Ciao, Olympics

It has been a total blast being a spectator of this phenomenon. I knew Laura could do it. I can still hardly believe Stephanie made it. And have you seen Dani's Olympic project? Ho.Lee.Cow. It's gorgeous. Go see.

I am totally going to have to start thinking of what I will do for the 2008 Summer Olympics. :)

Garden Shawl for MIL

I went to an artsy-craftsy get-together on Saturday and got a bit more done on this. I must say that, despite all the anticipation, I am not yet feeling the love with this project. I am sure this has to do with the fiddliness of trying to do intricate lace on DPNs. Not. Fun. I am really looking forward to the point where I can switch to a circular. There are, however, two problems with this. One: There is a vicious circle at play - I don't really want to work on this until I can switch to a circular, but I cannot switch to a circular until I work more on this. And two: I don't actually have the circular I'll need. On the way home from my artsy-craftsy get-together I passed a Lewiscraft and stopped in to see if I could buy one there. No. And today I called up the one local to my work to ask if they had one. No. I then called up the one at the mall near where DH picks me up after work. No. I'm getting the distinct impression that they just don't carry them at all. I'm bummed.

On the other hand, I still haven't gone through my circular needle collection - technically it's possible that I actually possess what I need. But my experience with Murphy's Law tells me no way am I that lucky. Worst-case scenario I can always order one from Yarn Forward. What a total drag to have to do that, though. Especially since the shipping will probably cost more than the needle.

Self patterning socks #2 for DH

While I was in the Lewiscraft on Saturday hunting for a nonexistent 3.5mm circular needle, I also looked at yarn. I know, I know. How dumb was that - there really is no such thing as merely 'looking' at yarn. Once you are 'looking' you are pretty much guaranteed to soon be 'purchasing'. But this was not as dumb a move as you may think. Why? Since Lewiscraft looks like it'll go out of business, they were having a sale on everything. EVERYTHING. In some cases (off-season items), stuff was 70% off. Yarn was 30% off. And little ol' me actually managed to nab the last two balls in the shop of Patons Kroy Socks Jacquards yarn, 75% wool/25% nylon:

Need I point out the delicious fact that these last two balls were even in the same colourway? I can't remember exactly how much it cost, but even after the tax I paid less than $9. Whee!

(Oh, BTW...they also had quite a few balls of discontinued White Buffalo wool at 30% off. If anyone's interested, this specific Lewiscraft was the one in Etobicoke.)

Anyway, one of the balls now looks like this:


They will be socks for DH, knit continentally. I'm not exactly sure what occasion I'm going to use to give these socks to him, though. Since I scrapped his anniversary mittens, bumped his birthday socks up to anniversary socks and bumped his Father's Day socks up to birthday socks, logic would dictate that these should be Father's Day socks. However, I've had a pretty cool idea idea for another Father's Day gift for him (if we can ignore the stupidity of giving a man a pure wool scarf in the dead of summer and having the temerity to call it a 'cool' idea) so these new socks may have to be saved for another time.

Dress socks for DH

This weekend saw huge progress, largely because I was desperate to get the first sock in this pair done so I could use the needles to start knitting with my new self-striping Kroy yarn.

(You are seeing an almost-completed sock. Be assured that the sock is now completed, I just haven't taken a picture of it yet.)

Never would I have believed that I could knit the entire leg of a man's sock with 2mm needles after just one afternoon, one evening, and one television program's worth of work. This continental knitting thing rocks. Unfortunately (or fortunately, considering that I still have the second sock to knit and I'd like it to be the same size as the first one) my gauge with continental has still not tightened up to equal my gauge when I knit English.

Striped socks for moi

This saw a little bit of action this weekend, but not so much that I'm really anywhere close to the heel. However, what I did find interesting was that my efforts to knit another pair of socks using the continental method started leaking into this project. Twice I switched needles and automatically started knitting continental instead of English - once I even made it about halfway through the stitches on the needle before realising what I was doing!