Sniff

I am sad to report that my much-loved Elfine Socks, in the Sunshine Yarns Rock Creek colorway, have a hole in the toe. They were already kind of felted in some places and wearing thin in others, so I'm not sure it's worth darning them. The yarn is the old non-superwash merino and I didn't know about using reinforcing thread yet, so they wore out pretty quickly. Still, almost two years is a pretty good life for a pair of socks. Now I just need to KNIT FASTER so as to finish my two pairs of socks in progress. Of course, that would involve knitting the socks, rather than the hot pink cardigan I just started. Um, oops.

Rockin' Socks!

The Rock & Weave Socks are done! (But Blogger's photo upload is broken, so you'll have to look at my Flickr or Ravelry page to see them.) They fit nicely and I really like the cute cuffs.

I'm afraid I may be at risk of joining the Socks that Rock cult. I'd really like to try the lightweight sock yarn, and the Atomic 6 colorway is calling to me. Then again, who am I kidding? So are Socktopus, Metamorphic, and Rolling Stone. But I'm on a yarn diet until I knit up some of my sock yarn stash - I feel bad about neglecting those two nice skeins of Bearfoot for so long.

Socktober!

Happy Socktober! I hereby resolve to finish at least one of my three pairs of socks-in-progress by the end of the month. In fact, yesterday I picked up the Rock & Weave socks and figured out how to fix them, which merely involves ripping back one finished toe and reknitting both, so I'm hopeful that those will be done soon. Then it's on to the Pink Socks, the first of which is at the heel, and the Grape Koigu Upside-Down Monkey Socks, which are only a few inches long at the moment. (I started them about two weeks before giving birth, so I've been a little too distracted to memorize the pattern.)

Julian's sweater is nearly finished - I just have to weave in the ends and redo the bind-off on the cuffs a little more loosely. I tried it on him this morning and it is Beyond Cute, so there will be photos soon!

Sickness and socks

The rockin' socks are more than halfway done! Considering that I only started them a couple weeks ago, this is pretty impressive by my usual standards. However, I've had both motivation and opportunity. Last Wednesday I started feeling sick to my stomach. I had tea and toast and stayed home from work, but by 9:30 that night I wasn't keeping anything down, including water, and I was feeling like absolute hell. We called up the hospital and fortunately my wonderful doctor was on call that night, so she told me to come on in and get some IV fluids. When we arrived they set me up in one of the really nice labor & delivery rooms, hooked up my IV, and attached some monitors as a matter of routine. A few minutes later, the nurse looked at the monitor screen and pointed out that I was having contractions every few minutes.

Well, no wonder I felt so terrible. Contractions! At 34 weeks! Not good! We knew that dehydration could cause preterm labor, but I hadn't realized it was already almost happening - I thought it was just more stomach pains. So I stayed in bed with my nice IV and had three liters of fluids, a dose of anti-nausea meds, and a shot of anti-contraction meds. My doctor determined that I wasn't dilated or effaced at all, so I wasn't in labor for real and the baby was probably going to stay put for a while longer (though he is Extremely Active and apparently likes to throw dance parties in there). After four hours in the hospital I was feeling a lot better, and we decided that the contractions had eased up enough that I could go home, but I had to stay in bed all day Thursday and drink more water than I had previously thought possible.

So, I stayed in bed on Thursday, and spent most of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday on the couch with my knitting. I'm feeling fine now, or at least as good as I can feel at 35 weeks pregnant, but I'm still taking it easy, working at home, drinking tons of water, and so on. When I started these socks I was struck with the realization that if I wanted to finish them in a timely fashion, I'd better do it before the baby arrived - now I know that could be earlier than expected, but I actually have more time for knitting, so I'm hoping to have a pair of socks soon, and a healthy baby a few weeks later. :)

No pictures

I was going to take pictures of my latest projects, the beaded wristwarmers and the Socks that Rock, but it's gray and cloudy, terrible picture weather.

Then I was going to post a slightly older picture of the Shetland Triangle shawl, which I started a couple weeks ago, just to post a picture, but Blogger isn't letting me post pictures right now!

So, um, I'm knitting the Rock & Weave Socks in the displayed color ("Fairgrounds") and loving it so far. (though thanks to Amy, I will be keeping a close eye on the fit as I knit the heel.) The silver wristwarmers with blue beads were a fun and super-fast project and look great, though (as usual) I want to re-do one of the seams. And I promise, there will be pictures once the clouds and the computer stop conspiring against me.

Silver Silk Socks

Yarn: Regia Silk, color 091. 55% merino, 20% silk, 25% polyamide. One skein per sock with a bit left over.

Pattern: My basic toe-up, short-row heel-and-toe sock pattern with the 8-stitch "Oblique Openwork" pattern from Sensational Knitted Socks. I reversed the pattern for the second sock so the two socks would be symmetrical instead of identical, which required a little bit of pattern-tweaking. Knit on a #1 bamboo circular, Magic Loop technique.

Verdict: LOVE the yarn. Of course I don't know how it wears yet, but it feels terrific on my feet, and the polyamide should give it extra durability without detracting from the softness at all. The silk/merino blend is luxuriously soft but it's remarkably inexpensive. I'm definitely going to buy more; it's a great yarn to show off lacy patterned socks. (And it comes in a gorgeous rich burgundy color, too.) This pattern was, shall we say, rather slow to knit. It looks good, but next time I'm doing something with fewer slanting decreases. I think I also made the toes a bit too tapered for my weird squared-off feet, so I'm tweaking my toe-up pattern once more to make the short-row toe a little more blunt. I'm so happy these socks are finally done and I can wear them!