Stephanie's Socks

I finally finished Steph's socks!  Just in time for the event that they were intended to celebrate.    

We work together, and I enjoy sending odd things through inter-office envelopes.  So I inter-officed her present to her.  The next thing I see is Steph, coming down the hall towards me, 'modeling' the socks!

I'm pretty happy with how they worked out.  My own split rib pattern in Knit Pick's Essential Peacock Multi.  I was a little annoyed that the yarn striped, Knit Picks sells a striping yarn, so you'd think that the 'multi' wouldn't stripe... anyway, they came out really well.  

10 Miles!!!

Sandy and I ran 10 miles this morning!  10 miles!  I never could have done it without her, best running buddy ever.  

Our race started next to Soldier Field, ran down to Hyde Park (51st street or so) and back up to the field.  The finish line was on the 50 yard line of the field.  They had us on the JumboTron as we crossed the line.  Then they gave us water and medals.  

We had a tasty brunch to celebrate, then I took a nap (and some ibuprofen).  

Not Knitting

I got to go to the Obama Victory Rally!


The first of three checkpoints.


The second.



And the third (the white tent in the top left corner of the photo), where they had the metal detectors.



Entering the park.



The Jumbotron, our friend, made Obama bigger for us. He was about 3" tall viewed from where we ended up.



The acceptance speech!

Crowd members.

Stephanie (taken with my iPhone), who let me be her date since I didn't get my own ticket.

Andre, who we ran into partway through the night.

And me, with the Jumbotron acceptance speech in the background.

People taking pictures of the crowd leaving.

The crowd leaving.

A long street shot of the mass exodus.

Stephanie and I headed right overafter work. We tried to stake out a space where several groups of friends could converge. Unfortunately, due to the sectioning of the field and cell network overload, none of our groups made it too us. We were in the metal detector screened section and, as Andre put it, our friends were in the section of the field where people might have guns. We ran into Andre by accident, he had become separated from his companions as well.

The evening was awesome. Several hours of election coverage, chatting with strangers, eating overpriced pizza (I later found out that it was $1 per slice less in the "people might have guns" section) and debating if CNN projections were bound to break our hearts.

I can't describe exactly how I felt when he won. When they first projected the win I was a little nauseous, feeling like it was too good to be true. I didn't relax until McCain gave his concession speech. It was a really really powerful feeling to be standing in a field with tens of thousands of people listening to Obama speak. It seemed like no one wanted to leave when it was all over. Once the adrenaline wore off a few days of worry and sleeplessness caught up to me. I crashed on the train ride home.

And the Winner Is...

Not this one!

This is the drunken cable border with a pie crust cable center panel.  It still looks bunchy and sloppy to me.  I am not a fan.  

Next I tried a ribbed cable, something I'd seen in the Vogue Stitchionary but had never tried.  A commercial sweater that I have, with an oversized cable, utilizes this technique.  It also employs other cheater methods to give the appearance of a cable where there isn't one though, so I wasn't sold on the idea.  

I used the idea of the drunken cable, but instead of crossing 9 over 9, I crossed 9 ribbed over 9 ribbed.  It looks much much nicer.  The cables lay relatively flat and seem pretty defined.  

So the winner is this one.  

I tried different numbers of rows between the cables.  I think this distance works the best.  

And I think I will have to use three columns across instead of two.  

I'm currently working out how I want to make the increases/decreases for the sleeves.  I think I'm going to knit this from the top down.  I'm going to knit one more swatch to see how wide three repeats of the cable will be and to make sure I like how it looks worked upside down.  

I'm so close!

Saturday!

That's right, we went to Yarn Con.

After I noted that the lady at the door had failed to complete my "x", Josh pointed out that it was most likely intended to be a "y". As he put it, "Y, for yarn."

The event was a little underwhelming. Especially after the Stitches marketplace. I didn't buy anything. I saw some fiber and yarn that I liked, but not anything that really struck me. More yarn money for another day I guess. They gave us nifty little yarn con pins, Josh said he wasn't going to wear his, go figure. I'm glad I went. If I decide to go again I'll probably try to take a more yarn centric companion.