I’m still fighting the cold thing, and the work thing, and the other distract-Judy-from-knitting things. How many pictures of half-finished socks and crumpled sweater pieces and long-forgotten UFOs can I show you, gentle reader, before you run screaming from this blog?

So, in stead of not-much-has-happened pics, I offer you this little video of the snow falling on my back yard last Monday. It was so pretty! I wish I had taken a longer shot. The thing that looks like a weird rope hanging on the left is one of my grape vines. I didn’t have shoes on, so shot this while leaning out the back door. Yeah… that’s how big my back yard is. I have tablecloths that are larger. But that’s OK.

PoliticalCritic (do you knit, too?) asks:

How is the weather normally in Portland? I’m on the east coast, but am considering a job out there? Does it rain as much as Seattle?

Personally, I love the Portland area and can’t imagine living anywhere else. But that’s just me. Does it rain as much… you know, I’m not sure. I think it might rain a little more in inches in our fair neighbor to the north. But we certainly have as many gloomy days. It’s a little warmer here in Portland. Seattle gets more snow, but snow here is a rare occasion as is freezing rain. December and January are hard to slog through. But we usually have some lovely spring-ish weather in February. September is glorious. And the rain? You don’t have to shovel it…

In other, non-knitting news, you will recall that #1 Son and I usually head to Las Vegas for a few days over the Christmas holidays. We see a show, take a tour, I do a little gambling, #1 Son does a little sleeping. It’s quite an enjoyable interlude.

This year, #1 Son has informed me that a tour has been booked for the time between Christmas and New Years because that is the only time that they can all go, and so he will not be available to go to Vegas. But maybe we could do something before or after the tour? I pointed out that the time between Christmas and New Years is all of the time that I have off, too.

I admit to being in a snit for a few days.

How dare he? How dare he grow up and act like a responsible adult and have a life and make plans that didn’t include his mom? How dare he?

Then I realized how stupid that sounded. I mean really.

So I will go to Vegas by myself. Why not? Vegas is lots of fun… it will mean more gambling time, right? Hopefully my pocket book will hold out!

I can report that the class socks are nearing completion. I’m almost out of yarn, so the end will come most likely today. Nothing else has progressed past the point you last saw it.

~Kristie opines:

I guess the stripe effect on your socks looks different because there is NO pooling!! LUCKY LUCKY!

I will try and post a finished pic tomorrow, and you will see that the socks never pooled. On the gussets the stripes changed a bit, but still didn’t pool. Ever.

I can’t take credit for it because pooling / not pooling is always, for me, completely beyond my control. I am open to any/all suggestions because, believe me, I don’t like things to be beyond my control. Just ask #1 Son (see above).

hpny knits offers:

striping socks- hmmm, some stripes depend on # of st per round, and changing that just a bit- can get it right.

So right! But I hate to choose between the correct stitch number for the yarn and having socks that fit.

One of my challenges is that my feet are skinny, so when making socks for myself I use a small number of stitches per round than average for my size of sock. That throws the pattern off sometimes. There’s not much I can do about the width of my feet, as much as I would like to!

I also like to knit a flap-and-gusset heel. Increasing for the gusset offers another challenge in that the number of stitches changes and throws off the yarn colors again. I could alleviate this by knitting a short-row heel. But short-row heels don’t fit my feet as well because I have high arches. So, again, I could have well-fitting socks or socks that stripe nicely.

It’s a conundrum, gentle reader.