The back of the Inferior Cardigan is finished. I don’t have a picture. It looks just like the Inferior Sleeves only wider. I do have a picture of the left front. Please do not mock my wonky ribbing.*

The Superior Cardigan is on the left. The Inferior Cardigan is on the right.

Exciting things happen on the front! I should be at the armholes in no time.

My other projects are not going so well.

The night before last, I was ready to cast on the first of the Bloomin’ Socks. First, I had to ball the yarn. I don’t have a ball winder** and M has a short attention span, so I put the hank around the back of the rocking chair and started to wind. As soon as I made it clear to the cats that I was Not Playing, everything went swimmingly. Then I noticed that an Upsetting Tangeling Thing was happening. It was like the guy winding the ball at the mill took the yarn off the winder, put it on backwards, and finished the job. M tried to help. The spaghetti mess rapidly became worse.*** I sat on the couch trying not to cry and undoing the tiny, tiny knots. By the time I had finished, I was in no mood to try an overly complicated cast on.

It is now a day later and I have cast on in the overly complicated manner THREE times. Each time I asked: “Why am I doing this when I could just knit one on/purl one on? Why does the designer want people to cry? The pictures would be a lot less complex if they just did it the easy way.” For my fourth and final attempt, I did it my way and you can’t tell the difference.

Emily Ivey, casting on as she sees fit since 2001. So there.

In my stash, I have enough actual sock yarn for eight pairs of socks. This does not count the sack of Wool-Ease and other yarns that can also be used to make socks. And yet, I have ordered yarn for three more pairs.

On the left, we have some Regia from Simply Socks. It was ON SALE. The Red is for the Red Hot Socks knit-a-long. On the right, we have M’s very favorite sock yarn of all time: Brown Sheep’s Wildefoot (Elderberry). I got this because I didn’t want to pay a ton of shipping for just a pattern. It does NOT cost $4.25 to mail two pieces of paper.

From the sock yarn I already have, I’ve started a new TakeItWithMe project: Fluted Banister Socks in some kind of Kroy. I really like this pattern and the color will be great for M. I’ve added 5 extra stitches to the leg to make it a little bigger, but I think I will loose them when I get to the foot.

Take a good look. You won’t see them again ’til they are finished. Months from now.

I have not forgotten about the bedspread! It is still a very active project. I won Rowan #33 on ebay which has a baby blanket that is really similar to the bedspread patterns, but the squares are bigger. Janet pointed this out to me in the comments and bless her for that! Maybe it won’t take six years after all.

*I don’t know what’s up with that but it blocks out nicely so I have decided not to worry about it. I imagine it has something to do with my loose purls.

**For the record, I don’t have a ball winder because a Certain Someone called me “lazy” when I said I wanted to spend $40 to get one. The same Certain Someone looked at me as I wound and wound last night and said, “Don’t they make something that can do that for you?” My memory is hazy at this point, but I believe I called him a Bad Name.

***Only ONE person should be trying to untangle at a time. ONE PERSON.

I finished those green striped socks that I started a billion years ago.

I don’t count socks in the Only Two Active Projects Allowed at a Time rule because I almost always working on a pair. They are such nice, small projects to take in the car or to meetings or to Great Gran’s house. They don’t take a whole lot of concentration (unless they are paticularly elaborate or one is grafting) so I can talk/listen/observe and knit at the same time. I finished these yesterday at the Farm when I went over to hang out. Great Gran was saying that she just didn’t really have anything new to make (she is waiting on a pattern and yarn order) and wants to use up all her worsted yarn. I pulled up Knitty on the computer and showed her Coronet. She got started right away.

This morning she called to see if I wanted to run errands with her. When I hopped in the passenger seat, I found the finished band and some needles. She didn’t want my company – she just wanted me to pick up the stitches for the crown!

This last bit is for Becky who wants to see our favorite non-handknit socks. Here are mine:

The monkeys on the left are the runners up.

Last Christmas, both my Mom and Aunt Sandy gave me a pair of these! They are covered in Angus Dogs and I love them. They are also covered in cat hair, but hopefully you won’t notice that.

I’ve been doing a little knitting on the Inferior Cardigan.

The gaterstitch at the raglan sleeves is made by making a p2tog as the decrease on both sides. The Inferior sleeves came out the same size as the Perfect Sleeves! The only difference so far is that the cuffs are smaller/tighter. I think Great Gran used the cuffs from the other pattern: there is no change in needle size when you are finished with ribbing. I have decided to run with the smaller needle size; ribbing has been known to stretch out. Both sleeves are finished and I have made the band for the back of the sweater. The Inferior Cardigan should look like this in no time:

Naturally, the picture with the smirk came out beautifully. Look how many blooms that bush has had!

I mailed our red scarves yesterday.

Great Gran’s are the furry ones! They are so fun.

The Consensus has been to go with the Loden yarn for my Bloomin’ Socks, so I am ready to get started. The first step is to master is the method of casting on that the designer wants me to use. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t care and would cast on however I wanted, but the tops of the socks in the picture are so neat and clean that I am compelled make mine Exactly the Same. I am going to practice a bit, the diagram of the cast on shows yarn wrapped around lots of fingers. Too many fingers. This Concerns me.

I Forgot to Mention

I have been working my way through the blogs of the entire list of Olympic Knitters (I’m on the “Ks”). I don’t know why. Some perverse desire seizes me every time I see a list of links like that. As I go through, I am NOT NOT NOT looking at their “Blogs I Read” lists – that is just too much Kevin Bacon for me. But anyway.

I have a short list in my side bar of blogs that I read all the time. It grows and changes depending upon a number of variables. But I have an MUCH longer list of bookmarked blogs. More than any one person can read in a week. Unless, of course, they have insomnia. Which I do not. I’ve always felt bad about my neglected bookmarks, and every now and then I take a day to go through all of them – you can’t just read a few, the others get jealous – and skim what all has happened in the past couple days. I am not satisfied with this and the all day blog-a-thon makes me crazy. So M has written me A Script. A Script that selects a random batch of blogs from my bookmarks each week and lists them conveniently in my side bar. I feel so liberated.

Since there has been some concern about this: my Darling Sister’s legs are not actually six feet long. Which is good because it would take WAY to much yarn to make her Excessively Long Socks.

I have decided to halt production on the aforementioned socks until she actually tries the finished one on. I started thinking last night that if they don’t hit her knee, I can order more yarn, start over and increase the legnth at the knee where there isn’t any shaping to make things complicated. If I do this, I can make them as tall as they need to be. Genius. So I have packed up the sock to mail it.