Where'd the time go?

I really appreciate all the support on my scarf slogalong, you guys. I feel really guilty to have to report that I barely looked at it this week. I've been grudging on it. I just read the comments and I feel bolstered enough to face it this weekend. We'll have my nephews up and an easy knit will come in handy.

In my defense, I have a few elephants in the room these days. As time passes the intensity of feelings they engender fade, but they are still there all the same. And my knitting? It's a bit all over the place and that makes for poor posting fodder. Tack on to this afternoons too cloudy for picture taking and my blogging inspiration evaporates.

In all the muck though, I've been making headway on my next pair of gift socks, which I cast on last Sunday night. It was slow going at first because it lacks the one thing that motivates me in knitting - visual stimulation.


On the one hand, this yarn is fabulous to work with. It has a great feel and crisp stitch definition. It's the same yarn I used for my Cornucopia socks, Aruacania Ranco. The colorway? Not so much. It's a bit dull for my sensibilities, but requisite for the project. These are for a man, and for a man whose tastes I am almost 100% ignorant of. They're sort of a surprise gift so I went with a highly conservative colorway, as well as a basic sock pattern.

A little bored with the stockinette, but fearful of anything with too much flourish, I settled on a K3P1 rib. I think it's just the ticket for this project without a name. (My naming inspiration is decidedly feminine, which these socks are not.)


Once I got past the ribbing math, it's been smooth sailing. I love the subtle pooling of this knit.

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My husband and I are not the romantic types, with me being much less romantic than he is. We're definitely more sentimental, than romantic. I've kept clothing I purchased for him at the start of our relationship which has since lost it's wearability. I keep them in a box full of fabric meant to make a family quilt (one of those someday projects). Flowers and lovey dovey stuff really isn't our thing.

With that said, I got a little itch yesterday and so I scratched it. When I was a tween, my sister and I spent a great deal of our spare weekend time at our local drug and stationary store. We collected cards and we coveted all the cool stuff they had on hand, like the fabulousness that was Le Pen. In the month following Christmas the ostentatous Valentines Day display came out and so we spent many an afternoon ogling at the three foot high chocolate heart boxes with a longing so intense, I can still feel it now across the span of some 28 or so years.

It's only been in the past five years that we've been comfortable enough to not think twice about buying freakishly large, heart-shaped, chocolate boxes for St. Valentine's Day, along with everything else I spent so much time coveting as a kid. I'm still in the phase where I muse over how the vastness of my desires are waning as my ability to obtain them wax.

I often marvel at all the tacky, nonsensical stuff I just couldn't live without at age 12 (and well beyond). Contemplating my not-so-romantic response to another Valentine's day, I found myself thinking about those large chocolate hearts. I was struck with a desire to get the largest one I could find for hubby. He would appreciate it, and I could satisfy the longings of a 12 year old girl.

Turns out my local CVS didn't sell the three foot variety, but I didn't leave empty handed. Hubby appreciated my one and a half footer in all its ironic glory. Right after the photoshoot with hubby and the heart, he unwittingly mimicked that famous Say Anything pose and so of course I forced him to do it again and again with the hope of recapturing that sponteneity. Here's the best we could do:


Happy Friday everyone. On a side note, does anyone know what's up with Blogger's spell check? It hasn't been working for me for weeks and weeks now. Is it just me?