Felted Clogs & Classic Socks

I was in a weird non-knitting limbo for a short time this week. Nothing on the needles...couldn't breathe...everything was getting dark...

But then I cast on for some stuff and revived.

First on the list is the Felted Clogs which everyone and their felted dogs have been knitting. Now it's my turn. I bought the pattern for these at the Yarn Barn over spring break, and the yarn last weekend when Kristina was in town. Abbe tells me that knitting this takes concentration, and boy, she ain't kidding. Every single freakin' row of this thing has a different set of directions. No "do this for 4 inches" or "work in such-and-such for so many rows." Every single stitch is dictated. So easy to loose one's place. I only had to restart once (so far), so things are looking up. This thing is enormous. Consider that the balls of yarn in the picture above are each the size of one of my fists.

I did knit a test swatch, and sort of got gauge, but I wasn't able to test-felt the swatch, because a) I have a front-load washer and b) I can't find my zippered pillow case that I bought for a previous felting project. I'm not willing to risk clogging up the drain of my washer and the subsequent divorce. I figured, what-the-heck, it's felting -- it doesn't have to be that accurate. So the swatch remains unfelted.

I also cast on for another pair of socks, because that seems to be what I do. I'm using a pattern called Classic Socks from The Knitting Man(ual), which I tried once before with some KnitPicks yarn, but wasn't happy with the results. This time I'm using some beautiful green hand-dyed yarn from J. Knits that I got at the Bluebonnet Yarn Shoppe last summer. I'm using the magic loop method, which I've never used with socks before -- although it came in handy working on the sleeves of the last sweater I knit for Jeff. For some reason the green in this picture is very gray and sagey, while in real-life it's made of much richer green hues.

And the yard continues to bloom and grow. Right now the Knockout Roses in front of our house are, well, you know -- and the freaky looking Jerusalem Sages are starting to blossom. I'm madly taking pictures now so that I can look at them and relive the good old days during our scorched-earth August.