What, More Sock Knitting?

With the leg warmers finished and put away for winter, Sampler M caught up, and weather too hot and sticky to knit on a fuzzy scarf, I decided I deserved to start more socks -- souvenir socks! -- with the yarn I bought from Knitters' Mercantile in Columbus, Ohio, while we were at Origins.

So far I still like knitting a turned toe the best. I've used increased toes, but I think my turned toes turn out come out better.

I am knitting from both ends of a ball of Online Supersocke, Highland color 838. I thought about winding two balls from it and starting at the same point of the color repeat, but eventually decided the yarn color was distinctive enough, and the striping blurry enough from the black plies, that I could stand to knit from both ends.

Finding the middle end was hard. I ended up pulling the whole middle of the ball out and hunting for the end. Right now it looks like this nice neat ball of yarn threw up -- sad. So I'm knitting to use up the pulled-out center.

I took this photo of the female ruby-throated hummingbird last Thursday. She was sitting on a rose cane, cocking her little head back and forth at something in the sky.

Hummingbirds live at a faster pace than humans. Her head movements looked mechanical. They don't fly like a bird. Our son says "They fly more like a bug." It's impossible to follow their flight path, since they can change direction and take off straight up too fast for my slow human eye to keep up.

We live in a spot that is isolated enough for us to "camp out" on the south part of our lot. Last week we slept out in the tent, but when we didn't take it down the next day, it got rained on that night. (Four-tenths of an inch.)

So I dragged everything indoors to dry, and before it was dry and put away, Truffles took advantage of our foam mattress.

Yesterday was grocery day, and I made a five-minute sweep through the thrift store.

The key to "lucky" thrift store finds is to go regularly. I get skunked all the time, but every so often I find something so nice for so little money that I keep going back.

The circular needle is a another US 6, which I didn't really need, but the "Calvin and Hobbes" book is the real find: for a copy in great condition, I paid forty cents! We have most of the Calvin books except for Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat.

One of the things I like about Calvin & Hobbes is the art. Hobbes crouched to spring, white birch trees like something out of a Japanese scroll, Calvin's quintessential scowl when one of his plans went wrong. Not to mention they were among our son's first books. (Which probably explains a lot.)