A quick warning - this is going to be a rather image-intensive post, so apologies to those of you on dial-up or other slow internet connections.

I finished my first Sgt. DayGlo sock last night. But not before some small issues.

See that strand there? Yeah, I somehow managed to skip a needle altogether, and strand along the carrying yarn to the next needle without working any of the stitches on the previous needle. I made my way around the sock without realizing it, and was forced to tink back a round to fix it. Oops. Word to the wise, people: don’t knit after midnight. It’s bad for your mental health.

Seymour groggily looked up from his napping place on the second-to-top stair when I started cursing my stupid sock

Still, I was able to finish the sock before I went to bed (my little screw-up made me all the more determined to finish it, and finish it right, damnit).

One down, one to go

This morning, I didn’t feel like knitting, so after a yummy breakfast (it’s amazing how much easier it is to eat well when there’s good food in the house…), I decided to get off my ass and finally do some dyeing.

My first batch of the day

The second batch is soaking, getting ready to go while the first batch cools

Second batch

The windowbox behind the sink serves as a cooling rack for yarn and a drying rack for rinsed-out dye cups

I spent the entire afternoon dyeing, and got two more batches ready to sell, as well as some nearly-solid purple yarn for myself. I dyed 4 oz. of the nearly solid, because I’d like to try to make some taller socks than the ones I usually make. I can usually get a pair of socks out of 2 oz. (the one Sgt. DayGlo sock, for instance, is 0.95 oz.), so I figured I could get pretty tall socks (maybe not knee socks, but certainly taller than what I usually knit) out of 4 oz. of this yarn. And perhaps tomorrow I’ll dye up another two or three colorways, and then when it’s all dry, I’ll get it ready to sell. It’s so exciting! Especially the naming process. I wonder if anyone else takes as much pleasure from naming their hand-dyed yarns as I do. Seriously. It’s that fun.

Gambit’s always at my feet, and whenever I dye, he’s always trying to get up on the table (which is bad. very bad.) to “help” me. Seymour, on the other hand, is perfectly content to curl up in the curtains and sun himself while he takes a cat-nap.

Seymour’s not interested in dyeing.

Towards the end of the afternoon, I realized I didn’t know where my phone was, and I was expecting a call soon from a friend I was going to be having dinner with. No problem, I thought. I’ll just call myself. And then a nanosecond later I realized that I didn’t have another phone to call my cell with. Since I have my instant messenger account set up to forward messages to my phone when I’m not logged in, I finally logged into a different account and IMed myself. A few seconds later, my phone played it’s little “You’ve Got a Text Message!” ditty, and I located it. Right under my nose. Literally one inch from the computer. Under a bag of bananas. I guess I had set it down this morning when I grabbed a banana for breakfast, and then accidentally set the bunch of bananas back on top of the phone. Oops.

“Where’s your damn phone, Liz?”

In other news, it’s definitely spring. My car’s windshield was covered with a fine dusting of yellow kill-me-now powder, and the cicadas are out in full force tonight, chirping their ear-piercing little “love me, love me, say that you love me” call. So, on that note, it’s time for bed, folks.