You Learn Something New Every Day

...like the fact that while I've been doing short-row heels since January, I apparently do them wrong. Or at the very least, half-assed.

This is likely because back in January when I was working on my second pair of socks using the short row heel, I was at my best friend Amanda's house in Pickering for New Years and had forgotten to bring the book I had with instructions for short-row heels, so I just did it from my (faulty) memory. The 6 litres of Pepsi I'd drank that weekend during our 24 Season 1 marathon (and, for that matter, the marathon itself, no matter that I'd seen the season before) may have had something to do with it too. It seemed to work and looked fairly good, if a little messier than other people's short-row heels, so I've done it that way since.

However, thanks to the tutorial on Cosmicpluto Knits last week, I discovered that I a) have been wrapping my stitches half-assedly (I would slip the stitch to be wrapped, then bring the yarn to the front, slip back and then bring the yarn between the stitches ready to work the next stitch) and b) have been doing the second half of the heel half-assedly, as I wasn't double-wrapping stitches. I'm already past the heel on both the Boring Socks of Doom, so I can't do the non-half-assed version any time soon, but will have to try it with my next pair and see what it looks like.

Speaking of the Boring Socks of Doom, I may be cursing myself here, but they seem to be almost done. I think if I can get another inch or two on the cuff of both of them, I can call it quits, and Thank God for it. Then I can cast on something more interesting, in time to take with me as travel knitting for th Creative Sewing and Needlework Festival this weekend.

Speaking of CSNF (I'll be there on Sunday, thanks to work scheduling, and dammit, there better be Koigu and Trekking left when I get there!), dammit is there some kind of T-pin embargo on this city or something? I need T-pins so I can block out the lacy sampler scarf, which only has about 6 or 7 inches of edging to go (I'll be able to finish that tonight, really, as each edging repeat is about 1 inch long and it's a pretty quick knit). I want to wear the scarf to CSNF this weekend.

But could I find T-pins in the THREE stores I tried? No! Fabricland? Out. Wal-Mart? Out. Husquvaarna (sic?) sewing store near work? Out. And with work I don't have time to go looking for them elsewhere in town until Saturday afternoon, by which time it'll be about 16 hours before I want to wear the damn thing. I won't even have time to hop off the bus near the yarn store tomorrow, run in, grab them (if they have them in the first place) and get out to the bus, as I have to commute from one branch to another on my lunch hour. If I got up very early on Friday, I could *maybe* have time to haul ass out to the other Wal-Mart in town, but I would then be very grumpy the rest of the day because from now until the evening of Sunday, I'm going to need all the sleep I can get.

Considering the scarf is made of laceweight yarn and very open and airy, there's a chance it might be dry before I need it, but it's cutting it awfully close. Arrgh.

I have bunch of photos to post, but they'll have to wait for next time as they're at home and I'm at work with about 5 minutes to go before I have to be on duty. So next time: photos, I promise! Hopefully I'll get them up before Sunday as I'd like to do some photoblogging about my trip into T.O. (aka "Yarnapalooza 2006") when I get back. But considering my track reocrd, no promises.