Sock Wars: Day 12

I don't want to sound over-confident or anything -- and I definitely don't want to jinx it -- but I'm starting to think that I'm going to have these socks finished in time...

I'm amazed by the progress I've made on Sock #2. It's going even faster than the first one (probably because I really, really, really want to finish it so I can work on something else). I started it on Friday night, and I've already turned the heel, picked up the gusset stitches, and did all of my gusset decreases. I just have the rest of the foot to go.

Of course, it might help that we collapsed yesterday after about an hour of fighting over parking spaces and elbowing fellow shoppers in an attempt to pick up some holiday gifts for Paul's employees. Instead of working on getting our basement ready for guests, as we'd planned, we made some corn chowder, opened a bottle of wine, and watched The Fellowship of the Ring. That gave me an extra three hours of knitting time.

Mind you, it hasn't exactly been all fun and games. On Friday, I ran into yet another knot. This time, though, since I knew I'd have enough yarn left over, I took the time to unwind the ball of yarn and start knitting at the right place in the stripe pattern. Call me anal, but I feel much better about it.

I have to say that I'm getting pretty sick of these stupid socks. I may talk big about socks, claiming that I'm going to finish my own pair of socks once I finish these. I may even claim that I'm going to knit Paul a pair of socks -- and another pair for myself. But once I finish these, you can rest assured that I'm going to give my #2 needles a bit of a vacation. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I haven't worked on anything but these socks since last Thursday -- when, typically, I'm working on about 36 projects at once. This whole last-minute Christmas present pressure has been a nightmare for my Knitting ADD. And then, to make things even worse, I keep thinking of other stuff that I want to make. On Friday, when Julie and I were at the mall, I noticed the most intriguing vest -- and I've already sketched out the pattern and bought some yarn. And then there's the cool fishy shadow-knit pattern that Paul designed. I've already bought the yarn for that, too -- and I'm dying to try it out, but I can't.

Stupid socks.

On Saturday, when I wasn't knitting a sock or trying to buy Christmas presents, we started working on organizing our basement. It's a really nice basement, actually -- a nice, big family room with a half-bath. We have great dreams for our basement -- guest room, bar, theater, gym, knitting studio...you name it. But, in the year that we've lived here, it's mostly been a place to toss stuff for which we have no other place. Unpacked boxes (which, we discovered, were mostly filled with worthless junk). A whole chest full of sweaters that I occasionally pick through when I'm looking for something to wear. And all of my shoes. And, occasionally, we set up an air mattress for guests. Last week, we got a nice storage unit, which now contains all of our off-season clothes (which mean we could empty out another box or two) and my shoes, which are only there temporarily. Things are starting to look a little more organized. We even put a few boxes that we'd given up on unpacking on the top of the unit, to make it look like they're boxes of really important stuff that we really want to keep.

At some point, that part of our newly-somewhat-organized corner of our basement will also be home to my yarn and other various knitting supplies. So, while I was thinking about organizing, I opened my yarn closet to ponder all the ways in which I can organize it in the coming year.

Then I got a headache and closed it again.

I can only be just so productive in one weekend.