Slacker

DH claims that the CD/DVD drive on our games computer is broken. Consequently he is spending much more time on the household computer, which I use to download pictures and blog. Hence the lack of entries recently. Oh, and also, I've been a lazy @$$. :)

But anyway...as long as I'm catching up, let's go to the comments. rachel made me feel infinitely better about my inability to start up the Garden Shawl properly on the first shot out of the gate. :) And I am thrilled to hear about the partial organization of her stash. That's awesome.

(My stash, incidentally, is now completely organized and stored. More about workroom progress in a future post, though, since this one is shaping up to be kind of huge. Suffice it to say that the news is pretty good.)

In other comments responses, christine, I totally lucked out with my husband - he is usually excellent at expressing sentiment. Which is why his insensitivity was not only hurtful, but also ridiculously surprising!

And Tanya, I miss seeing you in person, too. This living-out-in-the-boonies thing is nice on one hand because we love the house and the neighbourhood, but it blows on the other hand because a lot of the people we'd like to see more often are so far away. Sigh.

Finally in comments responding, I cannot help but mention 'NicoleW', who was flogging some website called...wait for it...'Fleshlight'. Now...although I have since deleted this delightful example of comment spam, I have found myself wondering - scratching my head, even - about this spam thing. Email spam is an entire industry. Avoidance of email spam is another entire industry. Now with the popularity of blogs, there is blog comment spam. And the whole thing just seems so damn pointless - I mean, does anyone ever actually respond to this crap? I think I even remember reading an article by someone who tried to respond to some of the offers they were getting just to see what the deal was, and couldn't because the contact information listed in the spam didn't even work.

Anyhoo...

(Apologies in advance...no pictures today.)

Self-patterning socks #2 for DH

Coming along very nicely. Heel of sock #1 has been turned and I'm about two inches up the leg. My speed rocks! I'm so happy.

However, I seem to have several choices as to when to give these socks to DH. The first choice - and sort of the original gameplan - is as a Father's Day present. But I have a better idea for that (see below), so that's already taken care of. The second choice is to wait for the next gift-giving occasion. Since his birthday is already taken care of with the dress socks, and I'm already planning to make him a sweater for Christmas, that means the next occasion is our anniversary...which is a year away. No WAY am I waiting that long to give him these great socks. My third choice is not to wait for an occasion at all but just to give them to him. That could actually be fun - I would just put them in his sock drawer and wait for him to notice. :) (Which he totally would, and then he'd go all vorklept.)

There's a fourth choice that's looking more and more appealing: I could give him two pairs of socks for his birthday - these ones and the dress socks. This might actually work pretty well since the two pairs colour-coordinate with each other rather nicely.

But right now I just don't know. On the other hand - who cares?!? These are really great socks!

Striped socks for moi

Compared to the speed I'm getting out of my continentally-knit sock projects, this thing is just crawling. I've turned the heel, but it seems like it's taking forever to do the leg. However, I will persevere.

Garden Shawl for MIL

An astounding thing has happened. I went through my collection of circular needles, and it turns out that I own a 3.5mm circular. I couldn't believe it! Now, it's 31" long instead of the recommended 24" that I'm supposed to transition to straight from the DPNs, but WHO THE HECK CARES. I ditched those DPNs like yesterday's garbage (partly because I had temporarily mislaid the fifth one and the circular was, at the time, the only way I could continue the project) and am now working in the round with the circular. At first it was something of a stretch, since the stitches barely went all around the needle, but it's getting better all the time the more I do since I increase by eight stitches every other row. This project is now starting to get fun. And also pretty. Pictures coming soon.

Scarf for DH

So I had this idea. It came from the fact that it doesn't make tremendous sense for me to give DH socks for Father's Day, since it's more appropriate for his gift to be from his daughter, who obviously would not have made the socks. But, I thought, what if his Father's Day gift was made by DD? With a little help from Mummy?

Thus I hit upon the idea. She and I could knit something together! It would have to be easy and quick, with big needles and big yarn so that her little hands would have an outside chance of being coordinated enough to do the movements of knitting pretty well, with Mummy's hands guiding her.

Well, some years ago a friend of mine was de-stashing, and I picked up three skeins of Belle Vallée Wools 3-ply Softspun, 100% pure Canadian Wool (two with labels, one without).

At the time I really knew nothing about yarn, I just thought, "Oooh, wool for cheap!" and grabbed it. But now that I know a bit more, I'm very happy with the purchase - the wool is soft and cushy and chunky. My only complaint is that it's a dun grey/brown that I would never put near my face. I've been considering putting it up for auction on eBay.

But, thought I, what if I used the label-less skein of this wool and some big needles, and helped DD to knit DH a garter stitch scarf? Whenever she gets tired of knitting it (which I expect will happen frequently), I can take over, and whenever she wants to work on it again, we can pick it back up together.

So a few days ago, speaking in whispers to drive home the point that it's all secret, I asked DD what she thought of the idea.

She is HUGELY enthusiastic about this. She loves the yarn. And so far she hasn't spilled the beans, although she has yelled loudly about "Father's Day!" and "My knitting!" with DH in the house.

We did, however, hit a bit of a snag tonight when I tried to start (while DH was making supper). The unlabelled skein is actually wound into two different balls (because the skein was big and the ball winder couldn't take all of it at one go). DD somehow got it into her head that the big ball was mine and the small ball was hers. So when I started to cast on with the big ball, she got really upset because it wasn't her knitting. I tried to tell her they were both hers, and both the SAME, for heaven's sake, but she was having none of it and she kinda...well...lost it a little bit. (What can I say, we're having sleep battles again these days and she's tired and whine-prone.)

So I ripped it out and am now casting on with her ball.

Once I'm done casting on, we'll sit down when DH isn't around and do some mother-daughter knitting. This promises to be fun. :) And of course DH will completely plotz when he's told that his kid helped to knit his gift.

Hee hee. I'm so eeevil.