An Experiment

You all remember the last pair of socks I knit?  yes, yes?  It was the reknit of the pink and white from January.  I reknit them on double zero needles (that's 1.75 mm for the international folk).

I finished them:

 

And they are lovely and soft and have a much better gauge than they did from the first knitting.

But alas, they didn't fit that well.  WOMP WOMP.  I had a sinking feeling they wouldn't.  but! Do not fret!  I've gifted them to Hazel who wears size 7 shoe.  They fit her great! Win/win!

I did start some new socks, for myself this time.  I decided to stick with the 00 needles, because the gauge really was good on the pink and white. They're just a touch tighter than the 0s were when I originally started knitting socks on 0s quite a few years ago.

Anyway, all that to say, the great sock fitting experiment has continued.  This time the adjustments I made were two-fold.  I upped the stitch count from 64 to 68 stitches, and I also added length to the heel flap.

In the past, I would knit the flap for 32 rows, do the short row and gusset up the sock and it seemed to be OK, but the tighter gauge is also tighter in the row count, and I have a slightly taller instep now.  I think my feet have changed in the last few years.  Either way, they deserve socks that fit. I decided to knit the flap for a length instead of a row count.  then I did the turn as usual, picked up enough stitches so it wouldn't leave gaps and began the rest of the sock.

I got through the gusset decreases and tried it on (oh the joys of magic loop!) and I'm actually quite keen on them.

 

These have a fun stripe pattern.  and like most of the things I knit these days :cough: exclusively socks :cough: They're easy to put down and pick up at will.

Now for what you all tuned in for, I'm sure!

The pokemoning!

It is continuing at a pace.

Not a very quick pace compared to the last time I did this, but a pace.

This is where I left it off yesterday.

What happened was, I'll give you two guesses.  One of them will definitely be correct.

I bought a new game.

(don't throw things!)

It's Final Fantasy 12 : The Zodiac Age.  And it was fantastic and I enjoyed it.  I spent an entire 2 weeks absorbed in the game and I loved every minute of it.  I even beat the last bosses without any issues at all.  It was a perfect escalation of difficulty through to the end.  Good game, this.  I would give it a review, but I'm afraid I can only think of 6 or 7 ways to say "it was fantastic and I enjoyed it." If you are a fan of final fantasy games and you haven't played it yet, I highly recommend it.

And I also got Zac into it, and now I get to watch him play over his shoulders.  He's OK with that.  I think he's happy to be playing games again.  For a long time he wasn't playing games much and he wasn't reading much, and this year he's been doing more of both and I'm happy for him.

I did some reading since last time, too, though again, not nearly as much as I had been before I found final fantasy 12.

I read a few more T. Kingfisher books: The Hollow Places, What Moves the Dead, and Bryony and Roses.

The Hollow Places was a horror novel about a recently divorced woman who moves back to her hometown to help her uncle with his curiosity museum.  Once there, she discovers a portal to another dimension of fog and Willow Trees.  It was captivating.  I daresay it was scary.  Good stuff you want in a horror book.

What Moves the Dead was a shorter horror story that, I learned when I was finished, was a retelling of the Fall of the House of Usher.  Not knowing that till the acknowledgements page didn't detract from the story at all.  I literally could not put it down. Some of the scenes were horrifying and will definitely stick with me for awhile.

Bryony and Roses I finished today.  It was another retelling of a story, but this time it was Beauty and the Beast.  I love retellings of fairytales.  Unabashedly, I love them.  This one was no exception.  This one took some creative liberties with the house itself and how the magic worked, and I was into it.  The Beast was less of a scary captor and more of a guy stuck in a trap of his own.  I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Furthermore, I decided to put Koontz away without finishing Watchers for a few reasons.  Mostly the details of the story kept taking me out of it.  You don't feed chocolate to a dog, and you don't go walking all day and only bring two pieces of fruit for lunch. Even if you're a woman.  I might pick it back up again, but I really couldn't say.

Same with the sixth (and final, so far) Invisible Library book.  As good as the 4th one was, these last two have not been great.  I went into it expecting a heist and they're sitting around playing baccarat.  Heist some shit, already!  I was halfway through that one before I abandoned it as they apparently abandoned the plan to go rob a museum.

There's so many good things on my shelf to read.  I don't need to finish things that aren't piquing my interests.

Like the above books I mentioned.  And the two other Kingfisher's I ordered when I ordered Bryony and Roses.  I have The Twisted Ones to look forward to as well as The Seventh Bride.

And the Dark Elf books I want to get back into. and Literally anything else that don't make me want to throw them across the room in frustration.

That's all I have to share this week.  Not an enormous amount of anything tangible since my entire life was FF12 for so many weeks, but that's life sometimes.  Life's not all cross stitch and knitting, baby.

Cheers!