Monkeying around

After the longest winter break on record (almost 3 weeks), the girls are back at school. I couldn't be happier. I need a routine again. A routine that doesn't include quite so much television and Wii in the background. A routine that puts the kids in bed at 9:30, instead of midnight (or later!)

So here's what I've been doing the past few days:

Cookie A's Monkey Sock
I'm using Cherry Tree Hill yarn, which reminds me of Koigu, only slightly different. Monkey is an easy pattern to memorize, and fairly quick to work up. I started the second sock last night, so this time next week I should have another pair of socks.

Here's what came in the mail Monday:

The yellow is okay. The brown, not so much. These are supposed to be the solid background and coordinating color for my Rainbow diamond argyle socks. I thought I had ordered a medium gray, not brown. I showed the website picture where I ordered the yarn to the girls and they both said it looked gray on the screen. Not to me. It would help if the color had an actual name, instead of just a number. Which, apparently, it does, on the German-language sites. "Choco brun." It would also help if I didn't have certain "color vision deficiencies." So now I have an ugly brown skein of yarn I will never want to knit into anything. Because it's ugly. Gah.

I also got this in the mail:

(the one on the right)

so that I will have enough to complete this:


It's a different dye lot, of course, than the first skein, but I figure since I'm working with doubled strands, I can switch to working with one strand of each, and then when I run out of the first ball, I'll work two strands of the new one and, with luck, the color change won't be noticeable. This is the "My so called scarf" pattern, which is simple to work, but nearly impossible to fix when you make an error. This isn't a color I wear, but it is a color my sister-in-law wears, quite a lot, and she's taken to wearing a lot of scarf-like accessories this winter to help disguise a surgical scar on her neck. As I look at the calendar, I realize her birthday is Friday. Friday! Crap, I've got to get busy....