Thursday, June 01, 2006

The Hidden Evil of "Simple" Projects

I went to my knitting group tonight and had a pretty excellent time. It was so hot and terrible at work that we closed early so I actually got to the meet up early instead of my usual rushing in at the end bit. I worked on my Mega Boot sock, which may have been a mistake because I was investing much more of my attention in talking rather than counting rows. I didn't bring my other sock with me either so I had nothing to compair it to. With the dark yarn, it was too difficult to accurately cont my stitches, so I just guesstimated and did my heel turn when it looked right. I ended up having to rush out on the group, whoch I regret now. I have issues driving on wet roads and my mom gets stressed when the power goes out unless it's pure daylight outside. Also, I wanted to be home when my sister came home so could witness any "stuff" that may hit the fan. Hehehe.....I'm a little troublesome. Traffick was so bad coming home though and before I even got to the turn for 29, the rin was pouring down in a way that I've never, ever driven through before. I couldn't see a damn thing. It let up after about 5 or 6 minutes though, but that proved to be quite a freaky experience. It turned out that it didn't even rain in my neigborhood and my nasty sister still hasn't shown back up.
In working on my sock, I've found that I really, REALLY need to pay more attention to the things I'm doing, especially when I find what I'm doing to be easy. I've made so many socks that I don't even think about it. usually it works out fine. These socks may or may not be. Here are all the boring details: With each sock, I cast on 52 stitches. For the heel turn, what I do when I'm not using a pattern is use the formula where you divide the number of heel stitches in half, then subtract 3 to get the number you need to knit across before your first decrease. Since I had an even number, I increased a stitch to make 27. For some reason, the heel turn on the first sock would NOT work out. I don't know what was going on with that. I even ripped it out and did it over a few times. I keot ending woth way more stitches on my purl side than the knit side doing the short rows. At the end, I just messed with it and "finished" the turn with some unknown number of stitches. Then when I went to pick up the gusset stitches, I know that I picked up some really high number, but what that number actually is, I have no clue. Now that I'm doing the second sock, this lack of information is proving troublesome. Stupid sock......and maybe stupid me, too, considering that I seem incapable of writing anything useful down.
On a happy note, I was gifted two fabulous hand made stitch markers tonight. One made by Jody and one by Margaret. That comes in quite handy since I currently need exactly that number of stitch markers for my socks. Lucky me.
OH yeah.....and huess you got straight A's this semester?? That would be ME. I suspected I may have but officially found out tonight after I got home. Very cool, indeed.

Heat Sickness! Tendonitis! Oh My!

So today basically was horrible. For starters, I woke up to a blinking alarm clock again this morning so had to rush around in the heat to find out if I was way late for work or not. I wasn't. In fact, I ended up being up waaayyyy earlier than I had wanted to be. It was SO HOT. To motivate myself to move from under the fan and get ready, I envisioned being at work with the chilly AC blowing my hair back away from my face as I charmed customers with a big smile on my face. Plus, I have AC in the car. Turns out the AC at work is busted, too. Again. SO HOT. I couldn't even go into the main room because of the stagnant heat. I got chewed out by a customer because of the heat also, which was really fun. I definitely had one of those 'True Lies' moments where I imagined doing.saying totally different things to her than I actually did. Anyhow, I did make some progress on my Green Gable but I decided to leave it at work since I'll be there tomorrow. Pretty much as soon as I started adjusting to the heat a small shipment of yarn came in. I made the mistake of believing my arms were healed enough to lift the little box and carry it into the back room. Then my stupidity continues as I unpacked the yarn and tried to put it out on the shelves. Those two little actions pretty much started me on a downward spiral of arm horror.
Once I got home I was faced with surprising (NOT) info that my wonderful sister had refused to help my mother prepare for her big recital tonight. I won't go into details, but let me just say that before my butt even hit a chair, I had vacummed two rooms and rearranged the furniture in my living room. All with one arm. I'm sure I looked very cute doing it. I got everything done though and my mother is completely ticked off with my sister, which is always fun for me.
During the recital I fell asleep. This is where things went very, very worng. My house was so hot and horrible. As I was laying there, I started hearing strange things. This should have warned me to perhaps not continue to lay in the heat. I woke up a few hours later when my mom called to tell me the recital was over. I was just pure nastiness. I was covered with sweat, my skin was all hot, I had a killer headache and was sick to my stomach. To make things even better, my tendonitis had flared up in a major way and I could not use either of my arms. I went downstairs and tried to shake the heat-grossness off, but I just kept getting sicker and sicker. Within about 20 minutes from waking, I felt like I was going to pass out and had to prop myself up on a chair outside. This made me feel slightly better because it wasn't as warm, but I was still in terribel shape. Finally, my mom had to pack me up and take me down to my grandpas so I could lay down in his cool air while all the pain meds for my arms kicked in.
I feel a good bit better now, but I'm back at home and already the heat is making me feel like my skin is burning. I should have just spent the night and my grandpa's. Too late now.
That's about it for today. Tomorrow night is my knitting group so that should be a good time. Hopefully I'll be done with this second Mega Boot sock soon so I'll have yet another goody to show.