Baking and Knitting

I made Sheri's Monster Cookies last night. She runs the Loopy Ewe. (For the record, when I wrote this post I hadn't bought anything from her yet , but I went back to the site and fell in love with a few things, so now I'm an official customer!!)

Anyway, my modifications were as follows: I made half of the recipe - which fit perfectly in my Kitchenaid Mixer - and made cookies with about 1.5 tablespoons of dough. That got me 8 DOZEN COOKIES! And that was just half of the recipe!! So yummy! I had enough for J and I both to take a giant bag to work, and then leftovers for us at home and to take to a friend's house tonight to share. These are awesome! I highly reccomend you make them!

I've also been slowing tinking away at my first sock. It's coming along - I just wish I had enough time to sit down and get this thing DONE! Socks do seem to be a quicker project - but judging by how long it's taking me to get through this one - you can see I don't get a lot of time to knit! And I guess there were a lot of mistakes on this one at first...

It is coming along though - I'm still in the decrease section of the foot. It's pretty easy to memorize how to do them, so I like that. what I don't like is the ribbing pattern - I wish I was doing some kind of lace or other pattern.

This weekend is the Iowa Sheep & Wool Festival. I went last year as well, so I'm looking forward to going this year! Here are some of my posts about the festival last year.

• Vendors and vendor photos
• Sheep Fashion Show (look for another round this year!)
• What I bought!

So, this is my last post until after the festival. Hopfully I'll have lots of fun photos to share!

Socks, socks, socks!

Points to ponder:

1.Why are my photos sideways? I know why...but I can't change them where I'm at right now...

2. Will I ever get this sock done?

3. Is the second sock going to have the same issues with my lack of ability to count properly?

4. I have cankles! I never thought I had cankles. This is the men's medium sock...

More of my sock story

So after my marathon night of finding the dropped stitches, I ended up with this...not too bad, eh? It's fairly smooth, but there is one little patch that is somewhat messed up.

I knit on the heel last night, and THANK GOODNESS that I used a lifeline when I was done with the cuff because I dropped two stitched of the heel flap and had to rip all the way back after I had completed 15 rows! It wasn't too bad though, I'm almost done re-knitting the flap!

This weekend we're off to St. Louis for family time and a friend's wedding. It should be lots of fun! With all of the driving, I'm hoping to have a sock done, but we'll see!

My sock might be saved

O.k. - last night it took me HOURS...from 6:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. to rip back my ribbing to a salvagable point and then pick up stitches from there. I won't tell you how many individual stitches had laddered down an inch or two, but I managed to get them all back on the needles, in the right direction and everything! This sock will not defeat me - I will defeat it. I did learn that I need a smaller crochet hook than a D, so for future socks I'll have to go buy one soon. I even started the heel flap (with a lifeline on the last row of ribbing) and am about 1/4 of the way through the flap.

I will make this sock. I'm excited to make a sock! My sister-in-law, who started sock knitting with me when I went to DC, has already finished her first sock! I have to catch up!

I'm finally doing it!

Socks - they're so fun - you can buy cute socks at the store for so cheap! I love wearing fun socks. But, I've always had this craving to knit my own socks and have been collecting yarn for it for some time - heck - every secret pal I've had has even sent me sock yarn!

So when I went to D.C. this past weekend, I jumped right in and started to make a sock. I used Cat Borhdi's book, Socks Soar on Two Circulars, and got to the heel turn! This is the funny part - the directions start to confuse me. You can't tell from the photo, but I've inserted a lifeline after my heel turn because I don't know that I understand the directions to pick up the gusset stitches properly. I wish I had the book with me to show the directions, but they confuse me at this point! I'll have to try working on them this weekend and post more later!