Eep, we did it! We closed on the house! I signed my initials to countless pages of hoodoo legal jabber ensuring that I’ll wind up in debtor’s prison if I don’t bestow vast chunks of my net worth on the bank each month. My signature now appears above the words “Borrower #1” on a tome of documents thick enough to stun an ox. Mr. Garter’s “Borrower #2.” We are the borrowers, and we drifted through the rest of the afternoon in a bubble of ether heady enough to fend off the Dear-Lord, what-have-we-done panic, at least for the moment. We even managed to open five new bank accounts along the way. (Our new bank is adorable. They gave us t-shirts designed to welcome us to the city and to promote local pride. Mr. Garter’s is egg-yolk yellow and says “Portlander”. Mine is sky blue and says “PDXIST”, which sounds vaguely illicit in a pleasing sort of way.)

Most importantly, we caught the last ten minutes of the France v. Spain match at a bar near the title company’s office. I have a long-standing affection for Les Bleus, having been in France during their victorious ’98 World Cup ride, and having been educated about the players and their merits by a lot of enthusiastic little schoolboys. (I was nearly run over by the Team Austria bus while riding my bicycle near their training center, by the by.) So I was happy to see them go through to the quarterfinals, and delighted that Zizou made that beautiful final goal.

I’ve turned the heel and worked the gusset of Pomatomus, and I’m swooning over the perfection of this yarn and this pattern in company. Pictures tomorrow, if there’s time between taking Mr. Garter to the dentist and both of us to the chiropractor and back to the bank and over to help my aunt move some of her things… And if I can catch my breath after all that, I’ll relate to you a most marvelous Sockapaloooza story.

…Was my interpretation of “hippopotamus” as a child (maybe because my mother’s side of the family passed down a freakish tendency to say “tomahto”), and now it’s what comes to mind when I’m trying to remember the name of that groovy sock pattern everyone’s knitting. The first time I saw them, I knew I had to make myself a pair. I finally finished the Conwy socks, and I was too impatient to even set up a photo shoot before I cast on Pomatomus yesterday. So here’s my beginning:

Reclining in the slug-eaten calibrachoa. Poor sock deserves better, I decided. So I went around to my mother-in-law’s side of the house to pose it among the dianthus.

Much nicer. I’m using Claudia Handpainted fingering weight in “Plumlicious” – oh, how plummy! I love the way it’s working up with nary a flash nor a pool – this happy result has persisted through the first two repetitions of Chart A since I took these pictures. And I haven’t found the pattern to be too toothy yet, although I did have to tear out half a chart repetition this morning when I got a little too glued to the Germany-Sweden match. World Cup soccer is prime for knitting, by the way. Nothing is as ideal as the Tour de France*, but soccer is a close second. Unfortunately, the Viennese Shrug requires a little too much attention to the pattern to be good TV knitting, but I’d say it’s five eighths finished. Of course, I’m not going to want to model it for you while it’s 95 degrees, which is the weather we’re having this week. We’ll have to take some pictures at dawn while it’s still cool (and this is the beauty of Portland – unlike NYC, it really does cool off most comfortably after the sun goes down). Fingers crossed, but I think I’m going to be very pleased with my modifications. I’ve also finished the Scarf-for-Money, which I’ll block tomorrow and then mail back to New York. No pictures, of course, but I’ll say that should you get the chance to knit with Rio de la Plata wool, you should absolutely snap it up.

What’s next? I need to pull up my socks and just finish Rosalind’s crochet edging. I’ve totally lost steam with that project because I’m pretty sure it isn’t going to fit me very well when it’s all done, and I’ll have to find someone to whom I can give it away. I also have some design projects in the works, and an entire blanket that’s supposed to be done by October. Sigh. Don’t you just wish you could knit faster? It’s not that I don’t take pleasure in the process. I actually mind frogging much less than most people I know, because it’s so enjoyable to keep working on the piece (present issues with Rosalind notwithstanding). But there are so many ideas in my head that I just can’t keep up! I made it a goal to work on my own designs this year, and I just need to start realizing my sketches in yarn. Luckily, between the World Cup and the fast-approaching Tour, there’s lots of good knitting time blocked out.

*Coming soon: a post about what I’ll be doing during the Tour, besides cheering on Ivan Basso!

Three cheers for a successful Sockapaloooza exchange! Today was the magical day when the postguy brought my package. Of course I grabbed the nearest sharp implement and tore into it right away, over Mr. Garter’s protests that I was using the good Wusthof kitchen knife for a purpose beneath the dignity of its finely honed blade. Here’s the loot:

First I gasped in delight at all the wooly goodness before my eyes. Then I giggled at the sheer serendipity of receiving socks so similar to those I had just knit:

They’re a little long in the foot (they fit Mr. Garter perfectly, but he declares they’re too girly for the likes of his Manly Man Feet [other Ed.: Did Not! Ok..uhm, just a little bit. They are quite lovely, but…]), but that’s nothing I can’t easily fix myself. The talented Ms. Seanna Lea worked a pretty star toe, which I’ve long wanted to try myself. So I’ll just pull back another inch of the cables and follow my handy Nancy Bush instructions – voila, comfy, comfy socks that are just what I need for wearing around the house, even in summer. My feet are always cold, and I haven’t any slippers. It’s a good thing I don’t have to rework the heels, though, because I’ve never seen heels like these:

They’re fascinating, and also comfortable. Did I mention these socks are comfortable? I don’t know what yarn Seanna used, but it’s like buttah. You rock, Seanna! And hang on, wasn’t that Schaeffer Anne we saw in the first picture? It was, it was!

Seanna and I have some kind of freaky mindmeld going on here. I’m always keeping an eye out for Schaeffer Anne in yarn stores, having occasionally ogled it on blogs, but I never find it. I did come across a couple of skeins last year at Rhinebeck, but I already had sock yarn in the same colors. So I was pretty giddy at Seanna’s extraordinary generosity. And yes, that’s a brain in there, because she’s from Braintree, Mass. This particular brain is a wind-up walking brain. Friggin’ awesome.

When’s Sockapalooooza?

Last weekend Mr. Garter and I took a jaunt up to Seattle to visit friends and relatives. I had an ulterior motive, too – the Seattle Knitting and Fiber Arts Expo was in full swing, too, and I wasn’t about to miss that. I didn’t know what to expect: the only knitting festival I’d attended previously was New York Sheep & Wool at Rhinebeck, and clearly an event held in the Seattle Marriott wasn’t going to be featuring quite so many wooly beasties. And while sheep dog trials in a hotel sound like a pretty good time to me (certainly the dog would be required to load the sheep into the elevator and bring them up or down to the correct floor), I didn’t get my hopes up. Sure enough, the Seattle Knitting Expo was a smaller and tamer affair. I hadn’t signed up for any classes, so I just browsed through the twenty or so vendors’ booths. Blue Moon was there, rocking their famous sock yarn (I didn’t buy any, since I stocked up at Knit Purl a few weeks ago and I still have a huge stash of it from Christmas), but I was disappointed not to see Brooks Farms in attendance. I did do a little stashing at Pat Fly’s Angora Valley booth – I picked up an 800 (!) yard hank of 3-ply wool in “Tartan”, a mix of berry tones, and a 650-yard skein of Fly Super Sport Monarch (formerly Happy Trails 3-ply – a dead ringer for the midweight STR at a much more generous yardage and better price, and superwash to boot) in shades of teal. By the time I had finished shopping, it was raining buckets and the temperature had plummeted. The weather had been so mid-summer glorious all week that I hadn’t even packed a sweater for my trip. So I sat in the lobby shivering in my Clapotis and knit like a fiend on Hourglass. When the rain lightened up a little, I fetched a car for the woman I’d been chatting with (an awesome green Buick with the vanity plate “I KNIT”) and then made my way back to the relatives’ house.

On Monday we drove up to visit my parents for a few days. And of course there was the Sockapaloooza deadline to meet. I almost got the Dalarnas in the mail for Tuesday. Sometimes I forget that when you’re on an island things work a little differently. It turns out the airline that used to carry our mail got all delinquent with their rent payments to the airport and lost their accreditation, so they aren’t allowed to carry the mail anymore. This means the mail has to go out by boat, and that means the post office has changed their hours and now closes at 3:00. Not 3:00:27, which is approximately when I turned up at the door with my package. Alas, my most pathetic appeals could not sway the man locking said door. So the socks had to wing their way to my pal in the other Washington Wednesday morning before I boarded the ferry for a day hike on a neighboring island. But I’m pleased with them – thanks to those of you who suggested blocking on coat hangers. (Click for big!)

Specs:

Dalarna socks from Nancy Bush’s Knitting on the Road

Dale Baby Ull in cherry red

US#0 Addi circs

As I mentioned previously, I modified the pattern to replace the leg shaping with ribbing. Otherwise, I followed it as written. It has the swirling toe decreases that many people seem to dislike, as they produce a somewhat pointy toe, but I decided to trust Nancy. The blocking rounded out the toes a bit.

I really did knit these babies on the road – in Friday Harbor, WA; Portland, OR; Alpine, TX; Big Bend National Park; and Kansas City, MO. I just hope they fit my pal.

And now I get to await the arrival of my own socks. One of the perks is that I have an actual mailbox to watch. It’s my very first mailbox. Okay, it’s really Mr. Garter’s parents’ mailbox. But my mail comes there, too, and it’s a real novelty for me. Growing up we had a post office box because packs of rowdy boys tend to play mailbox baseball from their trucks. (We’re a little short of teen entertainment in my home community. At least we haven’t resorted to wholesale cow tipping.) Lots of people have mailboxes anyway, but my parents didn’t want to deal with one. So it’s quite a thrill for me to put the electric bill in the box and tip up the little red flag. And it’s totally fun when the postmobile heaves in sight.

Next up: Hourglass sweater!