Take a Look!!!

Wooooooooooooo Hoooooooooooooooooooo!!! Sock number ONE is FINISHED! DONE! Completed!!!

I'm so inordinately excited that I can just hear the Seasoned Sock Sisters saying, "Oh yeah - wait till she tries it on REAL sock yarn! She'll get Second Sock Syndrome in no time!!"

Well, maybe. Right now, I'm thinking that we're snowed in for 2 days, everything's closed, and I have the yarn for one more sock. After that, I'll have to see if I have either some wool superwash in worsted or bust into the 100% wool....

Sock #1

Here's the first picture:  I really like how the colors lay out. And I did the Kitchener Stitch all by myself!

I'd forgotten that I purchased one of the "Visual" books, this one Teach Yourself Visually: Sock Knitting by Laura Chau, who's had patterns in Knitty, had help from our favorite Yarn Harlot, and is a teacher at a shop in Toronto called Lettuce Knit. She can be found on her website and blog at http://www.cosmicpluto.com/ if you want to look her up.

The book is what I used for Kitchener since I didn't want to knit in front of my computer. The directions, since I'd already looked at http://www.knittinghelp.com/ were pretty straightforward. My only screw-up was that instead of having 12 sts at the end, I had 10. Probably because I kept decreasing in the foot till I had 34 sts instead of the 36 it called for. Oh well. Winging it worked.



The top view



And here's another shot of the sock on-foot, as it were.  I love the way the colors swirl on the instep, though in a clog, nobody will see that, and I'm sorry - I don't do those "jelly clogs" so you can see your sock. Those just look nasty - I'd rather wear my Birkenstocks or just take off my clog if someone wants to see the pattern!

Actually, that toe kinda fits my foot!

So we're on a Snowpalooza here south of Chicago. The wind is howling, but no where near where it's supposed to get. Right now, the temps are about 21*F with wind-chill of 3* (sorry, my "degree symbol" won't work) and the wind is blowing about 27 mph. It may get up to 50 mph in gusts and we may have "Thunder Snow" - a relatively rare phenomenon where it thunders like a traditional T-storm, but it dumps BUCKETS of snow - like 4" per hour - while that's all going on. We've had brief rumbles before but nothing like what they were calling for.

I have 2 days off, the kids have 2 days off. Hubby has to work... He works from home anyway, so as long as we have power, he's working.

The dogs have already been to the park. We've already done one shovel-swoop to get the worst of the drifts, but will probably only do the back part of the yard for now, since we're not going anywhere.

Let It Snow!

Here's a shot out the front door, showing what's left of my Dusty Miller, and you can see some of the snow blowing around. I can hear the chorus of snow blowers starting now, as people filter out of their houses. I'm making a bet with Hubby that the lunkhead next door will not move his humongous truck out of the way of the snow plows. This is a small town - the snow plow drivers get really irritated, and aren't above plowing you in! The city will ticket if he's dumb enough to leave his truck out in the narrow street. We do have an alley-access driveway space. You'd think a big old Dodge truck would have enough ommpfh to get into the back alley, since Kid #2's Ford Focus makes the journey easily!

Just heard a few loud whomps from the tarp in the kennel, so I'm now wondering whether the tarp will stay on the kennel! It's all fastened with elastic bungees, so there shouldn't be a problem. And our lovely neighbor's big trees are on one side as a semi-wind break. Hubby over-engineers, so I know logically it will...but to quote Bette Davis, "Fasten your seat belts; it's gonna be a bumpy night."