dueling socks

    Yesterday, after Rissa and Karin left, I wound off and weighed the ball of MegaBoots Stretch I bought at Yarn Barn (VA) in October in order to have two working balls. I am making Marguerite's Shetland Lace Rib socks. Since there is such a difference in the two green socks, I have decided to knit both socks of this pair at the same time. I've alread got about half the foot done on one, so I started the second one last night to catch-up.

    Oh dear. I drafted that last Sunday night at 10pm, intending it to be the beginning of my Monday entry. (I did manage to finish the toe for this second sock before I went to bed Sunday night.) Almost a week later, I am finally getting back to my blog. It has been a long week, and a physically exhausting one, though it began easily enough work-wise, as the university was closed until noon.

    We began this week to measure the library collection, that is, how much space on our shelves is being occupied by the holdings. My partner and I had half of the fourth floor as our assignment: approximately 54 seven-shelf sections per range and 16 ranges. We only got into the second range the first afternoon; then I worked alone Tuesday morning. We finished by Thursday lunch break. But then, I -- nor anyone in our department -- could not do my work because the network went down. Actually, it seemed like it was up and down all that afternoon. On Friday was working okay in the morning, but by the time I got back from orientation for new graduate students, it was crashed again. So, after lunch it was back to the measuring project.

    The good news was that I went over 7000 steps on both Tuesday and Wednesday, and over 5000 on Thursday. I haven't been entering my steps at walkertracker.com, but I average 3500 steps a day (i.e., without specific exercise effort). I'm looking forward to yoga classes beginning, and hope to check out the BD classes.

    The bad news was that I have been fighting sinus pressure and pain on the left side of my face and left eye since Wednesday evening. It is better this weekend, but still not gone completely. I took a variety of medications but nothing really seemed to help the pain; it was a miserable way to work. The spicy Thai sauce on my Basil Cashew Chicken wrap at lunch Friday did more to help than anything else!

    Between that and the weariness of the physical effort, I was in bed earlier than usual this week! The worst though is no time/energy to knit or anything else. I did, however, watch the first two discs of season 5 of 24, and am now DVR'ing the Season 6 opener tonight (and tomorrow night). Will pick up the next two discs tomorrow, I think, with a free rental coupon. Maybe by next week I'll be on track. I'm finding season 5 much better than 4!

    So, back to the socks. Here's what the second Senso sock looks like when stretched to "fit" (think Cinderella's Stepsister trying on the glass slipper):

    See how tightly my great toe is poking out the toe, and how the leg ribbing starts way down on my foot? Not good. Not attractive. Not comfortable.

Here, though, is how it looks when not forced to fit:

    I will be ripping back to where the heel begins, adding another round of pale green rows, and then start the ribbing further from the end of the heel--but if I do that, I'll have to rework the leg on the other sock as well...perhaps I'll pull the whole thing apart and try to work it more losely, like the first sock. I did the toe wrong, too. I'll try to remember to take a side-by-side shot of both socks before I rip so you can see how much tigher I knit the second sock.

    I suppose the lesson is that if I'm not going to work both socks at the same time, I need to check my gauge often to be sure the two sock are working up the same! And make notes rather than relying on my memory because I may not make that second sock soon enough to do so correctly.