A change of plans

God has plans for us. Sometimes those plans are similar to what we were thinking of, and other times, His plans are an abrupt change from ours. In the past week, I've seen changes of great and serious magnitude (not first-hand) and small magnitude(first and second-hand).

For the second-hand small, let me just say that Denise has a juicy blog post to write, and I won't spoil her surprise. And for first-hand small, there's the tooth my husband just broke off (actually, I suppose that's second-hand too, since it is his tooth and not mine), and the knitting project sitting in front of me.

I got a lovely skein of Mega Boot Stretch at The Yarnery earlier this summer to make mom a pair of Padded Footlets. The gauge was 7 sts/", and the suggested needle size was US 0. I laughed and reached for my 2s, since I always use 2s for socks. I generally get 8-9 spi as well, but I wasn't too concerned about that. The stitch count looked good for my usual, so I forged ahead.

After some charitable muttering about the instructions for working the padded sole, the sock and I made our peace and I knit away. When I got to the point pictured, I tried on said sock. It fit wonderfully ... but the padding only covered the middle half of my sole. And my feet are narrower than my mom's. So, it was out with the ruler. The gauge on the padded part was 10 spi. On 3.0 mm needles nonetheless (I switched to metal from my favorite wooden 2.75 mms, just in case) Some serious rethinking was obviously necessary. What needles would I use to get 7 spi with sock yarn? The gauge on the unpadded part was 8 1/2 spi ... my normal. Why was the padded part tighter? Very likely, the k1 sl1 pattern done for 2 out of every 3 rows. Did I want to re-engineer the footlet? (No. I don't like the padding. It's not circular.) Did I want to knit a normal sock, and knit some padding to go on later? (Not particularly.) How attached was my mom to the Padded Footlets? (Not very.)

And so, yesterday at our very first town Craft Group meeting (attended by just my daughter and I, standing outside of a locked community Room on a 90 degree, humid day) I frogged the footlet. Completely and unequivocally. (We had relocated the meeting back to our home at that time). And now, the Mega Boot Stretch, nee Padded Footlets, looks like the photo at right. Isn't it lovely? No nasty gauge issues at all, and all worked beautifully in the round. During a baseball game, no less.

The baseball season is over. We were around 500, with two ties. I got oodles of knitting done, but am not sorry to have the busy-ness pass. The garden is starting to kick in with produce -- namely, cucumbers. Here's a picture of our very first, surrounded by some Stash Socks for Small Feet. Isn't he cute? Filius is lobbhing for dill pickles, which I loathe (having teethed on the critters). But I have cukes, and I have dill .. so why not? I've also got some zucchini, so perhaps I'll try some zuke pickles as well. I'll make sweet pickles for me, too, of course.

In serious matters, I have discovered Dickens. (Or Thingyens, as one message board filter terms him.) I'd read A Tale of Two Cities decades ago, and remember nothing but the opening sentence. I'd slogged through David Copperfield, over a 7 year period, and found it nice, but nothing that made me want to revisit it any time soon. And then, I read Hard Times. (Saturday and Sunday, to be precise.) It was funny. It was deep. It had some thought-provoking ideas. And so I declared it to be our next Read-Aloud, and checked out Martin Chuzzlewit for my next book. So far, Filii are enjoying the book ... and they don't even know how it ends!

I have also discovered (Thanks, Molly!) that my Christening Gown came from Dale's Book #40, which has been discontinued. But ... thanks to a fabulous knitting network, I have the book on my desk this very instant, on loan. No such luck with the blanket. It can't have been from Treasures in Needlwork, since I have all six issues. Was it Threads? Was it Threadneedle Street? Shall I ever know? I will probably settle for recreating one from the original (my original, at least) and Sharon Milller's Heirloom Lace book.

And that means I need to order more yarn.