Proving Myself Wrong

During the summer, I only wear flip flops.  Seriously.  So it doesn't really make sense that I have chosen now to take the plunge and knit my first pair of socks.  I am always up for a challenge but I have always stayed away from knitting socks.  Why, you ask?  Well, for many reasons:  1. It's cheaper and easier to buy socks.  2. I am extremely hard on my feet so it would make me really mad to spend so much effort on something that I will just wear a hole in.  3. I just know that I would get done with one sock and not want to knit up the second sock, therefor I wouldn't ever wear the one sock.  4. Have you seen sock yarn and sock needles?  5.  I just don't wanna.

Slowly, I started to come around.  I consider myself an advanced knitter and I have always had this nagging in the back of my head that said, "You're not advanced until you can knit socks."  Then I had a group of women recently tell me that I haven't lived until I wear a pair of hand knitted socks (I know, I hang around some real delinquents).  I have the needles and the yarn (I don't really know why) and I really started to develop a desire to tackle a sock pattern with the excuse that I am going to make them just to prove how much I will hate making them.

I checked out a bunch of sock books from the Library, scoured the Internet for free patterns and asked my sock knitting friends for suggestions.  I now have several patterns to choose from, but I decided on this free Knitty pattern:

Solidago by Mary Jane Mucklestone

I picked out my yarn and dug in.

Today marks day 3 since the cast on of sock 1 and so far I am half way through the heel flap.  It has gone pretty smoothly thus far, well see how the rest goes...  I will also begrudgingly admit that I am actually enjoying knitting this sock.  We'll see how I feel when I have to start on sock number 2 :-)

Until next time, Happy Sock Knitting! 

hello

Is it August already?!?  I keep seeing commercials for pre-season football, wasn't the Super Bowl just a few weeks ago?  Wow.

Well, let me catch you up.

July 5th, we went junkin'.  Here are some of my scores:

For those of you that don't live in the Midwest or even the USA, junkin' is where you shop at "junk" stores (flea markets, thrift stores, yard sales, antique malls) to find treasures.  This is the hubbs and my favorite past time! 

We used our left over sparklers.

I am knitting a few gifts.

I finally finished knitting my cowl.  I bought 5 balls of this Louisa Harding yarn at Tuesday Morning for $6.30 total!  It is 90% cotton 10% cashmere and it feels so soft! I still have one ball left  :-)

We saw a Yoda cloud.

I went to visit this girl...

In this city...

 and had a lot of fun, ate a lot of good food:

I bought some yarn in Chicago and decided to make some handwarmers. They are almost done.

Took the kids to visit the in-laws. Saw a fox the minute we got there in the middle of their yard.  This pic is taken with my iPhone through binoculars.  I think it turned out pretty decent, considering.

Took the kids to the zoo and was greeted be this feller:

Saw an elephant getting a bath.

And fed a giraffe.

We went to this fun place

And did some more junkin'.

 We got home and built an in-ground fire pit:

And it is fantastic!

Pinterest gave me this idea to make "Firestarters" Click here to find out how.  

And they worked like a charm:

Oh and I was given this stash of knitting goodies from a friend of mine that didn't want it any more.

I have started on Christmas projects already.  Which is probably a good idea since the last 7 months have flown by.

This pic doesn't look like much but I have started getting ready to possibly put an art exhibit together.  This will be the first one that I have done in 10 years! So fingers crossed that I can have the focus to get this done and accomplished.

I am also hoping to post more often so until next time, Happy End of the Summer!