Weekend

Hell, just the anticipation of the weekend buoys my spirits. And thank goodness, because it's dark and gloomy enough out to bring on seasonal affective disorder, if I wasn't so delighted by the minor drop in temps.

Imagine moving everything out of your walk-in closet and having to keep it in the bedroom proper for more than a day. And we have little floor space in the bedroom to begin with, because our bed's a king size. One of the maintenance guys came by late Wednesday, reattached the old hardware in a not-very-sturdy manner, and said he or someone like him would be back the next day to fill the holes with spackling compound (when the original hardware fell, it took pieces of the wall with it). Naturally we saw no one the next day; and while I'm afraid to put any boxes on the new shelf, I'd dearly love to hang our clothes, which have been sitting in boxes and suitcases for the better part of a year now out of laziness, late rents (I feel like I can't ask anything of them when we're behind with them financially), new landlord, etc. Yeah, yeah, excuses are like assholes, everybody's got one...this inconvenience has forced a bit of reorganization; I've already purged 2 boxes and 2 suitcases worth of crap...but if they don't show today, I'm gonna say screw it and retake my frickin' closet. It took an act of contortion last night to unearth my #2 dpns.

Why did I need to unearth my #2 dpns? So glad you asked. In my yearly fit of holiday delusions of aptitude, I'm trying to knit a pair of sox for LilSisinlaw for Christmas. I must be out of my mind. I've truly only knit one pair of sox in my life, and while the shape of the foot did turn out ok, they developed holes out of nowhere after one good washing...they were for me anyway, so I wasn't broken up about it. I've also finished one sock from the ruthee yarn, which a) came out too short in foot and shaft, and b) now suffers from second sock syndrome. So socks ain't exactly a field of expertise yet.

But I'm feeling the need to do a project with a pattern, while recognizing that I still don't have quite the patience or brainpower for full-blown lace. So Pippi Kneestockings it is, from Debbie Stollar's SnB original in KnitPicks Felici Firefighter (soft!). Gotta love self-striping yarn; wanted to do stripes, but I have a hard time trusting spit-splicing...I'm a knot-tyer usually (pause while the purist knitters cringe), but I knew that wasn't going to fly for a pair of knee-highs. So I got the yarn in the mail yesterday (and we won't even go into what an aphrodisiac THAT was), read over the first parts of the pattern, which are relatively painless, cast on and tucked in. If I bring it to work and ignore all my UFOs, there's a chance I'll pull it off by Xmas. And thankfully, my LilSisinlaw is about 5'4" and built like a twig, so I won't have to vary from the pattern at all. Only change I made is it calls for sport weight and 3s, but since I'm using fingering weight, I felt safe making 'em in 2s.

Man, I love me some Internet...just did a search for Pippi Kneestockings to gauge difficulty, and saw a majority of folks who liked 'em but changed the heel (which I may agree with them on, b/c I haven't done a stockinette heel yet, but I can imagine a more comfortable way to do that)...so I'm looking on Ravelry for advice. Ok, just kidding, Ravelry not helping yet...checking Knitting Pattern Central for ideas, and somebody mentioned Nancy Bush...