real knitting content!

so. i feel like i'm in a weird knitting place right now. i'm feeling a little stressed with all of the holiday knitting i've commited myself to, at least i've commited to it in my head. so i'm working on lots of projects now, and i don't feel like i'm making a lot of progress on any of them, nor do i feel really excited about any of them. it almost feels like work! that being said, i'm working on some things that i think will turn out to be lovely. hedera is coming along, slowly but surely. it's taking me FOREVER to finish decreasing from the gusset down to the instep, but i'm almost there (on the first sock anyway. i'm definitely starting to see the appeal of knitting both socks at the same time). look! here's a blurry and bland picture of it so you can be kind of meh about it too! when i sit down and actually work on these, i do enjoy it, so i'm just kind of letting these take their sweet time. they aren't a priority, but they will get done eventually.


















there's a scarf i'm nearly half done with it, and i would love to post a picture, because it's turning out to be beautiful, but alas, the recipient would see it if i did that, and that's no fun. but ooh! i can't wait til i can. i'll probably make this scarf (a very popular pattern in blogland, that's all i'll say) for myself - the yarn i'm using is too gorgeous to not use on myself. i'm just selfish that way!

and then...there's the matter of my 14 hour flight that i'm taking next week. we're flying to england the day after thanksgiving to visit friends and my husband's family. that's a whole lotta potential knitting time, but i don't want to have to follow a complicated pattern or have a big scarf to carry around, so i'm actually going to start another pair of socks, i think the lichen ribbed pair from knitting vintage socks. i've cast on using some yarntini cherry cordial i have, but i think i need to start over. here's my dilemma: i knit pretty tightly, even when i'm trying to knit loosely. this seems to be a problem when casting on for socks. the socks i've made so far (all three!) have been a little too tight in the cuff. i don't really need to move up a needle size for the whole sock, but would it help to just cast on with a bigger size? i'm thinking size 2 then moving down to 1's for the rest of the sock? or would it be better to knit the whole ribbed cuff with the 2s before moving down a size? or would that look noticeably weird? or should i use a different cast on? to be honest, i've only ever done a knitted cast on - i don't really know the merits of other methods, but i am open to suggestions. can you tell i don't know what i'm doing entirely with this whole sock thing?! anyway, advice would be appreciated. i want to get these started before i go so i can just have some blissfully simple knitting on the plane.

alright...my cat is in the living room having an absolute fit over a spider on the ceiling. i'd better go intervene before he flings himself against the wall too violently!