Socks and Lace

Sunday I finished Seth's socks that I've been working on for what seems like forever. I wanted to take a picture of them on his feet but haven't managed to do that yet. I know he was wearing them yesterday. 

The inside of one leg. You can see the color changes. I wanted to do these toe up but I have a terrible time actually beginning with the toe so I did a provisional cast on right about where the decreases for the toe would begin and did from there to the tip of the toe. Then I picked up the stitches and worked from there up. I'd like to work on the heel working this way, and the casting off, but they turned out pretty well.

This is what they looked like this morning. You can tell they were worn yesterday.

Yesterday I worked on my Magickal Earth shawl. I had done quite a bit on it over the years but a couple of years ago took it apart because my needle broke and I lost a bunch of stitches (there were still over a thousand on the needle at that point) and I didn't feel like going to the effort to attempt to pick them up and figure out the pattern. It was probably doable but not something I really wanted to do. Besides, I started making it in the relative infancy of my serious knitting as an adult and made all kinds of mistakes. I've learned a lot since then and figured it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing to start over. So that's what I did. 

This is what the second copy of the pattern looks like. I have numbers at the bottom so I can keep track of which repeat I am on. When I've used a particular copy four or five times, it's hard to see what's supposed to be going on and I print it out again.

This is what it looked like at the end of the day yesterday. Or the beginning of the day today.

The pattern for the lace edge (the whole thing is lace) is done back and forth (once it's done, stitches are picked up along the straight edge and then worked in the round to the middle) and has a 48 row pattern repeat that must be done 47 times plus another just doing rows 1 through 46. I'm currently about ten rows from finishing the tenth repeat. Yesterday afternoon while the boys were cleaning, I was knitting and watching Vikings. It was a good afternoon.

The Past Few Years to Present

Finally, we come to Massachusetts. It has been an interesting approaching eight years here, if nothing else.

This post was mostly ready to go days ago but the past couple have been pretty busy. We had this thing Saturday, you see. This thing called the Polar Bear Derby which requires being outside all day and is usually a lot of fun and this year had a Star Wars theme. Well, we couldn't just go as ourselves, now, could we? Well, some of us could because there are only so many hours in the day and only so many dollars in the checking account/pocket/etc. Still, not all of us could go as ourselves so for the couple of days leading up to Saturday, the me part of we was busy making Jedi suits. Two just in case the Boy Scout decided to go along to help because a scout is prepared.

This happened to be the best dressed Jedi in attendance:

The picture isn't the clearest but you get the idea; he looks somewhat poofy because he was wearing his jacket underneath. Honestly, Hubbardston Pack 12 had the best dressed characters there. Too bad the Boy Scout at our house who had something to wear decided not to go and there aren't more hours in the day.

See that huge gash on the right side of the image? That is a gravel pit. One of several on Pitcherville Road. In this particular one, they've put a solar farm in the lower portion. That's cool. They also want to put a toxic dump back there somewhere. There was supposed to be a town meeting about it a couple of weeks ago but it was postponed. No toxic dumps for me, thanks. We've got enough problems with allergies; not interested in more of them or other problems in general.

And this is home sweet home. While there is green, there isn't as much year-round green as I'd like. The autumn foliage here is usually quite spectacular but when it's gone, the trees are just bare and rather forlorn looking. Not green. But, with thirty acres, there's plenty of room for chickens and goats and a garden. And just about anything else a person might want. However, other than Joanna and Lincoln, it is more than 2,000 miles from family (and Joanna and Lincoln don't want to stay in MA).

Not to mention, this:

My beautiful mountain. My roots. This picture was taken on my birthday by Tony Kidd and posted on the Graven Images Facebook page. I do have permission to share. Isn't it beautiful?