Is Madness Reversible?

The second round in Sock Madness was posted this afternoon, so despite being home this evening with the flu (thanks to my son!), I'm trying to knit. I'm hoping that slow and steady will work, because I've taken so much decongestant that fast just isn't an option.

The pattern is beautiful. It's called Reversai, and it's by the same designer that did the I Love Guernsey socks that still get so many compliments every time I wear them. The pattern is easy (thank goodness - see above paragraph); it just involves following along the design chart. It's got a short row heel, which doesn't scare me anymore. (I conquered that fear with the Noro socks I recently finished.) I'm using the Araucania Ranco yarn my daughter sent me, and it's absolutely gorgeous. (Am I obligated to give her the socks since the yarn was hers, or can I keep them for myself?)

I'm trying real hard to avoid the temptation of panicking early again with this sock pattern. I promised myself after the last round that I would not obsessively check the postings to see how many people had already finished, and I would not make myself crazy by trying to knit non-stop for however many hours it might take.

Of course, promises were obviously made to be broken. I just peeked, and so far there are no finished socks in any of the brackets. (But once is not really obsessive, so it shouldn't count. Right?) And it shouldn't make me crazy to stay up just a little later knitting tonight...

As a teen, you're constantly trying to figure out who you are... (Mandy Moore)

I don't have a picture, so you'll just have to trust me on this one. After having it "easy" with my first two children, I'm finally getting a "real" teenager to deal with. We're talking shoes, clothes, boys, constant phone, make-up, parties, and Attitude (notice the capital 'a'!). This evening she dyed her hair red. Then she informed me that she had saved up almost enough money for a tattoo, or maybe a nose piercing...

Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others. (Winston Churchill)

I thought this was one of the saddest things that I've ever seen. I was at a thrift store (Thrifty Tea Swap!) and I saw these photographs. I wanted to just cry for the woman in the pictures. I really have no idea if she donated the frames, or if it was a relative/friend who gave away the picture frames. But when I think of the memories these pictures represent, just given away as an afterthought with $1 frames...

I have literally thousands of photos in my home (sorted in scrapbooks, storage boxes, and computer memory cards). I hope that my children would think that these photos are important enough to either save or destroy, should anything happen to me.

There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full. (Henry Kissinger)

Remember this from Wednesday?

I think I've wallowed long enough. Yeah, I'm overwhelmed by work. It's not the first time I've had to work hard, and it certainly isn't going to be the last time. At least I'm able to pay all the bills this month. And yeah, I've got a lot of things to be depressed over. But I've got a lot of things to be happy about, too. It's time to start focusing back on the happy side of life.

So I'll be back online tomorrow, with a (hopefully) funny story and news of my latest knitting project. Oh wait -- my current knitting project is a gift for a friend, so I can't say anything yet just in case my friend stumbles across this blog. (Hey, my high school boyfriend did...)

I guess that's how death works. It doesn't matter if we're ready or not. It just happens. (Randy K. Milholland)

When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough. (Maurice Maeterlinck)

We are each responsible for our own life - no other person is or even can be. (Oprah Winfrey)

They spend their time mostly looking forward to the past. (John Osborne)

The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible. (Arthur C. Clarke)

(I just realized that I don't have a picture for today. I thought I did, but there's nothing new on my camera. I'll try to remember to take something to post for tomorrow.)

The Madness is still going strong, and I'm pleased to be able to rest until the next round (which should be some time next week). I did go ahead and cast on another pair of socks while I'm waiting, but let's not talk about that.

On a totally unrelated subject: I would dearly love to have a dash cam installed in my car. There are just too many odd-ball things that I see as I go through my day. A video to prove that I'm not making them up (as if even my imagination is that good!) would be nice.

A good example is the motorcyclist I passed the other day. Something made me take another look. His motorcycle was a small red model, probably a Yamaha. (I like Yamahas; they're cute bikes as opposed to "manly-biker-dude" bikes.) He was just an ordinary guy, young-probably in his twenties, wearing jeans and a white t-shirt. Then it dawned on me. His helmet was on backwards. You know how guys wear their baseball caps turned around, so that the brim is down covering the back of their necks? That's how this guy's helmet was. Baseball caps look cool when worn that way. You can't say the same for motorcycle helmets. So now I'm left wondering: did he wear it that way on purpose, or did he just not know how to put on a helmet?

Today would have been an even better day to have a dash cam. I was driving home from work in the early evening, just as it was starting to get dark, and I noticed up ahead there was a car pulled off on the side of the interstate. It was a small car that reminded me of my mom's 4-door Toyota (older model), and the trunk was open. The driver stood by the open front door of the car as three guys were running back along the road -- my guess was that they were trying to retrieve something that had fallen out of the open trunk. As I got closer, I watched the guys run up to one of the construction barrels, pick it up, and carry it back to their car. As I passed them, they were trying to close the trunk lid on the barrel as the driver urged them to hurry. (Yes, I probably should have been paying more attention to my driving, but this was more interesting!) I think I witnessed a theft. So now I'm left wondering: what are they planning to do with an orange-striped warning barrel? Will they put a glass top on it and make it into a diningroom table? (We had an electrical drum as a coffee table when I was growing up.) Will it go in their front yard, next to the car on cinder blocks? Or will they start to feel guilty and leave it by the side of the road somewhere (which will confuse drivers in the morning as they look for the new construction)?

I'm finished!

Well, it's over. I think I made it through this first round, but I won't be sure until the update the division listing later on. (It's too late/early to expect anyone to be doing that now.) I had planned on using my daughter for the model (the socks would have fit better, and the photo would have looked much nicer), but there is no way I can go wake her up right now.

It's been a very intense few days. To paraphrase Bethtoons on the Ravelry boards, panic started much too early this year. This was the easy pattern. So what am I going to do if I make it through to round 4 or 5?

I didn't even post my "I hate knitting, what am I doing this for?" stage, which occurred around 2 pm today. I was so tired of knitting, and so stressed that I swore I would break every knitting needle in the house, shred every bit of yarn, start wearing sandals so that we wouldn't need socks, and never even look at a sweater again. But then I took a break to do some work, and I decided that knitting was not invented as a form of torture after all.

And now that it's all over, and the socks are finished and look beautiful... I just want to get some sleep in the two hours I have before it's time to get ready for work.

I'm giving it all she's got, Captain! (Scotty, Starship Enterprise)

I finally finished the first sock. I honestly didn't think that it would take me as long as it did. Now it's time for a couple of deep breathes, a bite of lunch, and I'm off to do the second sock. I think I'm still in the running, but it's going to be a close thing.

Tell me again -- I was doing this for fun, right?

Time to take a quick nap, I think

I've just spent five minutes looking for my glasses (I usually take them off to knit), only to realize that I was wearing them. I think I'll go lay down for a couple of hours and hope for a return to sanity soon.

All night long...

I'm afraid to stop for any reason. I've gotten both legs done, and I have a definite rhythm to the pattern going. Remember back when I laughed about some of the women talking about taking their knitting to the bathroom during competition? Well, it doesn't sound like such a far-fetched idea anymore. There are now 8 completed socks in my division, and I have not idea where the others are in their knitting. I still have to do the heels and feet. I keep telling myself that this should be the easy part; after all, the heel is a garter edge heel flap which is my favorite heel to do. But I'll feel a lot better when I can report that the socks are done.

Notice the m&m's and Pepsi in the background of my progress picture. I swear that this is what is keep me going right now. (Knit a row, eat a chocolate. Finish a pattern repeat, take a drink.)

My kids have gone to bed, but my daughter has agreed that I can use her feet for modeling the socks if I get them finished during the night. (She actually agreed to doing this in the morning for me, but I figure that whenever I get done will be "morning.")

Purl 2, Knit 2 (or is this the yarn over?)

I got home from work about an hour ago, and sat down to finish the first leg. Now it's time for a quick break to run my daughter to her friend's house (Are you sure you couldn't just walk? Mommy's busy knitting!), and then I'll be home to do the next leg.

I will admit to obsessively checking the brackets, and so far 19 socks are finished. Only three in my division, so I still have a chance to make it in the top 40. (Maybe.)

I need a couple of hours of sleep

One leg is almost finished. I was hoping to have both legs done before bed, but it just isn't going to happen. I'm starting to make stupid mistakes. What's worse, I've stopped caring that I'm making stupid mistakes. My wrist hurts, I'm tired, and even Lorelei is starting to get on my nerves. So I'm going to set my alarm for 4:30, and I promise I'll work some more on these before I go to work tomorrow.

Leave me alone; I'm trying to knit!

Okay, I've been through the Veronica Mars DVD and part of a Gilmore Girls episode, and this is where I'm at. The kids are starting to get annoying -- I warned them that dinner was not to be expected while I'm knitting. Thank goodness for Papa Johns online.

Since I had to pause anyway, I thought I would post these photos real quick. I'm too scared to take a peek and see how the others are doing. (Just breathe regularly, and remember that you only have to be in the top forty Uconn Cast Ons this time around, Sandi.)

I'm already folding under the pressure

My plan to stay up all night knitting didn't really work out very well. I did the first cuff, and then decided to rip it out and start over. I didn't like the gauge I was getting on the size 1 dpns (2.25mm). So I started over on size 1.5. I'm really not sure why .25mm makes a difference, but I do like the way this is looking much better. The problem came in when I decided around 1 am to rip out the cuff again. My reason? Because the tail was too long. As I pulled the first needle out of the stitches, I realized what I was doing. I put the knitting down, and went to bed. This morning, I managed to pick up the stitches back onto the needle, and then simply cut the affending tail shorter. I figure that at the most, the yarn I cut off would have gotten me another two rounds of sock knitting. If I find that I run out of yarn two rows early, I think I really can live with that.

I'm off to work now. But I'll be back to knitting around 4 pm. (Or do you think they'll let me go home early for due to my advanced case of sockitis?)

I'm in trouble...

I sat down to write a real quick "I'm off to start on my sock now" post, and I made the horrible mistake of checking the flickr group first. There are people who are already done with their first sock. I've cast on my first sock and have two rows of ribbing finished, but that's not even close to being done yet.

In my defense, I did have to work. Sometimes I can knit while with a client (it comes under the guise of teaching how to ask for attention appropriately), but it figures that today was not one of those days. (Why did he have to learn NOW how to say "excuse me please" instead of throwing a tantrum?)

I did pick up a couple of items on my way home: frozen dinners for the kids so they wouldn't expect real food until the socks are finished; french vanilla creamer, since I'll be drinking coffee in excessive quantities (starting tonight as I try to catch up to the others by knitting all night as those swift-fingered knitters waste time sleeping); and the large party-sized bag of m&ms (so that I don't waste time opening wrappers as I grab for chocolate while knitting).

Now as soon as the pain pills (for my wrist) kick in, I'm ready to kick some yarn butt...

I just got the pattern, and I can't believe I have to wait for another two hours before I can cast on. It looks like a fairly straight forward cuff down sock, except for the scary dropped stitches. (You want me to drop a stitch on purpose?!) I still haven't decided which yarn to use. The green would be pretty, but the red/brown would be more zombie-ish.

Don't worry, there will be frequent updates...

Waiting is heck! (Anon)

The first pattern in Sock Madness comes out today, and that's all I've been able to think about. I packed and repacked my knitting bag to bring to work with me today so that I'll be ready. I've got the yarn I finally decided on (the green Wildfoote), and the red yarn just in case I change my mind (again). I have all my needle cases, all of which have been relabelled (because I wouldn't want to grab the wrong sized dpn). I've double-checked my notions case, and the scissors, darning needle, and tape measure are all present and accounted for. I don't have any safety pins, but I'm trying real hard not to worry about that. After all, Walmart is only two blocks from my house and is open 24 hours, so I can always stop and pick them up when I take the kids home this afternoon. (If I need them before that, I have a box of paper clips in my desk drawer.)

Now if I could stop obsessively checking my email...