Say uncle

The mystery has been cracked. My sister-in-law is pregnant.

The hints were there in the note and tiny item in the package, but the lack of coming right out and saying "we're having a baby" threw me for a loop. While I didn't think it was an April Fool's Day joke, I thought it might have something to do with Easter. The news came out of the blue and was so indirectly conveyed that I didn't know how to interpret it.

I guess I have some baby knitting to do in the upcoming months.

Say what?

'Twas a long day away from home, which culminated in seeing one of the weirdest films I've ever seen. What could top that?

Upon my late arrival at home I removed the packages from my mailbox and found one from my brother and sister-in-law. I believe they made the trip from Texas to be at my parents' house this weekend. I'm the only one who isn't there, so I figured the package contained some small gift that they were giving everyone else.

Well, the package did contain a small gift in the form of a tiny sock, a note, and a piece of candy. The note is awfully coy about its meaning, but if I'm to go by the evidence, I'm inclined to believe that my sister-in-law is pregnant. If that's the correct guess, this is surprising news, yet I may be totally off base in my interpretation of this. I don't think I am, but honestly, I'm not sure.

Leave it to them to throw the biggest curveball in a day in which I see a movie featuring a piano eating a Japanese teenage girl (among plenty of other "did I just see that?" moments).

Like riding a bike

A quick knit was what I needed. Since some friends recently had a baby girl, a knitted newborn hat was the easy choice to make.

I made a few of these last year around this time, but it's been months since my last. While you may think that this hat would be a snap for me, never underestimate my ability to become afflicted with stupidity.

For instance, I couldn't remember how to do seed stitch in the round. I did a cursory search for the information but was more interested in knitting than doing a lot of looking. One book said that when knitting in the round, you're always knitting on the right side. By that reasoning I should k1, p1 each round, but after the first two rounds I wasn't convinced I was doing the right thing. Instead I ended up following the instructions I found for moss stitch. Good enough.

I smartened up once it came to doing two rounds in garter stitch. That felt like a small victory. All this tells me that if/when I resume knitting socks, I'll need to relearn everything. None of last summer's adventures and failures probably took root.

I have the hat about half finished. I put it down to watch the NCAA Tournament championship more closely. Although I'd already wrapped up titles in the pools in which I participated--darn, only one for money!--I was hoping Kansas would win to complete my nearly flawless Final Four round. (I missed with putting Xavier in UCLA's spot but hit both teams in the final and correctly predicted the winner.) Still, since it didn't make any difference, I was also pulling for Memphis. Tough way for the Tigers to lose. Me, I'll revel in my prognosticating glory and remember that it's not likely to happen again soon.

The Boy Done Wrong Again

OK, here's what the sock currently looks like. Heel, turned. Error, below.

See that piece of yarn a smidgen below the needle that doesn't match up with everything else? That's the mistake I was talking about yesterday. Obviously it shouldn't be like that. Beats me what it is, but I can live with it. I don't think it's going to create any problems as I proceed.

Make that when I proceed. I am having a momentary lapse of comprehension with these directions.

From the instructions: "Note that for ease of instructions, beg of rnd is now at center of bottom of foot. The needles are renumbered at this point. Needle 1 is beg of rnd." OK, I've got 24 stitches on needle 1. 22 stitches are on needles 2 and 3. The instructions for the gusset is where I'm getting thrown: "Divide heel sts evenly onto needles 1 and 3. Sts. on needles 1 and 3: 12 sts. Needle 2: instep sts, then: PU 22 sts from side of heel flap, PU 2 sts at top of gusset."

As I understand that, the 22 stitches on needle 2 should be transferred to needle 3 (which then becomes needle 2)and 12 of the 24 stitches on what is now needle 3 should go to the new needle 1, giving me this breakdown:

Needle 1: 12 stitches
Needle 2: 44 stitches
Needle 3: 12 stitches

See why I'm kind of confused?

OK, I think that makes sense now that I've typed it all out, but I appreciate any insight and advice you might have.

12 angry stitches

No no no no no no no.

Looks like I'll be starting that different pair of socks after all.

I began work on the gusset and was feeling pretty good about things. Maybe I could finish this sock by Wednesday or Thursday. I picked up the stitches on one side and got to the needle that had been holding the other stitches while I worked on the heel flap. There were twelve too many. How could that be?

I looked at the instructions again and was confused. And then it hit me. I cast on twelve extra stitches. There's a perfectly good, albeit dumb, reason why I did this. Rather than divide the cast on stitches evenly among the needles, I went by the division at the gusset. What I failed to take into consideration when I had this brilliantly stupid idea was that decreases begin from that point so that I get back to working with the original number cast on. I suppose this explains why the variegation wasn't producing stripes.

I'm an idiot.

That I can accept. What kills me is the idea that all of the work to this point is wasted. I have twelve stitches more than I need, and I've had them since the first row. All I can do is rip out everything and start over.

*#%!

Maybe I'll feel up to performing that painful task tomorrow, but I don't have the heart for it tonight. I began the evening ready to finish a sock. Instead I'll be as far away from that goal as possible. If I'm going to be frustrated, I might as well take another stab at a sock on US 3 dpns with sport weight yarn. If that goes awry, I have a dishcloth on the needles.

*sigh*

Inside out

Because confusing right side and wrong side is a tendency of mine, I should point out that the sock I'm knitting appears to be taking shape inside out. Having taken a closer look at the pictures with the pattern, I'm fairly certain that this is so. (It also explains how I start the heel flap on the right side.) The WIP is below my needles while I'm knitting, which is what I was doing when I made my second practice sock, yet the right side was on the outside for it. I don't understand why it is the way it is, but I think I know what to do.

The same thing applied to the walk I took this morning. I awoke early enough that I decided to get in my exercise before work. I've been walking or running around the park and schools just up the road from me, but I thought I could find a better extended course by venturing into the surrounding neighborhood too.

I went one street farther north than I would usually go and turned. Shortly after 8 a.m. the air was still light, although it held the promise of heat and humidity. One family was clearing their yard of the toilet paper strung like ribbon through the tree in their front yard. Several weekly suburban newspapers lay at the end of driveways. During this nice, quiet tour it dawned on me that I hadn't come out where I thought the road would lead me.

I had passed one familiar street name but didn't venture down it because I expected to arrive somewhere else. The more I walked, the more I realized that I could get seriously lost in the suburban housing development maze. I turned a few times to head in the direction I wanted to go, although by this time I had no bearings for which way I was actually going. I assumed that I would eventually make it to somewhere I recognized.

Finally I got back to the street that I knew, but I wasn't as far south on it as I anticipated being. The curves of the roads took me farther east and north than I perceived, and since the neighborhoods aren't laid out in simple grids, my path looked like something a Family Circus kid would leave in the Sunday strip.

One other knitting item... A tip o' the hat to Jennifer for drawing my attention to Dish Rag Tag. I'm signed up and ready to knit dishcloths. As if I needed any excuse to do so.