yard sales and asplosions

Remember the stinky azalea? Well, it asploded! Check it out now:

still stinky, but gorgeous!

Here's something I'm right proud of. My major yardsale find from last weekend. A little tykes cube climber/slide. You'll never believe what I paid for this. Just $2.00 dollars. WOW. My little guy won't play with this for very long. Then, I'm going to either sell this at the children's consignment sale that I'm involved in or ebay this sucker. I can get at least $30.00 for this thing. Have I told ya'll how much I love yard sales and estate sales yet? I lurv'em.

Things I am learning while knitting my first official sock:

disclaimer: Those who are not knitters may want to disregard the majority of this post, unless socks and knitting seem like a fun read, of course.

Things I am learning while knitting my first official sock:

1. That repetitive motion stuff hurts. From my elbow to my wrist is killing me. I've completed two sweaters now and this never came up before. ouch.
2. I am still not a perfectionist. Found several mistakes. I refuse to go back and rip these, cause frankly, I don't care that much. The mistakes are not overt and besides, these are gonna end up on a 6 year old boy who will mostly wear these to bed at night. Trust me, he likes to wear silly socks to bed. he's weird. So, I'm gonna semi-record the mistakes here, take them as a lesson learned and go on.
3. It really does matter which way the loops go on the sticks. Yes, figured that one out. I'm a combined knitter, which I'm told is sort of a hybrid style. So, I was knitting through the back of the loop as usual and many rows down noticed that my sts were twisted. damn. When I got to the stockinettes I corrected this.
4. However. It got messed up again when I began the heel and started purling the correct way. which, of course, led to more twisted sts. damn.
5. On a good note, I taught myself to use two circular needles to make the sock. This is fun. I didn't want to do dpn's cause a) they scare me and b) I already had the needles that I needed.
6. I am using yarn harlot's guide to making a sock, a plain vanilla sock. I like this. It's done like my style of cooking. A little of this, a dab of that, a few inches here, there and so on. I knew she was cool.
7. Self striping yarn is pretty groovy. Changing colors of yarns is not something I've learned to do yet. lazy is an artform you know. Look what the twisted stitches versus the correct ones do to the gray and white patterning in the stripes. that's okay. I forgive myself. he likes silly socks. :)
   

So anyways, I began this a few nights ago and here's the sock in progress (with a lemon for some flavah): mmmm. lemons.

This is a big huge shout out to my buddy Darrell! Happy Birthday! The big five - 0!

I bow down before the ever-aging one!