little feet, big sky

Arrrgh – I can’t believe I’ve finished my first pair of socks!! *pauses and looks around* Umm.. now that I think about it, where did I put them?

They came out awesome. Perfect, size 8 fit! I’m so totally impressed with Charlene Schurch’s instructions on foot size, such that I’m asking all my family and friends what their shoe size is. My aunt explicitly told me not to bring her shoes for Christmas. :-)

I know Kitten deflated my belated pipe dreams of knitting up Christmas prezzies in time, but these socks took me about a day each. With a little more relaxed knitting, I could crank out a pair in a couple of days. I know that sounds overly ambitious, but hell, I didn’t even use markers for the short row heel on the second sock. I thought about it, but realized all that slipping them on and off would just slow me down.

I’m itching to start another pair, but have too many other projects to finish, including the cable scarf and the kitty pi.

I was inspired by Kitten’s awesome knee-high socks to finally try knitting a sock. I crocheted a pair a long time ago that turned out okay – neat, but a little strange. I really wanted to knit them for a little more drape. I have oodles of sock yarns and Charlene Schurch’s Sensational Knitted Socks, but was a little daunted to casually start a pair.

Turns out that worsted weight knitted socks are super fast. I was working on another pair of longies, using #6 dpns and as I quickly knitted up a leg, I realized it was almost sock-size. I had some merino superwash sock yarn in worsted weight, gifted to me two Christmases (sp?) ago by the spouse, so I gave it a whirl – fun!

I chose the 5-stitch toes-up pattern, since I was scared of running out of yarn. 100yds seems like soooo little. :-) The 5-stitch patterns in the book were a little bland, but the yarn-over cable pattern looked pretty.

I cast on late Tuesday night and finished up late last night, which was awesome and I used the EZ stretchy bind off, which worked great. I’m so happy with the results, and can’t wait to start the second one. I wound the skein last night and it’s ready to go today.

Okay, so of all the things you can do with your iPhone, you can’t actually knit directly with it.. but almost.

Store knitting patterns on your iPhone using Evernote. After trying for ages to find a practical way to use this slightly clunky desktop app/website/iPhone app, I’ve found it’s great for storing patterns I’m currently knitting. Sign up online and create a new note. (You can download the desktop app for either Mac or Windows, too.) Copy and paste the pattern text into your new note. You can even drag a picture into the note, too, which is great for cables/braids or even charts. Install the Evernote iPhone app, login in from your iPhone and you’ll see your pattern there. :-)

Track stitches on your iPhone with Stitchminder. It’s a free app, and despite the slightly garish background of a blue ball of yarn, it works pretty well. Ironically, the preset column counts don’t have a heading for tracking stitches. Instead you can choose from column names like row count, increase/decrease row and pattern row. Make sure to set your Auto-Lock setting (Settings > General > Auto-Lock) to something like 5 minutes, so that you don’t have to unlock everytime you finish a row.

Now all we need is an iPhone app for Ravelry. :-) Any other ways you use your iPhone to help with crafting?

One of my twitter moms, techmama, was asking about favorite iPhone apps – the perfect question for a Monday morning blog post. :-) Since I feel that an app really has to be stellar for to me to pay money for it, most of the apps listed below are free unless otherwise noted. Enjoy!

• Stitchminder – For any craft in which you need to count stitches. Customizable column names, like “increase row” or “pattern row”.
• Sunrise – $.99. Spice starts knocking off to sleep right after sunset, so it’s handy to know exactly what time that is, so I can start her evening feed/bath/sleep routine.
• Wordpress – Blog from your iPhone. Pretty slick overall, but obviously not perfect if I’m still not blogging from it frequently.
• Things – $9.99. The ultimate to-do list. Really, I love this one, as it has a Mac desktop app that will soon sync with the iPhone version. Right now, it’s easier to just use the iPhone version for everything.
• eReader – Awesome e-book reader. One click download from books purchased on ereader.com or fictionwise.com. No sync needed! Setting white text on a black background is perfect for nighttime reading in bed. (Tip: Try it with one of their free books, like The Age of Innocence.)
• NYTimes – Full NY Times articles. What’s neat is that you can organize your preferred sections, like “Politics” or “Photos” in the bottom bar.
• Twitterific – Twitter client. Not as full-featured or fast as Hahlo, but Hahlo can’t do pics. :-(
• Weatherbug – Extreme weather details. Insanely better than the useless default Weather app. Like radar/satellite views and weathercams.
• Evernote – Note-taking program that syncs with website and desktop app. Can be a bit clunky. Neatest trick is being able to take pics that sync to both places automagically, which is useful for blogging later.
• NetNewsWire – News reader that syncs with NetNewsWire (OS X) and FeedDemon (Windows) through Newsgator Online so you never read the same thing twice.
• eBay Mobile – Track your auctions, whether you’re buying or selling.
• Pandora Radio – Incredibly sharp choose-your-own Internet radio.

I feel so useless lately. I know the whole “taking care of a whole person” bit, but I can’t help but feel that I’m just not accomplishing enough. And frustrated because I don’t have the time or energy to get more done. Work is pretty much shot. I might spend an hour with my hand in actual code, but that included hours spent in my head working out the problems first – and my head is nowhere near clear enough to do that. I have an attention span “the length of a flea’s nose”, as an old friend used to say. I consider the spouse lucky if I follow him talking for more than five minutes. All my mind can think of is baby, and other than that, my demeanor is pretty vapid most of the time. How on earth is this a biological survival skill??

At this point I’m capable of the following: eating, sleeping, showering, feeding baby, changing diapers, bathing baby, playing “wiggle out the farts” with baby, doing laundry and limited driving. Okay, so some days I only eat about 600 calories and I’m often so spaced while driving that I make myself say the color of the stoplight out loud before the intersection. Still, right now, that’s about all I can manage.

I’ve recently added knitting back to this list. Knitting usually takes more brain cells for me than crochet, but lately I’ve been on auto-pilot with it. The whole “sleep when the baby sleeps” thing doesn’t work for me because I don’t easily sleep with daylight and she rarely sleeps long enough for me to get in a nap, too. So I’ve found that twitter and knitting are both things I can do in 20 – 30 minutes chunks, between her and some laundry and maybe a cup of tea. I’ve finished a baby vest, and am almost done with some gorgeous wristwarmers that I’ll probably sell on Etsy. Next up are some scarves, a wool diaper wrap and perhaps a pair of socks. The other morning, I photographed many (but not all) pieces of my copious yarn stash to list on Ravelry. This made me realize just how much good yarn I have that needs to be knitted into something useful… hence, the knitting spell.

If you knit or crochet and you’re on Ravelry, check out my notebook and send me a hello! I’m also on twitter and always looking for new friends to follow.

It’s grey in L.A. today and hot cocoa stuffed with BonBonBar vanilla marshmallows is delish. Too bad I can’t figure out how to lick the inside of the mug…

The spouse is recovering nicely, thanks to lots and lots of vicodin. :-) My mother drove down for a surprise visit on last Monday, which was an unexpected godsend. She’s a nurse, so it was doubly good to have someone handy to keep an eye on the sleeping-all-day spouse as well as be able to hand the baby over once in a while. We lounged around for the most part, drinking tea and coffee and hanging out in the kitchen. The kitchen part is fun, because we both love cooking and it’s hard not to look at a jar of pecans and start imagining warm pecan pie. She woke up early one morning and cleared out and rearranged all my kitchen cupboards! Yea, Mom!

Now she’s spending the weekend with my sister, and the house is quiet. I’ve resurrected some old knitting/crochet projects and have filled up the recent downtime from Spice with laundry, the kitchen, crochet, tea and books. I whipped up some booties for her to wear under her baby legwarmers in some buttery soft , and frogged the newborn baby bolero I was making to make a sleep soaker instead. I also just finished Stardust last night and it was fantastic. (I’ve been a fan of Neil Gaiman since Preludes and Nocturnes, and aside from the Sandman books, my favorite book is still Neverwhere.) Now that I’ve read the book, I can add the DVD to my Netflix queue in good conscience.

My mother and sister are going for dim sum this morning and invited me. Given the recent drama, I’ll probably bow out, but dim sum! The spouse, being vegetarian, has a tough time finding something edible there, so I usually only go with my mother and sister. *sigh* I’ll just have to content myself with being curled up here with my tea, a blanket, cleaning out my rss feed reader and try desperately not to think of hot, steaming nor my gai.

I’ve been knitting up a storm lately, and have been making little “mini-layettes” of booties, hats, diaper covers, and kimono wraps. I’ve used patterns from around the web, but my favorite baby knitting book is the one above: Natural Knits for Babies and Moms by Louisa Harding. The patterns are simple and easily varied, and simply elegant.