Lazy Blogger = Busy Knitter

Yes, I know it's been almost a week since I last posted. I've been busy, and not just at work. I've been spending good chunks of time working on socks, as you'll see below.

First I have to thank everyone who left me those lovely comments to my last post. I think that's officially the most comments I've ever received, and J wasn't even one of them! (Although he did assure me that he'd read the post.) Granted, seven comments isn't much when compared to the hundreds that Stephanie and Laurie get on a nearly daily basis, but I am much newer to blogging and thus expect a much smaller readership. What I found most exciting is that many of the comments were from new readers, some of whom (gasp!) are even from outside the greater Pittsburgh area! Hello, new readers! If you've stopped by again -- as I hope you'll continue to do -- I'm sure you're waiting anxiously to see this:

Pomatomus #1, il est fini. I finished it up last night while watching the end of Proof (excellent movie, by the way). Although I had no major issues in the leg portion, I had some wonkiness going on with the foot -- specifically, each time I finished Chart B and started over, I wound up with 38 stitches in row 1 (I was supposed to have 37 for rows 17-22, and 36 for the remaining rows). Any other Pomatomus knitters have this problem? I "solved" this issue by throwing in an additional K2tog at the end of row 1. That got me back to the correct number of stitches and, to tell the truth, I couldn't see any difference on the pattern.

I have not yet started sock #2, because I'm toying with the idea of doing a little pattern modification. You see how all the scallops in the pattern go the same way? Well I was thinking that I'd really like the scallops in the other sock to go the other way, so that the two socks look like mirror images of each other rather than exact copies. The way my brain works, I think it should work if I just reverse (i.e., make a mirror image of) the charts. Has anyone tried this? Think it'll work? I think I may try it with some scrap yarn. I'll keep you posted.

My general reaction to this pattern is that it's really much, much easier than it appears. I whipped this sock up so fast it shocked me. For those of you who find it too intimidating (ahem, Yvonne), you may want to try it with some cheap-y yarn so you can get the hang of it. The charts do look complicated, but if you look at them closely, you'll see that, with the exception of a K2tog and a YO in each pattern repeat, the rest of the stitches are just K, P, K, P. Easy peasy! I'd like to add that this is coming from someone who is not a fan of charts, so that's saying something.

I finally remembered this weekend to take a picture of an item I made for J over a year ago. Did I ever mention that in addition to being an obsessed knitter, I'm also a hooker? That's right, I crochet. In fact, until recently, crochet was my main yarn-based craft. My main crochet project has been the afghan, as you will see here:

The reason I'm posting this now is that I noticed that Carrie commented on my last post. I've been reading Carrie's blog for a little while now, and have come to the conclusion that we might be twins. There are just way too many eerie similarities. We're both natives of Western PA. We both deal with words and language for work. We both knit and crochet. Our boyfriends have the same name -- and, it seems, nearly the same afghan. Need proof? Take a look-see. Scary, no?

Finally, I leave you with one last picture. Jen, this is for you: