Started something new

It's supposed to be something like 103 degrees out today (I think yesterday we officially hit 100 for the first time this year). Tomorrow it's supposed to be 94. (We're supposed to get a cool front tonight. It's kind of overcast, actually, right now, which suggests there is a change coming). So tomorrow is going to be my fieldwork day.

I am in for a little while; originally a student who had car trouble and missed the exam was going to come in and take it this morning but she called - she can't get the loan of the car she was "promised" so she will have to do it Monday. (But I have another person, who missed a quiz without prior notice, who e-mailed me wanting to make it up. I'm tempted to say no because officially the syllabus requires prior notice for quiz make-ups. And I don't want to say "Okay, come in" because that usually means an "Okay, I'll be there at 3" response)

And I don't plan on being in here very long - I want to do the first two soil samples and mmmmmaybe a bag of bee samples, but then I am going to the quilt show.

And maybe after I go there, I will go antiquing in Denison. I haven't decided. But I know I need some time out, and some time out doing something other than trying to grab the food I need for next week while reading labels/negotiating around the people blocking the aisles or having an argument in the middle of the aisle or talking with someone in the middle of the aisle.

Part of it is that summer classes are LONG. Two days a week, I am in class for about 7 1/2 hours. And yes, the lab, at least the Thursday lab, runs that long EVERY WEEK. I'm trucking out of there at 5:30 pm, and there are few places deader than a college campus at 5:30 pm on the "Friday" of a summer. (We have four day weeks in the summer, so Thursdays are our Fridays). Being in class for 7 1/2 hours in a day is exhausting. I know some of you won't believe that (there's a whole segment of the population who believes professors are lazy bums who only work for the fourteen or so hours a week they're actually in the classroom, but I'm gonna say "Ain't necessarily so"). Part of it is just being "on" and being prepared to interact with people (difficult for deep introverts like me), part of it is just the attention thing, making sure people aren't cross-contaminating the solutions (I had someone get upset with me yesterday because I stopped her from doing just that), making sure everyone is understanding what they're doing, answering questions, etc. And it doesn't help that the A/C in that room has mostly been broken for three weeks. We have fans, but they don't help much. So summer classes are just tiring, and then there's also the grading, the exam-writing, the various paperwork things, the keeping all the baby ducks in a row.....and trying to do research on top of it. And trying to manage a household. (I'm getting twitchy about "But what if someone comes over" which means it's time to clean house. I'm tentatively scheduling that for Independence Day).

But I did start a new project. (And I might start a couple more, I don't know. Having something new to start on does help with the summer doldrums)

I started a pair of toe-up socks.

I know, right? I'm a hard-core cuff-down sock knitter, even trying to "invert" some of the stitch patterns I want to do so they will work in a cuff-down sock. Part of it was "the typical hourglass heel on toe-up socks doesn't fit me well." Part of it was "I hate the figure-8 cast on (which you use for toes) far more than I hate Kitchener stitching them at the end" (Some toe-up socknitters do it to avoid Kitchenering). Part of it was "This is how I learned to do it, so I'll keep doing it this way."

But it's good to try doing things different ways. I had looked at Veronique Avery's toe-up socks pattern in "Knitting 24/7" and even set aside yarn for them. These socks are toe-up, but they use a provisional cast on (which you later unpick and then Kitchener stitch the toes) and they have a heel that is more like a traditional sock - a gusset and flap. (Avery points out that the flap is thicker - it has slipped stitches, like a cuff-down heel flap - than typical toe-up socks). So two of my big issues with toe-up socks (the badly-fitting heel, and the icky cast-on) are resolved in this pattern.

But anyway, I set the yarn aside and then got involved with other things and the yarn got buried in one of my storage containers. I found it again when I sorted my yarn to transfer it to the storage bags....so I took it out and once I finished the Carousel socks, I decided to start these.

It's fun. I like doing something I've done many times before in a different way. I used a crochet chain cast on as the provisional cast on (Take that, knitters who "will never touch" a crochet hook - you've closed yourself out of one of the handiest forms of a provisional cast-on) and set off on them. I've already got the toe increases done. It'll be interesting to see how the sock emerges.

These are 72-stitch socks, knit on size 0 needles. I don't normally use that size; ordinarily I use size 1s and do a total of 64 stitches, but I decided to follow the pattern for the first go, but now I see how I could go back and re-write the pattern to work with 64 stitches.

And there are a couple of advantages to knitting toe-up socks. First, if you're unsure about yarn amounts, especially if you're using yarn that comes in a 50-g put-up, you can just knit until you get bored with the cuff or until you're almost out of yarn, and then bind off - no worrying "Will I have enough to finish the toe?" because you've already done it. (I worried a bit with the Carousel socks, but about midway through the foot I realized I was good - there are 384 yards to a skein of the Felix, which is a bit less than what I'm used to with 100 g skeins). And also, there are some stitch patterns, especially some lace patterns, that look wonky knit upside-down, which is how you'd need to do them in cuff-down socks. (I can also see plugging a stitch pattern into this sock "blank" and making toe-up patterned socks)

Oh, I'll continue to do cuff-down socks, and probably mostly will stick to those. But it's nice to have another string to your bow, and it does break the "meh, another 'boring' pair of plain socks" thing to do them the reverse of how you normally do.