Like Magic

Cozy yarn, the right needles and the perfect pattern all comprise first half of knitting enjoyment.  Having time to knit, the ability to read a pattern and a little knowledge of math make up the second part of the equation.  When it all lines up, you have the perfect recipe for peaceful, wonderful knitting.

And then there are those days when all that lovely 'forward' knitting goes backwards:

My Marin scarf which was this far:

Was considerably reduced in size because of a math snafu, or was it a reading the pattern wrong snafu?

And don't get me started on what went wrong with everything else I tried to knit that magically turned into a pile of crap.  Craptastic is the word my friend Sojourn Knitter uses.  What a knitting craptastical weekend I had, yes I did.

So, since everything I've touched turned to dust I fell back on an old stand by: socks.  Lest you think I'm perfect, let me remind you how much I didn't like the Color Me Different skein I made when I participated in a spin-along:

So when my son's friend asked me to make him some plain vanilla socks, I pulled this skein out.  What better way to make it disappear?  And on Sunday I cast on:

Plain vanilla.  What could go wrong?  Shall I tell you or would you rather guess?  Let me enumerate for you:
A) the sock is knit on US #1 - my usual needle is US #2, so it took a lot more knitting than I had planned on.  B) the sock is ... um ... unattractive, but my son's friend won't care.  He might care that he'll have to fold his toes in half to make the sock fit his size 8 1/2 foot. C) If he can't wear them, then who gets them?  Me.

So that's the status of my knitting to date.  Lots on the needles and nothing got done.  Mountains of knitting with nothing to show for it except an ugly sock.  Sock two is on the needles, and considering the first sock took two days, the second sock will take the same and then, hopefully, the yarn will be gone and my son will steal the socks from me.

I know for sure he won't mind folding his toes in half to wear them.