James, get the hacksaw . . .

I guess I've been in an orangey kind of mood:



The socks are flying by: I'm using huge needles (well, relatively - they're a US 1) and easy 4-row-repeat lace. I've been into toe-up heel flaps and incorporating designs into gussets lately. If I ever took pictures of WIP, you'd know that.

The hat was done in about a day, too. It's the leftovers from my Retro Redux shrug and it's my standard too-lazy-to-swatch hat: top down with raglan increases. I used a brick pattern that merged into the ribbing, and then I just kept knitting until I ran out of yarn. That made the cuff reach almost to my chin, so I doubled it under and tacked it down. Hooray for warm ears. This also is the first and, I expect, the last, pom pom you will probably see on my blog. Again: the goal was to run out of yarn.

The UFO pile is getting ridiculous again. Once I finish the orange socks I've got a mohair shawl and a shrug I'm making myself finish before I cast on for the next sweater. This will power business is not what it's cracked up to be, my friends.

I was knitting the orange socks last week while walking one of our myriad suburban wooded trails. Nobody on the trail said anything to me or even looked at me cross-eyed. They just biked, jogged, and walked their dogs right past me, which I thought was interesting (I mean, come on, if you didn't knit and you saw someone walking, chewing gum, AND knitting with 5 dpns at the same time, wouldn't YOU stare?). When I was off the trail and back on the sidewalk heading toward my car, however, I got a lot of stares from older women at stoplights. Several of them rubbernecked with impunity as their spouses sped obliviously past.

Let's see... in other news, men with jackhammers have been tearing apart my patio for two days. I have moderately high hopes that, by the weekend, there will be a new patio in its place. My furniture is still in "storage," however, so any outdoor patio knitting chez sonnetstitches will be in kum ba ya sitting on the ground in a circle fashion for now. (The "storage" is in quotes because my parents exercised their right to use any furniture their children "store" in their garage, and a squirrel decided the chair stuffing would make excellent nest material.)

Also, speaking of furniture, there is actually a place to SIT in my stash room basement, and the cats are digging it.

Only one of them, however, seems to really have the concept down.

We're working on Ella.