I’ve had a surprisingly productive couple of days which seem to have been spurred by something utterly ridiculous :)

Please totally disregard the incredibly disreputable sneakers in the above photo.  They need desperately to be replaced but until I can find a nearly identical pair (wide, comfortable toe, inch-thick sole) these will probably get worn until they fall apart.  Oh, and they also shouldn’t cast $60 or more…  It’s the laces to which I wish to draw your attention :) 

I was getting dressed the other day and there was another break in the original shoelace.  There have been a couple already and, lazy slob that I am, I just knotted the ends together and went on.  This time there wasn’t enough shoelace left to do that again and there were no spare laces around.  What?  And give up room for spare yarn?  Gracious, no! 

So I needed to come up with something and what I came up with was a crochet hook and some worsted weight cotton :)  I do have some white - quite a bit, in fact - but I thought the blue would be more fun and would go with my jeans, besides.  Using the old lace as a guide, I just crocheted a chain to the proper length, laced up the sneakers and bob’s your uncle!  Didn’t take any time, solved my problem and added a bit of amusing funk to what’s left of my sneakers :)  It also occurred to me that you could make several pairs of laces in different colors if you were so inclined…

This seemed to set off an urge to do some real work so on Sunday, I got out my aunt’s mitts.  I’ve been doing a little on them (a pattern repeat) every day - and that’s usually as much as my hands can take of making bobbles with fingering weight yarn on size 1 US (2.25 mm) needles.  And yet, once I got into the rhythm of things, I just kept going.  In fact I got about halfway through the thumb gusset before my hands crapped out.

I finished them yesterday, but not before the yarn totally messed with my head.  I got within about six rounds of finishing and came to the end of the first ball of yarn.  You may recall that the mitts were being made with sock yarn that I had dyed - yarn that came in the standard 50 gram balls.  So I went to the basket in which I usually keep current projects (and their necessary components) to get the second ball.

Not there.

I looked everywhere, in every bag, box, closet and cabinet - including re-checking the basket at least three times.  Eventually, I decided that since I had dyed this yarn at my father’s house, I must have lost that second ball somewhere between his place and mine.  With much pissing and moaning and gnashing of teeth, I took some Peer Gynt DK weight which was a very similar color, and peeled two plies off about 8 yards of the stuff.  This left three plies which was roughly equivalent to fingering weight; I spliced it in and went back to work.  I brought the mitt out to the kitchen so I could look at the color junction in natural light.  It was essentially undetectable; the new yarn was just a hair darker and a hair redder than the old, but I’m probably the only one who would notice and probably only then because I dyed them both.

Going back into the living room, I had been thinking about another project I could probably finish up once I was done with the mitts and for which I needed a specific ball of heathered blue yarn.  I knew I had seen that very yarn earlier in the day, so I checked the basket for it.  Care to guess what I found?  Yup - the second ball of sock yarn.  I swear it was laughing at me…  Even so, I was more than glad to rip out the substitute and to be able to finish up with the real deal.

These were based on the Dana Victoria mitts and I made a couple of modifications to size them down.  I will add those modifications to the pattern.  I’m very pleased with how they came out and I hope my aunt will enjoy them.

Okay, the mitts were complete, but I wasn’t ready to stop knitting, so the second project moved up in the queue.  But I still had to find that blasted blue yarn.  Again, I looked everywhere - only this time I knew it was around because I had seen it earlier in the day, when I was chasing the second ball of sock yarn.  It was maddening, but eventually I located it in a bag that was living in an unusual place.  Yes, it was snickering at me too :)

But I did get these done…

...and lovely and toasty they are too :)  My feet were cold yesterday and when I finished weaving the ends in on these puppies and put them on, I swear I could feel my toes smile!  These are the Endless Knot socks.  I did a matching pair (instead of a yin/yang pair) this time and used the knot color for the heels and toes.

They’ll go nicely with my new shoelaces :)