Small socks, freight, editing/layout, and a phone

I’ve finished my Little Sky socks from Cat Bordhi’s new New Pathways for Sock Knitters, Book One. Other experimenters, like Kristi, are way ahead of me, even though many started after I did, because they are zoomier. Sometimes I plod. But I get there and I enjoy the view along the way. The small socks were most amusing to knit. I chose not to rush them. There’s more than enough rush around here with deadlines.

In other news:

1. The fifth print run of Arctic Lace has not only been completed by the printer but appeared in our driveway on Wednesday—a mere 1300 pounds in 33 boxes; yes, I moved and stacked them all (plus the  21 boxes, or 800 pounds, I moved on Tuesday to make room; sheesh).
2. On Tuesday, we offered independent bookstores advance reading copies of Ethnic Knitting Discovery. We had 25 ARCs available. All had been spoken for by midnight that day. We now have a waiting list and I’m printing a second batch of ARCs. The real books are on press but their schedule has been delayed due to a rush of jobs at the printer, so we need more interim copies.
3. I’ve had to slow down on making charts for Priscilla Gibson-Roberts‘ Cowichan sweaters book, but only temporarily. I’d been working on them too steadily and I need to use different muscles in my hand for a bit.
4. So I switched to editing and preliminary layout for Ethnic Knitting Exploration, the next book in the Ethnic Knitting series, for which author Donna Druchunas got me the final text files last weekend. Donna’s just starting to gather ideas for a website dedicated to ethnic knitting. One of the suggestions was to list related events (before) and reviews of those events (after). I’m currently getting psyched about the Scandinavian knitting conference in early October. Unfortunately, it’s impossible, both physically and financially, to take ALL the workshops.

There’s more, but I can’t think what it is right now.

Ah. As of last night, I have a working cell phone for the first time
since mid-July. I’d had a particular phone since last August and by the
middle of this week it had been replaced three times, after a total of
47 cumulative days without service. All the breakdowns happened under
warranty, but that doesn’t help when it takes between three and seven
weeks to get the phone back from the service center (after many phone
calls and, ultimately, a complaint letter to the president of the
manufacturing corporation).

So when the third replacement phone in less than six months arrived Tuesday and also didn’t work for more than fifteen minutes, the wireless service provider swapped for a different company’s phone. This swap is ordinarily only supposed to be for the same model, and it does, unfortunately, have a cost attached, even when the warranty is in effect.

I have great hopes that the new phone will  function reliably. We have basic service, for emergencies and to allow minor conveniences like letting my daughter know I’m running late or letting her ask me to pick up something at the grocery on the way home. With so many weeks of broken phone in less than six months, the previous model was not meeting even our most minimal needs. Fingers crossed that the new one will do the job.

Next I’m starting on the Little Coriolis socks from Cat’s book. I’m looking forward to trying a large enough pair of socks for me to wear, although I want to work them in a fine enough yarn that I’ll really get a sense of how they work on my feet. For now, these little samplers let me play with the combinations of techniques happily and quickly.

The standard against which I measure all socks is Priscilla Gibson-Roberts’ short-row heel-and-toe socks from Simple Socks, which I love, both to knit and to wear. So far Cat’s "sockitecture" concepts and the accompanying techniques feel between my hands like they’re in a similar satisfying, elegantly simple, flexible design family.