15 January 2008

I feel dizzy...

You know, people warned me. They said it becomes an addiction in an unnatural way. I poo-pooed their sillines. After all, they're just socks for goodness sake. Get a grip, people, get a grip.

But ever since that pitiful quarter inch of cuff ribbing I produced at my saturday class, the sock has been on my mind. Every time I sit still for longer then ten seconds, the thought creeps into my mind that I'm wasting time that I could use for knitting the sock. I sat through a meeting at work today and the constant droning made my eyes glaze over, and I again cursed the fact that I could have been made the sock just a teeny bit longer if I didn't have to sit in this $#@%^& meeting.

So today I vowed to work on the sock. The dog wouldn't leave me alone and I kept flinging toys at him. I was getting annoyed - especially when he asked to be let outside and I dropped the fifth needle but didn't realize it and proceeded to knit with only four. It seemed odd to me that I had so many stitches on one needle all of a sudden. There was cussing. Although, Lynne the Sock-Knitting-Goddess, told me that some knitting projects benefit from swearing at them. I took that as a good sign and gave it dirty looks too just to be sure.

But LOOK!!! Look at this!

See THAT???? I did it! The cuff is now about 2" long. Woo! Who knew 2" could make me so giddy? Who knew that pink-infested yarn could make me run into the other room and squeal like a two-year-old as I showed my mom what I made with toothpicks and string? (I'd ask her to put it on the fridge but I'm not done with it yet.)

I posed it on the computer and was feeling pretty good about it. Then mom said, "Is that going to fit? It looks kind of small."

Damnit, she was right.

I kind of panicked a little bit. The thought of having to frog my baby just seemed far too cruel. I wouldn't be able to tear it apart. Even if I decided that it was too small, I thought maybe I could just save this part and keep it forever...put it in a shrine...carry it in my purse...maybe make it into a leg warmer for Dooley (he's pretty short, it could work)....anything but unraveling it.

I went up to my bedroom and grabbed a pair of socks from my drawer and decided that I would compare it to my sock. And that's when I realized that for all the things I do, for all the complicated engineering I do every day, for being a complete math geek and seeking to find logic in pretty much everything in the world....


...I can be such a freakin' blonde sometimes. (And blonde is my natural color so stop shooting me the evil eye.)

I'm knitting this on four needles. The sock I brought down is flat so when I collapse my sock to two needles, they are about the same size. I am such a genius. I was ready to start over, wondering how I had made such a terrible miscalculation. Turns out I'm just high on the fumes from producing something that millions of other people have figured out how to do long before me. (Kind of kills some of the buzz doesn't it?)

Regardless, I have hope that this will move along at a bearable pace. I had visions in my mind of retiring and finding this partially finished cuff collecting dust in the back of the basement. But I think they will be on my feet sooner then that...stay tuned...

4 comments:

Leann said...

I love that you use the keyboard as your backdrop. I can't wait for you to teach me your photography tricks.

Julaine said...

Congratulations on the sock knitting!

Alessandra Collar Lipman said...

I am glad someone else is worried about knitting too small. The tam I am working on looks kind of small, but it's hard to tell on circular needles. Plus, isn't that what ribbing is for, as least in this case, to stretch?

Fibra Artysta said...

Hi Alessandra,

Yeah, the ribbing on the cuff is supposed to make it stretchy but I was still worried. I asked my friend at work that's been knitting socks forever and she said it usually looks like that when you're working on it. I think you can even block socks but I'm not there yet! :)

Lynn