I was beginning to question my sanity this afternoon. After fussing with this silly heel flap for about an hour I thought, “Toe-up socks are overrated.” What socks am I talking about, you ask? Why the socks that I started yesterday afternoon almost immediately after finishing the socks for Bryan’s Dad. My needles hardly had time to rest before I was pulling out my printout lessons for the toe-up socks from Socknitters.com and furiously casting on with some Regia sock yarn that I’ve had since February 2001. It’s one of the first sock yarns I ever bought. I don’t know the color number because I can’t find the ball band, so I’ve nicknamed it Lilly because that’s what the sock told me she wants to be called. Of course, I’ve always found some other yarn to knit my socks with or they’ve been for other people that this yarn just wouldn’t look good on (sorry, Bryan). So back to the socks. I started them yesterday and today was knitting along and realized I should work on the heel since I had finished the gussets. So I pull out the trusty lessons and for the life of me can’t figure out the silly heel flap. After three tries, consulting the Folk Socks book and some serious phone assistance from Amie I finally have a heel that looks like a heel. The heel has never been my favorite part going from either direction and it stands true for me again. I’m sure someone will say, “Try the short row heel.” But I can’t get the short row heel to work for me, plus I need all of the extra padding that comes with a dutch heel. It just comes with the territory of having barely size 5 women’s feet.

Bryan’s Dad’s socks are 99% completed. They look fabulous on (thank you, Bryan). I still need to reinforce one of the heels, which I’ll do with sewing thread and duplicate stitch. They really have to get sent this week. They were supposed to be Christmas gifts. And he really needs the good luck right now searching for another job.

I feel so cool tonight. Amie and I have recently exchanged addresses and just in time too. I got her email with her address as I was struggling with the sock heel. She’s even nicer on the phone than in email, not that she was ever rude in email. But you know how you get a certain personality over email and through someone’s blog. So thank you Amie for chatting, I’ll make it to Maryland Sheep someday.

And not to be forgotten, my baking. Today’s dough wasn’t for bread, it was pizza dough. It turned out quite well and was so easy. The crust needs a bit of seasoning, so the next dough will get some oregano or Italian seasoning and a bit of garlic powder. We’ve been making our own pizzas with dough from Trader Joe’s or from the local co-op but now we’ll be making them with our own dough. Who else makes their own pizza entirely from scratch? My next baking project? Probably a baguette.

This past weekend was quite good. I worked on Saturday and Sunday was spent with friends. Sunday, Bryan, Miss M, Miss S, Miss S’s friend, Ms. L, Ms. L’s husband and I all went to see Brokeback Mountain. It was absolutely wonderful. I think it’s the best movie I’ve seen in the theatres all year. Very touching and heartbreaking at the same time. Afterwards, Miss M and Miss S went to a café and knitted for several hours. The previous weekend, Miss S and I knitted at another café for several hours that was great fun, too. It’s wonderful to have friends to knit with and hang out with too. And it gets me out of the house.

The last few days I’ve been a baking fool. I checked out this book from the library and thought I would try my hand at baking some bread. My attempts this fall at starting sourdough starter were not good and I needed time to recover. So I figured enough time had passed and I was ready to try baking again. Tuesday after work, I thought I would bake some bread. I baked my first loaf of whole wheat walnut bread and it was really good. It was so good that we even had a few slices for breakfast on Wednesday morning. I learned some valuable lessons from this loaf. The first being that soymilk with a some vinegar added makes a great substitute for buttermilk. The other being always make sure that you have all of the flour you need before you start putting the ingredients together. Bryan was kind enough to run to the grocery store for me and pick up some whole wheat flour. While he was gone, I continued putting all of the ingredients together, so when he arrived home it was a matter of mixing in the flour and pouring the batter in the pan.

My second baking extravaganza was yesterday and I made banana walnut bread. This was another one where I learned some lessons, such as don’t fill one of the bread pans too full. I set off the fire alarm three times while baking this bread. One of the pans overflowed onto the bottom of the oven setting the fire alarm off the first time. The next two times the alarm went off were related to the burnt pieces of bread that were stuck to the bottom of the oven. I was afraid that bread was going to be a complete loss but after everything cooled, I realized I had two mostly nice loaves of banana bread. Okay, so the crust fell off one side of one of the loaves and the part of the bottom stuck to the pan on the other loaf but that doesn’t effect the taste. Once again, we had good homemade bread for breakfast this morning. I’m even giving Miss M and Miss S one of the loaves of banana bread. I think I’ve started something and am now looking at trying my hand at a simple baguette and even pizza dough. Anything to save us a little money and if it’s homemade bread, it’s even better.

My knitting hasn’t been forgotten this week. I’ve been working on Bryan’s Dad’s socks. I turned the heel on Sunday and am decreasing for the toe now. I’m looking forward to finally having these socks done.

I’m also nearly finished with the Rosepole mittens. I worked on reinforcing the edges of one of the thumbs last night at my knitting group and I blocked the hat earlier this week. Another hour to finish the second mitten and I’ll be ready to finally send these off. If it had been a cold winter so far, I think I would have been more inclined to finish these quickly.