BOO!

I was quietly knitting away on my socks for a couple hours this morning, and when I looked up, I noticed THE SUN WAS SHINING! Oh my gosh, it's been well over a week of non-stop gloom mixed with pouring rain, and I was so excited to see SUN! I threw open my front door to enjoy the rays, and laughed when I saw this little guy on my neighbor's porch. Isn't he cute?

Speaking of socks...last night I turned the heel on both socks, one at a time, but both of them still on the same needle. Then, believe me when I tell you I have NO IDEA what I did next to get the gussets going and the socks back on the needle the way they were supposed to be. My plan was to take notes on how I did it, but I got so screwed up (and frustrated!) that I just did whatever it took to get myself untangled. I ended up having to enlist the help of 3 double point needles to rearrange the stitches back in the right order, but finally I did it, and around and around I started going again. I have just finished the gusset decreases and am back to my original number of stitches, so on to the toes I go.

Of course, after I went through all that, THEN I decided to go online and do a search in the magic loop yahoo group messages and found something that probably would have been very helpful to me if I had looked at it FIRST! I am going to print it out and hopefully my next pair will go a little easier. I gave serious thought to just finishing them up separately, but I like the idea of them both being done at the same time. I was hoping I could do these socks in a week, and I started them last Monday evening. It doesn't look like it's going to happen, but it's going to be close. MAYBE if I knit all day........

Sadly, I am having flashbacks to my first sock (my "unfinished throw it in a basket in frustration don't want to knit socks I hate socks socks are stupid give it to my sister maybe she'll knit me some socks" sock)....it seems like I am knitting and knitting and knitting and making so little progress. I need to get used to these tiny little stitches, especially after working on Kim's scarf yesterday on size 35 needles :-)
I also feel like, once again, these socks are going to be too big. I did a gauge swatch, I measured my foot carefully, I went down to size 2 after using size 3 the last time (using the same amount of stitches) but still they seem to be huge.
Jane told me that I can actually try to shrink them a bit even though they are superwash wool. I'm hoping that's true, because if they don't fit after all this knittin' I'm going to cry :-(