I mentioned this on the outdoor knitting group on Ravelry, so I thought I'd post a picture. I made this the year my son was born. Every stitch by hand. I actually had very little idea what I was doing. A few well placed questions to friends who were quilters saved my bacon. It is now 28 years old, and on it's way to becoming a family heirloom. I've been told I should sign it. Guess it ought to go in the will, too, huh? Anyway, I'm very proud of this.

Reflections on Ikniterod

Well, I finished. Probably the last into the barn, but I finished. I think this is my 6th pair of socks in 2010. Scary.

I have learned the following:

1. Black socks, even with gray and white flecks or stripes, are not particularly inspiring. It's very hard to keep going for long periods of time. It becomes harder and harder to see the stitches clearly after a certain point in the evening. I don't think I will be knitting black socks again, especially where deadlines come into play.

2. My husband's feet are larger than mine. I knew that going in, but I thought I'd do a pair for him first and then start on another pair for me. He only has one other pair. I at this point have about a dozen. However, larger pairs naturally involve more stitches and rows, so they take longer. Again, not a good idea where deadlines are involved.

3. I will never contemplate knee socks for any sort of athletic endeavor that doesn't last at least a month. That leaves me with the World Cup, although I find it very difficult to knit through soccer matches.

4. In the future, I think I will confine my competitive urges to wild, loud colors for either me or people with smaller feet than I have.

5. Now I can return to my other hobby of yelling at the antics of the US Government as it tries to spend all my money.

One week later

I just checked the Iditarod website and discovered that the halfway point has been reached. That puts me way behind. I'm just past the halfway point of the first sock. There are several good reasons for this, not the least of which is that I tend to knit slowly.

The second is that the socks are black with grey running through the pattern - very nice actually, and the yarn feels great, but it's hard to stay inspired working with mostly black. Did I mention that these are for my husband, who is sort of a vanilla kind of guy, especially where socks are concerned?

But the real reason for my slow down is the fact that since I discovered Ravelry, I have found that several of the groups on there have caught my interest. Two of them involve literary series that I enjoy, and I have taken on a reread. One of these series - Diana Gabaldon's Outlander - is up to 7 volumes of 800-900 pages each. The other is Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time. There are at present 12 volumes in that and they are all at least 750 pages long. Then there's work, house, husband, beagles, church and keeping up with my family via phone, text and facebook. I'm lobbying for a slowdown in the earth's rotation so that the days become about 30 hours long. But I'd probably decide to sleep for the extra time. Oh, well.

Anyway, I am this far at this point.

Well, I got a little webcam and now I have to figure out how to use it. Bear with me, I'm a beginner.

Besides knitting which I love to do - keeps me sane - I plan to put in my 2 cents about faith, politics, history and whatever happens to be going on in the world that strikes me. I invite people to disagree with me, but nastiness is unacceptable. Just had to get that said.

My current issue is the constant carping on the subject of racism when anyone disagrees with the current administration. Obviously I can't speak for everyone, and I'm sure there are bigots of every stripe out there. Speaking for myself, I don't care if a politician is a Martian. If I think he or she is doing something wrong I reserve the right to say so, and if I think he/she is on the right track, I'll say that too. For the record I'm a big Sarah Palin fan. Wish she'd move into my neighborhood.

Just my opinion.

I accepted the Knitting Olympic challenge and set the bar too low. Thought I'd knit a pair of socks for a friend. Now whenever I have a deadline, something always conspires to derail me, so I figured that would happen, and being a slow knitter, that would be a perfect 2 week challenge. Well, of course, nothing happend to derail me, so in the tradition of the biathalon, I took a penalty lap and assigned a second pair of socks. I actually got 3/4 of the way through the second sock. For me this is downright amazing. So I feel I made my goal and deserve to display the pin.

Now I'm going for the Iknitarod. More socks. My favorite thing to do. I admit to be addicted to self patterning sock yarn.