It’s the week where I edit reports at the school where I work. It’s one of them new-fangled progessive schools where they don’t believe in grades and report cards — oh no, carefully crafted multi-page narratives for every child. (I think this is tremendously laudable, just so we’re clear.) The teachers write their reflections on the students’ achievements of the term, and then I brandish my red pencil to help bring them up to our director’s literary standards. Last night I brandished until I was cross-eyed, and then I decided it was a good time to take pictures of my Retro Rib socks.

See? I really did finish them! You can also see here a prime example of why you should never delay casting on that second sock, my children. Look closely at the ankle region of the left sock. Ignore the fact that my feet are on the kitchen counter (it seemed like the thing to do at the time, to get them into the light) and observe that unsightly pooling. That is what happens when you allow the first sock to languish mateless for so long that you forget what size needles you used to knit it. I peered closely at that first sock and compared it to some other socks. I knew I’d made the feather-and-fan socks on #0’s, and the Pig War socks on #2’s, and that lone Retro Rib looked like it fell somewhere in between. So I cast on the second with #1’s. Alas, I got the barber-pole stripes right away. Silly me, I blamed the yarn. It is hand-painted, you know, and it was from Claudia’s early days in the business. (I just saw a new batch of this same colorway, Ingrid’s Blues, in the shop, and it was completely different: indigo midnight and chestnut. It called to me. But I was deaf and virtuous.) And then I got that really goofy separation you see on the ankle, and I figured it was a smack upside the head from the knitting gods. It wasn’t until I realized my heel flap was coming out awfully long that I became suspicious about the needles. Sigh. I switched to #0’s right away, so the feet match pretty well. As long as I wear pants, no one has to know that the left sock is an inch taller and a mile whackier.

While I had the camera out, I thought I’d show you my tree. It was the middle of the night with no tripod, so why not, right?

  

Behold our tree. It may be the ugly duckling of all Christmas trees, but we think it has character. We like that it has three noodly appendages instead of a top (or a middle, for that matter). We cut it on my parents’ property back at Thanksgiving and tied it to the roof of the car, and the trip down the I-5 corridor left it somewhat battered. It broke one of the noodly appendages whipping about in the breeze. But we knitters don’t come by way of the turnip truck, so I scrounged up some #2 dpn’s and splinted it, as you can see on the right. (Maybe. It helps if you pretend you’ve had a snort or two of holiday nog and can’t quite focus.) And yes, that’s a rooster on top of our tree, not an angel or a star. Vive la France.

Actually, these last two pictures are rather a poignant commentary on my state of mind, since the next thing I did after taking them was to step over to the computer and buy my parents tickets to a play — one ticket on Thursday the 21st (the last remaining ticket, it turned out) and one ticket on Thursday the 28th. I had a little meltdown. Then I saw this and it raised my spirits a bit. Fortune smiled on me this morning, though. During my plaintive call to the nice lady at the box office, a second ticket for the 21st magically became available. My parents’ Christmas gift is intact, and they won’t even have to enter the mosh pit that is the stand-by queue.

Now I’m going to take myself off to bed before I do you all in with my rambling. After all, there’s much more editing to be done tomorrow, and a family dinner party to produce at the end of it. Thank goodness for husbands like Mr. Garter who manfully endure being sent out to hunt for ingredients like ripe mangoes and cilantro while simultaneously entertaining the in-laws. (Thanks, sweetie.)

I finally bound off this:

Behold, a knitted amoeba. But bless me, it really does turn into a sweater!

Now to dash off a couple of insignificant seams (along the sleeve tops only – brilliant!) and sew on five cute buttons, purchased Tuesday at Josephine’s Dry Goods. I may crochet a single chain along the border just to polish it up a bit, and then it’s off to the recipient, possibly even before he arrives in the big bright world. (He’s due on the 11th. If there’s any truth to Stephanie’s theory that babies show up as soon as you’re done knitting for them, his mother will be ecstatic that I worked fast. I promise not to dawdle with those buttons, Misa.)

And, because I am a bad blogger, I’ve been withholding pictures of my Socktoberfest project. I give you the Drunken Bear Stocking:

I’ve long meant to work up a pair of socks based on the Bear Track pattern in the second Barbara Walker treasury. I thought I’d go ahead and work in some new skills, too: Toe up, baby! Via Turkish cast on! With afterthought heel! The Turkish cast on turns out to be a breeze, exotic as it might sound, and I can see many splendid applications for it — glove fingers, top-down hats, booties, all kinds of things. I haven’t actually knit the afterthought heel yet, so we’ll have to reserve judgment on that. But let me speak to you of the Bear Track pattern. First I had to adapt it for working in the round. Easy as winking on the foot, where there’s only one pattern repetition. But when I got to the ankle and wished to replicate the pattern all the way around the leg, a pint of Laurelwood Sticke Altbier helped me discover the following: if you complete the last round as I’d written, the bear tracks begin to stagger. At first I thought I’d correct my instructions, but then the idea of a drunken bear track sock delighted me. (Total coincidence: Google “drunk bear video” if you haven’t already seen it.) I thought I’d work a few repetitions and see how it went. The color isn’t behaving with such fawning obedience as it did on the foot, but I think I like it all the same. Maybe when I do Sock #2 I’ll make a designated driver bear with straight tracks, as originally intended. The yarn is, of course, Socks That Rock, colorway Red Rock Canyon. These are intended to be knee highs, and I intend to wear them while riding my bicycle. Thus I will fulfill two proud traditions at once: that of outrageously colorful long knitted cycling socks, de rigeur in the ’20s when cycling became popular, and that of Keeping Portland Weird. (Seriously. We have bumper stickers.)

Next time: a project I’ve been knitting in secret the last few days. Can you guess what it might be?

   
              
At last I can heed the requests for more photographs of the Colorado odyssey. Thanks to Fred Meyer’s one-hour development service, I was able to get these on a CD before we drove up to Friday Harbor. (Easterners: Fred Meyer is like a local version of Wal-mart, only with better quality stuff and fewer lapdances for Satan.)

Anyway, clockwise from top left: 1. Wrangler Jerry, a 17-year-old Amish kid we corrupted, looking over the edge of Black Face Butte. 2. Sandra Lake as seen from the trail up to the saddle between Wilson Peak and Mt. Wilson. 3. The boys stubbornly disregarding the trail we clever girls found and riding across the Meadows in the San Juan National Forest. 4. The view of Vermilion Peak and Gabriel’s Horn from Black Face. 5. Lizard Head from the trail below. 6. The group reaching the remains of my great-aunt and uncle’s 1933 cabin.

And we wouldn’t want to forget the knitting content:

              
This is one rough-riding sock, friends. And Cassidy is a patient pony, little fazed by the antics of his crazy knitter and also unparalled at following deer trails through all kinds of unwelcoming terrain, even when assaulted most cruelly by yellowjackets. The picture on the right not only captures the art of knitting in a hail storm at 12,000 feet (okay, this is just post-hail), but reveals Phase 1 of a fall project I’m cooking up: dyeing with owl clover. I collected a plastic bag full up at Sandra Lake, and you can see it here drying on my laundry line.

I have no idea if I’ve got enough plants to make a reasonable quantity of dye, or if my haphazard drying process was too compromised by damp weather and the necessity of stuffing the plants into a duffle bag on a pack horse every day. They’re in my basement now, sad brown shrivelled husks of their former selves. Will they still yield a pretty red dye? Who knows. I also haven’t the faintest clue what to do to them to extract said color, so obviously a lot more research is necessary. Pat at Abundant Yarn & Dyeworks keeps making noises about offering a plant dyeing class, which I’m panting to join, but hasn’t given any details yet. Anybody have any good plant dyeing resource materials to recommend?

It’s a beautiful sunny day in Friday Harbor, so I’m going to wrest myself away from the computer for a trip up to my parents’ property to give my two cents on architectural and landscape design. It’s terribly odd to imagine my parents in a house other than the one they built before I was born, but change is good for the spirit. And they’ve got an undeniably beautiful site for a smaller place. Stay tuned: you might get to see a picture of it. Yesterday we went out on a birding excursion and I got some photos I think may turn out well, so maybe I’ll put together a little island montage for you.

You’ve cast your votes as to how best I should end my sock knitting delinquency, and Retro Rib is the clear winner. And just to show how disciplined I am, I’m going to take your advice even though I was leaning toward Pomatomus. C’mon, it’s so much more fun! I love watching the scales form, and I love the Claudia Handpainted Plumlicious colorway. But my Retro Ribs are Claudia Handpainted, too, so I’ll have to be content. And this way I can use Pomatomus as a reward for my diligence later on.

Alas, the Retro Rib socks are not my oldest unfinished object. There’s still poor Charlotte to seam and (hopefully) shrink. There’s half a cotton baby hat lying around somewhere. There’s a fifth of a Lotus Blossom shawl lurking among my laceweight yarns. There’s kid sweater with no arms (and no kid) on the closet shelf.

So what am I doing? Thinking of new projects, of course. I cross my heart and swear to finish the Prairie camisole before I cast on anything else — I’m halfway up the back — but I confess I’m already swatching for an Elizabeth Zimmermann Fishtrap cardigan for Mr. Garter. Here’s what it will look like (hopefully) — just imagine it in a tweedy natural wool:

I’d seen the above pictures of the original courtesy of Jen, and then I ran across an old and dog-eared copy of The Knitter’s Almanac in the Powell’s on Hawthorne the other day. Mr. Garter liked the look of the sweater, and I’ve owed him a knitted garment for a long time. The man’s been my partner for six years and all he’s gotten is a lousy scarf. (It’s not really lousy: it’s actually a very handsome scarf, if I say so myself. It’s Grignasco Top Print alpaca, and a tour de force of seed stitch.) Mr. Garter’s version of the Fishtrap will have a zipper rather than buttons, as he is sporty rather than tweedy. This means I’ll be both steeking and sewing in a zipper for the first time — on the same project. Next month will mark two years since I learned to knit, and I think this will be an appropriate way to raise the bar for myself.

But never fear: the Retro Rib sock will be completed before its mate is a year old. I swear it shall be done. The Fishtrap is a pretty complex little beast with all those travelling stitches, so it will be nice to counterpose some fairly simple sock knitting.

We’re up visiting my parents on the island until Thursday, but happily my father has the same camera set-up, so I hope to post pictures from here. Mingus the Cat has come along on the trip for the first time, much to his dismay. He expressed his disinclination for the car ride by throwing up his breakfast between my feet somewhere near Kelso. Thank goodness he missed the knitting bag. Prairie camisole certainly doesn’t need that kind of adornment. I think he’ll like Friday Harbor once he gets used to the new surroundings, though. He’s already running around exploring every nook and cranny so he can get comfortable.