Remember when I said it wasn’t going to be possible for me to spin all two ounces of that first bit of fibre during the Tour? Well, I didn’t do it, but I almost did, and if I had gotten the hang of spinning just a little bit earlier than I actually did, I definitely would have. By “got the hang of spinning,” I of course mean “improved enough so that I am only as bad as other beginning spinners are, rather than continuing to produce a substance that is completely unrecognizable as yarn by anybody’s standards, and that causes others to point and laugh, or to cower in fear of said mystery substance.”

Here’s some of my yarn so far. Notice how it’s extremely horrible near the bottom, but is starting to be thinner and a bit more even at the top? I don’t think it should all be that hairy, though. It’s awfully hairy. I think it needs to start shaving or something.

As for what I have learned, you know how everybody says that predrafting your fibre is important? And you know how when your mother is sometimes really annoying about something or other and says, “I’m not doing this for my health,” and you think, Duh, why would you be? That doesn’t make any sense at all. Well, when people tell you that predrafting your fibre is important, they’re not doing it for their health. It really is important.

I have also learned that just making crap up because you’re too lazy to read about spinning or watch spinning videos is kind of stupid.

Lesson #3: Spinning is hard enough that right now I can’t ever imagine not sucking at it, but it’s fun.

I probably learned some other things, too… but that doesn’t mean I remember them.

The weaving workshop I took on Saturday was also fun, and I’ll post about it another day. So of course I was happy tonight when I discovered that the new issue of Craft magazine is going to focus on all kinds of weaving. Sweet. The Craft blog also led me to Cake Wrecks today. The Cake Wrecks tagline is “When professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong,” and it’s the funniest blog I’ve seen in a long time. It’s like the dear, departed You Knit What?? — only with cake!

For all intents and purposes, I have finished knitting the Tangled Up in Blue Socks… but I can’t actually wear them until I weave those four ends in. The plan is to do that tomorrow morning, although I shouldn’t have said that, because as I’ve mentioned before, claiming on the Internet that I will do something at a specified time nearly guarantees that I won’t actually get around to it.

Although, since I’m talking about Internet promises, I’d like to mention that I haven’t let the Tour de Fleece fall by the wayside. Well, not entirely. I have not spun every single day that the Tour rode, but I didn’t expect to. It was just wishful thinking, and I knew that when I first mentioned it. I also know now that there is no way that I will finish those two ounces before the Tour ends, but I really didn’t expect to do that, either. I knew that would be a reasonable goal for Basically Anyone Who Isn’t Me, but for me? Not so much. Anyway, I have produced some yarn, and I am continuing to produce yarn, and I’m happy with that.

I’m happy with the fact that there is yarn production taking place, that is. I’m not happy with the yarn at all. It is seriously awful. Like, worse than any pictures I’ve ever seen of anyone else’s first handspun. I’m not so much of a fragile delicate flower that I will never post pictures of it… but I am sensitive enough that I won’t post pictures of the awfulness until I have also produced some slightly-less-awful yarn, as well. I have some pride, as hard as it may be to believe.

Spinning is cool for those rare several-second intervals where it feels like I’m doing it right. And for some variety, after spinning for a while, sometimes my whole arm is sore, instead of just my wrists! I also bought a latch hook kit last weekend (if you scroll down on this page, it’s the one called Small Tie Dye), and while this kit is very simple, it is absolutely fascinating to spend a while latch hooking and discover that hey, the next day, entirely different muscles in my arms are sore! (Near the shoulder, in the front, not the back. I don’t know if this is ’cause my latch hook technique stinks, or what.)

Annnnd… on Saturday, I’m taking this Threads & Colours: Weaving on Small Looms workshop, so I can learn the exact manner in which weaving brings pain! Despite my sarcasm, I am very much looking forward to it.

I’m going to be working on some fast & easy knitting projects now that the socks, which took way too long, are (essentially) finished.

This 12-ply Handmaiden Cashmere is going to be a Quick Knit Hat soon, knock on wood. The colourway is called Glacier, and this lovely aqua is so very much my friend that I have some Sea Wool in the same colourway.

As for Things I Am Actually Doing, as opposed to Things I Swear I Am Going to Do, last night I started knitting this Daiquiri Dishcloth for a friend of mine, and it’s almost half finished. Half of a dishcloth doesn’t make for an interesting blog photo, so no pic for now. If you want to picture it in your mind, it’s hot pink.

The temperature in Fredericton today was roughly equivalent to the temperature on the surface of the sun. With the humidex, it was 43° Celsius. (Without, it was 32°, but you can’t discount the humidity. It makes you feel like you are in a container of syrup all day.) All winter, when we were surrounded by feet of snow, people tried to placate me by saying, “Fredericton is really nice in the summer.” Well. Ahem.

Forty-three degrees is not nice. Forty-three degrees is demons poking you with pitchforks.

Naturally, I am playing with wool lately. Because I am not a masochist or anything.

I am participating in the Tour de Fleece, since I bought a beginner’s spinning kit from Susan’s Spinning Bunny two years ago and had never once used my spindle. This is not the Tour de Fleece mentioned on Yarn Harlot; there are actually two Tours de Fleece (assuming that is the correct plural). But this one has a Ravelry group and a better blog button.

This is two ounces of blue-green Wensleydale wool top that I am assaulting with my top-whorl spindle. I am using the ADHD learn-to-spin method, which is as follows: “With four different books in front of you (Spinning in the Old Way, Teach Yourself Visually Handspinning, Spin to Knit, and Spin It), randomly look at stuff in each of them, pick up spindle and woolly bits and make stuff up as you go along, then look randomly at books again whenever the fact that making stuff up isn’t working actually starts to bother you.”

The challenge that I set myself for the Tour de Fleece is to finally use my spindle for the first time and to make some damn yarn already. I have now finally used my spindle for the first time, and technically I have made some damn yarn already, too, but I have made very, very little yarn so far, and I’m going to keep on keepin’ on and try to spin a little bit every day the tour rides. It would be nice if I finished these two ounces, but I’m not going to bother setting that as a goal because I’m a very slow knitter, so I’m probably a slow spinner, too, and I don’t want to set a goal that I’m doomed to fail. Even if it’s a goal that everybody else could achieve with no problem at all.

Does anybody remember my African violet, Sparkly Fairy Princess? Well, she’s in bloom and very gorgeous right now.

She has a new friend, too, a cactus named Spike, although I don’t have any pictures of him.

Tangled Up in Blue Sock the Second was complaining (and understandably so) that its life thus far had been much less interesting that that of Tangled Up in Blue Sock the First. I took TUiBS the First to PEI and to a Bob Dylan concert, and I took it all around Fredericton and Saint John for the photo scavenger hunt. TUiBS II has mainly seen a) my bedroom in the evenings and b) the staff room at work at lunchtimes. So I figured the least I could do was take it to the Canada Day festivities downtown.

Since I am too old for pony rides, mainly what I did was visit a nice representative sample of the food vendor tents for pizza, Pepsi, a beaver tail (no beavers were harmed in the making of this tail), mango ice cream, and Italian soda.

The sock likes fried dough as much as the next person. Although not quite as much as I do.

I finished the heel flap last Thursday, decided something was wrong with it, ripped it out, reknit it, and realized that there might not have actually been a mistake before. I am not sure about this and would prefer to play a little game I like to call Let’s Don’t Talk About It. Turned the heel, picked up stitches for the gussets, knit the gussets, and am now finally at work on the foot.

I still have not woven in the two ends of the first sock, because that is not a thing I like to do. I can’t wait to finish these socks and start something else. I know that theoretically, I could start something else (or, ahem, pick up any of the other projects that I started a long time ago and am currently ignoring) without finishing these socks first, but actually finishing stuff is a) cool and b) fairly unusual for me, so I’d like to soldier on. Although my boyfriend and I bought an NES at the flea market two days ago, so the socks currently have to be pretty compelling to compete with Super Contra.

I am listening to fireworks right now but am so lazy that I have zero desire to go outside and watch them. Eh, I’ve seen fireworks before. I imagine that these are very pretty. They sound impressive. By which I mean “loud.”

Last weekend, I bought a book called Creepy Cute Crochet. Zombies! Ninjas! Trojans and Spartans! These are the most adorable little creatures ever, and clearly I must learn how to crochet someday so I can make some of them. I’m sure there are other reasons why I should learn, but this is the one that’s foremost in my brain right now.

Remember the third Patons Soy Wool Stripes seed stitch scarf that I knit, back in the winter? Yeah, I barely remember it either. I finished knitting it in December or January, but it was only recently that I forced myself to weave in the ends and send it off to the recipient. Merry Christmas! In June!

The colour is called Natural Green. I know there’s much more orange than green, but I didn’t name it. I keep knitting these scarves and giving them away. I swear I’ll make one for myself someday.

The second Tangled Up in Blue Sock is humming along. I’ve got about an inch of leg to go before I knit the heel flap. I’m going down a needle size for this next inch, because that’s what I did on the first sock to keep it from being baggy at the ankle. It didn’t work at all, but since I did it on the first sock, I want the second one to be as matchy-matchy with it as possible.

In the past few days I have actually been adding some project and stash details on Ravelry. See, even my laziness has its limits! It just takes a long time to find them.

I am trying to think happy thoughts, but it is not easy. A soothing picture of the sock near a lighthouse might help. Luckily, I just happen to have one.

Know what is a very happy thought? Lots of yarn.

The only thing I like more than lots of yarn is lots of books.

Baby-sitters Club books are definitely a happy, comforting thought. (That picture was taken in the Owl’s Nest. While I do own every book in the Baby-sitters Club series, I don’t own multiple copies of all of them.)

Knitting and other fibre-related magazines are also a happy thought.

Why do I need happy thoughts? Mainly because I have had a headache since yesterday afternoon. It was really bad last night, so I spent yesterday evening lying perfectly still with my eyes closed, because that was the only thing that made the pain bearable. Unfortunately, I wasn’t at all tired until my usual bedtime rolled around, so this was really, really boring. I tried taking ibuprofen yesterday, but it had absolutely no effect on my headache whatsoever. It did, however, make me dizzy.

When I woke up this morning, I thought that I felt a lot better. Then I tried standing up, and I realized that 1) I only felt a little better and 2) standing up was a bad idea. I went to work anyway, though, and lasted nearly an entire hour before going home sick. Oh, here is an actual happy thought: I bought the latest issue of Spin•Off on my way home from work.

I’m really bad at napping. Once I’m up, I’m up for the day. I can’t possibly go to sleep during the day unless I’ve been awake for well over twenty-four hours. If I hadn’t gone to work at all, I probably would have been able to sleep in, but since I did get up, there was no way I would be able to fall asleep again. So I’ve been up all day, sick and tired and cranky. The headache did subside enough by this afternoon that I was able to do things such as knit and waste time on Ravelry. I know time spent on Ravelry isn’t usually time wasted, but today I read all 4,811 posts in the most useless thread on Ravelry (it’s about tiny icons, mainly of food, that show up after certain words).

I finished knitting the cuff of the second Tangled Up in Blue sock and I was really happy about that because I do not have the patience to continue in 1×1 ribbing on those tiny needles for very long. I don’t generally find knitting on tiny needles any more difficult than knitting on larger needles (although of course it takes longer), but switching between knit and purl so constantly on those toothpicks (2.25 mm bamboo needles, switching to 2 mm for an inch at the ankle) is a bit much for me.

Then I discovered an inexplicable mistake in the cuff, and I had to rip back half of it and knit it again. Which is such a pain, because I knit ribbing so slowly on small needles, and I knit stockinette at quite a reasonable pace for me. I thought I was actually going to see some progress on the sock today, but nooooo. It was not to be.

I DID NOT ACCOMPLISH ANYTHING TODAY. This drives me crazy. I did not manage to read a book, not even a children’s book. (I did look at the pictures in my new magazine, but I didn’t really read it.) I had to undo the minuscule amount of progress I’d made on my sock, when I could have gotten so much more done if I hadn’t made that freaking mistake. I spent a bazillion hours on Ravelry without accomplishing anything useful there, either, except for adding exactly one yarn to my stash.

This is sock yarn that I won in a prize draw at Singer on World Wide Knit in Public Day. It is Regia Canadian Color 4747 Kilt, and although it looks okay in the skein, it’s so much prettier when knitted up — I found a photo of a sock that someone made with the same yarn. Ooh. Lurvely.

The teeny bit of WWKIP Day that I managed to participate in was fun — running to sit in front of the courthouse during my lunch break, knitting two rounds on a sock, gulping down one samosa, and probably seeming rude and/or strange as I barely had the chance to talk to anyone, except for saying, “Hi, let me see what you’re knitting! Ooh, pretty! Bye!” I hope another year I’ll have more time! It sounds like a good time was had by all, so yay to Trish, canKNITian, & co.

I have convinced Ria to come back over to the dark side, and she is knitting another sock.

I think I might be dumb for only giving the Tangled Up in Blue Socks a one-inch cuff, since they are a cotton blend. They will probably fall down all the time.

I can’t believe that I am worried about my lack of accomplishments on a day I stayed home sick. Quiz: Am I too a) driven? b) self-loathing? c) whiny? or d) all of the above? Oh, well. At least I wrote a blog post.

That’s how many different people were photographed holding my first Tangled Up in Blue Sock when I took part in the New Brunswick Photo Scavenger Hunt for World Wide Knit in Public Day.

Well, sixteen including myself. Hey, I count, too, ya know.

This is a guide at the Carleton Martello Tower, who said, “I’ve worked here for five years and no one has ever asked me to hold a sock before.”

I was working on Saturday, so I missed most of the WWKIP Day festivities. I am looking forward to other people posting their scavenger hunt photos, since I didn’t get to see anybody else’s yet. I am dying to see what kind of wacky hijinks the New Brunswick knitters got up to!

Ria and the sock are all about the wacky hijinks. Here they are conspiring in front of a fiddlehead statue.

Ria: “I can’t believe we have a statue of a vegetable in town.”

The moose statue also got into the wacky hijinks.

Admittedly, the best wacky hijinks were committed by a group of Fredericton knitters who, Knitta-style, festooned parking meters, fire hydrants, statues, and the like with knitted items. I want to be them when I grow up.

I wanted to write a longer post, but yesterday I went biking for the first time since 1997. And the bike was too big for me. And now my butt hurts. So I’m going to sit (or possibly lie down) someplace more comfortable than this computer chair. With any luck, I’ll have time to post some more tomorrow. Feel free to check out the Yarns on York Flickr group, some of my scavenger hunt photos on Flickr, and the WWKIP Day 2008 photos on justFRED.ca.

Oh, and don’t forget about Boob Lady, who was happy to meet the sock. But then again, she’s awfully friendly to everybody.

I think other people call her the Hula Girl, but ever since I saw The Simpsons Movie, she’s been Boob Lady to me.

I am not the one who originally said that this pink strip of knitting looks like a stomach lining, and I didn’t pay quite enough attention in biology class to know whether it really does or not (Tip: If you’re thinking of doing a Google Image search for “stomach lining?” Don’t.), but I’ve been referring to it as “the stomach lining” anyway. This has caused me lately to say things such as, “I’m going to put my stomach lining over here where I won’t forget it,” and not realize right away how insane that sounds.

It’s Sean Sheep Byron Bay in Antique Pink. I needed cheap yarn for a decorative strip of random knitting and I bought this yarn purely because it cost $2.20 (okay, I bought it because it cost $2.20 and it looks like a regurgitated ballerina), but I have grown so attached to it that I think I will buy some more and make an actual scarf out of it.

The stomach lining is actually part of the display, but the sock just ducked in there for a minute to put in an appearance. It gets around, it does.

The sock has had an eventful few weeks. It went to Prince Edward Island, it went to a Bob Dylan concert, and it went to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Since the Dylan show (you can see the set list here), these socks are now known as the Tangled Up in Blue Socks. (We will ignore the fact that the second sock is entirely theoretical at this point. Sock #1 is more than halfway done. I’m finishing up the gusset shaping.) That is a more interesting name than “yet another pair of socks that mainly follows Silver’s Sock Tutorial.”

I was not the only person knitting as I waited in line to see Indy 4. There was also a lady in line who was knitting something red. I was, however, the only person who brought my Indy action figures to the theatre, as well as the only person who was wearing an Indiana Moo and the Kingdom of the Lost Herd T-shirt from Cows.

The sock just told me that I should post the rest of my flood pictures, and whatever the sock says goes, so I shall do so. These were all taken on Thursday, May 1, 2008.

A week ago, I finally started my second pair of socks.

OnLine cotton sock yarn, pastel blue with stripes. Today at lunchtime, a co-worker was knitting socks with the same yarn, same colourway, which was kind of surreal. We were knitting socks in stereo. Quadruplet socks.

If the socks try to cause me any trouble (and they will), I have Dr. Jones to help me whip them into shape. Nothing horrible has happened with them yet, though. Apparently the universe has decided to go easy on me for a while, figuring that I’d suffered enough anguish with the felted clog attempt.

I’ve got to stop being so lazy in the near future and take pictures of the yarn I bought in Charlottetown last weekend, as well as the yarn that the lovely Heather gave me when she was doing a bit of destashing. I still have a whole bunch of flood photos that I haven’t posted yet, too.