Sock Madness Interrupted

It's a boy!

Actually, my brother & his wife already already knew that it would be a boy. I'm an Aunt again!

Benjamin Alex weighed in at 8.4 and arrived at lunch time on Friday, May 4th. Mom and I went to the hospital to meet the newest addition of our family later in the afternoon. They're now home and doing well.

Where was my camera? Home. Bad blogger Aunt!

The newest Sock Madness pattern arrived, at about the same time.
There have been some technical difficulties.

I'm not sure I have the will to start again. Certainly, not as written. It has an all over Fair Isle pattern and I have a problem with putting that much work into socks without personal servants to carry me around so my feet won't touch the ground!

I didn't work the stranding that wrapped around the sides correctly. There were long unworked strands that should have been caught up better, causing some puckering from strands too tight.
I was not happy enough with the way it looked to continue.

I may try the pattern without the design on the bottom and then use the bottom pattern for the other sock. The design is intended to wrap around the foot, but instead I might try mismatched feet murals.

Not sure when I'll try any sock pattern again since 240+ Letter People need to be finished before School's summer vacation starts. Yikes.

Edited to note: The last picture is of a cute pattern found here at DutchOrchid Designs. Her blog is here. I did change the heel to Eye of Partridge and it took me 3 attempts before I got the stitches divided symmetrically perfect so the lace pattern was centered in front.
Probably my fault and not the pattern design, though.
It's a little embarrassing to admit I had to do the first heel 3 times!

Trying to distract from my Sock madness failure with a picture of socks finished on Friday while waiting for the pattern. Did it work? :)

Just in time for Mother's Day

Last minute Kid Crafts

With the approaching deadline of a thesis to finish, my daughter was asked by Scholastic Books if she was interested in doing a freelance Mother's Day crafty newsletter for their online site a few weeks ago.

Stephani spent last summer in New York interning for them and is hoping for a Real Job there once she graduates from U Maine next week. First invite to apply officially came yesterday!! MSN even added her newsletter to their Family & Friends links. Check it out.

Hooray for college graduates!
I'll be doing some steady bragging on 2 of them now!!
Sara returned from Colorado last night after attending a conference on Fuel & Chemistry. That's what the free tote bag says!
Lots of important contacts were made, including an invitation to consider research with Cornell. Cool! Proud mom alert...beware!

And Round 6 of Sock Madness gets underway late today.
I'll be obsessive, compulsive knitting again this weekend.

Sock Madness update

Round 5 complete

This pair took me several hours past my Sock-a-Day goal.

Pattern arrived at 3 or 4 p.m. on Friday.

I forget which, and I'm too lazy to go look!

I only did 16 rows Friday night, before fading daylight and several pattern errors forced me to put it down and walk away. I kept thinking "trust the pattern" and that it must be something I was doing wrong, but turns out 4 or 5 rows had tiny errors that made a huge problem if you were not skilled enough to recognize the pattern.
(Or didn't bother to check the accompanying chart that only had 1 tiny error!)
Discussion group at Flickr had them all straightened out by the next day. Should have checked in sooner but I'd already had a long day and was exhausted.

Decided to snap out of it and just knit these in spare time.

Finished them at 7:33 p.m. Sunday. Just minutes after the Final Four posted the last entry that would move on to the next round. There was no sitting up all night knitting on pair at all. Plus I took Mom on all her errands on Saturday - at least 3 hours of nonknitting time doing the normal grocery shopping & prescription filling routine. Since I was out of the actual competition didn't seem right blowing off commitments. (Dad was very thankful, as he got to go golfing.)

I even did dishes for god sake! If I had known I was going to come so close to finishing before the final 4 was set, I would have at least skipped housework. For the good of the cause! ~ :)

Blog for Peace, why don't ya!

May Challenge

I don't care about the chance to win a freaking prize. Add your name to Bloggers For PEACE!

Only actual commitment is thinking peaceful thoughts.

Our government needs to end its damn occupation of a foreign country for the sake of oil & profit. Give the UN at least 90 days notice we're leaving.
There's going to be a bit of a mess to clean up.

And check out this video on the new irack .
Your humorous moment of the day, shared with me by Steph.
(Proud owner of an ibook and faithful Apple convert.)

Mission accomplished, indeed. Sign the damn bill!

com·pro·mise (kmpr-mz)

n.
1.a. A settlement of differences in which each side makes concessions.

b. The result of such a settlement.

2. Something that combines qualities or elements of different things: The incongruous design is a compromise between high tech and early American.

3. A concession to something detrimental or pejorative: a compromise of morality.