I am not dead yet

Despite the threat of my imminent death, I am not dead yet* and my socks are threatening their victim from the official Sock Wars blog, which is just incredibly cool!



* - I will probably have that Spamalot song stuck in my head for the rest of the day now, though!

I am not dead yet
I can dance and I can sing
I am not dead yet
I can do the Highland Fling

I am not dead yet
No need to go to bed
No need to call the doctor
Cause I'm not yet dead.

Crossfire

Yesterday I received an email warning me of my imminent Sock Wars death. Fortunately, the weapons of death were only just then being delivered to the Post Office and I had my own weapon socks knit to just before the toe. My only goal for Sock Wars was to take someone out before I was assassinated and it looks like I'll be able to do that, but it didn't come without a price.

Having stopped knitting the night before just prior to the toe decreases I thought I would be in decent shape. Unfortunately, I misread the pattern when I jumped in to finish them quickly. Although I kept double-checking for the remaining length stopping point, I missed that there were two directions before decreasing for the toe:

Work even-30 instep sts in patt and 34 sole sts in St st - until... aprox 2.5" less than desired length...

then later:

Work in St st until foot measures... approx 2" less than desired length.

Since I'm used to patterns that only have one step near the end, I somehow missed that there were two and followed the first until 2" from the end. Then, fearing a misfire if I left it in the incorrect state, I ripped back to the 2.5" remaining point and started over. And then I was up until 1 AM before I finally finished the toes. Not so quickly after all.

But now they're done (to my satisfaction at least). And if there are any mistakes remaining that are worthy of a misfire they'll be a problem for my assassin and not me. So, it worked out perfectly -- I was killed quickly, but my efforts to knit more quickly than usual weren't wasted because I'll still get to fire my weapon socks before I'm hit AND I'll be dead before I head out of town next week so that I can relax on my vacation without thinking about socks of doom. Ah, the sweet release of sock death.

But to my fellow ludistitchers, may you knit with superhuman speed and may your assassins be slow and hampered by many mistakes so that you live to be the Last Knitter Standing!

Yummy!

This is Nell, a Miss Babs Yummy Superwash Sock & Baby Yarn. I was unable to resist it as part of a Woolgirl sale.

Things are a little too busy right now, but someday I must find a good pattern to show this yarn off and find out what the colors will do when knit into a sock. I've worked with a lot of Opal yarns and others that didn't seem to have quite as much twist as the yummy here, so I'm looking forward to the possibility of extra squooshiness. Splurgey goodness!

Knitting With Flare... Sort of

My finger is healing - it isn't swollen anymore and I can type with it now. The blood blisters have hardened into something like scabs under the skin, but are still tender if I apply pressure to them, like when pinching a knitting needle between my thumb and index finger. So, I've been slowly working up to a new style of knitting - sort of like the people who hold their champagne glasses with their pinkie straight out I now hold my left knitting needle between my thumb and middle finger with my index finger pointed up and out of the way. It's a form of flare... or, you know, mostly silly looking. But it works well enough without too much hand cramping for light projects, like socks.

So I cast on some fun socks for Xandermommy. Since the yarn that I chose for her socks came with fewer yards than a lot of sock yarn, I had already decided to do them toe-up to make sure they would be the same. And, based on a small test swatch to test out my new "flare grip", I found that knitting on circulars seemed kinder to my hand. Having already tried the 2 on 2 method, I decided it was time to give Magic Loop a try, too. And so my first 2 at a time Magic Loop, toe-up socks were born.

Technically I should probably use a longer circular needle when doing 2 socks at a time and size 3 needles may have been a bit large for the yarn, but the pattern is stretchy and forgiving and they seem to be the right size anyway. And now she gets seamless toes and short row heels, which I still love doing. I wasn't quite on the ball, though, so pictures will follow in a future post.

Sidelined

It happens eventually to everyone who swings a hammer. Finger, meet hammer... WHAM!!

We've been spending the last couple of nice weekends working on the new deck and there are always some scrapes and bruises, but Saturday I had a really misplaced swing of the hammer. I have to say the photo doesn't necessarily do justice to the swelling and underlying blue tinge. But, surprisingly, other than the initial hopping around and the expected throbbing, it hasn't been too painful since I've mostly avoided even attempting to use that finger since... and a lot of it has been pretty numb thanks to the swelling. I'm also incredibly thankful that I just clobbered the meaty part of the tip and didn't give myself a blackened fingernail as that would have been much more painful.

Of course, not using an index finger means my typing is slow and sloppy. And I didn't even attempt to hold my knitting needles until last night, which also didn't go so well. Too painful to even think about holding a needle with that finger and gripping with my thumb and middle finger causes some interesting hand cramps pretty quickly. I made it across one row and then called it quits.

So I think my first Sock Wars attempt is likely to be a suicide mission. I've debated contacting the organizer to have myself removed from the competition, but I haven't done it yet. After 3 days my finger is still swollen, but parts of it have more feeling now and the start of the war is still a little over a week away. I guess I probably have a day or two left to bow out, so we'll see. But, suffice it to say, you won't be seeing much of anything flying off of my needles for a bit while this heals.

Misplaced Excitement

Between work and fun in the next few weeks, I have quite a bit of travel coming up. This week, I'm heading to NYC for a conference for work. I was very excited to get the invitation from my company (a bit flattering), and while I do look forward to seeing what the event is all about the most exciting bit is...the knit kit! I haven't had a chance to try it out yet. Based on my prior posts about the knit knack drama I am prone to because of my general clumsiness on airplanes, you will understand that this will be good for me.

It always seems like if I'm told to remain seated for a couple hours (ie - the Detroit to NYC leg of the trip) that I should take advantage of the time to use something pattern-centric. But by the time I get the pattern, stitch counter, stitch markers, etc. out things get a little crowded. I think the knit kit is going to change that for me.

The question then becomes...what shall I work on? The socks that I meant to be for ludistitcher have turned out to be, as xandermommy put it "huge" (slouchy on me, I have bigger feet than ludistitcher). So, I am thinking that I could start additional socks in her size and then let her have the not-yet-on-the-needles pair (which presumably fits) and she could also have the big ones for around the house socks. This opens up the opportunity for something pattern-ish. I'm going to browse ravelry tonight to seek inspiration. I would like to finish both pairs before the Sock Wars battle begins. Feel free to insert laughter or comments of "oh, sariebeth, you will never finish two pairs of socks in two weeks!" here. Optimism, people!

Customer Service Matters

I've ordered yarn online with varying success. There have been highs, like the orders from KnitPicks and Woolgirl that were simple and uneventful (and with fun little extras in the case of Woolgirl). There have also been lows, like the order from an obviously small, independent dyer that ended up taking about 5 weeks, had very little communication, and whose end result was yarn that didn't look at all like I expected. And then there's the fun of lost packages.

In the beginning of April I placed an order with The Dizzy Sheep, who much like woot.com only offers a single deal per day. Having seen all of the hype on Ravelry about Malabrigo yarn, I decided I wanted to try making something with it when it showed up as a Dizzy Deal. The order went smoothly and seemed to ship incredibly fast and was even due to arrive on a day I had off work. Except it never actually arrived despite the USPS tracking that said it was delivered that day. And we didn't get any other mail that day either. After nearly a week of calling either our mail carrier or the postmaster once per day it was obvious that despite claims that the postmaster was working to track it down it was gone. Our mail carrier was not to blame as someone else was subbing in for her that week (and I do believe this because she's always been good about leaving notes for us and was the most helpful person I talked to in trying to track down the missing package). The postmaster who would supposedly call me never did. When I called him he told me the carrier who subbed in didn't remember anything about it but would have left it if we weren't home, even though I repeatedly told everyone involved that I was home all day. I never heard from him again.

So, even though I felt guilty asking because it wasn't their fault, I contacted Dizzy Sheep support to inquire if it was possible the package was insured and if so whether I could get a replacement. They kindly responded:

Although the package was not insured, our goal is to have satisfied customers. If the Postmaster does not find the package we can

• ship you replacement yarn - this would normally be the easiest solution, but unfortunately we currently do not have that particular color in stock. I will have to check on availability and delivery time.
• ship you an alternate color
  
• refund your purchase price

Let me know your preference.

I know it's good business practice, but I was still appreciative that they were willing to send me a replacement even though it was not their fault.

Now I know it seems like I'm babbling on and on without much of a story (I'll give you the babbling part regardless, somehow I just can't help it), but here's the thing: After very quickly receiving my replacement yarn in a new color I made sure to send them an appreciative email message letting them know that it had arrived and to say thank-you for going through the extra effort to replace it. Then, a couple days later I received a response with the following:

I'm glad to hear that the replacement yarn made it to you and Dizzy hopes you enjoy your project.

For being the first customer to have an order lost in shipment, Dizzy wants you to give you a personal discount code for 10% off any one deal through June 30, 2009.

Now that was just plain above and beyond (and quite the illustrious distinction to receive, hehe)! There are definitely some businesses out there that don't understand how something so simple can really affect how you feel about ordering from them. So I decided to share the story here, because many businesses look good when things go smoothly, but how they handle the hiccup situations can really affect whether you ever buy from them again. I know I definitely have a discount code that I'll be using soon.