Socks and More Socks!

I finished some socks. First, these "Life's a Beach" colorway from Cherry Tree Hill. Just a basic 60-stitch stockinette sock, but my best-fitting ones ever. I went down a needle size. Fabulous. Have moved from thinking of them as the "tarnish" socks to the "verdigris" socks, as I've come to like them more. The color is truer in the baseball picture.


Next, I've finished these Lucy socks. They must be medium weight STR. They knit up very quickly. Knitting these, I discovered that El has a "merino problem"- she really likes to touch yarn. These are a little bit wonky, but nice.



I've started knitting these for the monkey. It's Trekking color 20. It sort of reminds me of granite.


Finally, not socks, but from sock yarn. I let El pick between the two skeins of Socks that Rock I had left in my stash. She picked Henpecked. I think this must be lightweight - it's much finer than the Lucy. I'm making her somehting that I've been calling, "something nice to touch." It's a lot like a dishcloth - seed stitch border, stockinette interior.

How is it almost October already?

Kindergarten is good. High school looks like it'll be good (this is a nice change). The baby room is starting to be a small pond. Soccer is underway. The Boy Scouts are wrapping up their first camp out of the school year - the council camporee. I'm thinking about making this quiche for lunch. Only with broccoli instead of spinach - I couldn't reach it at the store, and adding in some leftover rotisserie chicken. Won't the boys be glad?

The beach blanket for my sister was a big hit. And bringing El to the soccer games, I felt like I needed something to sit on there. Not a folding chair - because of El. She's mobile, and having to wrestle her to stay in my lap didn't sound like that much fun. But she's not big enough for her own chair.

This is the top. Although it doesn't really matter that much, I guess. This is what I'm calling a "no cut" quilt. I took leftovers and never-used, figured out if any of their dimensions matched up at all (like fat quarters usually had one side that was pretty close, and the whole pieces had about the same width) and sewed together stuff that matched. Then when the proportions were all wrong, I sewed stuff on to the other side. I winged it and I think it worked. Then I sewed it into a loop - the green strip of the plaid onto the left edge of the top. Closed up one of the long sides and most of the other, turned it right side out and closed up the small open part. There you have it. It's sort of got a lot to look at - which is pretty entertaining for the 9 month old.



This side is the bottom. The green plaid is two king sized pillow cases from Big Lots that I unsewed, washed, then sewed together. It's hard to find sheets by themselves (new) anymore. My favorite thrift store closed, and am not that great at getting to my less favorite ones. The chickens were just a fat quarter that I liked, the baseball kids were supposed to be for hooded towels quite a while ago (sorry Andy). Most of the others are leftovers from the watercolor quilt.

Sewing gifts

1. Blankets for new babies. An old coworker (and classmate), another old classmate, and one of my husband's old coworkers. Hunh. 1 boy, 1 girl, 1 TBD. I need to wash them after they've sat out in the house of sick. I hope I can remember who's who.



2. The birthday gift for my sister. I was all set to bring these when we went down for Labor Day weekend, except for the house of sick happened. Now I need to wash them and find a box.

A. Here's the beach blanket top.

B. Here it is put together with the back.

C. Here's a tote to carry it in. Made from the sheet used for the back.

The quilt was made from 8x10 rectangles. The flower print was part of my "heirloom stash" from Grandma Mercier. The tonal greens and blues were just a couple of fat quarter packs from Joann's. The backing fabric is a Lilly Pulitzer queen sized sheet from TJ Maxx. (What says Palm Beach County beach blanket more than Lilly Pulitzer??? ) The finished size is probably equivalent to a lap quilt. Or, about the size of my dad's Mohawk Airlines blanket, which we always took to the beach as kids.

Oh, and I also made a garbage bag for the back seat (of my car) out of some of the leftover sheet. Still have more leftover.

Well....aside from the sickness....

60% of our household is currently on some sort of antibiotics. There's nothing like getting sick to get you into bed at the time you've been saying you need to go to bed for weeks. It's been kind of an adventure.

I don't have any good reason, but I started some socks last week. I wanted something mindless (um, I have 2 other stockinette projects on the needles), something portable (I have not taken this anywhere and don't even have a knitting bag for it), something new (must be it.)



It's Socks that Rock in Lucy. It was already wound, ready to go. I had forgotten that I wanted to use the Jitterbug next. The cuff is some sort of odd rib pattern that I made up. These are sort of quick and dirty socks. I'm not completely happy with it, but, OTOH, I didn't feel like stopping to look anything up, and I didn't. Sometimes you get what you get.

On a related note, El seems to have a merino problem. So, next up is some sort of blankie in STR Henpecked (she got to pick of the two STR hanks I had in my stash.)

Something neat

The monkey missed the bus and walked home today. I googled "sidewalk routes" because I had seen some kind of jogging route map-maker somewhere before.

Google Maps can do routes for pedestrians now. Or, it looks like it can do transit maps. Neat stuff.