We have this cupboard in the corner of our living room that currently houses all of our packets of photos. Since we switched over to digital a number of years ago, there have been few added to the boxes and loose envelopes. At one point, I spent days sorting and labeling all the pictures by location and date in preparation for finally creating a number of photo albums.

Then the box containing most of them got accidentally dropped. Rather than metldown completely, I just piled everything back into the boxes, packing them away. After a few more moves we came to our current house. At this point, I no longer completely remember what is in either the boxes or the photos.

A vacation task for the teens was to bring order to the photos and to get them scanned. The youngest actually scanned a couple hundred. But mostly the three of them were fascinated by the old photos; what everyone looked like as a baby. About the years before they were born.

And this photo turned up

The kids remembered me getting teased by Hans. about knitting socks while on vacation. Our two families were together on the Nordsee, the kids running wild and having a blast. I quietly did my thing for a couple of days, then presented him with the socks. The year, I think, was 1997. Now that I have seen the picture, I can come up with the information. But I wonder how many other pairs of socks over the years I have completely forgotten and did not record on film.

Not counting the 56 full pairs floating around here somewhere (a few of which need repairs), there are 10 orphans whose mate has gone AWOL. Additionally, there are those that I sent out in the world to comfort others plus all the small ones that the kids went through, got handed down or lost when they were little.

I wish I had kept track from the beginning, both as a record of the different designs I made up and as a record of improvement and learning over the years. I am tracking now, as a result of the various challenges and KALs. Sockyarn is a bit more expensive now and most that I buy is hand dyed. But my pleasure in knitting, the wonder when watching the growth from a few stitches into a three dimensional object that is both beautiful and functional. That has not changed.

-Holly
I am on a train tomorrow evening to Zürich. On Wednesday morning we fly to Tel Aviv. I should be able to post, but might not be able to upload photos till I am back. We will see.

Posting in haste. In spite of another trip here from Telekom this week, once again we are without Internet all evening. This time we have telephone, which is leading me to suspect the router is malfuntioning this time. After 20 minutes worth of flipping switches and reset buttons, it is up for the moment.

Clean Up

The dog had been outside this morning. I had not noticed her trip to the water dish, leaving the floor spattered with water. Discovering this when heading to the microwave, I was amazed at how far a cup of coffee can splash.

Having this unexplicable urge to rearrange the living room furniture while the other half is on the road, I drafted the teens. To move my chair to where I was not directly near the TV and had good light meant that the couch and chair needed to be moved. To be able to tuck somethings away in the Shrank, we had to sort out everything dumped there for the last five years. Since I was on the kick, we restrung the audio wires, rearranged the extension cords and vacuumed. Trust me, you don’t want the details of the other five cupboards that got caught up in my organizational frenzy. But I now have two shelves in the shrank right next to my chair for patterns and some bags of wool.

Knitting

Finished up the first Niagara sock finally. The four twisted stitch sock I was working on yesterday is also complete and have the mate past the ribbing with the second Niagara waiting in the wings. I am letting the vest sit. I went through my entire stash and I don’t have any yarn that I can use without cancelling another planned project. My alternative choices are dark grey, navy or (surprising for me) a forest green. I was not able to get to Rödel today, so looked on line. Haven’t ordered yet as I am not enthused about investing a lot in yarn that would be difficult to return.

The cleaning turned up another UFO; this funnel neck sweater. I remember starting this sweater while visiting Angela, a Bundeswehr officer who was the commander of my partnership unit. We were sitting together with our families in the kitchen of their farmhouse and talking about renovations. That places the neck knitting back 10 years ago. I have located it off and on over the years. Sometimes with the pattern, the most recent time without. Each time it turns up, a bit more gets done. Since it is only the last sleeve to go, I think I can manage it without.

f course, it is now spring and I will not need it until next winter.

The kids just realized that the Internet is up, so I am uploading this before the connection gets overwhelmed.

-Holly

It was back to work today and very little time for knitting or anything else. I managed to find and return all but two books to the library, which means I am completely out of borrowed audio books for the moment. I dipped into the “purchased for emergencies” stash to have something other than noise on the car’s CD Player.

I even tried to be the good mom, and stopped for groceries on the way home. This may be the only time all year when I don’t get flak from the teens on unloading the car. After all, how else are they going to get at all the wheat products that they have been missing? Tortillas, pretzels, noodles, breaded chicken wings, and ramen: my crew has pretty eclectic tastes. Since I made the stop an hour away from home at Vogelweh, I skipped all the frozen goods in favor of a short trip tomorrow to PHV on my way home.

From the stash

The yarn as I mentioned yesterday is Tiger, Opal yarn from Wolfgang which I bought directly from the factory in late 1999 as it turns out. This is prior to Opal coming to the US via Mary Lou at PT Yarn .

Which reminds me, if you need the sideways sock (especially for long repeat patterns) Mary Lou has it posted here.

But anyway – the first sock is now complete and the second is 15 cm down the leg. I thought they would be for one of the guys. They both looked at me like I was insane and muttered something about not looking masculine enough. Sheesh. So the next on the list was the 18 year old. She is the one who wears army boots with her skirts. Other than the fact that the first foot is too long, she thinks they are cool. Now, I am knitting these top down. Shorten the toe by a couple of cms? No problem, the work of 15 minutes. As apposed to frogging them completely for fewer stitches around if I want to keep them for myself.

Lastly, since my knitting this year seems to be unlimited sock KALs of one kind or another interspersed with some bigger projects, I decided that I really needed a spreadsheet to keep track of all my committments. So far I have four fairly simple pages to the workbook: one for patterns that I have (including where they are), one for the stash (important things like year, source, fiber and amount), one for the commitments and the last for the completed socks. But I am not going to run totals on the supplies page, that would be TMI. I will post it for download as soon as it is completed if anyone is interested.