My favorite time of year!

That's right... its Shark Week again!

And my cable was out yesterday until almost midnight so I missed a couple new episodes...grr. Thank goodness for dvr technology, at least I can tape the reruns this week!

Ahh, reminds me of one of my favorite scenes in Jaws... Ellen and Chief Brody are sitting in the family room having a drink while he's flipping through the shark book (WHICH by the way is one of my favorite books ever, I think I borrowed it from the library 60 times between the ages of 8 and 18). Ellen wants to 'get drunk and fool around', the dog's already doing that himself on the couch, Sean's on the dock "watching Michael", and Michael's sitting in his new birthday present.

"Michael, did you hear your father? Out of the water now. NOW!"

If only she'd said that before Alex Kintner had begun to prune...

oooh! I'm so lucky!

So my car wouldn't start today after work because the genius I am left the lights on all day and drained the battery! At least I'm prepared enough with jumper cables since this is probably the hundreth time this has happened to me. But imagine my surprise when I got home (an hour later than normal!) and found my Hogwards Sock Kit Swap package waiting for me!

Could I get any better package?! I don't think so!!! Not only did I get the awesome yarn a little bit ago in Ravenclaw 3rd year stripes, but I got SO MANY MORE GOODIES!!

I got all kinds of needles-- a set of sock needles, two sets of bamboo straight needles, and cable needles (thank god! my cable needle had disappeared into either my mom's or sister's stash some time ago, and I'd not gotten a replacement yet, so its perfect!). I also got an excellent recipe card with some good texan recipes on it-- after all, my partner was from the Lone Star State! I got a huge bag of french vanilla coffee--which is very appropriate since it is my favorite drink. Two skeins of Moonlight Mohair to knit up with my new needles! Then the Hogwarts stuff--so much! Wizard trading cards (Wizzo, when does your card come out??), tons of yummy candies like Bertie Bots, an excellent bookmark which is also perfect because I'm expecting book #7 to arrive Saturday!! And the neatest stationary--Harry Potter themed of course! There's just too much to mention, and I love every bit of it!

Thanks, Sonia! What a great package!

New Foot Model

Its a bit late, but I just finished my first Friday Harbor sock (Knitting on the Road) and wanted to see how it looked. My dog was passed out next to me and man! He's tired. He didn't even wake up when I slipped the sock on his leg. I think his feet must be cold because he let out a little sigh of content (or maybe sigh of disgust) after it was on. The picture doesn't show the pattern at all, but man it made me laugh!

Ravenclaw has the best colors!

The sock yarn from my HSKS partner has arrived!!! Thank you so much Sonia! She ran into a bit of doggy trouble as her puppys destroyed the yarn she had originally purchased (naughty puppies!) but she was kind enough to have it sent to me directly from dharmafeys cosmic fibers. Thanks again! I love the yarn!

Sushi, Kool-Aid and Socks Socks Socks!

Holy cow, it's already Sunday! What a weekend! I didn't get too much done other than house stuff, but I did get to eat some yummy yummy sushi with Brooke which included this crazy beast! So delicious, and shame on me I can't remember what the hell this was called. All I know is that it had the spiciest spicy mayo EVER.

I also finished another pair of jaywalkers last week--this pair was knit with Austermann STEP sock yarn which I love! It has jojoba oil in the fiber-a nice treat for the feet. Lucky me, Stephanie bought this yarn for me on our pass through Howell, Michigan. Thanks again, Steph!

They feel great on my feet (of course I had to wear them practically immediately after finishing them!)

I'm really loving knitting socks--which is probably good because my sock stash is multiplying like a wet gremlin.

I also dyed some sock yarn yesterday! I used the Kool-Aid method again, this time I used lemon-lime, pink lemonade, and berry blue. The house smelled dee-lish! I hope to start knitting with this yarn this week to see how I did measuring out my stripes. My goal was to have a thin pink stripe, thick green, thin blue, thick green--we'll see how I actually did this week.

Since I finished the my jojoba jaywalkers last week, I've knit and frogged another sock literally twenty times. What the heck! I just couldn't find the right pattern that complimented the yarn. I kept getting blobs of color rather than anything like a stipe--which drove me nuts! I finished about 30 rows of the sock pattern that I finally decided to go with, but then realized that unless my sister's feet have been bound since age 2 like an ancient chinese girl, there was no way these would fit her. So I (once again) frogged the sock and started it up again on size 3s. Stephanie gave me this yarn because she had 2 skeins of it--Socks that Rock's Punk Pink. We decided that I'll knit her a pair and she'll knit me a pair in the same yarn. So this is what I have on the needles now. I should be starting the heel tonight (hopefully) and get this pair finished this week.

And thats about it for now! I am listening to Shannon and Steph's newest podcast--probably the only knitting podcast that has ever said "Roto-Rooter" thirty times.

New goodies!

So I'm a bit lazy right now to run down a snap a few pictures (although I could use Stephanie's excuse of I "lost" my sync cord, but why bother) but I got some excellent stuff this weekend from my mom and sister's adventure up north to the shop the Fold.
They got me a skein of some super excellent Trekking yarn in what other color but brown, my favorite! I can't decide what pattern to make this sock pair up with yet, but I am leaning towards Monkey. We'll see though, since I have to finish three pairs of jaywalkers I have started. I need to learn how to knit two socks at once so I won't have so many orphans around!
I also got a super excellent dying kit--with a super excellent dyer's handbook! I'm not sure if I'm quite ready to give up the KoolAid (I just bought a ton!) but I'm looking forward to more experiments in dying.
My HSKS package for my partner was also completed today! There were a lot of 'firsts' involved for me in this swap! It was my first swap, it was the first time I've made stitch markers, it was the first time I dyed yarn...and it was the first time I won anything in a swap contest (thanks to my house's prefect, Sarah and her great trivia games!)
Now off to finish my socks...

HSKS Trivia

Who said...
--"I'm not trying to say what she did was sensible. I'm just trying to make you see how she was feeling at the time."
--"You should write a book, translating mad things girls do so boys can understand them."

Hermoine and Ron!