Mad skills and Shakespeare thrills

Last night at Monday night Knitting Circle I successfully mastered a new and amazing technique: knitting in the round on two circular needles. The pattern I'm going to use for my first ever socks calls for this technique and while many people told me to just knit them on DPNs, I wanted to at least try learning this method first because I like to follow the instructions as much as possible in the hope that doing so will help eliminate possible errors. Incidentally, these socks are called 'The Happiness Socks' and to me may also become known as 'The Break Up Socks', because by the time I finish these babies I hope to feel much much better than I do at the moment!

So, because Anita used this method for her first hand warmer I emailed her all the way over in the land of Eng, asking if she learned how to do it on the internet. Of course she did! She sent me the link to this video tutorial. Because I was going to start these at Monday night Knitting Circle and wouldn't be able to sit in front of a computer at the time, I also found two written tutorials and printed them out, these can be found here and here. But, naturally, what did I do? Forgot to take my pattern and the written tutorials with me to Monday night Knitting Circle. So I had to rely on my memory and, in part, it didn't let me down!

Sorry, the photos are terrible, I was sitting in bad lighting

I managed to remember what I'd seen and read in the tutorials and only had to rip it out once before I got it right! It's actually very very simple. What wasn't so simple was remembering how many stitches to cast on. I thought it was 30. It soon became apparent that that would be the number of stitches you'd need to cast on if knitting socks for a tiny child. But I carried on anyway to keep practicing and then when I got home I checked the pattern and it's 60. I must have been thinking of the number of stitches you divide between each circular needle once you've cast the 60 on. Anyway, it was good practice and while knitting I continued to amuse myself with the thought that it could look to an outsider like I was knitting a condom. I don't know why I thought that but I did.

So tonight, I'm going to rip my tiny child socks/condom out (bad word combo right there) and start my REAL socks. Even though double what I was knitting last night still doesn't seem like it would be big enough to fit me, the pattern says the socks are 'ladies medium' so I will have faith that 'medium' in the country this pattern was written doesn't actually mean 'midget'. And I need to knit the first one and a half inches in rib so that will surely make them bigger as well?

Also, as I left my house to go to knitting I checked the mailbox and found this:


A postcard from Anita that she got at Shakespeare's Globe. Apparently she went to 'the most bloody production of Macbeth ever!' on my birthday in which 'Macbeth was a babe'. Alex, Anita, and I all went to Shakespeare's Globe together back in the good old days of 2005 as part of the Shakespeare Globe Centre New Zealand's Young Shakespeare Company. It was pretty cool to say the least, I can't wait to go back there one day - and not just because the actors in the Shakespeare's Globe productions tend to be of the good looking as well as talented variety.

And now, I have a date with some socks!