Mud and mistakes

Guess what? It's SNOWING in the mountains! I'm very excited about this. I keep eyeing the pass cameras on the Washington Dept. of Transportation webpage, and I tried to save one and upload it but apparently blogger doesn't approve of the file type. You can take my word for it that it's pretty snowy! Several of our local ski areas are opening this week, so if I'm not at work on Thursday that's where I'll be...all that precipitation has resulted in some muddy bike racing, which is always exciting. This man was the picture of futility:

Look what he's doing. He's sweeping water off the course. What I ask is the point of that? It might help for a couple of minutes, assuming you sweep the water into the grass and it stays there, but what was really happening was that he was pushing it to the left and it was just heading right back where it came from as soon as he turned his back. I found it hilarious.

Here's Dave after his race yesterday, looking very muddy and very happy about it. He is happy because he loves mud (and does better the worse the conditions are) and because he came in 12th, his best place this season (there are 50+ people, so that's pretty good!).
As you recall, I borrowed Daisy's ball winder and swift last week, and this is what I've accomplished thus far. The red cakes are Cascade 220, destined for a very cool felted bag with grommets around the top that I hope to knit before I go home at Christmas so that I can use my parent's grommet maker to finish it off. The purple is the second skein of Manos for my so-called scarf, which is killing me. I really wanted to finish the first skein last night (you might recall I've been working on this thing off and on since about June) but my hands couldn't do it. I'm really wishing I'd have gone up a needle size, but I didn't think of that until far enough into the project that there was no way I was going back to square one. So, I'm suffering through it. It's beautiful but so hard on my hands. Eh. The brown in the middle is also Cascade 220. I was thinking armwarmers but now I'm not sure, and really I just wound it because I had the equipment and I Oliver loves watching the swift spinning. The green stuff on the top there is mediumweight Socks that Rock, in Beryl, and is going to become my grandmother's Christmas socks. I don't recall if I mentioned it, but I've ripped out the socks I was making her. I wasn't happy with the yarn/pattern combo, and there were a couple of problems that multiplied when I tried to correct them (many thanks to Rachel for making a valiant effort at salvaging them, but to no avail as I screwed them right back up). The straw that broke the camel's back was what you see here on the right. Look closely. Observe the top right needle - the one with stitches very close to the tip. Perhaps you can also see the stitches that are NO LONGER ON THE NEEDLE? That did it for me (although it did sit on the table for a few more days before I put it to rest). How did this happen? Well, I am an idiot. Basically I was looking for a size 1.5 DPN to do the heel on the RPM socks, hoping that going down a needle size would increase sturdiness, and I grabbed the wrong needle. Instead of the extra needle, I pulled on one that was (apparently) in use. No wonder the needle didn't slide towards me easily, eh? So last night I swatched with the STR (why? I've made three pairs of socks with this. Swatching shouldn't be necessary, really). I swatched because drew a blank on what weight STR it was (never mind about the folded up tag in the cake o'yarn). I got all excited to try my new Knit Picks metal DPNs (size 1), and off I went. Amazingly I got gauge on my swatch (7.5 st/in), but as soon as I started the stitches were WAY TOO TIGHT, which shouldn't have been shocking to me since I'VE MADE THIS MISTAKE BEFORE. But the needles are great (so slick and pointy!), so I promptly went and ordered me some size 2s. So you'll not hear anymore about this sock until three weeks from now, when Knit Picks gets around to shipping them to me. I love Knit Picks, but they really do take their 'your free shipping will take 5-14 days' thing seriously, in that they really err on the side of 14 rather than 5 days. Why can't they be like Amazon? Their free shipping is slower than what you pay for, but your stuff generally arrives faster than you could drive yourself across the country and back to pick it up, which is more than I can say for Knit Picks. Right - rant over. Tomorrow I'll have a new project to show you!