Who am I kidding? Of COURSE size matters!!!

......and I'm not afraid to admit it!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was thinking this the other night - there I was working away feverishly on the (seemingly) huge object in front of me when I realized that I just had to finally break down and admit it...........I'm not an 8 inch kind of girl. It's just too much for me! Give me a comfortable 6 to6.5 inches anyday, thankyouverymuch! I mean, we all talk about it and some others of us even address it outright, so I feel very safe in saying that I certainly can't be alone in my preference.......

So I did a few more rounds before I got to the point where my cable round started and measured from there to the end and realized with a sigh of relief that I was exactly at the 6 1/2 inch mark on J's sock leg (which is plenty long for her as she's only about 5'4" and as a rare-books librarian is on her feet ALL DAY and up & down ladders ALL DAY and most certainly wouldn't want socks that pool/bag around her ankles because they were knitted too long) and that meant that I could........

......what?

.......what did you just say?.......

...........you thought I was talking about WHAT??????????

Oh people now really. Don't you know that my mom reads this blog? And maybe even my GRANDMOTHER? And certainly my husband!!!!

Please now.....use your noggin! Those conversations are totally reserved for whispered giggles over a recently-refilled glass of syrah - and never EVER where they can be cut & pasted into the body of an e-mail or printed as incriminating evidence. {giggle, giggle, giggle}

So anyway, drag your smut-laden minds back to my sock-in-progress, if you please. The sock that is now a lovely 6 1/2 inches in length for the leg & whose heel I turned this very morning while sitting in the waiting room of my local Toyota dealership for a heavenly 2 hours (dedicated knitting time, people!!!) while my car got a 15,000 service. (I got some seriously strange looks in that teeny tiny waiting room, let me tell you! Everyone else was watching the Ellen DeGeneris show - I was knitting a sock. Reminds me of that song from....was it Sesame Street? "One of these things is not like the other.....some of these things are kinda' the same...." I turned the heel at the dealership and then once back home for a refill on my coffee (never ever drink the coffee they offer you at a dealership waiting room!) I transferred the socks to two sets of circulars so that I could better understand how the cable twist was going to work next to the new instep and the foot of the sock, etc, etc, etc... Which also had the totally bonus bit of meaning that I could finally try them on!

I really like working on dpns, but they are really tricky when it comes to trying on your sock-in-progress. And as I'm still enough of a sock newbie I feel MUCH better when I get to try them on.

The colours of this yarn are the most edible I've ever seen so far - a huge melting swirl of tropical sherbert - you actually want to take a sniff or a surreptitious lick of the yarn to see if it's Willie-Wonka-like stuff and has been impregnanted with either scent or flavour!

The heel was a slipstitch heel - at first I thought it was a Eye of Partridge heel, which I've only done once, but when I saw that you always slipped the same stitch over & over again and always knit the same stitch over & over again I realized that nope - it was just a nice, sturdy slipstitch heel that shouldn't wear out anytime soon - and had the added bonus of short-striping quite nicely, which is a fun contrast against the huge pool of purple that was above it on the leg of the sock...

The pattern so far I really like - I think my cable confusion was mostly due to me not being a very attentive pattern-reader - - I got confused when the author referred to the "purl stitch in the middle of the cable" as to me it seems like there are two middles of the cable (I know there can't be, but neither seemed to be a middle stitch when I was contemplating this last night around 11:30 PM.....probably a good argument as to why I should NOT knit when I'm that completely knackered, huh?) but after the heel was turned & a few rounds of Deeply Concentrated Knitting things are totally back on track with the correct number of stitches all where they should be.....

Plus this pattern has the incredible bonus of being the absolute first sock that I've ever done where I don't have at least one oddly-gaping/pulled hole where the heel meets the instep! I have the sneaking suspicion that this is because there is a cable right at that exact junction, which simply hides any holes or oddly pulled sections, but I'd like to think it's also because the pattern is so clearly written and that my 'pick up & knit' skills are improving!

I really think that the way this sock is going to come together at the end: with the cable continuing down the side of the foot almost all the way to the toes; with the ribs on the top of the foot; with the so-clearly-demarcated line of ssk & k2tog stitches along the heel flap/gusset setting off the smooth expanse of stockingknit stitches on the underside of the foot; the last burst of smooth stocking knit stitches finished off in a Kitchner stitch at the toe...... While the crazy colours of this sock yarn (it's called 'Mousie Masala' - isn't that an oddly funny name???) might actually detract a bit from the pattern, I'm quite pleased with these overall. My dad has (apparently) appallingly cold feet - so after I finish my other single socks' pairs and finish my husband's fire-engine-red-knee-highs I'm going to start up a pair of super-warm socks for him. (I'm thinking an angora blend - anyone having any suggestions on either angora blends or super-warm sock yarns I'm totally willing to listen & read & learn!!!)

Is anyone out there a Sundance Catalog 'subscriber'? I absolutely adore their clothes (and the slim hips & looooong limbs on their models!) but can never afford 99% of their stuff. ($695 for a jacket? Yeah, right. I'm totally going to spend more on a jacket than I am on a monthly mortgage payment!!!) The new catalog came in yesterday's mail and this sweater really called to me.......But after only a peek or two I realized that the shaping of the sweater & the chunky yarn meant that it would totally be a Quick Knit - if I could only figure out the basics of the pattern.

It looks like a nice basic shape with a somewhat oddly wriggled front edge (I might make that a tad bit more even and traditionally boring if I knit this for myself) without a ton of shaping. But see how the line of stitches kind of.....angles towards that front edge? It's almost like the sweater was knitted diagonally.......and the sleeves in the same way - and then they were all put together on one huge circular needle and joined and finished smoothly together as you can see at the top of the shoulder. (Or is that angle just from the way the sweater is draping on the model?) It's a neat knit - I'd love to know how to do it! I'd also love to know how they got their hems to keep from rolling......

Amelia has a technique for such an un-rolled look and I'm totally going to try it one of these days - as I'm a huge fan of plain ol' stocking knit yet loathe the rolled hems they correspondingly produce.......