Sunday, March 25, 2007

No Pain, No Socks

So, how much pain is a knitter willing to endure to finish a competition? This knitter was surprised.
My Socktopia group was involved in a knitting challenge. At noon EST Saturday a pattern designed by the organizer (she designs beautiful socks)was to be released to a handful of us who were on two teams. We had signed up, listed our ability and and were assigned a spot on the team. Now this knitter(as taed in last post) had intended to take the night off from work but had overtime so could not. Friday was a busy night at work, got home about 9am and laid down for an hour as I did not want to miss the pattern release. Noon, 1215p..no pattern. There was a sense of panic on the message board as we commiserated no pattern, what would we do? The designer had been subject to a store in her area and the power was mixed up. Pretty much 1245 the pattern was released and we were off. I had some yarn dyed in the Harry Potter Hufflepuff House colors that was planned for the sock. I had gauged it out to size three needles(yes another swatch but only 10sts by 10 rows) and found in my tiredness it was wrong. After starting 4 times I settled on sz 1 dpns. I memorized the pattern after the first repeat and finished to turning the heel before leaving for work a few hours later for another 12 hr shift. I live approximately 40 minutes from work and DH drove so perhaps I could nap. Did I mention I had two pots of coffee already? Work was horrendous and I manged 1 rounds or so, frogged them, did them over, frogged 3...Came home and knit an hour fell asleep for 4-5 hours. As of 9pm Sunday sock one is completed sock 2 has head heel turned. I am planning on finishing at least half the foot before napping again, then up to finish the second sock. The winners finished their socks over night. Truthfully, if I had been rested and not worked I could have finished my socks probably in under 14 hours knitting time. I am loving them and will post the photos when they are done. Now we wait til 8pm Monday to see which team has more finished pairs. It was a ball and hope there is another one soon.
March challenge socks are also done. I have the following pics to post this week:
Knit off socks-Hufflepuff House Colors
March Challenge Socks-green
Civil War Shawl-through round 90
Vintage Socks for DH-VERY big blue
Dale body-anticipate finishing end of week
Salina, started back 4-5 inches done
Purse Swap-purse sewn together have to felt
That may be all...
I am working 10-20 hours extra every week which is cutting into life but giving me more opportunity to knit...
OK, more blogging later with many pics to follow

2 comments:

white oak studio said...

Hi Cheryl!

I'll look at all your photos when you post them!

Get some rest.

I'll be opening my etsy shop with my hand-painted sock yarn within 2 weeks.

If I send you some free yarn of your choice of colors, would you knit one example sock for me (with yarn I provide)?

I'm also going to carry Fiber Trends sock patterns. How cool is that? And you were the first to get me really hooked on socks, with your Color Swap gifts!

Jana

Cheryl said...

Hi Jana
I will respond on your site