is this cruelty to yarn?

I have this lovely hand-dyed merino which I'm trying to knit into socks for Amelia. The poor stuff has been knitted and ripped 5 times now.




First, I tried knitting them from the toe up. I finally got the 8 loop cast-on thing & was cruising along, but then I couldn't find a toe-up heel pattern which didn't involve short-rowing and I 1) didn't like the holes & 2) didn't understand the instructions for getting rid of the holes if you don't like them.

So I retreated to my comfort zone of top down socks. (this might be a good time to mention that these are only the second pair of socks I've attempted to knit)

I kept dithering over the gauge. This stuff seems to have a fair bit of stretch and Amelia does not like baggy socks. I swatched in the round on dpns to really get a feel for it & then I decided to make it a tad smaller than I thought I needed. Then I decided to make a little eyelet detail on the cuff which we both thought would look cute on the cuff of a short ankle sock. Breezing along, feeling just fine, & then discovered I had missed a yo. And got a sneaking suspicion that this would be too narrow a sock anyway. So I took it off the needles and got Amelia to try it on. Yup. A bit too snug. And I didn't like the appearance of the stitches pulled apart. And there was the issue of the missing yo. So ripped it again.

Cast on with bigger needles this time and cast on 4 extra stitches. The yarn is still looking miraculously good after all this mistreatment but I decided to start a little bit away from the end. Everything is going really fine, except now the yarn patterning has gone all weird. See above how the stripes are all nice and cool looking? This time, I have light colored stripes on the front and dark colored stripes on the back. Argh.

I've only been getting little bits of time to knit as we have been in the midst of painting and decluttering. The painting is all over now and I have just (sheepishly) realized that I didn't touch a paint brush or roller even once. The kids helped with the painting. I was in charge of filling boxes up with stuff so that we could unbolt furniture off the walls. (when you live with a geologist, in an earthquake zone, have 9 foot ceilings and tall furniture - everything is bolted to walls)

On Sunday, I was at a summer picnic put on by my local chapter of Romance Writers of America. It was a lovely break from all the painting and chaos and boxes all over the place. There was an optional anonymous critique and for the first time, I participated. We were invited to bring the 1st three pages of a work in progress. They were read aloud, and then people offered comments and constructive criticism. It was fun and I got great comments. It was awfully hard to try to stay anonymous, though. I think I turned red when mine was being read, and I know my hand was shaking because I almost spilled my drink. A kind of weird, suspenseful excitement got hold of me. As usual, hanging around with writers was inspiring and energizing.

We're off to the lake to camp tomorrow morning. The rain is apparently coming as well. Rain and I are such good friends that when it heard where I was going, it came back from its 2 week holiday and bumped glorious hot sunshine out.

I have to get back to the boxes. (this time, filling camping boxes up with supplies; hopefully I won't mix the boxes up with the crap from our bookcases or we'll be camping with a collection of lego pieces, ancient maps, snapshots of other people's babies, and mysterious pieces of things which look like they might be an important part of some appliance....)

Back on the weekend! (& comment, will ya? I know you're here, you might as well wave and say hello!)