When you start thinking of excuses...

...not to do something you love doing, it's time to stop.

What am I talking about? Knitting.

Not stopping knitting, just stopping knitting 2-socks-at-once toe up.

I know I was excited about it, I know there are others who just L.O.V.E. it. Honestly, I think it's the most wonderful thing since just plain Toe Up and Magic Loop.

(hanging head and sighing) I just can't do it. I can't get into a good enough rythym with it and God knows I've tried. And tried and tried and tried.

I started making excuses not to pull out my knitting on the train. Not too far out there if you consider that my ride is short and it took me the entire 25 min just to do one full round on each sock. About 10 minutes was spent untangling the yarn and cables. How do people DO this?!?

But then, I started making excuses not to knit on the socks at home, in the evening, when I was doing laundry or watching TV when I had plenty of time (so to speak - it's multitasking time, but time none-the-less). I started cleaning and sorting and organizing rather than knit.

You know it's bad when you'd rather clean than knit. Especially if I'd rather clean than knit. I'd rather do ANYTHING than clean.

The 40" size 1 square needle had to go.

Back came the size 1 bamboo dpns. Ahhh.... I'm back to enjoying knitting socks. They may be one at time, but they are getting done. I'm sticking to the toe-up thing tho, that I absolutely L.O.V.E., whether it's one-at-a-time or two-at-a-time.

Oh, and after taking apart the two socks, and after knitting for about 3 inches further on one of them, I discovered that they were probably too small. I looked at my calculations, the instructions for the calculations, the sock, and (sigh) something just didn't seem right. Asked Honey for his measurements again, redid the calculations (redid again) and sure enough...too small!

No worries tho...both socks frogged, yarn cakes remade, new larger socks started. I'm about at the same spot I was when I frogged the one I started with the other method. Knitting one at a time. :)

It's so much easier to knit on the train, and people really avoid sitting next to me again since I have a mini-porcupine in my lap. They seemed to like the bowl of spaghetti better (seriously, with all the cables, yarn, etc - it looked like spaghetti). Guess it didn't look so "dangerous".

Anyway, I knit cos I enjoy knitting. Doesn't matter what I make or how long it takes me to make it. I don't even care if I have to frog several times before I get it right. Just means I can knit even more. :)

At the rate I'm going, Honey's socks with be ready in no time flat - definitely way before he comes to visit. I might even have my pair AND Spence's pair done too - and we can be sock triplets cos I'm making them ALL out of the Knit Picks Time Traveler yarn! hee hee hee

Edited to add:

Just want to give a shout-out to Charles Voth, author of Design Your Own Toe Up Socks. I've knit every single pair of socks (5 pr complete) since I started knitting socks with his method of measurements and calculations and they come out perfect for the wearer every time. Follow the link and the tutorial is for sale in the right had column.