Friday, March 09, 2007

Gonna Have to Face It...

...I'm addicted to socks.

My lights are on, but I'm not home

My hands... are not my own....
My heart sweats, my body shakes
Another row is what it takes


Whoa, I like to think that I'm immune to the stuff...
Closer to the truth is that I can't get enough...

Oh, you don't like bowdlerized Robert Palmer? How about Salt N Peppa?


Let's talk about socks, to-night

Let's talk about left... and right
Let's talk about all the good yarns
And the bad yarns,

That may fight
Let's talk a-bow-out socks...


After having a fairly good time with the test sock last week, I decided to just jump right in and knit my first pair.


I picked that colour-shift yarn that I bought at Stitches the other weekend.


And then, on Tuesday, with the knitting class all swept up in a Writing Exam for the morning, I had a bit of time on my hands... so I just bit the bullet, and cast on.

I used the 'sock cheat sheet' from the Yarnharlot's book "Knitting Rules!" and decided I'd just knit it stock, not worrying if it's actually gonna fit me. This pair will be the 'pattern' pair, that I examine after they're done, and try to extrapolate from there what I *should* knit from here on in...


I figure, if I'm good, I might have a sock done by Easter.

Ahem

Perhaps, now, if I'm good, I might have a sock done by tomorrow...

They're addictive. What can I say? I spend my time thinking "I should knit just ONE more round, and then go on to do something else." or... "Hey, I've ironed ONE shirt, I should reward myself with a few rounds!" or... "Well, the boys always take books into the bathroom, is it SO silly of me to bring my sock into the potty with me?"

Yeah. Intervention time, right?

This was yesterday afternoon:
Look at how the colour's moving from the green-and-purple, through green-and-yellow to green-and-red, and now I'm back at the yellow again. This is out in the sunshine, on the playground at Kelly's school. She wanted to play with the after-school-care kids, so I just sat out in a sunbeam, and knitted. Drew quite a crowd, too.

Today, I couldn't stand it any longer. I had to Try It On.

le sigh
It's at this point that I curse my size nine-and-a-halfs. If I was a nice petite size five, I'd be nearly finished the sock now.

I'm already seeing things that I would do differently, dimensions that I would change, but there's NO way I could do that without making a pair straight from the pattern first.

But just wait until I break out my hand-dyed sock yarn for the NEXT pair!

Thursday, March 08, 2007

Fix My Breasts

The big all-school variety show is coming up this weekend.

Kelly is beside herself with excitement.

She's going to be a mermaid.

For the last 2 months, we've been at weekly rehearsals for the "Mermaid Number", and she's been doing lunch-time rehearsals for the Chorus.


I think I'd written about the Mermaid Costume Follies. Fortunately, after I put together 16 quilted mermaid tail fins, my work was done. I shouldn't have worried. There were plenty of other willing hands to put together the remainder of the costumes.

On Sunday, they had their last rehearsal, turning the street out in front of Julie's house into a big taped-off stage.


And then, once they'd gotten all their moves right, we went inside, for the final fittings of all the mermaid costumes.

They looked DARLING! I'm amazed at how cute everything turned out. But there's just a little bit more to do. The costume consists of this long extravagant mermaid tail, worn over top of a flesh-toned body suit. Sewn to the body suit is a little bandeau of stretch velour in a variety of undersea-costume colors, as a sort of bikini top. The finishing-touch job was to do a bit of hand-sewing to tack the "bikini top" up on the bodice
of the body suit, to make it look less like a strip of elastic wrapped around their body.

Kelly was getting her costume on to show Daddy after supper on Sunday, when she looked up at me, and loudly, in a lull in the conversation, announced "Mom, you've got to do SOMETHING to fix my BREASTS"

"what?" I ask, as all the boys stop chewing and look over at her.


"You know, mom. Fix that part that covers the BOOBS."

Say WHAT? I hope you're not using that sort of language around school, honey.

Ohhhhhh, you mean fix your "BRA"? Or the "BODICE" of your suit? Yeah, let's make sure we understand what all those B-words really are, ok, and which ones we might want to use more, and which ones we might want to use *less*.


Here she is, breasts all fixed up fine.