I’m not sure how my better half is going to amuse himself during this time, but his willingness to go on a mini-honeymoon entirely full of yarn (real honeymoon to happen sometime in 2012) indicates that he will be the best husband in the entire world.

Speaking of classes, last month I took a Fair Isle class at Cricket Cove from Andrea Arbour. Project: the Paris Mittens that she designed.

Don’t let that progress picture scare you. In general, the mittens look better when they are knit by someone who is not me, and that particular mitten would look better when photographed by someone who is not me. I also expect that a photo of the mitten when it is entirely finished and, most importantly, blocked, will look much better even if I am the one who takes it.

I’ve been nearly finished the left one for a while now, but have been having some arguments with the mitten regarding closing the top of it. The garter stitch saddle in two colours makes my head go a little splodey. Once I have shown it who is boss, I plan to get back to work on baby items for various friends and relatives before embarking on the second mitten. I swear this is a result of my spirit of generosity, not second-mitten syndrome. Uh-huh. For reals. I’m willing to pinky swear on it.

Reason #2 why Mare is awesome: She made a cake for Kaytlyn’s baby shower, inspired by this Cake Wrecks post.

(When I told my mother that Mare made a cake with Spock holding a baby, she asked me, “Dr. Spock, or Spock with the ears?”)

Reason why Isabella (Kaytlyn and Addison’s baby) is awesome:

Look at her, only ten days old and already holding her own lightsaber.

Judy Blume is wearing my sock on her hand. JUDY BLUME IS WEARING MY SOCK ON HER HAND. Excuse me while I go breathe into a paper bag for a while.

Apparently she enjoyed the concept of the travelling, poseable, bloggable sock, because she DREW ME A KITTY FACE. Judy Blume. Doodled a KITTY FACE. For ME.

I am not even jealous that my boyfriend was there and I wasn’t, because if I had been there, I would have been fangirlish about everyone and humiliated myself. When I was nine, I kept a diary in my Judy Blume Memory Book, beginning each entry with the words, “Dear Judy.” So if I ever actually met Judy Blume, I would babble something like, “Wow, I can’t believe this, like, seriously, when I was a kid my family had a myna bird named Uncle Feather because my little brother was totally obsessed with Superfudge, which makes sense, ’cause he was always so much like Fudge, and thanks for teaching me that everyone feels like they don’t fit in and it’s okay that I’m not normal ’cause nobody is normal, oh, and please write Alison’s story someday, because you’ve written Stephanie’s and Rachel’s, and you know it’s got to be a trilogy. Although I’m looking forward to the YA historical fiction you’re working on now, too.”

How would I have humiliated myself in front of Laurie Halse Anderson, this year’s Margaret A. Edwards Award winner, author of the modern YA classic Speak, Twisted, and Wintergirls, and other great books? Well, I’d probably say something like, “Sometimes, when it gets really bad, I sleep with a copy of Speak under my pillow, because I know that at least Melinda understands me even if nobody else does.” Then I would promptly burst into tears, which would at least prevent me from saying anything else embarrassing. Oh, and I know for sure that would happen because I burst into tears just writing that.

The line for Neil Gaiman was too long, so my boyfriend kinneared him.

Well, kinda sorta kinneared him. I’m pretty sure it was not all that surreptitious, since he took seven photos, but he did manage to get Neil and the sock in the same picture without, you know, asking if he could.

I believe I am safe in assuming that I do not have to explain who Neil Gaiman is. He is magical and he can do everything. In addition to his general awesomness, he won the Newbery Medal this year for The Graveyard Book. (By the way, have you seen the Coraline Sweater pattern?)

Here is John Green wearing a Nerdfighters shirt. He is the author of Printz Award winner Looking for Alaska, Printz Honor Book An Abundance of Katherines, and Paper Towns. The other day, I said, almost completely seriously, “I want to be John Green when I grow up.” The fly in the ointment is that he’s only three years older than I am. Clearly, if I want to be John Green when I grow up, I should hurry up and finish the second draft of my angsty teen novel (and somehow magically make it not suck anymore).

I may not have literally humiliated myself in front of Holly Black, but back in February, she ran a contest on her LiveJournal, and I did win an autographed ARC of Geektastic: Stories From the Nerd Herd, the fabulous short story collection that she and Cecil Castellucci edited, and I never thanked her for it. The woman who wrote Tithe, Valiant (which was the best book that I read in the year 2006), Ironside, and The Spiderwick Chronicles deserves better than that. I’m sorry, Holly! My parents brought me up better than that! It’s not their fault! I just suck! Thank you for the book, and for your toleration of the sock!

My boyfriend told me that Melina Marchetta seemed intrigued by the travelling sock dealio. Maybe he’s correct, or maybe she’s just incredibly good at Acting Normal and Friendly in Front of the Crazy Sock Man, but either way, it’s cool. The especially cool thing about a Melina Marchetta/Sock photo is that, apart from Judy Blume, she was the only author there whose YA or kids’ books I actually read when I was within the target age range for them. Well, “book” in the singular, in this case, since I first read Looking for Alibrandi when I was thirteen or so, but Saving Francesca wasn’t published until I was twenty-four. (No, I haven’t read Jellicoe Road yet. Yes, I know it won the Printz. Yes, I know I should be beaten for this dereliction of duty. I’ll read it soon, I swear.)

Look, this blog entry is getting hella long, and I am running out of steam. So here is E. Lockhart! She writes books! They are good! One of them is The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, which was a Printz Honor Book this year, and which I did read, despite not having gotten around to Jellicoe Road yet.

Brother/sister team Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm write (Jenni) and draw (Matthew) the kids’ graphic novel series Babymouse. They both do other things, too (two of Jenni’s novels are Newbery Honor Books), but it is Babymouse that I am obsessed with. Babymouse likes books, the colour pink, and eating cupcakes. A girl after my own heart.

Also? My own brother? Would totally never go out in public wearing that outfit. Pity.

I would like to point out that I really do read books for grown-ups sometimes, and I was a Sherman Alexie fan long before the publication of his YA novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Although I’m not sure that saying “I read books for adults written by a man who is holding a sock over his nose” is the best evidence of my maturity. He is a much better sport than I am, since I don’t know if I’d do that with a stranger’s sock.

These are the guys behind the comic Unshelved. Unless you work in a library or are in library school, you probably don’t read it. But you totally should.

Not everybody who held the sock was human, or even technically alive.

The sock even hung out with the LibraryThing rhino. No, I do not know why LibraryThing has a rhino. It is beyond my ken. Well, except for the fact that everybody would be happier if they had an inflatable rhino. That, I understand.

DID I MENTION THAT JUDY BLUME WORE MY SOCK ON HER HAND? I am totally naming that sock pattern “Margaret.”

I sent the sock.

There’s not much sock yet, only the toe and six pattern repeats, but I obviously had to take a break from working on it in order to send it to Chicago, as I haven’t learned to knit through telekinesis. Yet. My boyfriend is gamely showing the sock a good time, kinnearing authors with the sock in the background, getting people to hold the sock, and acquiring signed books for me. Isn’t he the best boyfriend ever? I can’t wait to see sock photos, receive all the goodies he has picked up for me, and, oh yeah, learn helpful things about our profession that he has gleaned from the sessions there.

Since Sock the First is on vacay without me, I started Sock the Second, but I did not get very far with it (the toe and two pattern repeats) before I had to put it aside for the time being. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince opens this week, and I decided I needed a Hip House Scarf from Charmed Knits: Projects for Fans of Harry Potter by Alison Hansel. In Gryffindor colours, the third-year trapped-bar stripe pattern. I started it Friday night, and I know it’s a skinny scarf, but I’m really going to have to knit at warp speed if I want it to be finished by 11:55 p.m. Tuesday night—and I do.

Last Saturday, however, was glorious, sunny, and warm, which was serendipitous, since it was World Wide Knit in Public Day, and in Fredericton, we were knitting in public. Outdoors. Specifically, in front of the yarn shop. With considerably less planning than last year. (The lovely event notice I wrote up included the line “Hosted by: We’re sort of developing plans organically on Ravelry.”)

The turnout was quite good, considering how last-minute it was and how many people had other commitments that weekend. I think the most people we had sitting in lawnchairs on the sidewalk and knitting at one time was seven, with others arriving and leaving as their schedules allowed.

I actually have quite a few photos of people KIPping, but since I don’t know how well people I’d never met before would react to me posting pictures of them on the Internet, I’ll stick with a photo of Kathy, Trish, and me.

More people were induced to join Ravelry, more people later found one another on Ravelry, we taught some passers-by about WWKiP Day and were pleasantly surprised to discover that a few passers-by already knew it was WWKiP Day (fellow knitters? people who saw the—ahem!—highly popular WWKiP Day knitting book display at the library?), my awesome boyfriend did my laundry while I spent six hours knitting, a tourist took pictures of us, some guy walking by called us Amish, and a good time was had by all.

There was also some knit graffiti, in the vein of the scarf on the panther statue last year. Sadly, I never got to see that in person.

One of the lampposts on Queen Street now has a lamppost cozy.

It looked great last Saturday, but now it’s all slumped down onto the conical section below the most cylindral part, as it is clearly too big to properly fit on that pole.

One of the dolphins frolicking in Freddy the Nude Dude’s fountain celebrated WWKiP Day by wearing a little scarf around his tail. That only lasted until some point on Monday, when presumably a city employee was ordered to remove it.

My friend Mare just sent me some photos of another Animal Statue With a Scarf, which I’ll include in another post. Mare is a better photographer than I am, although so is everybody.

I’ve been reading about Knitta’s stuff pretty much since they came into existence, but I only recently started reading the Masquerade blog, which I now love. I don’t know why I said “reading,” when it’s almost entirely photographs. And I’m familiar with The Ladies’ Fancywork Society (a crochet street-art crew!) and the awesomeness that is Knitted Landscape and some others, but I’ll have to visit every single link on the Yarn Bombing blogroll to see what nifty things I have been missing out on. How much am I looking forward to this book? Let me count the ways. Oh, and speaking of books, how annoyed am I that the release date for Stitch ‘n Bitch Extreme keeps getting pushed further and further back?

I was working on my first toe-up socks on WWKiP Day. This is how they looked then.

That is also how they look now. They used to have a little bit of foot, too, besides just a toe, but I ripped it out. Then I knit a little bit more foot. Then I ripped it out. Then I knit a little bit more foot. Then I ripped it out.

I don’t want to talk about it right now.

Kevin was really nice and patient about complying with my bizarre request, especially when you consider that my camera was not being nice or patient. We had to move into better light and I had to take a whole bunch of shots in order to get one that turned out okay. Not that the final sock photo is a very good picture of him. Look, here he is during the concert, looking normal.

Kevin was also very nice about giving hugs to us weirdo girls who were waiting outside the tour bus after the concert. Aww, we ♥ you, Kevin!

It’s been a while since anyone has asked me why I wanted them to hold a sock, and I totally failed at explaining it to Kevin. I eventually gave up and said, “Look, it’s just something knitters do. You’re just going to have to accept it.” Sorry about giving the impression that all knitters are unhinged.

David didn’t come out to talk to the fans afterward, although he sometimes does. ‘Twas a good concert, though. I also liked the opening band, Crash Parallel. I’d prefer a concert at a venue where you can stand up the whole time, rather than at the Playhouse, but it was a better venue for a David Usher show than the casino in Halifax, which is where I saw him last time.

I wrote down the set list… mostly… I won’t post it unless I think I’ve actually gotten all the songs down correctly.

There actually has been quite a lot of knitting going on. I still need to finish up the baby sweater, but I’ve also started a Mystery Project involving intarsia, which is coming along quite well.

The back of it looks considerably more complicated and horrifying now, but overall, I’m very pleased with my progress on it.

Oh yeah, this is a rock star post, isn’t it?

Tilli Tomas Rock Star, in Jade. The colour really has to be seen in person to be properly appreciated. And appreciate it I do.

Last Saturday, I went to Kings Landing Historical Settlement with my boyfriend and some friends. It’s a “living history museum” that recreates a nineteenth-century Loyalist village. I thought it would be a cool place for a textile geek, and it totally was. So much textile-y goodness.

There were a bunch of crazy quilts, including this crazy quilt-in-progress. I didn’t take any photos of the cross stitch sampler and the embroidery that some historical animators were working on, but I did capture a hooked rug-in-progress,

as well as a tiny table loom, although I also didn’t get any pictures of the larger floor looms (they were in a rather dark room). The thing on the right side of the loom is going to be a braided-straw hat when it is finished.

There were also, of course, some spinning wheels.

It was nice for me to be able to ask the people working there some questions, because sometimes I listen to other people asking intelligent questions and I feel like a dork for not being able to come up with anything or I feel like it makes me look uninterested if I don’t have questions. I mean, as a graphic design and typography geek (although it isn’t even remotely apparent from the way this blog looks), I cared about what the guy in the print shop was telling us, but I didn’t have any questions, so I was hoping it didn’t make me seen bored.

Anyway, we asked a girl working there a lot of stuff about spinning and got her to demonstrate using a wheel

and a drop spindle.

I was hoping that I might pick up some pointers by watching, but since she was using a bottom-whorl spindle and I have a top-whorl, it was slightly less helpful than I’d hoped. Still fun, though.

She even asked me if I had carders at home and said if I did (which I don’t), I could take a little bit of fleece home to practice. Me working with any bit of unprepared fleece, no matter how small, would be a comedy of errors, but still, it was extremely nice of her to offer.

They also dye some of their yarn at King’s Landing using natural dyes, of course, since it’s supposed to be the 1800s.

The dark pink was dyed with cochineal, some of the peach-ish skeins were dyed with apple leaves (which produce quite a different colour in the spring than they do in the fall), and I don’t remember what else she said they used for dyeing… but isn’t this yarn pretty?

Back in the twenty-first century, I’m not sure how long it will take to get all my ducks in a row with regards to my new apartment, but it is definitely worth it, since it is giving me more space to store my yarn and craft books.

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.

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.

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.