Several Firsts!!!

It's been an eventful evening. I came home and immediately cooked chicken to go with the Mexican "burritos" I'm making for lunches this week (who knows why these cravings hit us, but I rarely can stop myself when I'm on a bent for spicy food!). My need for nachos morphed to quesidillas and then to burritos...I'm glad I know how to cook them, and thank you, Birdsong for your nachos recipe - I will try it! (see the comments to the previous post if you'd like to see what she wrote...)

I decided it was time to put another pair of socks OTN, so pulled out some Claudia in her Ingrid's Blues colorway. I've had this for quite some time, along with a couple of other colorways, but have never knit Claudia's yarn (the colors are gorgeous!). I decided to try out the new ball winder, so opened up the skein, laced up the winder and before I knew what was happening....

I had Claudia Spaghetti. Please tell me this is a newbie ball winding problem? I hate to think this will happen with the other skein (I may suddenly develop SSS when I've never had it before...it took two hours to undo this mess).

But...

undo the mess I did, and managed to wind it, as well (yes, that's a 1/2 of a TP tube there in the middle to keep the ball from collapsing on itself...)

My Harmony needles arrived today! I was so excited...and I'm in love. I'd promised myself when they arrived I'd try out knitting socks on two circs...so there are two 16-inch size 1 needles up there in that photo. I also decided to get a set of my size 1 dpns, a size 2 short fixed circular so that if I had a problem I could pair it with my Susan Bates size 2 (and have two distinctly different needles to use in this process of learning to knit with two circulars), and size 4 needle tips with two 24-inch cables so I could decide if I really like the Harmony set. I've been pretty disappointed with my Denise set - I'm definitely NOT a plastic needle gal...

Now a couple more firsts:

For the first time using the two circulars method to knit a pair of socks, I'm also using Judy's Magic Cast-on for my toe-ups. I'm not in love with my technique yet - it's not Judy's fault - I think I didn't M1 correctly. I should probably have knitted thru the back loop. I'm really good at forgetting to do that...so there are teensy holes where I increased. Tell me what you think? Anything glaring there?

I like the method. And I'm proud of myself. Because I usually tend to stick with the tried-and-true. If you need help learning to do this cast on, I went here and watched Cat Bordhi's video. It really helped me to visualize things....

One totally non-knitting (and probably irrelevant) comment: I am SO pleased with the manner used to resolve Gideon's departure on Criminal Minds. I worried most of the week, waiting to see the final episode with my heart-throb, Mandy Patinkin, and hoping against hope that they didn't kill him off. I would have had a difficult time resolving his suicide (come on, isn't that what you thought was going to happen?).

It's so much nicer that he's just setting off into the sunset to put his head on straight and recapture his equilibrium, to find the joy in life again! Mandy, not that I really think you'd EVER read this, but here is my two cents: if indeed you left because you thought the show's writers were making it too violent, I think you were right. Much as I adore the other characters in the show, I'm not sure I'll continue to watch. It is too much.

And I admire someone who stands up for his beliefs. (But I do wish we'd had a little more warning you were leaving)

(Ok..I really don't think he's reading this, folks! Just wanted to put myself on record, tho')
lolol
(((hugs)))