No Hedgehogs

Because they don’t make them in dark chocolate this time of year. Pooh. Only at Christmas, the bums. I did get a lovely red heart box with a selection of dark chocolates though. Poor guy, he had to choose between milk chocolate hedgehogs or dark chocolates. “Give her the hedgehogs or give her the dark chocolates but not the dark chocolate hedgehogs that I know she really wants because they don’t have any!” Not so tough. He would have won my heart anyway whichever he picked! Am I making it too easy for him? The box is already half empty. I shared.

Only a day late, but I’ll be giving him his new socks this afternoon. Currently they’re drying on the sunny but quite cool deck after their little finishing bath. Here’s the stats:

T-Man’s Socks

Begun: January 22, 2006
Completed: February 15, 2006
Yarn: 2 balls Sisu, 80% superwash wool/20% polyamide (nylon), Col 1480 Lot 3037, 3 plies really dark grey and 1 ply white, hand dyed in Lanaset/Telana dyes.
Needles: 2mm Clover Takumi dpns, 2 sets of 5.
Comments: Cast-on 68 stitches, 2/2 rib for 30 rows. Leg 6-1/4” more (9” total) before the slightly longer-than-usual flap heel (with one extra stitch picked up plus extra corner stitch for slightly higher instep). Foot 8-1/4” before toe decreases, decreased down to 24 sts. I used the “anti-ears” corner decreases to make 20 stitches total (10 top/10 bottom) before grafting toe. Finished foot is 10-1/2”. The bits of yarn in the picture are what was left over!

The “anti-ears” method is where you have your stitches ready to be grafted on their top and bottom needles, then you take each of the four outer stitches over the one next to it. This reduced the tip of the toe just enough to avoid that poking-out effect that can happen at the corners of the grafting.

If anybody is bothering to keep track of these things, I’ve completed a total of 13 pairs of socks in 2005 and 2 pairs so far in 2006. I was supposed to be starting a new class of sock knitters this evening but it’s been cancelled without enough students. I’ll be starting a new pair of socks anyway but they won’t have to be demo socks — they’ll be my first pair of tabi socks with a separate big toe for The Ninja. Plus I’m determined to finally finish the Jaywalkers that I started ages ago. They just aren’t “mindless” so I have to pay attention to them. Can't knit on them while reading or watching TV because I make too darned many mistakes.

On the rug front, I’m still whipping around the perimeter. I’ve discovered it takes more than half an hour to use up 2 yards of yarn. My shoulder is feeling stiff and my fingers are getting sore so I have to take it a little slower. I’ve turned my first corner this morning though. Second corner (sort side!) coming up. That makes me almost halfway around.

With T-Man sick this week, we didn’t get to babysit our granddaughter so we missed her latest trick. The news is she can finally walk on her own! Took her own sweet time on this, didn’t she? She’s 18 months old. Even her preemie dad was walking by 14 months. She just wasn’t willing to let go until she felt secure in her ability. It’ll be interesting to see how this trait carries on into her life, doncha think?