Another Winner

Jennifer and Mamma weighed in with their answers to the question: Which Olympic athlete did I attend the same high school as? And I have to say that they've been paying attention. Mamma answered Tonya Harding, which is a very good guess since Tonya went to high school in Portland. But Jennifer was correct when she said Steve Prefontaine, noting that he was also an Oregon boy. We were born in the same city of Coos Bay, Oregon, and we both graduated from Marshfield High School, though more than 20 years apart. My sister remembers him, but I was too young to recall anything. The city of Coos Bay still honors him by holding the annual Prefontaine run, which is the route he used to run in high school.

So congratulations to Jennifer. I do have your address handy, so I will ship this yummy Debbie Bliss Cotton Cashmere out to you immediately.

I'm still waiting to hear from Trek so I can send her the Debbie Bliss Cotton Angora yarn for answering my first question correctly. As soon as I get your mailing address, I will send it on its way.

Now I would like to direct your attention to my friend Chrissy's new knitting design website. (Click on the button to visit the website). I think it turned out beautifully. She has a few patterns for sale, one of which I test knit for and can now show you here. This is the Passport Pouch, knit with one skein of Louet Sales Euroflax. As soon as it was finished, it was snatched up by Girlie for her own purposes. It was really fun to knit. Chrissy will be adding more patterns as time allows. Well done, girlfriend!

Finally, another sock warrior goes down.

But it's not me!

Last night I finished the second pair of Socks of Doom for my next target. You remember that I was sent an unfinished portion of a foot started by Mamie using the toe up method. I agonized over how to proceed. What I decided to do was to put that portion aside and start knitting the second sock from the top down. My thinking was that if I was elminated before finishing, I could send the toe-up portion to my assassin to finish. But after finishing the first sock without receiving a package, I had to address the toe-up dilemma.

My favorite local yarn store, Molehill Farm, has a wonderful owner named Cheryl who knows how to knit anything. I took the unfinished sock to her store this week only to find out that she was sick and wouldn't be in. I looked up some tutorials on knitting from the toe-up that some of you generously provided links for, but couldn't figure out a way to merge this pattern with what was written. I thought I might be able to knit down to where the leg would join with the foot and graft the two pieces together. That was my plan until I attended the Tigard Knitting Guild meeting last night, where Nancy Bush was scheduled to speak. As fate would have it, she sat at my table, right next to me. She remembered me from last weekend's classes and I asked her opinion on the situation. She said due to the ribbing, grafting the two pieces together would be GRIM. She said if it was her, she would just knit a complete sock in the time it would take to figure out how to connect the two pieces.

How could I not listen to sock advice from Nancy Bush, I ask you? She of the Folk Socks and Knitting on the Road fame? So last night I finished knitting the entire second sock.Don't you just love those colors? These were hard to let go.

As an added bonus, since I had to knit a complete pair of socks from scratch, this gives me my October credit for Sock a Month 2. Can't beat that!

I am in no way disregarding Mamie's efforts in the Sock Wars. I appreciate every stitch that she put in to her unfinished sock. If I could have found any way to use that portion, you better believe that I would have, in a heartbeat. What I have done is to set her unfinished sock aside for a time when I can learn to knit socks from the toe up so her efforts will not be in vain.

I have emailed my new target to let her know that her socks of doom will be mailed today. I've asked her for any information that she might have on who my next target should be. At this point I don't know if I will be waiting for another pair of unfinished socks to complete, or exactly where I stand. Hopefully she can clear this up a bit for me.

So, exactly four weeks into the competition, I'm still alive and kicking. Hooray!