Aran Sandal Socks and more Knitting Police

THEY’RE FINISHED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m referring not to the 9th wonder of the world, but to my Aran Sandal Socks. (I say 9th and not 8th because I’m suddenly uncertain if they might have come up with an 8th in the meantime and I would not want to suggest that my Arans eclipse a wonder like Mount Rushmore, the Taj Mahol or Tom Cruise’s single brain cell, even if they really should). After much sighing, gnashing of teeth and fixing of careless mistakes in the cable pattern, I finished them on Sun. and I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE them. They are warm and toasty and lovely and soft. They also help me to achieve my life’s goal of looking like a conservative desperately trying, and failing, to look hip by wearing her cabled sandal socks to work in her leather Teva sandals. Woot! I can now look back on my life and say that I achieved one of my goals. Go me.

I’ve also been mulling over the idea of the knitting police after reading the following in the Yarn Harlot’s blog entry from Oct. 19th :

The first sleeve is done, and I started the slightly tricky business of adding the front circle stitches at the same time as I start decreasing away the sleeve stitches. I started that part last night on the plane, but the cold drugs took their toll on my ability to count and I can't tell you of the multiple things I discovered wrong with it this morning when I was clean and sober.

So you see? We really do need knitting police, or at the very least one of those gadgets like they are developing for cars that can tell if you are having short blackout or if your eyes are closed. I think they’re supposed to do something to wake you up even before you fall asleep, like having your MILs voice shriek at you that your house isn’t clean enough for her baby boy who needs to have everything done for him or he will surely die a sudden and painful death caused by the effort of putting his own dirty (hand knit by you) socks in the laundry basket.

This would work for knitting too. As soon as it detects your eyes drooping or blinking more often or more slowly than usual, your MIL will ensure that you are jolted awake again with a rapidity that rivals the TGV. This has the added benefit of ensuring that you will not continue knitting in this state because most of us have more than enough of our MILs in real life and do not need to hear any more diatribes on the hygienic state of our husband’s underwear, which surely should be washed by hand in 110° water, dried in the fresh air so it smells nice and then ironed to make sure it looks neat enough for him to be hit by a bus without embarrassment - after we’ve picked it up off the floor ourselves that is. (my own ex-MIL is exempt from this as she is lovely. I would like to have kept her, just not her son).

I’m sure there are those of you out there who would object to this because not only do you knit whilst out to dinner with friends, in the movie theatre and while waiting in line at the bank, you knit in your sleep as well. I assure you the latter might be functional, but it’s wrong. Just wrong. Knitting is your hobby. Hobby people, hobby. Try and remember this. One of the basic requirements of enjoying your hobby is being awake for it, of which your MIL would surely love to remind you.

Now I just have to figure out how to police taste and colour usage so we never have a repeat of the 70s...

Drunken Knitting

Well, I made some pretty good headway on the second Aran last night. I was going to finish the phone sock, but figured I'd leave it for the moment so I would have something to do when on the phone. I don't want to risk the Arans.

Which brings me to knitting when tired. Someone ought to invent a gadget that tells you if you are too tired to knit. I'll be knitting along, knowing I'm tired, but not wanting to quit, especially as I'm utterly convinced that I am doing everything correctly. So I continue to knit and knit and knit. Suddenly I look at my work, only to realize that something has gone completely haywire. I used to blame this on my knitting ability. Now I know it's not. These are mistakes I made because I was too tired to knit. I feel like the drunk who is convinced that he is still fully capable of driving when, in reality, he's two sheets to the wind and about to fall out of the boat. Now we ask ourselves, should a person in this state be allowed to not only possess and hold, but wield two sharp pointy sticks? Is this wise? Should we have knitting licenses with tiredness limits? Should there be knitting police?

Oooo! Knitting police. Now there's an idea. They could not only save us from knitting when we're tired, but knitting things they know are not going to work, will look horrid on the person we're knitting them for, should not be knit in THAT yarn, or are of a colour that will make future generations spew at a glance. Think of it! If we had had knitting police in the 70's all of those tightly knit tunics with belts in bile yellow, poop brown and dirty orange would never have come into existence! What a service that would have been! Maybe the Swiss Fondue Police (who come around making sure you are stirring your fondue properly) or the Paper Recycling Police (who are there to make sure you do not put your old paper out for collection before 6am on pick up day) would be interested in collaboration.

But I digress. The reason for all of this is that I did that last night with the Arans. I suddenly realized that I had knit the same 6 rows twice. It did not look attractive. Even if it had, it wouldn't have matched the other pair. Thus, we Frogged. If Frogs were only Princes...

I am hoping to get them finished this weekend, as I am fickle. Now that I've got the hang of the arans, I'm wanting to get started on the Snickets I found whilst hunting for a pattern for my aunt's commission socks. So many things to knit, so little time!

Brain in Overload

Lately my posts have been taking on a long winded quality - honestly, if I were that long winded in sports I'd be a marathon runner - so I'm going to try and make them a bit shorter. Hmmm...36 words to tell you that, will I succeed? Bets anyone?

First up - doggie update, the short version: After a very long week full of very little sleep, T is finally getting better. *takes short break to play with wooden drum set, aka knocking on wood* He's a lot brighter and wants to take part in life again, for which I am extremely grateful. I am even more grateful that he is no longer on cortisone because the constant trips to the loo at all hours of the morning, and I do mean ALL, were making me question my love for this dog. I'm fairly certain he wasn't thrilled either. All of you Moms out there, I just don't know how you do it. T is only a dog and I have several more grey hairs this week than last week. Had it been my child I probably would have been hysterical.

So, since life is set to get back onto it's normal rickety track, I can get back to knitting. Having spent much of the last two weeks at the vets or running around after a sick dog, not much of that got done. I did finally finish the first of the Aran socks, go me! It took a couple of evenings just to get my head around no longer knitting the cable pattern in the round for the heel flap. I never did manage to do it as per the instructions, but I did do it. I just decided to start on the other side of the sock so that the first cable row was an odd one. The even rows were much easier to do from the back. That solved the problem and the heel looks fine. All roads, Rome, toga party til dawn, right? The rest of the sock was a breeze and now I'm looking forward to starting the second one.

Even though I really do like knitting the Arans, I'm taking a break so that I can finish the phone socks that have been on the needles for a month now. My aunt has been travelling so I haven't had my normal amount of phone sock time and it shows. She does still have the Internet though, so I mailed her pictures of the *Keira Knightly 9 to 5 and the cable socks so I could show them off, which landed me in a bit of a predicament. Now she wants some. They've been commissioned. This is good because I GET TO GO BUY YARN WITHOUT HAVING TO FEEL GUILTY but bad because I now have yet another pair of socks to knit. I was hoping to actually start on my Rogue Sweater some time this century. The socks can't wait though because they have to be done for my trip home in Dec. (yes, anyone reading this I will be gone for the entire month of Dec. Don't bother to come to my house and burgle it. There is nothing to steal except yarn. All of my electronic equipment is either second hand or of the lowest quality and none of it is new. Honestly, it isn't worth the petrol, especially as petrol here is running $6.50 a gallon at the moment. It's also not worth risking my neighbour's dog who is every bit as big as mine, and slobbers even more. If yarn is stolen, I will know it is a knitter and they were desperate. I will forgive them. Just don't ever let me find out who you are, k? :0) So, guilt free trip to yarn store. I can't wait for the weekend! :D

*I'd like to note that when I refer to my 9 to 5s as Keira Knightly socks I am not knocking Keira Knightly or insinuating that any of what the media is saying is true. It's actually because it's the media saying it that I doubt it in the first place. It's just that she is thin and that's just a fact. Should this truly a be natural occurrence, then that's just more proof that life really is fairer for some than for others.

PS: I'm in this month's edition of the Yarnival! Check it out, there's some cool stuff in there!

PPS: the second dog sweater fit like a dream apparently. Now they just have to convice the dog that wearing clothes is a good thing. Smart dog imho.

OK, It was another marathon. I'll try harder next time.

Aran Sandal Socks

Dang. I had just finished pasting and re-formatting my Aran Sandal Sock chart in here so I would have it for future reference when I realized that it might be a tiny bit illegal to post that publically. Bugger. All that work for nothing. Still, as I have little to no desire to find out what the inside of a Swiss prison really looks like, or an American, or any other prison for that matter, I erased it. I'd like to keep my non-experience of prisons and police stations just that, non-existent.

I started these socks because, as pretty as they are, I couldn't bring myself to do yet another pair of the 9 to 5s in the same yarn, whether in Denial or not (oh, those are finished by the way). So I'm doing the Arans. Grandma better appreciate this because I'm tellin' you, the learning curve is steep. This is by far the most difficult thing I've done to date (which tells you how limited my experience with kitting actually is). The pattern says experienced. I figured I'd try anyway. I can always give up.

At first I thought it was the pattern, then I blamed the publisher, now I know that it's my fault for not understanding the pattern. I didn't read the beginning thoroughly enough to understand that they did list the abbreviations, just didn't label them. Now that I've found them, I have to frog the first 4 rows I did last night because I did the one cable wrong. I guessed at the abbreviation figuring that it would be OK as long as I did them all the same way, but now that I know it's wrong, I want to re-do it. Hermione is still fighting with Ron. She refuses to be caged completely. This is how I know I never actually reached Denial. Sad, I would have liked to see what was on the Other Side.

Back to the point. I love the book Socks, Socks Socks (see above link through Ravelry. I can't get to Amazon to link right now), but if it has one failing, it's that they tried to cram everything into as few pages as possible. Great for the number of patterns, bad for comprehension. So, I've gone and written the pattern out. It's going to be slow enough going with this sock, but constantly having to go back and forth between paragraphs to find where I am and what I'm supposed to be doing makes for little knitting and lots of reading.

Should you not hear from me for a time, you'll know that I'm still fighting this sock. I am determined. I am also occasionally very stubborn. Unfortunately, this stubbornness always seems to surface when it is needed the least, like with knitting patterns for socks that could be knit 1000 other ways, all of which would be easier.

In the meantime, a little Zen. This is the only thing that keeps me sane when doing difficult projects. Now, imagine a little light snoring, soft breathing and the occasional yap in their sleep: