Here's a dark photo of my teapot collection nestled among the dried lentils and beans. The black and white cat one is my newest and favorite although it drips when it pours. The green one second from the left has bunnies and carrots sculpted on it.



Despite Blogger's insistence that my blog would not be changed in any way, upgrading to the new version of Blogger has resulted in my archives disappearing. I'll try to figure it out later this week.

I know I should be knitting gloves but I started Priscilla Gibson-Roberts' Caspian Sea Socks. If you go to Knitting Daily and do the free registration you can get her free pattern. I am apparently incapable of knitting any of PGR patterns the way she writes them so I am doing it top down with extra colors.






There are some three color rows on the cuff with a braided edging. I plan to add the extra colors on the foot via duplicate stitch. I'm using Knitpicks Merino DK and I went up to size 3 dpns for the foot to ensure they'll be long enough for my size 9 foot.

These socks have a peasant heel - it is worked similar to a peasant thumb where you put in some waste yarn while knitting then add the heel later. I'm not especially fond of the fit of these heels but the pattern for the bottom of the foot was so cool I'm going to do the heels her way.

Of Knitting Socks, and Cleaning Bathrooms

Yesterday was Sunday, and Sunday is a big day for me. I clean bathrooms, of which we now have 3! As I woke up, the sun was shining, the birds were singing, it almost felt like spring, minus a few degrees. I thought, maybe I won't clean...Maybe I could just sit in my comfy lounge chair, and knit Rolfe's socks... No, no, no...I thought. Come on Caroline, there has to be something good about cleaning bathrooms! And then, I had a great new idea, what if I tried to see common points between cleaning bathrooms, and knitting socks. I proceeded to make a mental list of the resemblance.
Actually, it is really not that far fetched. You knit socks for yourself or for others. It is a gift of love. You clean bathrooms for yourself and for others, and it is very appreciated. You can knit socks in many ways. You can knit them with dpts, or circulars. You can clean a bathroom with a scrubby, or a sponge, you can use liquid cleaner, powdery cleaner, or foam. You can knit socks, from the top or from the toe, and there are many possibilitites for the heel. You can knit a short row heel, a flap heel, an after thought heel. It is the same with bathrooms. You can start with the bathtub, and finish with the toilet, or vice versa, etc... I was already feeling better about cleaning the bathrooms. It was not all that bad. So for safety, I decided to conjure up a few more positive associations. When you decide to knit a sock, you go to your stash, or go to the store and you pick the yarn. Well, when you need to clean the bathroom, you go to your cleaning product stash, or to the market, to get your materials. I thought, not bad! So I carefully got up, as if I was afraid a brusk movement would make me lose my good thoughts. I went to my cleaning product stash. I picked a light yellow bottle, deep yellow gloves, a teal blue scrubby, a green smooth sponge, and an oatmeal wiping cloth. The palette was fantastic! I entered the first bathroom, ready to make magic, I decided I would start with the tub, I sprinkled some yellow product, and as I started rubbing, like a souffle, my enthusiasm collapsed. No matter how much you work on a bathroom, no matter how much you scrub, the bathroom only goes from a filmy white to a white! Whereas a sock, is a colorful wonder... Reds, yellows, blues, greens, and every color in between... So I put the cleaning products back in the stash, and went to sit on my lounge chair, with Rolfe's socks, and I thought I'll never like cleaning bathrooms, at least not until they invent a cleaning product that changes the bathroom colors, or stripes!!!

I found a cute British book on house rabbits at the library - it is called Living with a House Rabbit by Linda Dykes and Helen Flacks and it has lots of adorable photos.



I love the hilarious captions for the photos such as "Carpet-chewing is a favorite pastime of house rabbits" and "Jaffa's youth was spent on one long mission of destruction."

Apparently British house rabbits have much larger ears than American rabbits:



The caption says this guy is 6 months old - he'll have to triple his size to grow into these ears.

Recently I ordered one skein of all the blue, green, and purplish shades of Wool of the Andes from Knitpicks. Please ignore the brick red shade at the top right of the photo - I'm not sure how that happened. I wonder why there are so few green color choices? I'm going to do the same thing with Peruvian Highland wool as well.

I started a glove for the glove booklet and am anxiously awaiting my copy of Anatolian Knitting Designs from Needlearts Bookshop. It was backordered for a while but they shipped it earlier this week. Considering it is already fetching hundreds of dollars used via Ebay, I'm glad I snagged a copy for the original price while it is still around.

Men's Hiking Socks

Here are the first of DH's Valentine socks - he picked the colors and the pattern is the men's hiking socks from the Lulu store. I'm also doing some socks with three colors of worsted weight yarn and size 6 dpns so they should certainly be done by Valentine's Day. After that I am back to glove knitting until the booklet is finished.

Sock Pixie is Born

I just moved to Boston from California, with my husband, and 4 children. Until a little more than a month ago, I used to own a yarn shop there called Philato. For a month, I thought maybe I was just on a short vacation. And then, reality sank in, I was a yarn lady no more. So I vengefully put my needles away, and stored my stash in the coldest corner of the basement! Slowly day by day, the yarn bug crept up... I started by having my children knit baby hats for donation, my poor little husband needed a new scarf, so of course I had to knit it, and then it was socks, and the smell of the yarn, the touch of the yarn, the colors of the yarn, and the magic of socks did their trick. This morning I woke up, I was the sock pixie!

Every time I convince myself that Peaches is losing weight I see yet another photo of her where she looks enormously roly-poly. Here she is stationed at the wood stove waiting for some more firewood to inspect. I think I must be delusional that I'm succeeding in slimming her down. She is quite good at begging. She'll plant herself in front of you and just stare you down until you feed her.

I'm working on a pair of colorwork socks for DH - I hope to finish at least two pair by Valentine's Day since I can't think of any other gift for him.