Monkey Mittens 2013

I try to knit a pair of mittens for my niece (aka: "Monkey" ) every Christmas. This is a picture I took of this years mittens before I sent them off.

Yarn: 87.9 yards of Lion Brand Wool-Ease Thick & Quick Stripes in the colorway "Tigers"
Needles: US 10 - 6.0 mm
Pattern: Wool-Ease Mittens by Stephanie Taylor

This is the 5th time I have made this pattern and I just love it. It's really easy and the results are wonderful.

You notice I used 87.9 yards of yarn? The Wool-Ease Thick & Quick Stripes comes in a skein with 87 yards. So yeah - I had to use less than a yard of the second skein. Add to this that I wanted to start the second mitten on the opposite color of the first - and my left overs turned into three balls of just under one skein's worth of yarn. Sort of a bummer, but what are you going to do? If I had made the cuffs a little shorter and hadn't cared about how the yarn lay - I would have been able to do this in one skein. But I was picky about how the thumbs were and I wanted the mittens to be kind of opposite.

Love how they turned out and my niece was happy to get them as always. WIN!

Tree Planting Hat

And I finished a hat! I actually started this back in May when I went up to do some tree planting at my Brothers house. I wanted a simple project to work on in the car and while we sat around after the planting was done and just chatted.

The pattern: Countrywool Rolled Brim Hat on Ravely - or if you are not on Ravelry you can find it HERE.

The yarn: Adriafil Knitcol I used 44 grams which is about 121 yards (111 m) on size 7 (4.5mm) needles. I love this yarn as it does all the color-work for you! So you get to look fancy with no effort. Awesome.

This is the fifth time (at least!) that I have made this hat. Love the pattern. It's just so simple and perfect. My Ravelry page can be found HERE for anyone interested in the notes I have there. The pattern is really easy though and written well. Highly recommend!

A gift for a Neighbor

Here we are at December 22nd and I have done pretty close to nothing for Christmas this year. I have not a single decoration up. I have baked nothing. I have purchased nothing. BUT I have knit/crocheted a couple of things. 

One of those things is a scarf for the daughter of a neighbor. I actually worked on this at school while waiting for class to start for the most part. Crochet goes really fast so I had it done in no time. Since it was for a toddler, I made it with one skein of yarn - Bernat Pipsqueak in the color Neapolitan on a size K (6.5mm) hook.  I don't have many notes on this, but my Ravelry page for this project can be found here. I think this was double crochet? Uffda. Can't remember!

Then when I was at the store I found the perfect gift box to tuck it in. It's all set to take over to them as soon as I buy something for the adults to go with it. I suspect I will be out shopping with everyone else today!

Jaded Dreams but Warm Hands

Another pair of mittens finished! I once again used the Wool-Ease Mittens pattern by Stephanie Taylor. This was knit with 100 yards of Brown Sheep Lambs Pride Bulky yarn with size 10 double point needles. These are really warm and the fit is perfect. If anyone wants the details on my project pop on over to my Ravelry page. (I did very minor mods on the pattern - the pattern is pretty much perfect just as it was written!)

I keep making mittens in an effort to stop my hands from cracking and bleeding so much. Sadly - it's not helping too much. I am still struggling with chapped and bloody hands. BUT I will keep trying to wear mittens and moisturize in an effort to stop this.

 

Temperatures are well below normal here in the Twin Cities. It's been cold and the roads have been awful to drive on. Every year I wonder why we live here. It's just bitter cold and miserable. Maybe I will have to look at pictures of my garden from this summer. Summer in Minnesota is awesome. 

December, Finals, and a little Snow

 

Nothing too thrilling to report from the Land of 10,000 Lakes. 

I have a final exam and a quiz tomorrow at school for my Excel II class. So in just 28 hours I will be down to having just one class to focus on, and that is nearing it's end as well! Pretty exciting. I still wonder how I managed working full time and being enrolled in 6 classes this semester. Kind of neat when you impress yourself!

We are getting some winter weather here this week. I was happily distracted by the above view out my window while studying today. Huge white fluffy flakes fell from the sky - so pretty when you aren't trying to drive in rush hour. ☺

No holiday decorations have been placed in our home - and I sort of doubt it will happen this year. Just not feeling that Christmas spirit this year. I haven't purchased a single gift yet, and I am thinking gift certificates and Amazon Prime will be my saving grace this year. 

I have not knit a stitch in days. Really hoping to get my knit back on here really soon. A girl gets crabby when she doesn't get her fiber fill.

Malabrigo Mittens

I finally have a finished project to share! I haven't had a ton of knitting time lately, but Winter is here (it's snowing out RIGHT now) and my hands have already started to crack and bleed, so mittens seem like a good thing to make. Here are the details:

 

Project name: Malabrigo Mittens
Pattern Name: Wool-Ease Mittens by Stephanie Taylor (A free pattern on Ravelry)
Yarn: 85.3 yards (82 grams) of Malabrigo Chunky Yarn
Needles: US 10 (6.0 mm)
Size made: Large

I have made mittens from this pattern several times now. It's a great stash buster and the mittens work up pretty darn quick. It's just hard to go wrong with a chunky mitten! I know knitting a heavy wear item like a mitten from Malabrigo is just asking for it. I suspect these guys will look like pilled up messes before the winter is over, but for the time being I am enjoying these soft and warm mits!. Some times you just have to go for it!

Is there anybody out there?

I am still here! I know I have been quiet the last two months, but I am still here! I am currently working full time and I headed back to school this fall. The schedule has been hard to handle and I pretty much just work, study and attend class. So even when I think I have a little time to do an update here, I tend to stutter to a stop as I don't have a clue what I would talk about. I think everyone hits that point with a blog from time time. It seems like the only way to get your mojo back is to jump in and start babbling!

So I am actually making pretty good progress on my class-load for this semester. I finished my Excel 1 class, my Access class, and my Computer Careers course. I am hoping to be done with my Introduction to computers class tomorrow, and that will just leave me with my online Word class, and my Excel 2 class. So far I am doing really well, but boy am I missing just hanging out and knitting while watching some crappy tv! I know it will all be worth it in the long run. I really need to get out of my job, and this is a great direction to head if I want a new career. Maybe one day I won't dread going into work everyday.

I have been picking up a little knitting the last week or so. I knit up a pair of mittens for my niece and I kind of wanted to keep them, so I immediately cast on a pair for myself! I am making mine out of a ball of chunky Malabrigo that came from deep in my stash. I will have to take pics and post details this week. I know I will regret knitting mittens in Malabrigo as they will be a pilled nightmare in no time, but boy are they soft and warm. Sometimes you just have to do it even though you know better.

I have also whipped out a couple of crochet items. They go so fast! I have a scarf I made for my neighbor's child, and a cowl I knit from stash. So hopefully I will get some pictures taken this week and will be able to give a proper show and tell.

So that is pretty much what my world has been revolving on lately. I am looking forward to getting back into the blogging groove!

Slow Going

I was hesitant to even take a picture of my progress on my sock, as it feels like you can't really SEE any progress, but there is a little movement

School has got me jumping and I find I barely have time to breath lately. I start two more classes this week which will put me at 5 classes. October will be BONKERS. I am a little concerned my hair might fall out or start on fire or something. I have very little positive to say about the college I am attending, but I like the subject matter I am studying. I guess that is good. I just wished my instructors and my college didn't suck harder than a Dyson.

Sigh.

Cooking it up!

I have been falling in the health trap that I knew would happen with school being here. I am tired and anxious - and that translates into stress eating and grabbing whatever I can find and stuffing it in my mouth. I was determined this weekend to cook some healthy food up to eat this week, so I didn't explode out of my jeans and have to live in sweat pants until the semester was over. 

Searches on the Internet found me some great Weight Watchers friendly recipes. I made a crock-pot of Skinny Slow Cooker Hearty Vegetable and Bean Soup which turned out just fabulous. I chopped up all the ingredients and threw them in the crock pot and just studied away while my dinner cooked. 9 hours later my brain was melted from all the studying, but I had an awesome dinner of hot homemade vegetable soup. The only alteration I made was to throw a little more ground pepper on it when I ate it and then I threw a small hand-full of oyster crackers in there when I ate it. I scooped the soup into two cup Rubbermade containers and had 7 servings left after a generous dinner. I froze half and put the rest in the fridge for lunch for the next few days. I love that I could put fresh veggies in the soup and I could control the salt an seasoning. It turned out just so good and it was really filling.

Then today, when I couldn't stand to study another minute, I made Make-ahead, Healthy Egg McMuffin Copycats. I found this recipe a couple of weeks ago and purchased the pan on Amazon along with the deli-quality wax paper sheets. (They were a splurge - but I wanted them and they will last forever!) My Amazon order arrived this week so I was just itching to make these, but school had to come first. So the pan and papers along with the recipe sat on my table for the last several days - taunting me. So today was the day and it actually went great! the eggs came out perfect and they taste great. I used a slice of lunch meat instead of turkey sausage, but otherwise I followed the directions (which were just Eggcelent!) and they turned out perfect. I tried one for my dinner, put one in the fridge for the morning, and the other 10 are in the freezer for the next two weeks breakfast.

Again - I love that I can control the ingredients and that I am not eating something processed and of questionable origins. I also love that it was easy, inexpensive, and I have a breakfast that I can nuke and take on the road. Win Win Win!

Ghoul School Progress Report

I have been studying all weekend like a woman possessed, so knitting time has been minimal. (I think I knit two rows on Friday?) But I have made progress since my last post, and thought I would share what I have done.

I tried the Eye of Partridge heel this time around and I am so happy with it!I love how it looks on this yarn and I think my stitches picked up much cleaner. I love seeing my technique improve. I am still working away on the decreases and heading down to toe town. I suspect it will be a few weeks before I get to sock two. School is kicking my butt - and it's hard to work in the quality knitting time.

Did I mention how much I love this yarn?!?! GnomeAcres yarn is so yummy. ♥

Summer Days

It's the last legs of summer here in Minnesota. We are warmer than normal for this time of year and I find myself trying to enjoy every moment of it. When I am not studying or working I try to go out and enjoy my yard.

I have been planting sunflowers the last couple years as they make me really happy. They are so pretty and the birds just go bonkers for them. This year they have turned into squirrel feeders and these awesome huge sunflowers are largely getting bent from the weight of a squirrel climbing up it's stalk and eating away like it's some giant buffet I planted just for them. But we have a few that are still reaching for the sun and I really enjoy their smiling faces.

On the knitting front, I am still working away on my Ghoul School socks. I finished the ribbing on the cuff and am knitting away on the sock. I am trying to decide how long I want them to be before I start the heel flap. I am leaning toward making these a bit shorter, partly for speed and partly because I think I will lean toward wearing these around Halloween (since they are pretty Halloween/Autumnal tones) and we really don't need the warmth/length in the fall that we would need in January. And I tend to wear two pair of socks during the winter anyway, so yeah. I am leaning toward these being a bit shorter.I love the feel of this yarn and am really enjoying the knit.

Other than that I have just been working my job ans studying for school. My on-line class has been very challenging in that it is run pretty poorly. The test I was supposed to be able to take this week was not open to me to access, so I studied all last weekend for it and then went in to take the test only to find I could not. When I e-mailed my instructor I got no response. Several students (including me) also left messages in our discussion boards and got no response there either. So mostly my online course has been a study in frustration. I will be starting my third class this next Monday and hopefully things will start to really chug along for me after that.

Time to do some knitting.

Ghoul School

 Starting my next set of socks and I am trying to take my time so I don't stress myself out over something that is supposed to be relaxing end enjoyable. Why do I stress out over knitting?!?! Seriously. I need to think about that a little bit.

So I decided I wanted to make some Halloween type socks, and picked up a skein of "Smell my Feet" yarn from Gnome Acres. I balled the yarn up and decided to knit a mini swatch going up one size of needles from my last pair of socks.

 

So I knit up a little swatch and measured it out. Looks like going from a size 1 to a size 2 needle changes my gauge from 9 stitches per inch (what I got on my last socks) and I am now knitting 8.5 stitches per inch. Heh. Not a huge difference, but I find the knitting feels a lot faster on the size two needles than on the size 1. 

So today, while recovering from some minor food poisoning, I sat myself down. watched a movie on Netflix, and cast on for my new socks. I am calling the socks "Ghoul School" since I will be taking 6 classes this semester and working full time. I suspect I will be bery much like a zombie before too long.

Rainy Days and Mondays

Project Name: Rainy Days and Mondays
Pattern Name: Sock Recipe: A Good, Plain Sock by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee
Yarn Used: Lion Brand Sock-Ease Prints in 201 Rock Candy and I used 284.7 yards (260.3m)
Needle Size: US 1 - 2.25 mm
Project  love: ♥♥♥♥ out of 5 ♥

 
See my notes on my Ravelry Project Page HERE.

This was my first time using Size one needles. My first time with this pattern. My first time with this yarn. The needles were easier to manage than I would have thought. When you are a bulky knit girl the thought of working on these small DPNs can be intimidating, but I think I am over my small needle fear now.

I took gauge after I started knitting and found I was getting 9 stitches to an inch - not 8. But the socks ended up fitting me well in the end. I did soak them and block them on my sock blockers, but I tried them on before that and found they were fitting just fine.

My goal was to have these finished before school started and I didn't think I would make it - but I did! I finished the knitting and the end weaving with 23½ hours to spare! LOL. Cutting it close! But I did it. It killed me not to immediatly rince them and block them out, but I had school, so yeah.

The pattern was great. It's in Stephanie's book Knitting Rules!: The Yarn Harlot's Bag of Knitting Tricks and part of what I loved about this pattern was that she spend pages and pages explaining what each part of the sock construction is, how to personalize it to get it to really fit your foot, and then there is a two page "cheat sheet" where the pattern for a good, plain sock is just written out. If you get yourself a little stuck, you can look back in the book and read about the construction of the area you are working on and get an explanation of what you are really doing when you are on that area. Really nice! I would recommend the book just for that alone.

As for the yarn, I admit I pulled it out of my stash because it was clearance yarn and I wanted my first time working on fingering weight yarn to NOT be some expensive Indy died yarn. It would break my heart to mess up on that kind of yum. I find the yarn to be very attractive, and my hubby said they are his favorite of my socks so far, but the yarn itself is rather scratchy and I found areas to be a little inconsistent in weight when I was working on my socks. I had a spot where the yarn just seemed to be a bit thinner. Still, I suspect I will get a lot of wear out of these, and with how rough they are they will probably last for a long time. Would never give these as a gift though. I suspect the recipient would not be pleased with the scratchy factor. 

Overall I am very pleased with these socks and can't wait to wear them this fall/winter.

Catching up

My goodness - how time gets away from a person! I had no intention of taking an almost 2 month break from my blog, but it appears that is exactly what I did! Since my last post I enrolled in the local community college and will be going for an Associate in Applied Science Information Technology Support Degree. It is a two year degree and I am sincerely hoping it increases my potential in the job market. I start classes next week and will be taking 6 classes this semester while working full time. My head may very well explode, but I am also excited to be moving forward on my life in this way.

So that has been a huge chunk of what I have been doing the last two months. Meeting with the various people in the college, setting up a million different accounts, and enrolling in classes. I have managed to work in a little knitting too! I have finished just one project since I last wrote. Now that I am knitting socks, I find my finished objects are further and further apart.

Project Name: Summer Breeze - Makes me feel fine
Pattern Name: An Anklet a Day.... by Jessica Marks
Yarn: Knit Picks Felici Sport Self Striping and I used 1.05 skeins = 172.2 yards (157.5m)
Needle: US 2 - 2.75 mm
Size: Fits my size US 7½ foot
Love: ♥♥♥♥ out of 5 ♥s

You can find my Ravelry Project Notes HERE.

This is proof that I am a slow knitter as it took me close to a month to finish these guys. And when I was done I thought I wouldn't like them as they are really pretty short, but I find myself loving them and wearing them around the house all the time. We have hard wood floors and I always get cold feet, so they are a pretty perfect summer sock. I think if I made them again I would increase the ribbing (maybe double or triple?) as I like my socks to stay put and I just feel like these want to slop a bit. I also found some errata in the pattern and found that I had to spend some time working things out that an experienced sock knitter probably wouldn't have a hard time figuring out. ("Continue on in this manner..." instructions tend to throw me for a loop!)

But overall I am very pleased with them and they are very wearable!

Rainbow! Rainbow!

Project Name: Rainbow! Rainbow!
Pattern Name: AfterThought Heel Socks by Laura Linneman
Yarn: Knit Picks Felici Sport Self Striping 1.4 skeins = 229.6 yards (209.9m)
Needle: US 2 - 2.75 mm (double points and a circular for the heel and toe)
Size: Knit the smaller size and fits my US 7.5 foot
Love: ♥♥♥♥♥

You can find my Ravelry Project Notes HERE.

I finished my Rainbow! Rainbow! socks in JUST under a month. I love them like crazy!

The pattern was easy enough to follow for a newbie sock knitter to have wonderful success. The video links in the pattern really helped me work through the picking up stitches and the afterthought heel was very easy to do. I love that the stripes don't match. It makes me happy to look down and see a different pattern on each foot.

I am sad that this yarn was discontinued. It was a little splity, but overall a joy to work with. Happily I have a stash of this yarn, and I know I get 8 stitches per inch on size 2 needles, so I can work with this stitch knowing my gauge pretty well.

So happy with this project and pleased to have finished a knitting project! It's been too long!

http://tamisamis.blogspot.com/

Most Eggcelent

I have been seeing this on Pinterest for a while now and thought I would give it a go. I am still on Weight Watchers and a hard boiled egg is only 2 points +, so they make a nice snack food. But the thought of boiling them and then peeling them only to get a mess of egg was holding me back.

I took a dozen fresh eggs and grabbed a mini-muffin pan. The eggs sat nicely in the mini pan, so I went with it. 

Preheated the over set at 330° and then put the eggs in the over for 30 minutes. There is no water in the muffin tin - just the eggs.

 When the eggs came out I placed them into an bowl filled with ice water to stop the cooking. I left them in the bath for 10 minutes. I had to grab a thick washcloth to grab the eggs out of the pan so I didn't burn my fingers. The pot holder I had was too thick and bare hands = burned hands.

After the 10 minute ice bath I pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl to go in the fridge. According to the Incredible Egg website, you can keep a hard boiled egg in the refrigerator for up to a week safely.  Raw eggs keep longer than hard boiled eggs. (You can read about that HERE if you are interested.)

I had to try one right a way of course. The shell peeled very easily - taking almost none of the egg with it. I sliced it in half and the yolk was cooked perfectly all the way through. I sprinkled a little salt on it and gobbled it up. Delicious!

I am a convert!

Strawberry Goodness!

 

I am off from work today so I can take both my cat and my dog to the vet. I woke early and went out to my strawberry bed and weeded a ton and then pulled a bunch of Strawberries for snacking on today. There is something about eating strawberries while standing over the bed. So fresh and so juicy! Ended up with quite a haul. Num num num!

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Several of the blogs I read recently posted about Google reader going away on July 1st and how they are switching to Bloglovin'. I decided to join the bandwagon! If you want to see a wonderful tutorial on Bloglovin', I recommend heading over to this post on "Sew Many Ways". It's a great tutorial with screen shots, and just in general a great blog to look at.

Afterthought Heel in Progress

It's WIP Wednesday and I am making progress on my 2nd sock. Today I picked up stitches along my waste yarn and then yanked out that waste yarn. It's as close to steeking as I have come and it's kind of thrilling!

I am still hoping to finish these by the 30th - which would have them completed in 1 month. Exciting!

WIP Wednesdays With Tami's Amis

Getting there is half the fun

We had a family picnic yesterday and I was able to spend about 5 hours knitting on my sock. A lot of progress this weekend! The white colored thread is where the heel will be going in. I will probably be doing that pretty soon so I can try it on and see how the fit is before I start the toe decrease. I am really excited to almost have these done!

WIP Wednesday - Rainbow! Rainbow!

WIP Wednesday with Tami Amis

I have decided to start participating in WIP Wednesday and FO Friday. Which means an update on my Rainbow! Rainbow! Socks.

Pattern: AfterThought Heel Socks by Laura Linneman  (Free pattern on Ravelry)
Yarn: Knit Picks Felici Sport Self Striping in colorway Southwest
Needle: Size 2 (2.75 mm) double points and circular needles in the same size for the heel and toe

 

I struggled with getting the ribbing on the needles this time for some reason. Then I remembered the trick of casting on, then knitting back and forth once on a single needle and THEN joining in the round. I pretty much flew after that and I will use the waste yarn to neaten up those two rows I knit flat when I am done with the socks.

I am not a matchy matchy girl, so I am fine with the stripes not matching. Although I would have preferred the ribbing ended at a color change rather than a little way into a color. Not a biggy, but I really liked that about the first sock.

I have really been enjoying this project. I have never made anything on needles this small and I am in awe of the stitches. Having knit a lot of bulky and super bulky items, I find this fabric so delicate and pretty. And I am loving the afterthought heels. Picking up the stitches is a little rough (those holes at the edges! Argh!) but the learning process had been really fun and I am already dreaming of my next socks.

Health and Happy things

My smurfy nail polish looks awesome next to the first Snapdragon to open in my garden this year

I weight in every Saturday and am still a member of Weight Watchers on-line. I still have work to do in the health and fitness arena, and I am just going to keep plugging away at it. I find myself bouncing between eating in a way that will help me loose weight and then giving up on other days and doing whatever I want. The yo-yo between being "good" and being "bad" is stressful, and I find the scale hasn't impressed me in months as a result.

Yesterday I found myself pretty crabby and feeling a little soul crushed after my weigh in. I had been "good" for two or three days before my weight in so I felt like I should have seen a drop in the scale - not a gain. Thinking back I realized I had been very NOT good the weekend before, drinking high calorie coffee's at Caribou and snacks (brownie and cookie) to go with them. Camping almost always means straying from my diet. And it often takes a couple days to reel myself in from a camping weekend. I wonder what the scale would have read if I hadn't worked harder the days leading up to it. Probably it would have been worse.

So I find myself spending time on the weekends reevaluating how I am eating and exercising, and this weekend has been no exception. I decided to do some pampering things to make myself happy, I puttered in my gardens and I have newly polished toes and fingers. I almost never polish my fingernails as my job wears nail polish off in minutes, but I just really wanted to gussy up my fingers and I went for it! It was fun and it makes me happy to see this vaguely smurfy nail polish on my fingers as I knit or type.

Sometimes little things like polishing your nails or playing with your dog can really make you feel better. Also, it's hard to snack with wet nails!

OH We are half way there.....

 

My first afterthought heel sock is off the needles and done! 

WOOT!

I am knitting this with a Knit Picks Felici Sport Self-Striping yarn on size 2 (2.75) needles. Cuff down and double points except for the heel and the toe which I knit magic loop. I think it's ♥!

 

The heel is knit almost exactly the same as the toe. It looks really weird when you are making it, but the fit is really nice actually. I still had the problem of holes where I picked up stitches, but I just wove ends into them. (You can only master so many things at a time, right?)

I am really happy with how my first sock turned out and am anxious to get cranking on sock #2. I tried casting on Magic Loop for sock number 2 already and found my gauge is much different with magic loop - so I will be sticking with double point needles again.

The yarn is really nice. Pity Knit Picks discontinued it, but I got a bunch on clearance super cheap, so I guess it's a win! 

Camping trip

We finally got out on a camping trip this past weekend. We went back to Myre -  Big Island State Park in Southern Minnesota. The photo above I snapped while we were walking the paved trail through the woods into the prairie area.

The park is really nice and the campsite was great, (we were in site 89) but I pulled soooooo many ticks off my dog Emma and several off myself and my hubby had a couple too. Three days later and I am still itching and checking to make sure that the slight wiggle feeling I had was a hair and not a tick. Ish. Ticks are gross.

We ended up leaving a day early as the rains came back and it was already so wet and muddy to tromp around in that we decided to just head home instead of dealing with it. It was a nice 24 hour respite though and I am happy to have gotten some hiking and campfire time.

Sock Progress

Knit for hours last night and made some progress on my sock. I am still on the first sock and researching like mad as I knit. I am thinking I will want to place the heel before I get too much further so I can try it on and get the toe just right. Would really like these socks to fit after the hours I have put into them already. ☺

Stay tuned!

Sock ♥

I guess I cannot kid myself anymore. I have become just a little bit bonkers for Sock Knitting. I knew it was just a matter of time before it happened. About two years ago I found myself going to the sock yarn display before any other section of the store. Flirting if you will. Balls started to find there way home with me. No big deal. You can knit sock yarn into things that are not socks. But soon I found myself spending hours on Ravelry looking at sock patterns. Flirty little half-assed attempts at slipper socks on bulky yarn started happening. And then finally, I cast on a pair of beginner socks.

My first attempt left a sinister taste in my mouth and I set them down for over a month after turning my first heel. Then something caused me to finish the first sock and plow through the second. 24 hours later I was casting on these socks. These are the AfterThought Heel Socks by Laura Linneman.  You pretty much knit a tube with some waste yarn in the heel position as a place holder. Then after you finish the sock you go back and pick up stitches on either side of the waste yarn, and add the heel. This makes so much sense to me as it's awfully close to how you make a mitten. 

So I have been working like a crazed squirrel on these socks. Last night I placed my heel  waste yarn and figured out how much further I needed to knit before decreasing for the toe. Knit knit knit!

 

For more details on this project go to my Ravelry project page. I need to go knit!