Socks!

I keep forgetting to mention this, but I finished the first of the Purdy Plum socks on Friday. Isn't it purdy? Haha...I really like the colors and I'm bummed I made this a tad too large for myself. But, it will make a lovely Christmas gift, don't you think? I think the color is off in the photo, but the light bits are actually pale turquoise. Now onto the second sock...
But first, I finally got around to starting the socks for my Sockapalooza 4 pal. They don't have to be mailed until early August, so I've been procrastinating (nothing new there, movin' on). I've actually thought about the socks a lot, and I was going to make some Monkey socks, but then I noticed my pal was making some of those already (not giving anything away there, since the entire internet is making Monkeys)! So, back to the drawing board I went. Lord knows I have sock patterns coming out my ears. My pal was up for anything except pastels, so I thought I'd be adventurous. Thus I'm making the Twisted Flower Socks, by Cookie A. I'm using Louet Gems Pearl as called for, in bright red (surely not pastel!). I'd say the color is pretty accurate. I was actually hoping to use the same green as in the pattern, but the only greens they had at Weaving Works were borderline pastel, and we couldn't have that. Like my pal I'm not keen on pastels. As you can see, I've really just begun. However, we're about to watch The Last King of Scotland, so I suspect some progress will be made! I have a nagging suspicion that it's a mistake making such a complicated pattern for someone I don't even know, but, well, I want to make them more than I want to wear them, so perhaps it's a perfect idea.
Oh, the blanket ends? Not yet woven in. Rachel is going to show me a trick, so the blanket will be heading on into work tomorrow.

Almost...

I present an almost finished baby blanket!

Now, about those ends...

Major Modifications

Despite the fact that it seems I've been posting a lot of them lately, it's not all finished objects chez Emily. As you might remember, I started a new sweater not long ago, the Dollar and a Half Cardigan (now to be called the $1.50 cardigan) from the Spring 2007 Interweave Knits. I've made quite a bit of progress, especially considering I completely abandoned this for awhile to work on the baby blanket and the Endpaper Mitts (glad you all liked them, thanks!). Here we go:

I've done three full pattern repeats (lace panel + reverse stockinette panel) so far. I discovered the knitalong for this sweater yesterday and noticed that all of the finished sweaters seemed really long, and many had an undesirable puffiness in the reverse stockinette panels. Thankfully I don't have that particular problem, so far. However, the length thing is a real issue. The pattern calls for 18.5" before the armhole shaping begins, which to me seems like an awful lot. The sweater in the magazine is quite long, and hits the model at mid/low hip, which on her looks fine, but on me is likely to be a no-go length, since I actually have hips. So, I thought I'd lay my sweater on top of a sweater that I like the length of, for comparison, and this is what I saw: To be fair, the model sweater is a raglan, so I'm thinking the armholes are likely larger than they'll be on the $1.50 cardigan, which has set-in sleeves. But, do you see how close I am to where the armholes start? My sweater is currently 12" long - I'm thinking of doing one more repeat (about 3") and then doing the decreases. 3.5" shorter should work, I think. I've considered doing just a lace panel, and then starting the decreases in the stockinette portion, which would surely be easier, but I think I'd rather stick with the pattern as much as possible since I'm going to need to get two fronts and two sleeves to line up with the stripes on the back. Then I worried that because I'm making this in the 36.25" size, which is going to be a bit large on me, maybe it would be better if I made it longer, so it didn't look boxy. Thoughts? I also plan to shorten the sleeves, but I think I'll do that by making less ribbing. Could I knit the sleeves from the top down and then stop early? Is it harder to decrease on sleeves than increase? That would be ideal I think, for matching and length purposes...Here's a close-up of the lace pattern, which is quite simple to work and looks really nice:

Sorry it's a bit blurry - the red yarn isn't the easiest thing to photograph. I haven't just been working on this (of course). I'm still plugging away on some simple stockinette socks, following Wendy's new toe-up pattern (It's the toe-up gusset heel pattern.):

The yarn is Monarch, colorway Purdy Plum. I'm getting to the point where I want to weigh the sock and the yarn to see how far up I can go. I accidently made these a tad too big (the heel was longer than anticipated) so I might be gifting them to someone with slightly larger feet. One Christmas gift in progress already! Wendy's pattern is great - simple and easy to follow. I believe Daisy is making some socks with this pattern as well, so I wanted to post these so she could see how the heel came out...

I went to my first Seattle Stitch & Bitch gathering in over a year tonight, and it was really fun! There were 10 of us I think, coming and going, and everyone was really nice. I hope to start going more often, since it's fairly close to my house and it's nice to get together to knit with other people, instead of on the couch with Dave and Oliver (Not that there's anything wrong with them, of course, but it's good to get out a bit.). Anyway, it was nice to meet all of you!

FO: Endpaper Mitts

Voila, they are finished!

Project Stats: Endpaper Mitts

Pattern: Endpaper Mitts, by Eunny Jang

Yarn: Rowanspun 4 ply (Jade, from my favorite Ebay seller, Cucumberpatch UK) and Rowan Yorkshire Tweed 4 ply (Discontinued, from Weaving Works). I have about 1/3 left of each 25g skein.

Needles: Brittney birch DPNs, size 2

Gauge: 9 st/in. My mitts came out really small - the gauge for my size was supposed to be 8 st/in

Time on the Needles: Mid-March - May 20, 2007

Impressions: I LOVE these! This is my first Fair-isle project, and it won't be the last. Watching the pattern appear is so addicting, and although I'm sure I wasn't using "proper" technique, I got pretty fast in my own way and these came off the needles pretty quickly when I actually worked on them. I know they took about two months, but there was a lot of downtime in there. I knit over half of the second mitt this weekend. Eunny's pattern was well-written and I followed it exactly except that I did a regular cast-on and bind-off because I was too lazy to figure out how to do the tubular method she recommended. I also used the same size needles throughout instead of switching after the ribbing. I think this was a wise move because my gauge was tighter than the pattern guidelines and I think doing the ribbing on needles two sizes smaller might have made these difficult to get on and off. In fact, my only gripe, and this is completely my fault (No, I didn't check my gauge. I have really tiny hands, I figured it would be okay), is that these are really small. I can get them on, and once they're on it's okay, but getting them on and off is a bit of a struggle. That said, the first one is looser, and I think that's because it's been tried on more times, so I think the other will stretch a bit as well, and if all else fails I can always block them. About the book - it was one of my birthday presents from Dave, and I love it. You can't go wrong with a good disaster...Anyway, I am thrilled with these, and can't wait to start my next Fair-isle project! Big success!!!

Seven Random Facts...

So, Shannon tagged me for the Seven Random Facts meme, and here goes! This is my first tag, how exciting - thank you Shannon, I'm always looking to be more involved in the blogosphere!

1. I'm afraid of balloons. I'm not sure when this fear developed. As a child I loved balloons, and in high school we bought each other balloons for our lockers all the time. It was practically a competition, who got the most balloons on their birthday. It was great. Now, I hate balloons. To be fair, it's not actually the balloons, but the risk of them popping, that I don't like. I'm not into loud sudden noises.
2. I'm really into reading non-fiction books with single word titles. For instance, I just finishing reading Coal, and I'm currently working on Salt and Tea (Like with my knitting, I'm not always a monogamous reader until something really grips me.) There are others, but these are the most recent. In general I prefer non-fiction - I'm not sure how the single word thing started, but next up is Tobacco...Before anyone brings this up, I realize some of these have subtitles - that is allowed...
3. Although I'm not much into computer games, I have wasted spent countless hours playing Civilization IV and its precursors. In fact, I played it last night! I was exceedinly excited when I had to get a new computer because I could get one fast enough to play the newest version. Sometimes, I am a dork.
4. I wake up at 6:30am (or earlier) every day during May to watch the Giro d'Italia, during July to watch the Tour de France, and during September to watch the Vuelta a Espana. Although my faith in cycling is diminished a bit due to all the recent doping scandals, I can't seem to stop myself from being into it, having been a fan since childhood. And I have to watch it live, otherwise it's just not the same...
5. The first piece of music I owned was the Bangles Bangles Greatest Hits and I must admit I still listen to it sometimes.
6. I love dams and bridges. I'm fascinated by large civil engineering projects. It's possible I've made a poor career decision by becoming a microbiologist and not an engineer. Perhaps in my next life...
7. My freshman year of college I attended a party where many margaritas were consumed, and my boyfriend at the time was a bit less than clean-shaven. Suffice to say I woke up the next morning with a very painfully raw red chin. I came up with a story that I did it to myself by wiping my face with a wet towel with salt on it (hence the scratches). And people believed this! Smart people. Or maybe they were just humoring me (Any of my college friends remember this? Did you really believe this, or were you just being nice?). Anyway, it was embarrassing. I've stubbornly refused to date anyone with any facial hair ever since...

You're it! I'm tagging:
Daisy
Marisol
Elinor
Megan
Amie
Shelby
Jennifer

Those who are tagged need to write on their own blog those 7 facts as well as the rules of the game. You need to tag seven others and list their names on your blog. Remember to leave those you plan on tagging a note in their comments so they know that they have been tagged and to read your blog!

It's a partnership

Awww...
Say it with me, I am a lucky girl. Observe Dave knitting, with Oliver's close supervision. What's that he's knitting? It's a baby blanket for Kristin, one of his labmates. She's due in early July but we're rushing because she's getting bigger by the day! We're co-knitting this, but Dave is doing most of it because a) she's his coworker, and b) I have many other things I want to knit! I'll try to get some close-ups soon, but basically it's just a striped blanket. We're choosing colors randomly and using each for two or sometimes four rows at a time. This means there are many ends, and they're all on one side. I'm thinking weaving them all in is going to be quite a chore and I'm concerned that they will make that side of the blanket bulkier than the other. Ideally we'll leave them and make matching fringe on the other side, but I've heard babies like to suck on fringe and that doesn't sound like a good plan. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
Shannon tagged me for the Seven Random Facts meme, and I promise to get on that tomorrow. I hope I can think of Seven interesting things...If you know me and you have a blog, be warned, because you might get tagged next!

Weekend travels, and a little bit of fleece

Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes! Andrea, I loved the card you sent, and I did indeed have a cupcake-filled birthday, courtesy of my labmate Stephanie. We always do something for birthdays in my lab, which I think is really great! These cupcakes had cardamom, and they were delicious. I must get this recipe...
I received a couple of fibery presents, including a drug-dealer yarn scale from Dave and a Knit Spot pattern from Rachel, and I will show them off as they arise, but I did want to show you this (Pardon the squinting, it was sunny. I do in fact generally have my eyes open.): That my friends is 4 pounds (yes, pounds) of alpaca fleece. Remember this fleece that I got as a Christmas present from my uncle Adam? Well, he heard I was going to send it off for processing, not being much of a spinner, and decided to send me more! 4 pounds! Thank you! This is going to be a LOT of yarn - I'm thinking of having it spun DK weight since I suspect that will be the most versatile, but I will probably also get some laceweight, because frankly there is plenty to get significant yardage in several weights.

Dave had a bike race in Wenatchee, WA this weekend, and I went along for the ride. We stopped in Leavenworth on the way, which is a real experience. It's worth looking into this in your spare time, but basically Leavenworth is a small town in central Washington that has decided to make itself into a Bavarian village. Some folks got together in the 1960s (I think) and thought, "Yes, here's a good idea. Let's turn this town, which has no German history whatsoever, into a replica German village, and maybe tourists will come and resurrect our economy." Amazingly this plan worked, as you can see here: They even had a beer cart:

I didn't get any photos that really do the place justice. Suffice to say it's bizarre, and exceedingly cheesy. We camped at Lincoln Rock State Park, just northeast of Wenatchee, where a massive windstorm kept us up most of the night. It was like camping on Everest (I expect). The sides of the tent were shaking and the wind was really loud. I've camped in thunderstorms and I think this was worse. The scenery was nice - the park is on the Columbia River just above the Rocky Reach Dam. This was taken Sunday morning, before the sun made an appearance.

Because I didn't get much sleep, I had to drink some diet pepsi:Let it be said that I can really hold my soda...

Knitting content soon. I took a sock and my Endpaper Mitts but hardly knit at all because it was really too cold to sit outside with hands exposed...

Happy Birthday!!!

To me!

A package, and, as promised, a new sweater

Today I got another early birthday surprise, this time from my secret pal! I had a premonition there might be a package waiting for me today, so I made sure to get home before the building office closed, and there it was, a package!

The wrapping was so nice I had to take a photo - inside the box each item was individually wrapped with little tags describing each item. For instance, the note with the hand cream said "For your hard-working hands."In the box were all the goodies you see above. A nice journal (one can never have too many notebooks and journals), a pen, birthday candles (so cool!), chocolate, the aforementioned hand cream (lemongrass and cedar), a cool ring (Which fits! This is amazing because I have really small hands.), and Knitting Without Tears, by Elizabeth Zimmermann. And, check out the cute card! Now, I must admit that despite the widespread adoration of EZ, I've never read any of her books, nor even really looked at them. So, I'm really happy to have this one, and I must say that I read about half of it as soon as I opened it! The writing is great - very witty and quite to the point, which I really enjoy. I've seen some lovely examples of her Seamless Hybrid sweater, and I bet there is one in my future sometime. The lotion is great, I used some this evening and I really like the scent - lemongrass is one of my favorites. My secret pal is very shifty - I know she lives in Raleigh, NC, but I've noticed (because I watch way too much Columbo) that she's mailed my two packages from different addresses! And she has really neat handwriting, the kind I'm always jealous of, because although I have neat handwriting, it pales in comparison to some people's. Alas...Anyway, thank you secret pal! I love my package and I can't wait to find out who you are! The suspense is killing me!!!

In my last post I eluded to having started a new sweater, so without further ado, I present the humble beginnings of my Dollar and a Half Cardigan, from the Spring 2007 Interweave Knits. I'm knitting this using Cascade Sierra, which is a 80% cotton/20% wool blend. This is a new yarn for me, and basically I think it's the Cascade version of Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece, although I've never used that before either so I can't make any sort of informed comparison. I think my photo is a bit dark, but if you click here, you can see the red I'm using, which is the dark one on the lower left. I sense this is going to be a tough project to photograph, due to the color and the fact that the lace bits want to pull in and the reverse stockinette panel wants to puff out. We'll see. I'm a bit concerned about my gauge, but I took a good stab at getting it right. The reason I'm worried is that the gauge was measured over the lace pattern, not the stockinette portion, which made it a bit tough to measure. If anything I think my gauge is a bit small, just a tad, and that would be okay because I'm making the 36.5" size, which gives me some wiggle room. We'll see. I mostly suspect that my row gauge may be off, just looking at the height of that first lace panel to the stockinette bit above it, but it's really too early to tell. When I block it the lace will stretch more than the stockinette (I suspect), so I imagine it might even itself out. Fingers crossed!

Oh, and how beautiful is this Hanami stole? I really really really want to make one of these! I found this pattern a few weeks ago and kept forgetting to mention it...I especially like the cherry blossom part (bottom in the photo). Simply stunning!

Early Birthday Surprises!

First off, I'd like to thank everyone for their nice comments on my sweater. I really appreciated hearing from all of you!!! Of course as soon as I finished it, the weather warmed up enough that I can't really wear it to work, but I suspect, this being Seattle, that it will cool off again soon...

My birthday is on Friday, but tonight I came home to find this waiting for me:

Oliver was intrigued. What can it be you ask? Why it's a swift, from my Aunt Susan!

I had actually expected this, having requested one when my parents asked me what I wanted for my birthday, but I was surprised to have it come so early, and from Susan and not my parents. Susan got me a ballwinder this past Christmas, but I haven't gotten much use out of it because it's difficult to use without a swift. It's a lovely wooden swift, and it gets quite large so I think it will accomodate anything I can find to throw on it. Thank you Susan, this will get plenty of use!!! Dave thanks you as well, because now he is off the hook when it comes to ball winding, and Oliver is also looking forward to watching a fun spinning gadget!
Then tonight at knitting club I received a most unexpected bag of birthday gifts from Anne-Marie!

There is a lovely skein of Fleece Artist merino sock yarn, which I'm quite excited to try. I've heard great things about this yarn but I didn't have any in the stash, amazingly enough. And she got me my own copy of Latvian Mittens! I had been looking for a good book of Fair Isle patterns, and Anne-Marie just finished some mittens from this book (which are spectacular, by the way). I had eyed up this book when she brought it to knit one day, and now I have my own copy! It's got all kinds of great patterns in it, some crazy complex and others completely manageable even for a Fair Isle newbie like me. So, I'm pretty excited about this. AND she got me a bright teal LeSportSac purse, which I tried to photograph unsuccessfully (it's shiny). I am not worthy - thank you again Anne-Marie!

I've made some headway on my new project (Are you curious? Have I even mentioned what I'm making?), and I think it will be blogworthy soon. Tonight I made some reverse progress at knitting club, having knit an entire row (99 stitches) doing *P2tog, yarnover* instead of *P2, yarnover*. Now, it comes as a surprise even to me that I then knit the entire next row, got to the end, of course having the wrong number of stitches, tried to fix that by knitting two together, all while thinking, "wow, that row seemed really quick," before realizing what I had done wrong. I ended up having to rip out about 4 rows because it's a lace pattern and I didn't see a reasonable way for me to unknit it or unravel and pick up the stitches properly at any point before the stockinette bit at the beginning of the lace. BUT, I've since gotten well past where I started so nothing was really lost, except perhaps some pride, because there were witnesses to this P2tog debacle. Let us not speak of it again. For the next lace section I will be putting in a life line at the end of the stockinette portion, so if I screw up again (not unlikely as there will be shaping in pattern (gasp!)) I won't have to go back too far...

Jewel cardigan? Finished!

It is finished! In just over 3 weeks, which has to be some kind of record for me. Just a warning, there are a lot of photos in this post. Dave and I headed down to the Lake Washington Ship Canal for the photo shoot. If the rocks look familiar, it's because this was also the site of the zucchini graffiti last fall... I finished the Jewel cardigan (aka short-sleeved cardigan with ribbing) Sunday morning at about 10:15. There was a slight snafu when I realized the purl ridges didn't line up after I attached the buttons, but that was quickly rectified.
Project Stats: Short-sleeved Cardigan with Ribbing (Jewel cardigan)
Pattern: Short-sleeved cardigan with ribbing from Fitted Knits. I made the smallest size.
Yarn: Cascade Jewel, slightly less than 4 skeins. Yarn acquired from Little Knits. I've not seen it for sale anywhere else, so I'm glad to got my hands on it, because it's great yarn! Needles: Clover bamboo circulars, size 10.5 and 9. I'm a tight knitter so I had to go up a needle size on both needles to get gauge. I believe my gauge was spot-on, which is a miracle for me. Usually I'm pretty good with the stitch gauge and I wing it on the row gauge. That's actually what I did here, now that I think about it, but it worked out pretty well.
Time to knit: April 12-May 6, 2007. Just over three weeks, and it could've gone faster but there were some pauses while I found buttons and then blocked the sweater. The actual knitting was super speedy. Big needles = fast progress!
Knitalong: The Fitted Knits Along was great for help and inspiration! Thanks to all of you for dropping by!Impressions: I'm really happy with the way this turned out! It's not the most slimming sweater I've ever seen, but such is life with a tight-fitting bulky sweater! The fit is great, despite my concern about the bottom ribbing being too tight. I was able to block it out quite a bit and the added width from the buttonbands was all it needed to fit perfectly. It could be a bit smaller in the bust region, but it's fine. I will concede that it might enhance the cleavage, but that's not really what I was going for. Although there were several errors in the pattern (check the errata), it was easy to follow and well-written overall. This was the first garment I've made from the top-down and I really liked it because the progress seemed so fast, and it looked like a sweater almost immediately. For me the one-piece construction was key to my quick finishing of this sweater. I'm scared to death of screwing up all my hard work in the seaming of garments - hence I have a sweater that is completely finished apart from the sewing together, and has been completely finished for months and months now. The minimal finishing on this meant I wasn't intimidated and I could finish it quickly. The only finishing was the buttonbands, and I'm good at picking up stitches :) I loved working with this yarn, and highly recommend it to anyone who can get their hands on some. It's a bit thick/thin but knits up to be fairly solid, in that I could wear this sweater without anything underneath (although it is slightly itchy, due to the tight fit). I'm really happy with my sweater! Now onto the next - progress photos soon!

A new dyer is born!

This post is a bit belated, and there's really no excuse, because I had the photos, and I was sitting around at home for large chunks of the weekend, but anyway. On Thursday night, Anne-Marie came over to try her hand at the dyeing of the yarn. We started out with some options: She decided to dye the Knit Picks sock yarn, and I dyed that giant hank of thick/thin wool (from Weaving Works). I'm not going to show you my finished product because it's going to my secret pal, and I don't want her to stumble upon it here and figure out who I am! Anne-Marie decided to go with a red/pink/salmon colorway, and is a nice handpainting-in-progress shot:

See all those cookbooks behind her? Wouldn't that lead you believe I cook a lot? Ha! Ha! Well, I do sometimes, but not enough for all the cookbooks or as much as I would like. Too lazy you know. Dave and I are into pasta. The big tupperware is full of onion skins for when I try my hand at natural dyes. Anyway, you can see the lovely red that Anne-Marie using, which I really liked. She also had some pink in there, and some slightly lighter reds. I took a photo of the finished painted skein, but it didn't turn out well. Here is a photo of the finished skein, taken by Anne-Marie.I suspect it's more red and less orange than this picture might indicate. It turned out really well, and I think she's pretty happy with it. The skein I dyed turned out well also, although I think (don't tell) I like Anne-Marie's better. Mine is much more muted, which is what I was going for, but hers is so bright and fun! I suspect she will be back to dye more...

On pins and needles

Voila! The Jewel Cardigan is blocking on the futon, ribbing stretched tight as a drum. 15 inches across, which means almost 30 inches in circumference, which should be more than necessary. I've consulted with my fellow knitters at the Fitted Knits Along, looking for advice on this tight ribbing problem, but not yet gotten any responses. Fingers crossed.

Rachel's comment has guilted me into this, but surely I would have gotten around to it soon enough. Probably. I imagine it will be dry enough to unpin on Friday, so I will get on with the buttonbands over the weekend. Tomorrow should be a good night for knitting as Anne-Marie is coming over for a dyeing extravaganza. I'm going to help her get her hands dirty dye some yarn and I'm plan to dye up some bulky thick/thin yarn to send my Secret Pal in her next package. I'm using the same base yarn that I used to dye the yarn I used for this scarf, which was sent to Marisol during the Funky Scarf Swap last fall. Aside - that was a fun swap, I wonder if there will be another? I'm hoping for more subdued colors this time around, as my pal is a jewel tone person. I'm thinking blues and purples, but blue is her favorite so I might just go with shades of blue. My most successful dyeing experiments thus far have been using multiple shades of the same or similar colors, since by using all one color you avoid the potential of the bad-colors-bleeding-into-each-other-brown-black-mess that can arise when you use multiple strong colors. But, for me it's always a bit of a crapshoot what actually comes out the dye pot! For instance, that scarf I made Marisol was bright! That's what I was going for, but it's almost neon in places. I have a lot of that yarn left too, but I'm a bit afraid of it and unsure what to do with it...I'll be sure to document the dyeing for your viewing pleasure!

Almost there!

My Jewels Carigan (aka Short-sleeved cardigan with ribbing) is nearing completion! It's all finished aside from the button bands, and the blocking that shall come before them. I've been procrastinating on the finishing because I didn't have my buttons in hand, but you can see them up there on the sweater. Here's a close-up: I got the buttons at Nancy's Sewing Basket in Seattle, which is a lovely shop. Not being a sewer, I'd not been in before, but they have a lovely selection of buttons and everyone there was very helpful. The buttons are simple, dark wood with light flecks, and I think they complement the yarn quite well. So, now onto the blocking and buttonband knitting! I hope to have this done by/over the weekend, but this week is quite busy so we'll see.

I also mentioned that I'd started a sock, knit with Monarch sock yarn in Purdy Plum. Here is the progress so far: I really like the way that it's striping, and the yarn is very nice to knit with. I believe it's the same base yarn as Socks that Rock, and it feels just as nice. I'm think I'm getting about 8 st/inch on size 2 needles. I'm about at the heel (small feet), so there's been a brief pause while I figure out how I want to do the heel. Have you noticed I'm all about pausing/procrastinating/abandoning projects when they're at a spot where something different must be done? I should get over that. My excuse for the socks is not really that I'm unsure about the heel, but mostly that I was knitting this while watching a movie on Sunday night, and I didn't want to deal with the heel whilst involved in the movie. That said, the movie was awful, so I should've just pressed on. In case you're curious, it was The Good Shepherd, which I had such high hopes for and was quite disappointed in. Dave and I agreed that we were both bored and falling asleep about 30 minutes in but neither of us wanted to bring it up in case the other was enjoying it! The acting was good but none of the characters were likable so it was difficult to get involved in the story. Just bland overall.

I've signed up for Sockapalooza Four, but I've not heard anything about it and haven't been able to log in and find out who I'll be making socks for. There is a blog, but I've not recieved the invite to it, and I've tried several times to log in and check my info, find my pal, etc, without success. It's pretty frustrating but I know I'm in since I found myself in the participants list! There are over 1000 of us, so I'm sure getting all the technical stuff sorted out is quite a pain, so I'm going to be patient. After all, the socks don't need to be done until August 2nd, so there's really no rush!