Sock Pal Socks and Mystery Stole Pix

So, here are some photos at last, only slightly out of date.

First, an action shot of me working on my sock pal's first sock last weekend in Lake Placid (at a Chinese restaurant with quite possibly the slowest-for-no-apparent-reason service I've every experienced... but they were very nice, I had my sock, and the food was yummy when it did arrive).

And then an in-progress shot of the same sock from the following day, stuffed with a towel to show the Monkey-ness.

As nearly everyone who knits this pattern has noticed, it's incredibly addictive to knit--this is my second pair, and while I was working on them I was thinking about making the pair I'm working on now Monkeys too (I didn't, but it was close). I'm done with the pair for my pal, but I'm not quite sure how I'm going to take pictures of them, since her feet are a little bit smaller than mine (and smaller than my sock blockers).

In other news, here's chart A, more or less, of the Mystery Stole (that's about 50 rows). I took this picture over the weekend, because I was worried again that I didn't like it after all. I liked the swatch, remember, but then once I knit a bit of the actual design, I got to worrying (again) that the stitches near the yarn overs still looked funny with smaller needles. Rather than ripping, I figured I should block it and think some more (focusing on the disastrous increase in yarn mileage which would result from buying more lace yarn helped me be patient).

But, remember that I was staying in a hotel, so I didn't have most of my knitting supplies. First I tried to block it by just getting wet, but then it wasn't staying flat without pins, so I ran some metal knitting needles through the eyelets along the edges and used them to spread it out while my mom ironed it (gently, through a dry washcloth). After it was dry, I stared at it some more, and decided I was being too critical, and that I liked it after all. Maybe.

In any case, I've knit a few more rows since this picture was taken, and--barring disaster--I should be done with clue 1 in plenty of time for clue 2.