Knitting and spinning. The fun never stops.

Here’s a photo for those of you who were concerned by the lack of chocolate on my kitchen counter.

The cake I was making is a Boston Cream Pie.

And for those of you who were concerned that the yarn on my counter was in danger of having food spilled on it — trust me, not enough actual cooking goes on in my kitchen for this to be much of a danger.

Here’s Teddy, hanging out with a friend.

We went to my brother’s weekend cottage for a barbecue yesterday. Here’s the only photo I took, of the side of his fridge.

You can tell he is a car guy . . .

Lucy stayed home and went mountain climbing.

And I finished the second Six-Pack Sock.

Here’s a close-up:

Tune in tomorrow for some pix of closing up the hole at the top of a heel, and a giveaway to celebrate the unofficial start of summer!

Kitchen Counter Still-Life (click to enlarge)

Key

1. My mom’s birthday cake, fresh from the oven.

2. Obligatory morning beverage.

3. Pastry cream filling for cake.

4. Irish whiskey.

5. Ragdoll Diva from Tempted Yarns.

6. Wollmeise.

7. Phone charger.

8. Swedish vodka.

Back of the Couch Almost Still-Life

A little sleeping angel.

I am cautiously optimistic about the rest of the week.

This has simply not been my week.

I get to work this morning, log onto my computer, and am inundated with error messages. Some time between logging out last night and logging on this morning, the drivers for my display, network card, DVD drive, USB drives, and other assorted stuff became corrupted. Four hours after I called them, someone from the IT department showed up and took my computer away, threatening to re-image it. And believe me, these people do not inspire trust.

Because I could not do any work, I left the office at noon and came home. I already had leave scheduled for tomorrow, so I won’t be back to work until Tuesday. And you know what? I’m not going to think about my dead computer over the long weekend. Tuesday is soon enough to think about it.

So I got an unexpected early start to my weekend. That’s not a bad thing.

Wow, what a response to the comment counter. Thanks to everyone who commented and a special thanks to you delurkers!

I think you must be right — it tracks number of comments by name, not by email address. (I’m not sure where I got that idea.) So any commenter named Susan gets credit for all the Susans who comment. Oh well, it is all in fun, anyhow.

I really surprised Miss Lucy by coming home early today, but she quickly adjusted.

By the way, the remote control she had in yesterday’s photo? It is this one:

That controls a fan. So the KOARC is not overly concerned with it.

Just to get some knitting content in here, here’s my Six-Pack Sock:

Do you see what I did? I split the center motif and moved the halves to each side of the sock and put a new smaller motif in the center. After I turn the heel, the formerly center motif will continue up the side of the sock, and the other half of each side will be on the back of the sock, so there will be a full motif on each side of the sock. I think it’ll look even nicer that way. Next time you see it I should be past the heel so you can better see what I’m striving for.

Okie doke — I’ll be back on Sunday to talk about my weekend hijinks. And I’m gonna have something awesome to give away!

“It’ll have to come out.”

(Extra points awarded if you know the source of that quote.)

I spent a good part of today rassling a 25.2 Mb pdf file. A text-based pdf file that is 25.2 Mb in size. No wonder my brain hurts. It’s like dealing with a tap-dancing elephant that in a shoebox. Or something.

Yeah, fun times.

But that was then and this is now, so I’m not thinking about it anymore. I’ll think about it tomorrow. When I have to.

I promised you something silly today, right?

You may have noticed that my web guru recently installed a doo-hickey that puts the number of total comments a commenter has left on my blog in parentheses after said commenter’s name when said commenter leaves a comment. (I think I just invented a new tongue-twister with that sentence.)

Anyhow, a friend of mine (who shall remain anonymous unless she wants to “out” herself) recently told me that she hesitates to leave comments now because she’s afraid that her total number of comments on my blog would put her in the stalker category. I responded “Don’t worry about it. Heck, you have to have 500 comments before you get your Junior Stalker Pin.”

So naturally she responded that she wanted a Junior Stalker Pin. Then L-B (who has left more than 500 comments) got in on it and asked why she had not yet received her Junior Stalker Pin.

You know where this is leading, right?

Do you qualify for a Junior Stalker Pin? Leave me a comment to see how many comments you’ve left total. (I believe it’s tracked by the email address of the commenter.) If you have left 500 comments or more, email me (using the “contact me” form accessible via the tab at the top of the page) your snail mail addy and I’ll gladly send you your very own junior stalker pin. Should you want one. While supplies last.

And I’ll take under advisement other stalker-ish behavior that might qualify you for a pin.

(You do realize that this is a ploy to get more comments, right?)

Okay, was that silly enough for you?

So that this blog post is not utter frivolity, a question from the comments:

WendyT asks:

My question to you is (because I ripped back several times before I was satisfied) is after your turn the heel and knit the heel flap, how do you prevent those pesky holes when you pick up those extra stitches where the top of the heel joins the instep? I had to do it several times before I was satisfied, and I’m not even sure how I managed finally. What are your tricks?

That’s a toughie, because I think the answer is “experience.” For my first umpty-ump pairs of socks knitted I was not satisfied with my picking up of the extra stitch to prevent a pesky hole. I’ve gotten pretty good at it, but it’s hard to say exactly how I do it. I did successfully do it on my stealth sock this morning:

And here is one of the Costa socks:

After the heel is done, you always have a little gap, because working back and forth on just the heel stitches, you stretch the junction between front and back, and also, I think there is an extra row worked on the back so you’ve got a tiny bit of an edge on the sides of the heel. I always pick up an extra stitch from the middle of the edge stitch on the side of the heel so it looks a bit neater. It I’m anywhere near a camera next time I’m completing a heel (and unfortunately, I’m usually not), I’ll try to document it.

Lucy was not cooperating with the photographer today . . .

Last night I got most of my first Ninja sock done.

This morning I got an email pointing out that it is very close in design to a sock pattern that is already available. (This is no doubt because the main motif came from a stitch dictionary.)

Back to the drawing board.

Actually, while working on the first sock, some changes occurred to me. Changes that would make a pretty big difference in the look of the sock. I’ve re-jiggered the pattern and will knit the second sock with my revised chart and see what I can see. So I’ll have a mis-matched pair.

Oh, and I’m changing the name of the design to “Six-Pack Socks.” Why? Just because I like the way it sounds.

A couple of people asked about my design process. It varies. Sometimes I chart up a design that’s in my head and start knitting. Sometimes I start with a motif from a stitch dictionary and go from there. I’ll make minor and sometimes major adjustments to a motif to make it work in my socks. I always start with something charted up, whether from my fevered brain or from another source, but I will make adjustments to the chart as I knit, as needed. Sometimes I rip back to the toe several times before I’m satisfied with the way a design looks.

I realize that it would be useful to knit swatches of the design before putting it in a sock, but I don’t. As much as I hate to rip out my knitting, I really don’t mind ripping back on socks for some reason. Consistent I am not.

In other news, I am not having a good week. My knitting time in the evenings will be severely curtailed because I need to re-create something that the postal service “damaged” in transit. I do wonder how they get away with calling a package “damaged” when they rip a box open, empty out the contents, seal the box back up and deliver the empty box to the recipient. Sadly, all the pissing and moaning in the world (and believe me, I have done plenty) does not change the fact that I have to re-create the lost/stolen contents. I’m not out too much, moneywise, but I resent the loss of valuable time.

Okay, I’m done complaining. To reward you for listening to me whine, here is Lucy.

And if you come back tomorrow, not only do I promise not to whine, but I’ll show you something silly you might be eligible to win. Should you even remotely want it.