It Was the Socks' Fault, Not Mine

My blog seem to have vanished from the face of the earth. I blame it on two things: facebook and sock knitting. The thrill of the first has worn off a bit, although I used its messaging to arrange a huge surprise for my husband's birthday. I got his brother, sister-in-law, and niece to fly out from Iowa for his 70th birthday (26 December) and our 40th anniversary (31 December).

The thrill of sock knitting lives on. I finally tried it, years after it became so popular. I got Melissa Morgan-Oakes's two books on knitting socks two at a time, cuff down and toe up, using Magic Loop. Then I sent off to KnitPicks for worsted weight yarn in approximately the colors she used for her sample socks. Carefully following each well-illustrated and well-described step, I discovered that sock knitting is easy. Then I did a little shopping and discovered that it's fun and pretty, too. I've just finished turning the heels on my twelfth pair of socks.

I can't recommend these two books enough. I've collected a bunch of other sock patterns and it's very easy to adapt any of them to her techniques.

The bitter irony of this new-found passion for knitting socks is that I don't wear hand-knitted socks. Mostly I wear thongs because I live in fairly warm places and sandals work just fine. On the rare occasions when I do wear socks, I wear Katie Bell socklets that I buy from Costco in bundles of ten pair. Or I wear a pair of cotton socks from my vast collection from Lands End, as these socks, bought before I retired in 2002, show no signs of ever wearing out.

So what do I do with all these socks I knit? I give them away, of course. I have friends and family in cold climates who love my socks. The first pair I knit, a lovely pair in purple, went to my beloved sister-in-law. My niece, my cousin's wife, my goddaughter, my cleaning lady, my friend Pat, e-friends on Usenet (alt.fan.cecil-adams, to be precise)--all of them get my hand-knitted socks. I buy colors of yarn with each of them in mind. When my sister-in-law and niece were here we went through my four bins of sock yarn and pulled out an entire bin for the two of them (plus four balls for my brother-in-law). Every one they liked was one I'd bought with them in mind, which made me happy that I'd picked so well. My dear goddaughter finds wool too itchy to wear, so I buy non-wool yarn, like bamboo, for her.

I was going to post a photo of some early pairs of socks, but it's not working from flickr and I can't figure out where I put the original. I'll dig out the memory stick, which is probably in the camera, which I think is in a knitting bag somewhere here, and get photos posted. I should probably photograph some of my yarn, too. I discovered Trekking XXL and Zauberballs, to add to the KnitPicks and Elann sock yarn. I have stopped going to my favorite sellers on eBay and Etsy because I absolutely cannot buy more sock yarn until I've knitted up at least a bin's worth.

Library Dedication

On 2 February the Friends of the Lancaster Library dedicated their bookstore within the library to my mother's memory. Here's the photo of her, a small plaque explaining why, and the official Los Angeles County Library System sign.


This was at the annual meeting and they also installed their officers and had a great speaker, a local author who has sold one of his books to be a movie. A lot of my mom's friends and fellow volunteers were there and everyone said wonderful things about my mom, even the speaker who had only met her once, some years ago, and had remembered her very well for her efficiency and her kindness. He writes a column in the local newspaper and, it turns out, mentioned my mom in his column after the dedication. I haven't seen it yet, but one of the volunteers saved it for me and is going to drop it by later today.

I said a few words about her love of reading and of books and how important the volunteers and the library were to her. Everyone seemed to like what I said and they laughed at my little jokes and nodded in agreement with what I said.

Here's a close-up of the official sign, made to match all the other official signs throughout the entire county system:


And here's the photo of my mom, taken at an angle so that the flash wouldn't reflect off the glass and ruin the picture:
Isn't that a pretty frame that they picked out? I'm very impressed with it.

What A Week It's Been

I went over Friday and signed all the paperwork to list my mom's house. The only thing we didn't do is set the date we'd begin. My realtor, Jane, who used to be my neighbor, came by the house on Saturday and agreed with me that it wasn't ready yet.

On Monday we cleared out the master bedroom and both bathrooms completely. The bedroom set (queen bed, dresser, nightstands) is still in there, which Jane says is OK because it'll show people how big the bedroom is. Apparently, people have trouble estimating the size of empty rooms. I think this set is going to go to one of the sisters who clean my house in Palm Desert.

We got kind of a late start because we had to go by the bank and get my signature medallion certified so I could cash in one of my mom's IRAs, since I was the beneficiary. The medallion certification guarantees that I'm really who I say I am and promises that the bank will cover any losses if it turns out I'm not, so they don't just hand these out at random. We'd had a raging hassle over this Friday, but I figured out what the bank really wanted and it just sailed through.

Then Tuesday my friend and I finished clearing out the guest room. It's still got a daybed, a dresser, and my mom's cedar chest in it, but the dresser and chest are empty. We also packed up the last of the kitchen stuff and made a run to the thrift store. We had about ten boxes of stuff for them. They were getting ready for their fall sale the next day, so we just put everything in the conex out back. My friend and I both noticed that some of the stuff they were taking into the shop for the sale was stuff we'd brought over earlier.

Wednesday my husband and I went over to the dentist. We both had crowns to have cemented and I had two fillings. It wasn't particularly painful for either of us, but we were there for almost three hours. It might have gone faster if my crown hadn't been such a perfect fit. The cementing process starts with a trial fitting and bite checking. Well, my crown wouldn't come off. It was made to fit my tooth and fit it did. My dentist ended up doing the adjustments in place and then tried for at least five minutes, maybe more, to get it out. When it did finally pop off, it bounced off the tip of my tongue toward the back of my mouth. I wasn't in any real danger of swallowing it, fortunately. Needless to say, we didn't do any more trial fittings; the next time it was in my mouth it had cement on it. It's perfect.

Thursday our new van was supposed to be delivered, but there was a problem with getting the running boards. They were damaged in shipping, with a deep scratch through the gel coat, and there was no way they could be used. So they've been re-ordered and we're just waiting on them arriving and getting painted. My friend went over to the house and moved all the cartons of books for the Friends of the Library out to the garage. She also moved about three-fourths of the cartons of stuff we're taking to our Palm Desert house (mostly kitchen stuff and books) out there too. Meanwhile, I started organizing stuff here to go to Palm Desert, mostly books. I'm ignoring the yarn for now.

She got a call from her husband, at about 1730, that his car wouldn't start and would she please come down and get him. He works near Burbank Airport. She put their dinner into the fridge and went down and got him. He went down with a co-worker this morning and figured out what the problem is. Tomorrow they're going to get a hitch for her pickup and go down and get the car. Not that she needed any more excitement in her life, because she's on the board for the public parks in the unincorporated area west of town and they're having a book sale tomorrow. Apparently the county employees can't actually sell the books and take the money, so the board members have to do that, something it would have been helpful to know before Thursday.

Today, Friday, was a very successful day. We started by loading the books for the Friends into my van. Then two guys from the thrift store showed up and took away the two filing cabinets, microwave oven, microwave stand, and two vacuum cleaners. To save them making a second trip and, more importantly, to save them from having to lift the heavy console TV into a Suburban-type van, we ended up moving all the boxes of books into my friend's pick-up and putting the TV in my van. The ramp really helped with that. I followed them over to the shop and they unloaded the TV and I visited with the workers for a bit and then went home. I was so pleased to get these big things out of the house and garage and over to the shop. My friend and I would have really struggled with them.

Next one of the afternoon volunteer workers, who had been a very good friend of my mom's, came by on her way to the shop and picked up the five boxes of things for the homeless shelter (my mom had been collecting this, like towels too worn to sell but still good enough to use, from the donations to the thrift shop). We also had a big black garbage bag full of large RubberMaid, Tupperware, and other storage containers for her daughter-in-law, who is a serious baker and can use these large containers for flour, etc. I also had a few little things for her, mementos of my mother. Between all these visitors we managed to finish clearing up the office. There's a few pieces of furniture in there, which we'll move on Monday.

My friend has graciously agreed to take the daybed, the drop-leaf table, the end table, two living-room lamps, the rock-maple hutch, and two paintings by my father's youngest sister. She has also taken a number of other things. She knew and liked my parents and will remember them both when she uses these things. Her daughter, her only child, also knew my parents and also will remember them fondly. I just can't say how much it means to me that she's taking these things.

Anyway, we finished up the day by taking fourteen cartons of books over to the library, where we were met by the president of the Friends. He and one of the library guards unloaded the cartons onto carts and whisked them away. The librarians will go through the boxes and take any books they want for the collection and then the Friends will take the rest to sell, either in the bookshop they've named after my mom or at their semi-annual sales. My husband and I buy books on science and other non-fictional topics that we don't always keep. We pack these books, frequently the newest books on the subject, in a marked box and they, I'm told, always get added to the collection. I think this says something rather sad about the funding for our county library system, that they have to rely on donated books in such important areas.

It is just amazing how much progress we've made. For so long it seemed as if we weren't making any progress at all, no matter how hard we worked and how much we took away or packed up. Now all at once it's almost empty. We have another day, at the most, and then I'll get the cleaners in. Following that, the entire interior has to be painted, except (maybe) the kitchen. Then it goes on the market, probably in about a week. And there it will probably sit for ages, until some investor buys it and turns it into 8A housing, like what happened after the last real estate bust we had in the Antelope Valley.

I decided to send some people, mostly family, photos of my parents. They had a great portrait done by a very talented local photographer about ten years ago and I was able to get her to make prints for me. I kind of underestimated my list and had to call her this afternoon and order a few more prints. They'll be ready in about two weeks. I bought a box of those stiff photo mailers and I've been tracking down mailing addresses. I'll start mailing them once I get them all.

I'm still knitting away on my Bigfoot Shawl. I'll get a photo over the weekend.

Another Baby, Another Blanket

I mentioned earlier that we had lunch on Sunday with my husband's college roommate and his wife. They have twin daughters, one of whom is just finishing her residency in surgery and is expecting her first child in November, much to their great delight. The other twin has three children, so our friends have gotten pretty good at being grandparents, but you know how it is, grandparents are always thrilled to have another grandbaby to spoil. Both of their daughters live in the Los Angeles area, so they see each other a lot, too.

As a knitter, I immediately jumped on this wonderful opportunity to knit something useful for the new baby. I haven't mentioned this to our friends yet, but I just bought the yarn from one of my favorite eBay sellers, Yarnbow, and it should arrive by the weekend. I picked Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sport, which is Superwash wool, in color 601, Rainbow.


Isn't that just great yarn for a baby blanket? The pale pastel "baby" colors really show the dirt quickly but this yarn won't. Babies are adorable but they can be kind of messy, so this is important. The yarn is machine washable, too. Blankets that can only be washed by hand are right up there with little outfits that have to be ironed for impracticality. New mothers have it hard enough without adding silliness like that.

The pattern I'm using is the Argosy Baby Blanket by Vyvyan Neel, a very talented designer and an exceedingly nice person. If you look at some of the other patterns in the Argosy series, you'll get an idea of how this blanket is going to look in this yarn. The pattern calls for six skeins of Blue Sky Cotton 100%, which has 150 yd per skein and a gauge of 4 stitches per inch on US 9 (5.5 mm) needles. I'm using eight skeins of sport weight yarn with 200 yd per skein and a gauge of 6 stitches per inch on US 4 (3.5 mm) needles. I think it'll work out just fine, if only because the pattern calls for increasing until half the yarn is used and then decreasing. My blanket may not be exactly the same size as the pattern calls for, 54" x 47", but it won't be a lot smaller.

This baby blanket may take precedence over the Argosy baby blanket I'm knitting from the Great Adirondack Superwash merino in Bahama Mama, even though this baby is due in November and the other baby is arriving in August. That's mostly because we'll probably be seeing our friends again in three or four weeks, so if I have it done by then I won't have to pack the blanket up and ship it. Another factor is that August isn't exactly the best time of year for using a wool blanket, particularly in the desert, meaning August is not exactly a hard deadline.

A Four-Day Old Project On The Needles

This is my latest project, a feather and fan stole. It's knitted from a lovely hand-painted sock yarn according to my own pattern. I mean, it's pretty straightforward. There's a six-stitch-wide border (chain selvedge and five garter stitches) on each side and five repeats of an 18-stitch feather and fan, making it 102 stitches wide.



I started it with eight rows of garter stitch, which you can see, along with the feather and fan, in this photo. The colors are a little darker than this shows, with black, dark purple, and wine red.


I maybe should have knitted fewer garter-stitch rows, as these have a slight tendency to cup. By the time I figured that out I had about eight inches of stole knitted, so I decided I'd live with it. The digital knitter is a pragmatic knitter.

Here's something I find amusing, but then, I'm easily amused. I wound a great big skein of yarn into a big center-pull ball that was flat on top and bottom. As I've knitted away the ball has changed shape markedly. The bottom is still as flat as a pancake, but the top has gotten more and more domed. The ball is now a lot thicker than it came off the winder. I'm sure this growth from the friction when I pull yarn out as I knit.


I haven't gotten a lot knitted in the last few days. My husband's college roommate and his wife came over from Whittier to visit yesterday (Sunday). We hadn't seen them for a while, so it was a really nice long visit. I'd spent Thursday and Friday getting the last cartons either completely unpacked (sf books to live in Palm Desert, for example) or packed (knitting books to go back to Lancaster for the summer). Then Saturday we went to the supermarket and had a wonderful time shopping in the service deli and bakery. Four kinds of meat, five kinds of cheese, four kinds of rolls, salad, and a beautiful lemon and cream filling cake. Of course, I got the usual produce for sandwiches, too.

The deli salad was very interesting. I'd never had it before, but it looked so good I tried it. It's called fried corn salad and it has sweet corn, pozole, black beans, onions, sweet potato (I think), and green olives in a vinaigrette. Everyone really liked it. I had so much food on the table that I forgot the potato chips entirely, not remembering them until about six p.m.

We all had a wonderful time and they're probably going to come back in a couple of weeks. Considering that they live about a hundred miles away, it's not the shortest trip for them, but they said it was an easy drive, easier than fighting their way north to Lancaster.

As soon as I finish the stole, I've got to get started on a baby blanket. Here's the yarn, Great Adirondack superwash merino worsted weight in Bahama Mama. I'm going to use the Argosy pattern for it. It has to be done by August.


I was going to have the yarn for this custom-dyed, but I fell in love with the Bahama Mama colorway and decided to skip that step. I also got two skeins of Bahama Mama Chinchilla, for what I don't know. I just love the Great Adirondack colors and yarns.

My husband has been recording Knitty Gritty for me, using the DVR in our bedroom. I spent this afternoon watching a week's worth. I took my stole knitting, my new book on modular knitting, and my diet Coke and went back and camped on the bed to watch. I loved the skirt in butterfly stitch but didn't think much of the sushi toilet paper roll cover. I just adored Annie Modesitt's corset and intend to make one after the baby blanket.

The fourth show was on modular knitting, which I didn't know when I picked that book out, and the guest was Iris Schreier, author of Modular Knitting. That was the very book I'd been clutching to my bosom. I've decided I need Vivian Høxbro's Domino Knitting, too. One of the blogs I read has featured a sweater knitted in mitered squares and the techniques look very interesting to me.