One Baby Sock Done

The minute I finished posting last time, I realized I hadn't shared the story of the winding of the yarn Creamy into a center pull ball. Creamy is delightfully soft for something made of milk, but it's also very fine. It's possibly finer than most other yarns I've ever worked with as I've never worked with lace weight yarn yet. My husband had just finished winding a skein of my Blue Sky Organic cotton yarn into a skein, and it was about one in the morning. We were both watching some cooking show on TIVO and I asked him if he'd mind winding the skein of Creamy in the morning for me. He shrugged, put on another cooking show, and started to wind it then, which made me happy since I knew I could get a gauge swatch almost immediately then.

As a side note, my husband loves to wind yarn into center pull balls for some reason. I've asked him if he secretly wants to become a knitter and he admits that he'd love to knit, but he's afraid we'd become competitive at it. This is a legitimate fear, since I am competitive and he is also.

He started out the skein of Creamy fairly slow, taking two or three times to get a good start to the center pull ball. I had forgotten to give him the advice to really wind the yarn around your fingers before moving on to the next step when you're winding sock yarn or smaller. However, he got moving, while I was knitting on my baby blanket. I was half watching him wind yarn and half watching the cooking show, when I heard a "Uh..." Out of the corner of my eyes, I noticed that he had dropped the hank of yarn from his knees and it was simply laying in a big pile on the floor. I cursed silently to myself, but tried not to panic, picking it up as best possible to avoid tangles. Too late! It took us a three hours of combined effort to fix that mess. We picked apart the knots as best possible often moving the yarn balls on EACH end we had started around each other and the mass of yarn. It was miserable. My husband kept apologizing, while I kept comforting him and offering to do the fix myself. I will probably let him wind sock yarn in the future, simply because I feel that once you've done this (and I've done the same thing with sock yarn) you learn a lesson about being careful with winding yarn.

Anyway, I'm now officially done one and a half Better than Baby Booties. I'm flying through them so quickly, I've been wondering if I should start the socks for Helen when I finish, or if I should start my winter hat. I am thinking that I might even cross-stitch a tiny bit or start my Slytherin scarf for myself. I wasn't expecting to have so much time before this baby showed up as YESTERDAY was my due date. Some quick notes on the baby sock pattern:

• The particular pattern I'm doing is the Cable Rib pattern.
  
  
• I disliked the ridge of stitches at the toe, so I kitchener stitched the whole thing closed instead for a more seamless finish.
  
  
• The pattern is slightly confusing. Around the cable cable that comes down the foot, you see at one point p1, work 2 stitches in cable pattern, p1, k16, p1, work 2 stitches in cable pattern, knit to end. Why does one cable pattern have purls on both sides and the other has a purl only on one side? I couldn't fathom this. I also couldn't figure out where they wanted me to place my damn cables exactly. Finally, after a lot of reading that line and wondering WTF they wanted me to do, I made my own decisions about purling and cable placement. On the first one, I work 2 stitches in cable pattern, p1, k16, p1, work 2 stitches and knit the rest. On the second one, I decided I wanted a little more pop around my cable and purled on both sides of it. This means that my baby will not have socks that exactly match.
  
  
• As I finished the first sock, I was so proud and so in love with its cuteness. I seamed in all the ends and stared at it happily. While staring at it, I noticed that one stitch in one of the cables was slowly, but surely, winding it's way up the sock. I panicked and shoved one of the needles into it while I tried to figure out where the hell I went wrong and what I'd do. I managed to pull the stitch back up to the toe area, put a piece of the yarn through it, and tied it into place, then seamed THAT piece of yarn into the rest of the sock. That's right, folks, I have no pride. I tied a knot into my knitting.
  

That's all for now. If you don't hear from me soon, I'm busy having a baby.