This is Bullshit

And so I decided to start the December sock club sock and I wind me my yarn and I get me out some needles and I open up the directions and I can't start them because the designer wants me to use something called Judy's fucking magic fucking cast-on and she did NOT provide directions as to to how to accomplish this goddamned thing so I have to look it up. The pattern does not include complete directions! Who ever heard of such a thing?

The Man to the Rescue

So I lost a needle down the side of the sofa cushions. This threw off my day. I could have gotten out needle five (I normally do socks with four needles, but they come in sets of five) and finish off the toe of the October sock club socks, but I was too busy pouting and thinking about what a loser I am. (If one of the litigants I deal with at work wrote this, it would say "looser" instead of "loser.") I had a good long pout. Eventually, The Man came home from the grocery store and, after only about an hour, he noticed that something was seriously wrong with Dirtbunny's attitude. Bunny's attitude is often pretty bad. I don't know if it took him so long to notice because he's clueless or because one of my bad moods doesn't look much different from an ordinary mood.



I could have just told him what happened, but that would defeat the purpose of stewing in it.



Anyway, he noticed, I told him, he stuck his hand down there and fetched it out for me. Isn't he the best? And I finished the socks and here they are:







This is a The Man photo, which means that the toes are ever so slightly cut off at the bottom. I know, I claim to be praising him, and still I can't give him a break. Here is my best photo:

So I have a completed pair of socks and a complete set of needles in the obscure size.

So next, I decided that a cool thing to do with all my leftover sock yarn would be to knit tiny socks and donate them to hospitals or other such charities. Here is my first teeny tiny sock:

Please to notice the nursery-friendly color: grey and dark grey. Every baby's favorite! Plus it's only about 2 1/2 inches long! That's for one teeny tiny baby's teeny tiny foot. It's probably too small to be useful to anyone. Any baby with a foot that small probably has a leg too delicate to stuff through the cuff. Lessons learned, etc. I'll try again a little bigger.

I have just now lost one of my shiny new sock needles down into the sofa cushions. It's gone. I tried to retrieve it, but I only have spilled coffee to show for it. It would be the new ones in the obscure size. I now have 3 bent bamboo, 2 straight bamboo, and 4 metal. Not a complete set.

Yarn Bandit was crowding me when it happened. Then I dropped it and I looked at him, and he looked at me, and he decided to retreat to one of the dog beds.

Bunny's new set of sock needles is here, so she can now go back to work on the October sock club sock. I love them. They are pretty and shiny and I like to touch them and hold them.

The Week in Yarn

At this moment, the Wahoos are leading their opponent, so it's a good time to get up from the sofa and record the week in yarn. If I don't go back to the game later, then the hapless and pathetic Wahoos can remain evergreen in my memory.



I have made The Man his own version of the ridiculous green hat. His is blue, made from leftover yarn that matches his recent Man Mittens.





I offered to make the braids yellow, so he could pretend he's Heidi Klum. He said no thanks. I said he didn't have to pretend he was Heidi Klum; he could just pretend he was wearing her scalp as a hat. Again with the no thanks. I have a hard time finding people to play with around here.

I have started some new socks.

These are a simple k3, p1 ribbed socks with contrasting cuff, heel, and toe. If you have been paying obsessive attention, and you probably haven't, then you will have noticed that these socks mark a certain event in the history of Bunny's on-deck circle. Here's a hint.

And I have made excellent progress on the October sock club sock:

I like the yarn. I don't mind much that the dye leaves a little bruise-looking mark near my thumb when I knit with it. I like the pattern. It has lace, but the bulk of it is at the cuff so I am not forced to carry around the pattern with me everywhere. The leg and foot have an easy-to-memorize ribbed lace pattern so it all goes pretty quickly so I don't have to pay great attention to it. Maybe I should pay a little better attention because I ended up with an extra stitch on the last round.

So.... Notice anything special about that photo?

Yes, pretty lace, but that's not what I meant. Notice anything else?

That's right. That's one sorry-ass bent needle. Actually, three of the five needles I have in this size are bent. They are 2.5mm size U.S. 1 1/2. Nice and obscure. Not available everywhere. The Man took me to both crappy craft shops looking for a replacement because they are closer than any of the yarn stores. No luck. I got these online at simply socks. I could get more, but all they have are bamboo and I don't want any more bent bamboo. I want metal! But not the really expensive addi turbos.

Yarn Harlot, as always, has the answer. She mentions sometimes that she gets some basic sock supplies from a certain somewhere. I've got the fancy fibers covered nicely, but I don't have a good source for the basics. So I looked up her source. Voila! I've ordered me a nice inexpensive set of metal DPNs in assorted sock sizes from Knit Picks. I ponied up for the extra fast shipping too because knitting with bent needles makes me nuts.

P.S. Spell-check isn't wrking today and I'm too lazy to proofread. Deal with it.

P.P.S. I keep typing "cocks" instead of "socks" today.

Man Socks

The Man Socks from the leftover grey yarn are now complete. Kirby got bored posing with them, so here's what you get. I still have four balls of dark grey left and no idea what to do with them, but the new rule is only one olde yarne project at a time, so I'll worry about that another day.

Old Friends, New Rules

We are moving on here Chez Nous to exciting new knitting projects, because the lame, boring ones are finished.

Here are some Man Mittens fashioned from leftover yarn. No they are not the same size. Custom-fit mittens for custom-designed Man hands.



Here is the purple cardigan. Plain stockinette stitch, saddle shoulders, and a plain garter stitch neckband. No buttons. Nice and heavy and warm. Of course, now that it's done, it's 70 degrees outside. It figures.

Beagle blanket. Some of that white stuff is lint from the dog beds, where the wubbie (as we now call it) has been enjoyed for two nights now. Some of that white stuff is the mattress peeking through lace.

I have only one project active now. Grey Man socks from leftover yarn. There is satisfaction to be obtained from using up leftovers. I get to feel frugal, and I get to free up space otherwise occupied by leftover yarn. The thing is, I have plenty of beautiful new yarn in the stash. Old yarn is boring, and I've been focused too much on it. New rule: only one leftover yarn project at a time. Because I am working the Grey Man Socks, that means my next project is a new yarn project.

No problem. Remember this? The October sock club sock. I have wound the yarn and read the lengthy advice about gauge and sizing (which has me quite confused about what I should do). I also have the December sock club sock and the January sock club sock to do. I am compulsive enough to have a need to work them in order. FIFO and all that. But, one of my knitting circle buddies is new to the sock club and is working the January sock. I am competitive enough to want to finish mine before she finishes hers. (Don't change what you're doing, Mel. This is my issue, not yours.)

This poses quite a dilemma for the Bunny. I am trying to be more flexible and less neurotic. Working October first means succumbing to the compulsive FIFO-ness side of me. Working January first means succumbing to the Memememememe! side of me. Both are neurotic. Perhaps the thing to do here is neither: start the December sock first. Of course, making a conscious decision after attaching so much importance and meaning to the various choices is in itself neurotic. I can't win.

By the way, when my December sock arrived, The Man mistook it for a Christmas present he ordered for me. Yup, it's yarn, I must have ordered this for her. He wrapped it and put it under the tree for me. It never occurred to him to actually look at it and notice that it wasn't the yarn he ordered, it wasn't from the yarn company he ordered from, and it had all sorts of sock club instructions and documentation accompanying it. Yarn is yarn. Muggle.