Nearly instant

An e-mail from a wonderful friend on Saturday morning was just the excuse I needed to cast-on that immediate gratification project I'd been looking for! My friend, who was out of town visiting her daughter, couldn't wait to share the good news - her long-awaited first grandbaby is on the way!

A quick search for a pattern and an even quicker look through stash resulted in a likely combo - purple is a good, gender-neutral color, right? And if I double-strand the Malabrigo worsted, then I'll pretty much have a bulky weight - perfect. This is the Jacinto colorway - fluffy soft and gorgeous to work with. The hat is blocking now, and needs a big fat pom-pom on top, but otherwise it was less than 3 hours of knitting, start to finish. I'll be having lunch with my friend on Friday, and I hope she'll love it - at worst, she'll appreciate it as it's intended - a goofy, can't-wait-to-celebrate gift.

Quick note to self - by counting the strands in the hank before winding, then carefully re-counting to divide the hank in half, I came within inches of rolling a perfect, doubled ball, with the 'fold' buried in the middle, so I may have 30 or so yards left - enough for an Ipod cozy or some other teeny thing. Sometimes things work out!

Another bit of e-mail good news received Saturday was word that my SFS package arrived safely, and that my socks had been pronounced 'perfect' by the group's founder, organizer, and cheerleader, Kim - otherwise affectionately nicknamed 'Sarge.' I'll admit to being a little intimidated by her at first -she seemed awfully picky and at times, quite stern about insisting that knitters get things right. The more I've read from her on the Yahoo group site, though, the more her generous heart shines through, and it's clear now that she just wants to provide items that are of consistently high quality for our troops. I can't imagine being in her place - trying to manage hundreds of knitters of varying skill levels who are all working remotely, plus collating and packaging piles of socks, beanies, other goodies of all kinds - what a woman! Her praise and appreciation really mean a lot.

Guess it's back to the single-digit needles now, though it will be a while before I get back down to 0's, I'm sure. I'll get there eventually, but maybe not just yet.

FO - SFS!

Just a few pictures to commemorate my first-ever finished pair of socks! I've made plenty of baby booties and Christmas stockings in the past, and I've also started but then frogged a couple of other pairs of socks before these, so they really shouldn't have taken so long to finish. If I'd been using a beautiful hand-dyed sock yarn instead of desert tan (could've been worse - some knitters have to do black!), or perhaps if they'd been a little smaller, instead of needing 12" legs, 10" feet & a diameter large enough to fit over a 2-liter bottle . . . or maybe if the yarn & needles had been a little larger, say sport weight

on US 3s & 4s, instead of fingering on 0s & 1s. Perhaps then I would've gotten more than this one pair completed in the last three months!

Oh well, they're done, and they're in the mail, along with a few other 'care package' goodies, including six balls of sock yarn donated by my very generous LYS - I figured someone else in the SFS group could use it up a lot faster than me!

At this point, I'm feeling very grateful that the next pairs I do (and yes, despite the whining, there will be more) already have the legs complete. Many thanks to Lisa for machine-knitting these and sending them to me from Texas!

Now that I have my studio somewhat together again, I can say with confidence that the only other thing still on my needles (besides two very quick & sorta secret gifts) is this felted bag, which will be fun to get back to. Not bad! Guess a little more stash-busting is in order between now and the end of the year. Hmmm . . .