Socks, Slacking and Stitchy Stuff

If you'll recall my deliriously happy post of a week or so ago, I signed up for the sockwars yahoo group. That hasn't turned out so well. The whole group has degenerated into 1 of 4 types of emails:
1) complaints about not receiving socks, prompting people to offer
2) suggestions on how to make the system perfect, usually from newbies, which are then shot down by people
3) telling everyone to chill and just have fun with it.
4) then there are a bunch of new people saying hello (I like those emails)

All in all, I'm thinking I won't be participating in that one. I like smaller groups - this has over 200 and counting. Also, I'm don't really knit socks, so why am I signing up for Sock Wars where I'll have to potentially knit many, many socks under time pressure?

In the meantime I've found another sock group that's much more my speed. Let's see if this link works:



It's a Harry Potter Sock Kit Swap (the 4 signifies the 4th round). Instead of making someone else socks, you send them a sock kit (loaded with yarn, a pattern, needles and all kinds of fun stuff), all with an HP theme. This combines 2 of my 3 loves - books and crafts - so I'm a big fan. I also love the HP books, sci/fi and fantasy in general, British children's books... so yeah this is the perfect swap for me. It's capped at 100 people. And I love how they have a very elaborate system of rules and lots of little pieces of the game, all of which are very well thought out. I'm not sure how much I'm allowed to say about my involvement - there are secret email addresses and codenames involved after all - but it should be fun. They still have spots left, if you want to sign up get over there already! :-)

On to the slacker portion of the blog post:
I didn't start any new projects on 01/01 as I'd hoped to. Something about not reading the fine print on a pattern and getting the wrong gauge fabric for Caron Watercolors - that is some chunky yarn! I did stitch on already started projects. Maybe that means I'll finish a lot of WIPs
and UFOs this year? One can only hope.

My second slack of the new year was on 01/02. I didn't bike to work today. However I'm still in the running with J since I didn't take the car either - I worked from home. Someone needed to be home when a worker came to the house, and my parents (and Sky) are on vacation. It was a wash for the environment but I missed out on the biking. Oh well, that's what tomorrow is for right?

Maybe people are used to telling me to be careful on two-wheeled vehicles but it's surprising how many people tell me to *be safe* on my bicycle. I appreciate the sentiment and that people are concerned for my safety. I also think I will start telling car-drivers to be careful. In my experience, people on 2-wheeled vehicles are more cautious and aware drivers - we are already careful, and we don't have cell phones, radios, and passengers to distract us. Plus motorcyclists and bicyclists aren't in the papers all the time for hitting and killing people. Car drivers kill. And door. So all you car drivers out there, please be careful!

Can I brag about how smart Sky is? Sky likes riding in cars, but not riding in crates in cars. When she goes on a trip to the train station she can have free reign over the backseat, but for long rides that doesn't fly. She took one look at the crate in the car and tried to bolt the other way. So I picked her up (all 65 lbs of her) and carried her back towards the car. I didn't want to bang her head on anything so I stopped short of placing her inside the car, but it was cool. She totally got the message - "Walk in or be carried in, but you're sitting in the crate missy" - and got into the crate on her own. She knows how to make her wishes known - she won't touch her food unless we spoon some plain yogurt on top, period - but she also knows when to fold like with the car. That better than some people I know!

On the stitching front:
I'm a bit late with my new year's start, but today I started a wine cozy from knitty.com. I'm doing it in a teal acrylic/wool blend from Michaels using size 10 DPNs. I cross stitch really slowly but knit like a madwoman, so I should be done tonight or tomorrow. I'll post a pic once it stops looking like a sweater sleeve, lol. The only bug with this project is that since I'm using DPNs instead of knitting a rectangle and sewing later and all the *interesting* rows are WS rows, I'm knitting the cozy inside out. So I'm going to have a LOT of purling to do when I get to the sst part. Oh well.

I've seen a bunch of them on the internet and really like Vonna's work, so I signed up for Vonna's pay it forward. The game works as follows: 5 people who sign up with me will receive a handcrafted item made by me within 1 year. In turn, those people need to pay it forward to 5 more people. I checked with Vonna and any handcrafted item works, so I'll probably do a mixture of cross-stitched, knitted, crocheted and beaded crafts. Sign up by emailing me or leaving a comment. If you sign up you should have a blog, so that you can pif, and I'd prefer if you post at least a few times a month so it's easier for me to figure out what to make you.

Off to finish my first scissor fob. Have a good night!