FO: Spiral Boot Socks

(click for bigger)

Look, they're done! My sister will be so happy...you know, because feet get really cold in May in Texas. Ah well, better late than never, right? In any case, I do get the satisfaction of scratching one more pair off the infamous sock queue:

1. Charade socks for Brian
2. River Rapid socks for Jennie
3. Vinnland socks for Van
4. Millicent socks for Sam
5. Rhiannon socks for Mandy
6. Spiral boots socks for Leila
   
7. Socks for Mom
8. Socks for Stepdad
9. Something sockish for Dani (possibly booties?)
   
10. Indestructible socks for Jon

Ah. Finally making progress! Speaking of which, I'll likely be done with another pair really soon, so stay tuned - it could be yours!

Yarn - 2 skeins Knitpicks Gloss (70% merino, 30% silk) in burgundy. This is really nice shiny yarn, especially for the price. I found it to be kind of splitty, though, and not as soft as I was expecting.

Needles - I merrily magic looped away on 32" size 2 addi turbos.

Pattern - Spiral Boot Socks from Interweave Knits, Summer 2007. Really, the only mods I made were working it toe-up instead of top-down and substituting a short-row heel.

A good beginning to the summer

Sorry about the month-long absence! It's been crazy around here - first finals, then prelims (which I just turned in yesterday! Woo!), then a week or so of zombified recovery with much sleeping. This summer looks like it'll be great though, basically no set schedule and plenty of time to catch up on the analysis/writing up for publication (!!) of all the data I've been collecting. I even found a ways to run stats via a remote desktop from home! And of course, sweatpants + SPSS = nerd heaven. This also means I've got way more time to knit, and that I'm actually making progress on some stuff, so expect more regular posting in the near future.

But before we get to all of that, I should tell you about Tamar's visit! She and her boyfriend, James (who is also awesome), came to visit a couple of weeks ago, right after finals were over and right before I had to kick it into high gear to finish prelims. So, perfect timing. We spent a lot of time playing warcraft and eating various pizza-related products, but probably the most entertaining part of their visit for those of you who weren't there was when we went to the playground in the park next to my apartment building.




See, when Tamar and I used to live next door to each other junior year at Oberlin, we lived in a building called Firelands which was campus-owned off-campus housing for upper-level students. It was actually a converted old folks' home with random bars you could grab hold of in the bathroom to prevent you from falling and being unable to get back up, but that's neither here nor there. Anyway, one nice thing about Firelands was that all the apartments in it had a teeny stove, meaning you could cook in the privacy of your own home instead of in a group kitchen. Being the inexperienced college students we were, few of us (apparently) knew how to operate said stoves appropriately, meaning that fire alarms were constantly going off. During said fire alarms, Tamar and I would often scamper over to the swing set across the street and play on it until the firefighters let us back inside. So, in a weird way, this was kind of nostalgic for me.

Although, I should note that in all that time, I never noticed the fear that Tamar had of swinging which she ever so cogently describes here: