Apparently (so far at least) the fourth time around seems to be working. I’m just past the first pattern repeat on the Ring of Lace Wrap. Now that I’ve gotten that far along, things seem to be going more smoothly.

Dave and I have been busy trying to unearth the desktop in the office and trying to locate any unoccupied surface in the dining room for the past few days. The dining room table typically serves as my work/cutting area, with everything else stacked in the sewing room. A couple of weeks ago, a friend came and spent the night when he lost power on the coldest evening of the season, so I had to pull everything out of the sewing room on short notice. I simply stacked it all in the dining room. Between that and the things that came down to help with the pinewood derby, it was impossible to walk more than two feet into the room. The floor is (mostly) clean. There are boxes of books to be put away, but the boys have to clean the toys out of the corner in front of the bookshelves before I can tackle that project.

Part of unearthing the desktop is catching up on some financial data entry. We have stacks of statements that were simply set aside to be dealt with later, and later is finally arriving. I think that’s going to be our focus for the next few days, but I still intend to get the sock pictures up when I can. Things are taking longer than expected, because for the past several nights, Dave and a co-worker have been in the office trying to get some issues for work resolved.

Catching up seems to be the operative item for the past couple of weeks. I also made some pajamas for the boys. They picked out fabrics last summer, and I finally got around to making them. I made some winter flannel ones for Daniel, and then some short summer ones for both boys. Daniel originally selected one flannel and one cotton fabric, while Michael selected two cotton fabrics. Michael has decided that he either wants a second summer set, or possibly even a shorts set with the second fabric, so that’s going to be a project for another day at this point. They’re both wearing their “summer” pajamas now. I still need to hem the pants on Daniel’s winter ones before they’re completely finished.

Dave took some pictures of the socks Saturday, but he left for the airport shortly thereafter. Originally we thought we’d get them up that night, but things didn’t work out correctly.

He’s getting back into town tonight sometime, camera in hand.

I hope to have the pictures up this week, and then you’ll get to hear “the rest of the story”.

I cast on yet again for the latest project. I generally try to initially put stitch markers every 50 stitches, just to make counting easier. On my second attempt, as I worked my way up through the several rows of stitching I did manage to accomplish, I finally shifted the markers to every 60 stitches. I reasoned that with a six stitch pattern repeat, it made more sense and I could easily tell if I was where I was supposed to be at the end of each section.

So for my third cast-on attempt, I decided to go with markers every 60 stitches rather than every 50. It didn’t seem to make sense to use the 50 count when I knew I’d just shift everything once I started the pattern anyway.

Apparently I can no longer multiply. I dutifully placed markers every 60 stitches, but I still cast on with six sections…so I wound up with 360 stitches per round rather than 300.

Back to the frog pond yet again….

The socks were finished on Tuesday, although I don’t have pictures yet. I had to take the van into the shop Thursday morning so I went stashdiving Wednesday night to figure out what project I was going to take with me. The winner was:

http://www.heartstringsfiberarts.com/h45.shtm

I actually had the yarn called for on hand already, so I pulled out the instructions to see if there was anything I needed to do ahead of time before Thursday morning. The first discovery was that it called for a crochet cast on, which was new for me. I did a quick search on the internet, found some instructions, and did the entire 300 stitch cast on Wednesday night. Then I confused myself as to whether or not a ROUND was the same as a ROW in the instructions. I finally decided they had to be the same based on how the instructions worked…or at least I decided that was how I was going to start it off anyway. I was good to go for Thursday.

Thursday morning at the dealership (where I expected to be until noon, and I didn’t bother to bring anything else to work on with me) started with problems almost immediately. It was a new set of circular needles, and they wanted to coil so much I was never certain that I hadn’t twisted the stitches when I did the initial join. I tried checking it a half dozen time, resorted to asking the gentleman next to me to hold one end of the needle while I attempted to straighten everything, and still wasn’t certain it was right by the time I had made the first round. I continued gamely on and started the second row.

That’s when I was informed that the van was going to be staying in the shop overnight, so they were getting me a rental car (thankfully covered under our service agreement.) This meant I had a couple of hours to run errands that I hadn’t planned on being able to do.

I headed a couple of miles down the road and made my first stop…and stayed there, because I couldn’t get the key out of the ignition. I felt rather stupid calling the rental car company five minutes after I left asking for help, but I didn’t really have another option. Forty minutes later, they finally arrived, and immediately popped the key out of the ignition. Turns out you had to push the key inward to get it turned that last little bit to disengage. In the meantime, I had managed to *almost* finish the second row…and discovered that my stitch count was apparently off by one.

I frogged the entire thing the next day.

This time I was smarter about it all. I straightened the cables before I ever started casting on. Once I had the cast on completed again, I had Dave hold one end while I straighted all the stitches before joining the round. This was much easier, as the cables weren’t coiling around themselves while I was trying to do it.

I started knitting again this morning. I got to the end of the first row, and discovered that I’d apparently joined the round much more loosely than I’d realized or intended. I convinced myself that a) it was going to tighten up as I continued with the rows, or b) I was going to be able to live with it anyway.

Five rows later, the join wasn’t tightening up, and I apparently dropped a stitch in the pattern repeat immediately before the join. I attempted lace surgery to fix the dropped the stitch. I managed to wind up with the requisite number of stitches back on the needles, sans the gaping hole from the dropped stitch, although I’m certain it’s not exactly the correct pattern through that portion.

This still left me with the even larger gap from my inadequate join. I’d been watching that gap each row, loudly telling myself I could live with it in an attempt to drown out the voice in my head that said I really couldn’t live with it.

I have finally admitted defeat. I’m not going to be happy with that gap (it’s almost as large as an entire pattern section), and the portion directly in front it probably isn’t right anyway. I even asked Dave for his opinion and he immediately commented that it wasn’t something I’d be happy with.

I’ll be frogging it all again tomorrow. Maybe I’ll work on something else for a bit.

I finally managed to get past the several disasters involved in getting the gusset decreases done on the socks last week. Yesterday I plugged my way (it was just about torture by the time I finished because I was so ready to be finished) through the rest of the foot. I actually managed to start the toe decreases before calling it quits for the night. I’m hoping I might actually manage to get this off the needles this evening! (Said statement should just about guarantee that something unexpected is going to come up and prevent me from accomplishing any knitting at all today!)

As I opened the door at the house this afternoon, a very foul odor came wafting out of the house. It didn’t take long to realize that it was a “someone missed the litter box” type of smell, but the litterbox resides upstairs and this aroma was fairly overpowering.

A quick check as I got into the house and I discovered that Clancy, our dog, had had an accident (of both varieties) by the back door. This isn’t typical for him at all, but I can only assume that as cold as it’s been, he simply hadn’t been outside enough after all. We typically put him out when he asks to go out, but don’t necessarily have a regular timeframe to send him.

So, I arrived home hoping only to crawl into the bathtub and nod off, to be hit by a major cleaning job. The worst part….as I turned on the light in the living room to assess the damage….I discovered the other “accident” in the living room.

Apparently, Clancy was also bored enough to help himself to the bag with my sock project. The bag was ripped to shreds, yarn strewn over the living room, loose knitting needle on the carpet. I was just about to cry, thinking I’d have to start all over on those socks. A closer inspection revealed that the damage may be fairly minimal. The loose knitting needle was the extra one without any stitches on it at the moment. All the current stitches appear to still be on the appropriate needles. The yarn in use has definitely been pulled out from the ball. I’ll have to see as I go along if there are any rips or tears. But at least I’m not starting over from scratch!

After you rip all that out and start over, don’t assume that listening to the football game on TV and chatting occasionally with anyone in the living room counts as no distractions. Otherwise, you discover once again that the needles holding your heel stitches once again do not have matching numbers of stitches. I gave up in disgust and have yet to finish ripping out once again.

Rule 1: Never forget/ignore Rule 2.
Rule 2: Do not attempt to work on something that requires concentration (such as gusset decreases in socks) while also trying to watch TV or (and) visiting with friends and family.

This can result in ripping out the eight rows of gusset decreases as you try to figure out why one needle of gusset stitches has more stitches than the other, while simultaneously realizing that you actually started the pattern stitch across the top on Row 2 rather than Row 1, because you consistently view Row 2 as the start of the pattern.