I’m addicted. This is as much as I was able to accomplish. I completed the wheel early this morning, 1:30AM and then went to bed. I was able to spin two partial bobbins and then ply them this evening. I was a bit concerned that a double drive would be too difficult to begin with but it wasn’t. The flyer and bobbin do spin very, very, very fast but I was only frustrated a time or two because of speed. The furbaby helping me is Zorro. Boo needed mommy snuggles, so the yarn is on a third bobbin waiting. I need to get it off the bobbin and either wash it or just let it rest. so the twist is set.

Day 4422 of captivity

9:10 am
They locked me in the pen again and left me alone. I really wish they would stop doing that. I like to ride in the car as much as they do. They take me sometimes, I like it when they take me with them, I get to put my head out the window and pant.

9:30 am
Freedom!!!! I’m out of my cage and get to explore. Yum, bunny fur. I’m going to scatter it all over the sidewalk and side yard.

10:00 am
Drat!! The neighbor kid spotted me in her front yard, must run faster. Hurry, hurry.

11:00 am
Drat!! The other neighbor spotted me and is watching me. I’m going to pretend I don’t see him and continue hunting butterflies, cowbirds and maybe a cat.

11:45 am
Thirsty, very thirsty, must go home and get water.

12:15 pm
Time to explore again, maybe the neighbors have gone away and won’t see me.

12:30 pm
Drat, he still sees me. He’s calling my name, I’m gong to pretend I don’t hear him. Oh noes, he’s following me, must head home, quickly. Ack!! He’s still following me, I’ll pretend I’m going in the house and waiting to be let in, maybe he’ll go away.

12:45 pm
I’m trapped on the porch, he won’t let me go.

1:00 pm
He put me back in the pen and duct taped the door close, I’m stuck here.

While talking with a friend on the phone today, I noticed a new bird at the suet feeder. He’s a rather plump red-bellied woodpecker.

Spring is here. My plants are happily growing under their light, I have broccoli plants, chives, dill and what I think is a hot pepper plant, only one smallish sprout. The cat grass has sprouted and Duke as bitten the tops off of all the blades. Maybe the boys won’t mind pre-chewed blades. Birds are returning, the blue jays have invaded again, finches abound and cardinals zoom past my living room windows off for an adventure. Most of my winter friends have moved on to warmer places or found their own food supply. I spent a few hours on the porch this morning, snuggled under a blanket reading. The sun was peaking out from behind the clouds, Daisy Mae vigilantly keeping guard near my feet, lest any birds or butterflies drop in for a visit. Today is a new day, full of possibilities.

Photo updates:

• top left: daisy mae sleeping
• top right: lost power, light candle
• bottom left: Z and his reflection

The furries figured out how to get along. For the most part, our three cats and one dog have established a peaceful coexistence. Daisy hangs out where ever she wants to, but gives extremely wide berth to either of the boys when she crosses their path. Duke, the antisocial cat, is on my lap or racing around the living room jumping in a basket or beating the tar out of a paperbag she has flattened.

Well, I take that back. Duke just jumped on Daisy, who was sleeping on the couch and Daisy growled at Duke, which caused Duke to hiss and the boys came running to Duke’s defense. Now everyone is on high alert.

LG has become Mr. Friendly Cat, which is quite funny. I’m afraid there is a direct correlation to his friendliness and Cucumber moving in with John.

Except for isolated incidents, everyone seems to have adjusted quite well. Thus ends part two in my March Monday post.

Mom, Dad, Granny, Jason and I had dinner around 4 in the afternoon, then packed into our Ford Focus rental car and zipped over to Granny’s church for the Christmas Eve service. We returned to Granny’s house for a rousing game of dominoes, from double twelve down to zero.

Photo record.

Jason and I celebrated our own Christmas on the 24th. Jason’s gifts for me were quite thematic. I have become quite fascinated with the birds at Jason’s feeders, so he purchased three bird feeders, two shepherds hooks and a scooper-funnel for the bird seed, as well as rope and s-hooks to hang the third feeder. He has been enjoying my Law and Order DVD collection, so I found season four and packaged that for him as well as a stuffed star penguin. The penguin came with a code to go and name a star in the international star registry. After naming it, Jason can print a certificate that will show him where the star is located.

The socks are finished!!! I know there are a few skeptics out there who thought maybe I would finish one at the most, I have surprised even myself. They are far from perfect, but they are finished. The picture doesn’t show the correct flavor of orange, I think it’s a smidge darker, which is just a little more than a dash if you are of the curious sort. Nonetheless, they are finished.

I am now able to work on other projects. Next up, two socks at a time on the needles. I read warnings about having to take copious notes to be sure that the socks matched. I tried, alas, there are a few differences if you look close enough, however, I warn you, the next time you see the socks will most likely be on someone’s feet.

<rant>On my way to find the url to link to the pics for this, this lovely final post on the creation of the orange socks, my blood pressure increased so dramatically I really wanted to hurt someone. My photo gallery had been spammed by a whole host of asinine idiocy. Until I find a better way to deal with it, I turned off comments for the photo gallery only. WordPress provides some nifty plugins to deal with spam and they are slick. I have control, I have choices. Gallery doesn’t come with anything built in to deal with that, I will have to install something extra that may or may not solve the problem according to the comments I reviewed at the website for that product. </rant>

April 29, 2008: I quickly (3 hours of deleting by hand) solved the problem with a plug-in and requiring registration to leave comments.)

If you made it through the rant, I only have to publicly apologize to Z Mao. He had the unfortunate happenstance to desire my lap for nap. It took 5 minutes and 10 removals for him to understand that my lap was not available at that time. Pobrecito gatito.

So maybe it’s not the sock that’s struggling, it’s me. Or maybe the yarn is struggling to become a sock even though it is an inanimate object incapable of doing much of anything on its own. I wish my pattern had said at this point, “We know these instructions make absolutely no sense. We further understand that what we are asking you to do seems to be impossible, please trust us, we’ve actually made a sock before using this method, you have not.” If that statement seems to harsh and uncaring, maybe this one, “Up to this point you have knit in the round with no need to distinguish between front and back or left and right. At this stage, we are adding the heel, you will now have a distinct front and back of your sock. Once you finish the heel, we will rotate the stitches on the needles so that you view the sock in profile. We will divide the sock down the center and position the left side of the sock in profile on one needle and the right side in profile on the other.” However, if space was an issue and we needed to condense, something like, “We will now slide stitches around the needles and rotate the sock one quarter turn. From now on, you will view the sock from the side, rather than front or back.”

Had I any of the above statements, I would have said to myself, “Self, this pattern makes sense, let’s keep going, we can finish tonight!” Alas, it did not offer any of the aforementioned encouragement to persevere in the task. Instead, the pattern (yes, yes, an inanimate object) made me crazy for the better part of an evening.

As the furry maos began to help, so set the sock down and began searching on the ‘net for an hour or so. After a day of hunting, today is opening rifle season, Mom had offered to make chili for anyone who was game, so we went over to the folks’ place for dinner, with the brothers. (I have brothers!) I tried not to puzzle out what to do about the sock and enjoy dinner, at least I did something right

After returning home, we watched some of our favorite Thursday night shows, then I did some more hunting of my own. I must have read 20 or 30 different pages on sock construction with two circular needles, I even found a video or two to watch. Unfortunately, the videos were sock construction on dpns (double pointed needles) as were several of the pages, the authors only indicated that socks could be formed on circs. Fortunately, I was able to see how to move the stitches and yarn around in a circular manner on dpns to pick up all the necessary stitches. I found several other lovely women, they seemed lovely but I didn’t probe too deeply, who struggled with the same step in the same pattern and book. Several pleas for help went unanswered, but I found an explanation or two, that while not answering the direct question, answered how that particular individual handled that specific step. All the sudden I felt that if I looked at my struggling sock and read the directions one more time while looking at struggling sock it would finally make all sense in the world. It was as if the heavens parted and angels sang. Ok, so it was more like a cat yawning and a dog snoring, but it was no less amazing. It made sense, I understood that I was putting two sets of stitches on the same needle even though a third set needed to be in between those. It’s like the logic games, move the boxes or the sliders. Sometimes you move them out of order so you can maneuver all of them into proper order later. I wish I could credit one author or a set of authors, regrettably was not one distinct source. I am now ready to pick up the stitches on the left side of the struggling sock and knit. My numbers don’t quite work out according to what the pattern indicates I should have, but I’ll fudge it later. I picked up extra stitches to prevent gaps and holes, as recommended by some of the lovely women I encountered in posts while researching. At this point, my struggling sock looks like an upside down miniature ski mask. I wonder if I could make a ski mask that way . . .

My truly random thought, because the ski mask wasn’t, does anyone need a researcher? I’m not going to get my master’s in library science, but I’m a really good researcher. I spend many, many hours searching for an exhausting answer to my lack of sock construction understanding. I am fairly confident that I can now say I have seen it all.

On a completely different knitting note, I have learned so much on this one sock. I used to knit by counting and following the instructions extremely closely. In an effort to learn how to knit socks, I have checked out many, many random knitting books from the library. I have learned to knit stitches rather than counting, knit the knit, purl the purls. I found a small hole on each side of the sock, right where it isn’t supposed to be, I didn’t pick up enough stitches. On this knitting round, I knit to the old and armed with a crochet needle, I created a few new stitches and poof! no more hole. I have ripped stitches, recreated stitches. I believe I owe these brilliant discoveries to Douglas Adams. I have been watching the older BBC Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy episodes. I love the local library!

Today Daisy and I were quite busy. We went and bought a bike, no, not for her. I got a really good deal on it, almost 60% off the original price. After showing it off to Jason’s Dad, we went home and baked bread. One smallish. loaf of spelt and another of applesauce. We’ll see how they go. If that wasn’t enough adventure, we then rearranged the living room, the couch is now at a 45° angle to the television. I’m not sure what I think about the living room yet. The couch extends onto the kitchen floor in order to give the recliners enough room to recline. The kitchen is going to seem a little small having to navigate around the couch. We also cleaned a set of cupboards so that there are no milk products at all, and the wheat without milk is separated into a different area. Anyone need any wheat/milk/yeast products? At seven, it’s time for my shower so I can go meet Jason and Nate for Mexican.

I made some progress on the flowerbeds this week, but I still have stones to move. I’m not really sure I want to redistribute the stones knowing that I’d like to redo all of the beds eventually.