Blog stuff.. and sock stuff

Blog stuff first. Until we come up with our "Team Detroit" button for the Knitting Olympics, I'm signing up for . Thanks Dixie!

And here is proof from snapshirts that my blog is getting somewhat obsessive about knitting socks:

At least Chocolate makes a good showing in there...

OK, now onto knitting stuff. Here are my current projects - all socks of course!

	This is the ubiquitous Jaywalker sock, in Fire on the Mountain sock yarn. It's perhaps knitting up with a tad too much bright pink for my tastes, though I love the overall pattern. These may end up with a certain family member who I know adores pink and bright colours....
And these are from my City Knits class - two socks at once, on two circular needles. That in itself is fun, but I'm also knitting these from the toe up, which is a new technique for me (and one that may pay off in other ways - see following paragraph!). I'm about two-thirds of the way through the foot, using an 8 stitch pattern called "Oblique Openwork" from Charlene Schurch's Sensational Knitted Socks, and it's worth clicking on the thumbnail to see the detail in it. The yarn is Lorna's Laces in "denim". I wasn't sure at first, but now I'm really liking how the pattern is working with them. Next Tuesday: short row heels!
And now for the lack of progress report. With the help of Karen Kendrick-Hands from City Knits, who gets even more obsessive about stitches than I do, we figured out how to reverse the decrease, and how to knit the rib so that the stitches would twist in the opposite direction from "knit through the back loop", thus solving the slant problem detailed in the previous post. However ... as you can hopefully see from this picture ... that opposite twist makes for a really thick ribbing, completely overlying the purl stitches, which again, won't work for the scale pattern. So I think I'm left with one option: knit the second sock from the toe up. The Sensational Socks book has a pattern for a toe-up sock with a heel flap, so it should be manageable. The gusset will look slightly different, with a horizontal line where the stitches are picked up, but that bit will be hidden inside my shoe anyway, right? And everyone will be so impressed by the pattern, they may not notice. Or else I suck it up and knit two socks the same. Any opinions?

So that's the knitting news. This weekend I'll be staying as far from downtown as possible while the Superbowl fever hits Detroit.