Unpalatable Truths

It turned out to be a slow knitting week. I discovered that when the temperature is 96°F with 100% humidity, even the most enticing project does not inspire me with the desire to rise from my puddle of sweat and knit. I quickly gave up on pretty much everything, in fact, except for cleaning the pool and submerging in it to the fullest extent possible. (I did consider standing in the pool and knitting, but chlorine wouldn't be good for the yarn. At all.) When the weather broke, I eagerly pulled out the red socks for their FO photo shoot.

Now, when people talk about project monogamy, they talk about the joy of finishing, the gratification of a project moving quickly, or possibly the difficulty of not being distracted by the next shiny mohair that shimmies in the stash. They should have also mentioned the utter chagrin of finishing a sock, only to find that the four-day-weekend you went on with another skein of yarn? Can result in you forgetting what you did on the first sock.

Yes, the Basket-Weave socks have gotten their revenge for being abandoned. And I need to remember to try on the finished socks before I weave in the ends. These apparently finished socks? Need to have one leg ripped back to the heel and be reknitted with the same extra stitches that I put in the first sock to loosen up the fit around the ankle.


Also, I should maybe consider keeping a project notebook, so I can write down these little improvisations for future reference.

Fortunately, not all the knitting is taunting me this week. After some initial dubiosity, I've decided I like the first attempt at re-knitting the formerly Garter-Rib socks, henceforth to be known as the Feather and Fan socks. The pattern does what I wanted- it breaks up the horizontal line of the striping, and takes advantage of it to add emphasis to the texture of the knitting.


I couldn't get the normal 18 inch stitch repeat of the Feather and Fan pattern into anything close to the number of stitches I wanted for the socks. (Not without radical changes of needles size that would have had undesirable effects on the density of the fabric.) So instead I messed with the pattern. This is a 14 stitch repeat version- 5 YOs, 5 K2tog. To account for the odd number of decreases, I'm doing the tops of the socks with a K2tog 3 times on one side and 2 times on the other, so the pattern will be offset by two stitches. It's not really obvious to look at it- but just out of general persnicketiness, I'll be reversing the order on the second sock, so they mirror.

And speaking of rude awakenings, this month, my passport expires. I went looking for the information on how to renew it. I don't recall it being terribly complex the last time- just filled out the form from the post orifice, got some pictures and sent it off. Nowadays, the form comes with four pages of instructions (some of which tell you to go look at the website, which has even more stuff on it). But I painstakingly read through it all several times, filled out the forms, addressed the envelope. The real moment of truth occurred when I held up the old passport next to the new pictures.

Now, you don't actually expect passport pictures to be any good. But I kind of liked the one on my old passport. It made me look like the cool kind of person who would go to Paris for the weekend, or be found strolling into Covent Garden in search of a Cornish pasty. The new photo? Makes me look like the kind of person who taunts TSA agents and is thrown out of airports. Positively surly. (That's not me, really it's not.) However, it's done, it's clear, it meets the government requirements, and I don't want to mess with it.

But the *mumble-mumble* pounds I've put on in the last ten years? Those have got to go.