Alas, I had a sock-tastrophe yesterday. I discovered that the sock-in-progress I had been keeping in the back seat of CH's car was no longer attached to a ball of yarn. Apparently at some point, the ball rolled out the door. As an extra annoyance, the working needle was stuck in the ball. So if you happen to find half a ball of brown Trekking with an aqua #1 Pony Pearl dpn lying around anywhere in Indiana, it's mine. Meanwhile, the sock was only about 40% done, so now I haven't got enough yarn to finish the pair. I mourn.

At long last, I have FINALLY managed to brew a drinkable pot of cofffee! Thanks for the early Christmas present, Mom.

Since I have only seven hundred and four projects-in-progress, I started a new one yesterday: the Aran Sandal Socks from the Knitter's Magazine sock contest book. In my defense, they are intended to be a holiday gift, and since sock-knitting time is rarely interchangeable with sweater-knitting time, they shouldn't interfere with getting the Manos model done. I keep making mistakes in the Mirror Cable (even after downloading the errata), which is aggravating, but it's still a very entertaining pattern. I particularly enjoy the cross-stitch cables, and look forward to each round #3.

In spite of the rain, I'm off to ThreadBear, with Hope's shopping list in hand. See ya after lunch, boys.

I didn't actually get the fringe put on until after breakfast this morning, but the Eros scarf is finished. Looks real good with my purple nightgown. :)

My MIL has recently rediscovered knitting thanks to a co-worker who gave her a ball of Eros to play with. She was cheerfully cranking out slinky scarves while I was at her house in Minnesota over Thanksgiving weekend. She took me on a jaunt to an area yarn shop to get more Eros along with my BIL's wife, Karen, who formerly did not knit. But, we fixed that. She got the hang of it immediately and knit two-thirds of a nice warm cuddly scarf (two strands of Plymouth Encore) in less than two days. She's probably finished it by now.

What I'm really itching to start right now-now-now is the Manos model I'm going to knit for ThreadBear. My favorite dealer says he has a kilo waiting for me. But I can't go get it for another day or two.

I've been reading the latest Knitter's Magazine and I just have to say that I feel terribly sorry for Perri Klass. Apparently the opinions of strangers are more important to her than knitting. She wrote an entire tedious column about places she doesn't dare knit, almost all of which are places that I do knit. She "doesn't want to be anyone's eccentric." I guess that's her choice. I have had a lot of delightful conversations with people who found me interesting because I was knitting in some atypical situation, and I don't give a hooping funt if someone thinks I'm eccentric.

I used to have a blog. But then, I got distracted and neglected it for weeks and weeks. Funny, the same thing tends to happen to my knitting projects.

I did manage to knit myself an entire sweater from the Beatrice I bought at ThreadBear in October before losing focus. If you don't believe me (and there's no reason you should) you can see my pic wearing the finished item on Rob's blog, if you rummage around in the archives a bit for November's Third Thursday wrapup.

Today I am knitting a scarf from Plymouth Eros in (big whopping surprise) pinks and purples. I thought I wasn't interested in novelty yarn, but I decided I wanted an entertaining accessory to wear with the lush but plain black velvet outfit I bought for choir concerts. I need to finish it before I go to bed just in case I'm out of the notion when I wake up tomorrow.