Ugly Knitting

You sensitive types might want to turn your heads. What you are about to see isn't pretty. I give you, the first completed stems sock:

Arrrrrrrrggghhhhh! The pooling is horrid! I didn't change needles so my gauge must have gone wonky after completing the gusset. I spent the entire instep trying to get it to stripe again but it just...wouldn't....budge.

SO there I was, thinking I was knitting the most beautiful sock in creation, and I come up with complete crap. I don't know what I'm going to do with it. I'll certainly finish the second sock, if only to feed my curiosity. Who knows what it will look like. Can it get any worse?

Onward. The mailman brought two boxes from BMFA yesterday. The first was the sock club kit. No pictures here--you can look for it on someone else's blog. It's mmmmm, interesting. I'll knit this one, and save my reservations until it's finished.

The second box was an order I placed a few weeks ago. From left to right:

Backstabber, Xmas Rock, Hollyday, Falcon's Eye, Lunasea, Ms LaRock, and Lucy in the Sky. Love them all.

Also in the box was:

It's mmmmm, interesting. I believe it was the Harlot that said something like "Just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you SHOULD". And I wholeheartedly agree with her. I flipped through the pages thinking "Now why would you want to go and do something like that?" A lot of my reservations come from the designs being so asymmetrical. Which is fine. But my brain does NOT like asymmetrical. I would be silently screaming "adjust! it's twisting! Center it!" and that just won't work with this book. For those of you who like to challenge yourself, and can completely trust yourself in the instructions, you're going to love love love this book. Me? I'm not totally writing it off. I'm going to put it aside until the dead of winter when I can give it my complete attention. Maybe I'll try one. Maybe.

I had to rearrange my stash basket yesterday. I traded a skein through Ravelry, and the one I was looking for was way on the bottom of course. So I emptied it, and put everything back in a way where I can see more of the skeins. There's more underneath this top layer. There's also 12 skeins of Wollmeise in a plastic bag to the right. And about 27 skeins of STR hiding in the coffee table.

But it sure looks nice, doesn't it?