Jazzysocks

These are a pair of custom fit, no nonsense, top down, heel flap socks. I started them back in January, maybe you remember, and then there was a lot of baby having and leg twisting, etc., etc. In the wake of my shawl knitting frenzy I finished them off. Oh, and by the way, I was wretchedly ill when I finished them. This is no exaggeration. I tend to exaggerate. I thought you ought to know.


I was so wretchedly ill that I only managed a couple of hours sleep over a two day period. It was that kind of illness where you're sore deep down in your bones, and your skin feels sticky even when dry. My internal thermostat was going crazy and after some harsh bargaining with the Tylenol it opted not to go above 101F but not to go lower than 99F. My throat, however, was a real shark in the medicinal negotiations. It refused to compromise on anything. It made the homeopathic medicine cry.
I finished the foot of the second sock during the worst of this illness. There was a lot of one row, put the knitting down, stare at the mobile above my baby's bed for an hour, pick the knitting up, knit a row, repeat. My baby is also sick, and there was a lot of staring at mobiles going on. There were some points where we just stared at each other and telecommunicated about how much this bug sucked. He's my buddy.
Four days into this festival of germs, I'm starting to feel like the party's winding down. My throat is allowing for some solid foods and my body has cooled off. I have a throaty wispy voice which by husband describes as sexy, but which I would call contagious sounding. There's a lot of hacking and gasping for air, which I suppose just makes me sexier. The baby is still running a fever, but the doc says it's O.K. so I'll try not to freak out all over him and tell him that 4 days of fever is not O.K. for a mom, let alone a baby.
I'm going to sandwich this blog post about illness with a tiny bit of knitting and hope you'll still consider this a knitting blog. I don't want to have to change the title to "The Wendigo Gets Sick and or Hurt a Whole Lot, Plus There's a Little Knitting Going On". So, on to the socks.


I think that they are hideous. They remind me of modern dance, or free form jazz, or eating too much candy and then going on a violent amusement park ride run by a very young person who seems frighteningly uninvested in their job. They are totally gross. They are jazzysocks. I'm calling them that, because bad jazz is my least favorite thing in the world. Really bad jazz being either the Kenny G. or the crazed squealing horn variety and about 70 percent of the jazz in between. Billy Holiday, you know I love you. I'm not talking about you. You're more blues, and I love blues. Back to the socks, I think they went from Missoni to Methuselah when I knit the second foot. The small stripes circling the first foot are cute. The large sludge colored stripe on the second foot is throwing everything off. It's jazzy.
I'm not going to blame this jazzy quality on the dyer, Farmhouse Yarns. They made a beautiful yarn with colors I love. The creamy white with touches of yellow, pale blue and pink with a dark vegetable green does in fact remind me of "wild flowers" (that's the colorway). I think that in my delirious sickbed knitting I made one foot two stitches smaller than the other one. It's totally my fault.


These will be the socks I wear when I just don't care what other people think, which is most of the time.

Fini, All Done, No More

That's what my two year old son says when he's finished with something.


This is "Haruni" in Blue Sky Alpacas "alpaca silk", colorway "ivory". It took me about a half an hour just to pin it out for blocking. I'm so very proud of this. I know my friend will love it.


It's such a relief to be done with it. My hands were so busy knitting this thing that they couldn't stop, and I've almost finished a pair of socks in the last two days. It's like knitting in the wake of a big shawl boat. Now, if the promises of our mail services are to be believed, it should get there just in time for her wedding reception.

Soldiering On

One week after I gave birth I fell into a small stone watering hole while trying to count the salamanders. I am aware of how impossible that sounds. Yes, it is true. One leg stayed on shore, while the other one went in. I pulled a bunch of calf muscles and was pretty handicapped for about a month. During our June knit night there was a small fire. This was due to too much talking and not enough paying attention to the candles. I burned myself while trying to put the fire out and lost a good bit of skin on the back of my hand. Thanks to some good witch doctoring by a fellow knitter (mother of 8, lives in a yurt) my hand healed in about two weeks. I had one week with a good right hand and then I sliced the back of that same hand open on an exploded champagne bottle. I know, all of my accidents are fun related. Try not to be jealous of how much fun I'm having.
It took four stitches to close up the cut. I thought that would be the end of things, but since then I've had an allergic reaction to the tetanus vaccine, then an allergic reaction to the stitches which in turn caused the cut not to heal properly. Then my husband had a run in with a wood chisel and had to have three stitches. That's seven stitches in one week. Today my cut is starting to look like it's healing up but.......it seems like I might be coming down with some sort of sore throat thing.
This is the point at which I am admitting defeat. I am not going to pretend that any of this is O.K. It's insane. I know it's not life threatening, or terminal and things could be a heck of a lot worse, but right now I'm feeling pretty put upon.
That's why this......(please ignore the mess on my desk)


should be making me strap on the ole' straight jacket. This is "Haruni". Well it's almost "Haruni". It's "Haruni" minus one row of knitting. I ran out of yarn one row short.

Do you see the pretty scalloped edging? That's the row I'm missing. It's not a row I can skip. This is a gift for my best friend's wedding, so it's got to be finished within the week.
The extra skein has been ordered. In my professional opinion, the other yarn that I ordered along with that one skein was a medical necessity. It's a small soft cushion between my psyche and the proverbial wall.