Dusting off the old blog

I'm probably not on anyone's blogroll anymore, so I'm not sure why I'm bothering, but it suddenly seems like a good idea to dust off ye old knitting blog and talk about knitting.

First, a little bit about what I've been doing. I finally finished all of my research and am in the middle of (slowly) writing my thesis. After almost 3 years of living apart from DH, John, (he was in CA and I was in Chicago) I moved to Pasadena because there was no reason for me to stay in Chicago while writing. Then, John started a job at the NASA lab, Ames (coincidentally the name of the town in Iowa next to the town I grew up in), and so we moved to the SF Bay area a couple weeks ago.

So, here I am with time on my hands (because I'm having trouble keeping myself working on my thesis because it is boring as hell) so I figured, "Hey, I could write on the knitting blog again." So, here I am.

I've been keeping track of some of my knitting projects on Ravelry (my rav name is e-beth in case you want to look). My current project is a pair of socks for my sister, M. They're a Christmas present. Last year's Christmas present. I bought Wendy Johnson's Socks from the Toe Up and I'm doing the Diagonal Lace Socks (Ravelry link) pattern using TOFUtsies. According to Ravelry, I started on them in August, but it doesn't seem like it was that long ago. Probably because I got most of the first sock done, decided it was far too loose, and started over with smaller needles (size 1).* I've been working on that sock for about a week and I've already got the foot and part of the leg done. Now, I'm slightly worried that the foot could be too small. M's feet are slightly bigger than mine and these socks fit me pretty nicely, but I think there is room for stretching (if not, I'll get them back from her, take out the toe and extend it, but I think it's going to be okay). I haven't decided how tall to make them, yet. I divided the yarn into two halves before I started so I can keep knitting until I run out of yarn if I want, but I probably won't do that since I don't like very tall socks (and neither does M, I think).

At any rate, here are a couple pix from this weekend:


And the Ravelry project notes are here.

I'm also working on a purse for a little girl, but I don't have any pix for that, so I think I'll save it for later.

So, that's it for now. No guarantees I'm going to be particularly regular about blogging, but I'm feeling the urge to talk about my knitting these days, so I'll probably keep it up for a little while anyway.

*Actually, the first time I started the sock, I started the large size and that was WAY too big so I ripped it out and sized down to the medium. To get gauge, I needed to use size 2 needles, but those turned out to be too big. It was one of those situations where you got gauge but somehow it was coming out the wrong size. That's when I switched to the size 1 needles and started over again.