Sock Madness 2

As apposed to reorganisational madness.

This morning I joined several others from AMD on a short trip over to Keogh Barracks to hear the out-come of various top level structure studies.

One might want to be nice and say that these were all driven from love, good humor and the wish to do the right thing. In reality, Whitehall is going from its present three buildings down to one. In the process, there are about 1700 people who will no longer have desks. Some of the jobs will just go away as several HQ combine and others will get relocated. The medical portion will go from 126 -> 20. Yes, that is a rather significant decrease.

In the case of Medical – it is to some place in the Midlands near Birmingham. There will be a Joint Medical Command (which is replacing three other organizations) holding responsibility for secondary care, education, training and a lot of plans and policy.

I have lots of details, I don’t really think that you want my five pages of notes.

In the afternoon, the AMD chief of staff gave a briefing on the Army reorganization and the medical reorganization. Of course, these processes have been done relatively independantly of the above mentioned studies.

On the Army side, it means that numerous HQ, AMD included will all become part of Land Component Command. New location, but not before 2010 will be Andover.

Now, I have nothing against Andover. It is just out in the middle of the Salisbury Plain and near nothing. And if I can avoid a 40 minute commute at these petrol prices, I will be pleased. One of the main issues about Andover is that there is no where near enough housing for all the people that will be moved out there.

As you would expect, this is a case of more to follow.

There was sunshine today.

After getting back to the house, I decided that it was warmer outside that in. Which leads me to

Sock Madness

Essentially this is a world wide sock knitting contest. At the beginning, everyone is divided up into four divisions and you compete within your own division. The rules are simple: you have to knit the pattern exactly as written (you can go larger but not smaller). Post at least one progress picture and a final picture of the socks on adult feet on the Flickr group page and email the information to the score keepers.

Pattern is distributed at a random time to everyone at once by email. That starts the clock which keeps running till enough people have qualified. Half the participants are eliminated in each round. This round will take the numbers from 160 down to 80.

There is obviously an issue with time zones. Depending on when the pattern is issued, some places have a definite time advantage. Staying up all night to knit is stupid in the early rounds, but there are those who are doing exactly that.

there is a garter stitch heel
garter stitch short row heel

garter on the sole

garter on the sole
and I managed to finish the first sock. This particular yarn sucks – to put it bluntly. I wanted the colour changes, but my hands are suffering for it. Plus it is taking forever (like three hours to knit a sock top not including the heel). Something about 72 stitches around as well (rather than my normal 56-60).

The first sock is complete

Rather than keep going, since I am a working person, I am going to do the sensible thing and go to sleep.

-Holly

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3 Responses to Sock Madness 2

  1. Ruth says:

    Woohoo…go Holly! And I think the colors look great, sorry it’s so hard on the hands.

  2. knittyvritti says:

    good luck with the madness!!! and congrats for not getting all manic over it…it’s not the struggle for world peace, after all….

  3. The sock looks great! Sorry it’s so yucky to knit with. I have stayed away from Noro because, although the colors are wonderful, touching it is less than pleasant for me. I hear it makes nice comfy socks, though!

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