On the move

Gertrude and I (and Husband) are packing up and heading out. This is a crazy, whirlwind time....especially since we didn't think we'd be leaving Massachusetts so soon...let alone in less than a week!

The good news is that Husband just graduated with both of his master's degrees two weekends ago:
The bad news is that they won't let us put our lease (we live on campus at our grad school) in my name unless I become a full time student through January (not going to happen). So we had to figure out pretty quick-like what we were going to do and we decided that if we're going to have to move anyway, we might as well move all the way back to the west coast since that's where we were planning on ending up eventually anyway. Plus with his shiny, new MA's Husband has some job opportunities out in the promise land that he doesn't have here.

The badder (okay....I know it's not a word) part of the bad news, though, is that because we found out kind of last-minute that we're moving across the country, we haven't had a chance to do the things people normally do when they move across the country like, say, find jobs and a place to live. Or pack. So we're packing now. All while trying to plan a cross-country camping trip and do school work for the 2 classes I'm taking at a school in Missouri on our way to the Promise Land.

If that sounds like a recipe for chaos to you, then I think you'd be right. My main hope is that Husband and I don't kill each other and are still friends by the time we get to where we're going. Nothing like a major cross-country move (especially when one of you has never moved cross-country before) to put a damper on your relationship.

*sigh*

In happier news, my pomatomoi (that's the plural of "pomatomus") are coming along nicely. To try and avoid getting SSS (second sock syndrome) I'm knitting both at the same time. Knit the cuff for one....knit the cuff for the other. Knit the leg for one...knit the leg for the other. I've just finished the gussets of both and now just need to do the feet.

Here's a close-up of one of them:

Wordless Wednesday

Thanks :-)

Thanks everyone for the input on what I should do next.

As much as I really wanted to cave to Lana and Jenger and blow off my second sock to knit the option1 top, after talking to Sassy, I realized “I need another ball of yarn” isn’t a great excuse. I thought “but the yarn is expensive” would work better. But when Sass asked how much the yarn was and I heard myself say out loud “six dollars” I realized how utterly stupid I sounded (I’m going to let $6 stand between me and the yarn I need to finish a project?) and that I should take my Punk Pal’s (and everyone else’s) suggestion that I just do the next Hedera and get it over with.

So on my way home from work yesterday, I stopped at the store from whence I bought the first ball of yarn I used for Hedera and they were all out of my color! What to do? What to do? To keep from feeling like my trip to the store was worthless, I bought a present for my soon-to-be-not-a-secret punk pal and another ball of the magic stripes yarn (see option 5 below) since I’m going to need it at some point to make an actual pair of socks. (don’t worry, I’m sure they’ll have more of my yarn soon)

In the end what did I do?

I…er, I mean Gertrude….yeah, that’s it….cast on for the Pomatomus. Can I just say I hate knitting twisted ribbing? Does anyone know if it is somehow superior to regular ribbing or does Cookie just like it? I thought about changing the ribbing but being newer to this sock business and the only sock I’ve knit that “works” was a Cookie A. sock (that and Cookie is a sock knitting genius) I figured I shouldn’t mess with it lest I manage to screw it up. I am planning to do the 2 socks on 2 circular needles thing with them (after I get past the ribbing, which I'm doing on smaller needles that I only have DPN's of), though, so we don’t run into the second sock syndrome problem again.

Goodbye Hedera

At first this was going to be a post about the wonderful Hedera sock. Shadkitty is a sockophile and she inspired me to try socks again (my first pair have some issues. They make good hiking socks but aren’t very pretty). So after scouring the internet trying to find a beginner-friendly pattern, I happened upon Hedera on Knitty. It’s a Cookie A sock, so it’s beautiful but it didn’t have a confusing lace chart I was going to have to figure out how to read.


So I swatched up and jumped in. After finishing the ribbing (which I hated….mostly because I had decided to try and knit elastic into the cuff which made it both boring and time intensive…yeah, that was dumb) and got to the fun part, it became rather addicting. The pattern was easy and it looked really neat. I’d work on my sock before bed, dream about my sock, and couldn’t wait for lunch time at work so I could work on it some more. But after 2 repeats of the lace pattern, I began to notice a problem….the holes on one side of (what was supposed to be) the symmetrical eyelet were nicely defined and the holes on the other side were very, very tiny. I figured maybe it just needed to be blocked? Hmm. So I kept going.

After 5 repeats of the lace pattern, something looked off. The lace was really pretty but it didn’t look like the picture. (see figures A and B)

So after some research I realized I was making my yarnovers the wrong way….which apparently didn’t matter for half of the holes but did for the others. !#$?!%&!


I didn’t know what to do. If I start doing it properly now, the sock will look funny. I suppose I could always finish this sock and then do the second one wrong on purpose so they match? In the end, I came to the sad realization that I was going to have to frog. So today during lunch I said goodbye to my good friend Hedera and began anew on Hedera II.


This is Gertrude helping me with Hedera II:

Hopefully Gertrude will be better at this knitting thing than me.

Gertrude and the Easter Bunny

This is just a sneak peak at all of the wonderful surprises my PRGE pal sent me.


I brought Bunny Rabbit to work today to be Gertrude's new pet and did a demo for the editorial department. There was lots of laughter and slightly disturbed looks as I twisted off his head to fill his body with jellybeans and wound him up so he could walk about pooping brightly colored candies. It was great! My boss was a little weirded out but it was SO funny. Thanks PRGE pal!


(more to come on my PRGE pal presents after I return home and have the use of a proper camera)

Gertrude just wanted to pop in to say 'Hi!'