Kris Awesome

I’m only halfway through the foot of my first sock and I’m already contemplating what I want to do with my second pair. It may just be a product of my short attention span, it may just be my love of color and striping (I’m just doing a pair in plain navy right now)… or it may just be the start of an addiction. Oh dear.

I wonder if if there’s a toe sock pattern out there. Or if I could just figure one out on my own. Hmm.

As much as I like Brittany DPNs, I’m now in such fear of breaking a second size 1 that I might have to buy a set in bamboo or something. This isn’t an issue with larger sizes at all, but the fact that I have musician fingers of doom does not bode well for the size 1s.

I don’t really have to be too picky about what kind of yarn I use because I can’t really feel the fabric anyway. This makes my wallet happy. It’s not like I’m going to go for acrylic, but still, it’s nice to know that my feet will be perfectly okay in sock yarn bought from Elann.

And finally, I like being able to try on the sock as I’m working on it. I’m doing a toe-up sock, and at first I thought the toe looked a bit too pointy, but then I actually put the thing on and it fits the shape of my foot rather well.

Guess who just broke one of her brand-spanking-new size 1 needles?

Yeah, that’d be me. >_< Anyway. I've decided that I definitely have a love/hate relationship with knitting scarves. On the one hand, they're very much a means for experimentation. I like to play. I seem to have a bit of a phobia of following patterns exactly as written. I'm addicted to color. And so the nice thing about scarves is that I can mess with a whole lot of things and not worry too much about it. Also, I like wearing them, and they're generally a pretty easy thing to work on while you're watching a subtitled movie or something. On the other hand, they can drag. There's a point when the playing turns into sheer tedium, and unfortunately that point happens fairly early on. Unless you're using a pattern that really requires your attention (ever try to double-knit a long scarf with both sides striped in three colors? that experiment definitely kept me awake), you can't help being consumed by the boredom of it all, and then at that point you can't really do anything else while you're working on it, which sort of defeats one of my main reasons for knitting scarves in the first place. I need to keep my hands busy most of the time in order to concentrate on something, so scarves are handy for that, but at the same time, if I have to use a complicated pattern to keep awake, they take up all my attention. It's a vicious cycle. So remind me why I'm adding yet another scarf to my list of works in progress? Oh yeah, because I want to play again and I want another accessory. DOH. At least I've also started my first pair of socks (which would be when I snapped my needle in two), and will probably start swatching for Shimmer very soon (I've had the yarn for awhile, but got distracted by holiday knitting), and since I need/want a cute wrap and loved the Cozy pattern so much I'm making one for myself in black. So I'll have opportunity to distract myself if I start getting bored with the scarf... even if I do have a project temporarily halted by the needle issue.

I really should just suck it up and finish my sister’s pink scarf already, but it makes me want to stab my eyes out. It doesn’t help that it’s sorta frilly. Okay, it isn’t really that bad from an objective standpoint, I suppose, but it’s still girly, darnit! But I guess that’s a good measure of how much she’ll probably like it. Also, I scrapped the Wavy idea because I found something else in Scarf Style that will suit her better.

Thank goodness for discounted yarn, otherwise I’d go broke making stuff for the immediate family.

Mom’s Cozy is going. Slowly. But I should have enough time. As for my dad, I think I’m going to do a couple of hats plus a gift certificate, which seems a good balance between putting in some effort for his gift and giving him something that I’m 100% sure he’ll use.

My allergies have been acting up, which makes knitting kind of a pain sometimes. Luckily I’m not working with any fibers that can really fly up my nose, but still. It’s hard to really be productive when you need to sneeze every couple of minutes…

Oh well, at least I’m done with finals. :-P

Apparently the act of knitting continental looks a lot cooler than knitting English. Or at least that’s what my sister says. :-P When I was back in the Bay Area and working on a project, she kept staring at my hands and muttering “how come it doesn’t look as cool when I’m knitting?” Silly girl.

Ive found a new addition to the little scarf collection Ive been working on for her Christmas gift. Wavy, from the new Knitty, will definitely suit her, but I have to pick out the right color. I hate figuring out colors for her, mostly because Im practically allergic to half the stuff she likes, and trying to decide what might coordinate with parts of her wardrobe is a pain in the ass.

And now I have to figure out whether I should bother knitting something for my dad or just get him some sort of gift certificate or whatever. He really could use a hat or two for when he spends hours on the golf course (my poor, poor balding father! Im sure the top of his head freezes horribly :-P), but he can also be terribly picky regarding wearables, so I dont know if I want to make him something he might never wear. Or I could do golf club covers or something, but I dont know exactly what clubs he has now, which complicates things a bit.

But to make up for it, at least my mom’s fairly easy to please when it comes to garments… *shrug*

I started knitting last winter quarter. So, I learned maybe nine months ago, give or take a couple of weeks. I had a three-month hiatus this summer, though, so let’s say I’ve been knitting for six months.

At the time, my mom was surprised, and nobody else in my family thought anything about it at all.

Flash forward to last week. My sister now thinks it’s a pretty darn cool thing, and is currently knitting her first scarf. In fact, a number of my cousins are now learning as well.

?!?!?!?!

This really weirds me out, because I am never the first one of many in my family. Usually I’m just the odd one. I study archaeology and media, while the rest of my generation’s doing health sciences and the like. I love watching hockey (damn damn DAMN the lockout!) and playing ultimate frisbee, everyone else watches and plays basketball. I dabble in electronics and everyone else dabbles in fashion. And so on, and so forth.

But now, I knit, and everyone else starts picking it up. What the hell gives?!

Unfortunately this means I will probably need a new idea for a gift exchange item. I have the sneaking suspicion that at least a couple of my relatives will be bringing scarves and such now. Which means I need to either just make something really really cool that’s currently beyond their skills (any ideas for a unisex item or two that fits this description?!) or just ditch the knitting idea entirely.

Damnit, couldn’t everyone have at least waited until just after Christmas or something to borrow one of my hobbies? :-P