Success! I have finished the first massively huge man bootie!

Does it not fit well? Does the toe not look nice?

But, wait! Who is modeling the bootie? It is my Kevin! Here is the conversation we had during the bootie fitting.

Gail: You have like a size 10 wide foot, right? I’m sure it’ll stretch more.
Kevin: No, its 8 wide.
Gail: Hrm. That bootie looks like it fits you.
Kevin: Chris has like a size 14 foot, doesn’t he?

So, now Kevin has a bootie. Given that I knitted almost the entire bootie in his presence, I think he used mind control rays to make me knit a size 8 wide bootie instead of a size 12 EEEE bootie.

Kevin thinks, and I quote “You can knit. I’m just not sure you can add.”

He is lucky that he is the bestest boyfriend ever and taking me to Las Vegas next week, otherwise I’d have to smack him.

I don’t think we can blame Lucia’s bootie generator. I think I’m just plugging the wrong measurements into it. I’ve commanded Kevin to make his brother measure his foot. And this time, I’m knitting it out of Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Worsted, not Sport. Mainly so it’ll go faster.

Plus, I needed an excuse to buy yarn at Loopy Yarns, since I was meeting Lynette there over lunch. I was a good girl - I bought a skein of the worsted in the Jeans colorway, and two skeins of Smart Superwash, which is an all purpose worsted from Norway. Oh, and the Celtic Braid Socks pattern from Cabin Fever.

I order far too many books from Amazon. How do I know? Because they offered me a free four month trial of Amazon Prime. Amazon Prime is cool - its free 2-day shipping on any item, pretty much, and you dont’ have to group items together in an order. So, say, you are browing your Amazon Recommendations, and see a fabulous book. You can just buy it! And you’ll get it in 2 days!

Well, assuming its available and you have money and blahblahblah. But that’s not the point!

Anyways, I’ve been buying books from Amazon just because its so much fun to get free 2-day shipping. It’s becoming a problem. But, what did I buy?

First, I got Vintage Knits: Thirty Knitting Designs From Rowan For Men And Women. I bought the book because I have six balls of Rowan Felted Tweed, which I shall use to make this lovely sweater. One day.

Of course, one knitting book is not enough! So, I ended up buying Heirloom Knitting. Having received it I can honestly say that it is completely worth the 50 dollar price tag. It’s a fabulous book, with great pictures and text.

What’s funny is that I bought the book because I wanted to knit the Unst Bridal Shawl. I love the border on it. It turns out, however, that the center of the shawl is the exact same pattern as the center panel of the Shirley Paden shawl from the Fall 2005 Vogue Knitting that I’m currently knitting. I take it I really like the diamonds and spider web pattern.

Given that the Heirloom Knitting book takes you through designing your own shawl, I might try and do that instead. Then it’d be a really special bridal shawl.

Or, I may just go insane and knit myself a poncho. In fun fur.

Speaking of my stole, I’m almost done. Like, I’m 12 rows into the last repeat. I had dreams of finishing it last night, but Dee (who has a blog now, go look!) told me that Hobby Lobby had all their knitting and crochet books at 50% off. And, she insisted that they often have very nice books. I told her I had never seen such a thing, accused her of lying, and then decided that I just wasn’t godly enough to see the cool knitting books.

After that much attitude, I had to go to Hobby Lobby. I went to my Hobby Lobby instead of Dee’s, and found nice knitting books!

I bought Weldon\’s Practical Needlework, Vol. 1 for just slightly under the price that Amazon is offering. I really like this book. I also picked up a cute Paton’s pamphlet and a HeartStrings pattern.

Finally, in Massively Huge Bootie Knitting News, I’m almost done with my third attempt on the first bootie. All looks well - I just need to do the three needle bind off. Which I’ll do on the train tonight. Then, I’m going to have to start the second bootie later so that I can start on Aimee’s scarf, now that the yarn has arrived. Aimee the Sis’s birthday is the 17th. For 6 days, she gets to be only one year younger than me, because my birthday is the 23rd.

Now, for the folks who actually read all of the above, here is a picture of Squeaky, Aimee’s awesome cat. Now, her other cat, Gumby, is a cuddle slut, but I like Squeaky a lot. Here he is being a fearsome Halloween cat!

Lucia (who should come to knitting at Barnes and Noble tonight :)) took up an argument with Marilyn at the Knitting Curmudgeon blog about the past quality of knitting magazines. To oversimplify the argument, Marilyn feels like 1980s knitting magazines were chock full of fabulous patterns and that today’s knitting magazines can’t hold a candle to them.

Lucia has been posting extraordinarily scary designs from her own personal stock of 1980s knitting magazines in rebuttal.

I think there are two issues here. One, we tend to remember the good things, and forget the bad things. So, the Vogue Knitting issue from 1994 that we remember so fondly might only have 3 nice designs and 10 designs of complete dreck.

For example, the latest Vogue Knitting. Marilyn says it isn’t worthwhile, and I would agree that there are some highly scary designs in it. But, there are a number of designs I adore. We all know of my lust for this capelet.

But, I think we can all agree that no one will ever knit this coat.

Secondly, what kinds of designs a person knits might not have a lot to do with their personal taste. For example, I’d buy this jacket.

But I’d never knit it. I don’t like intarsia, and the stockinette would put me to sleep. That’s a big reason why I don’t tend to buy magazines like Family Circle Easy Knitting - even the designs I like, I’d never knit.

On the other hand, while I’d knit this lovely scarf/shawl from Vogue Knitting in a minute:

I’m not sure how I’d wear it.

A third issue is personal taste - the cabled cover sweater with set-in sleeves that folks have been drooling over on Marilyn’s blog sends shudders through me. Yes, the cables are lovely and the nipped in waist is nice. I bet its an interesting knit. But the collar! And the shoulder pads!

Finally, I think we can all agree that Knitters Magazine sucks ass these days. That is one magazine that I think you can validly say used to be much better in the good old days.

In other news, I now order so many books from Amazon that they offered me a free four month membership in Amazon Prime. Which means I get free 2-day shipping until February. Rock! I keep losing control and ordering things. Such as Heirloom Knitting - the price on it keeps bouncing around between 50 dollars and 33 dollars. I just ordered it at 33 dollars. I also picked up a book for Kevin. That’s my excuse.

In knitting news, I’m still plugging away on the shawl. I’m almost done with the 3rd repeat in the second half, so I’m not worried about my deadline now. I’ll have lots of time this weekend to do a power knitting job.

Pretty much all the pictures in today’s post comes from Aimee the Sis, who happens to be my one and only sister. She recently passed the Colorado Bar, so of course I sent her a package filled to the brim with random items from around my house.

First, Franz did get his cape after all.

He’s raiding the box of See’s Candy that was included in the box. Illinois recently got its first See’s Candy store right here in Downers Grove. I like See’s much better than Fanny May. My absolute favorite from See’s are the ones with marshmellows and caramel covered with dark chocolate. Mmmmm. Although, honestly, I’ll always reserve a special place in my heart for truffles from Michelle’s in Colorado Springs.

I also included a Knittergail.com t-shirt.

If you want to look as fabulous as Aimee (and aren’t we jealous of that nice weather in Denver?), you can visit the Knittergail.com store. Aimee reports that she receives many compliments on her shirt, especially from folks associated with PETA, who apparently think the shirt is agitating for banning wool yarn or some such nonsense. Oh, wait, she wrote the following:

maybe showing a real life person wearing it will help your sales. you might not want to mention the assumed PETA crazyness assumption factor.

So, ignore that part about the PETA people.

In other, non-Aimee news, progress continues on the shawl. I really should never knit anything on a deadline. A deadline squeezes all the joy out of knitting - it turns into a chore.

But, here is a picture of the first 6 repeats of the shawl. I’ve started the second half of the shawl, and have 4 repeats to go.

That’s unblocked. Sorry for the jitter when I took it - blame it on the fact that we can’t raise the thermostat above 70 degrees in fear of the gas bill. And I’m a delicate flower who can’t stand the cold, now that I’ve lost a lot of “padding”. I even bought Fleecy Eeyore PJs from Kohls in the hope of battling the shivers.

You know, if certain family members were looking for birthday present ideas, they might want to consider buying me more cutesy PJ sets, because the 20 sets of various PJs I currently own just aren’t enough. Just not anything pink. For example, I adore the reindeer flannel PJs I bought last year, but they are massive on me now.

You know, its a good thing I have a blog, otherwise I’d be forced to actually talk to people, rather than leaving very obvious hints.

I finished my first bootie, loosely based on Lucia’s slipper pattern. Loosely in that “Wow, no wonder they didn’t work out” way.

I totally screwed up the toe. When Lucia says that it’ll be easier to turn the sock inside out if you place the stitches on a circular needle, she’s not just saying that to boost her stock in the circular needle factory. It’s because if attempt to turn the slipper inside out while it is attached to nice long pointy sticks, random stitches will spring off the needles, and you’ll end up with a total mess.

The slipper doesn’t actually point up like an elf bootie. However, that leads us to another problem - my row pattern in no way matched the specified row gauge in the pattern. Which I knew, but I somehow thought would work out in the end. I also thought that there must be something wrong with the calculator - after all, why would having more rows per inch lead to having more stitches on my needles?

Because, it turns out that the construction of the bootie leads to you knitting back and forth down the bottom of the bootie. Suddenly, the number of stitches on the circumference of the bootie is all about foot length, and not about foot width.

So, my beyond the toe being beyond saving, I didn’t get to 10.5 inches long, which is what is required for Kevin’s Brother’s feet of massiveness. So I ripped back to the garter stitch flange. I used the calculator again (I’m getting 6 sts per inch and 8 rows per inch), and I’m going to stick with the narrower flange, but end up with a lot more stitches before I start the bottom of the foot.

On a final note, look at the cool boots I’m wearing today. They zip! I’m not in pain! My calves are not being compressed! I haven’t worn them in two years.

I asked Kevin if he thought the boots made my ankles look big. He looked at me like I’m insane. It turns out that men don’t really obsess over the size of their ankles.