Knitting Socks? Not quite the ROI I expected ... at least so far.

I learned to knit this past summer.  My first grandchild was due in August and I felt that all grandmothers should know how to knit, so I took a class.  Three lessons.  I don't know if it was me, or my teacher, but it clicked right away.  My first project was a sweater for the new baby, then a hat and scarf for me, and currently in progress is a sweater, also for me. 

But I kept reading about socks, knitted socks.  Everybody seemed to be making socks.  They even have wars - sock wars - death by socks: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119766934184930123.html.  Every time I looked at the class listings for my LYS (Local Yarn Store) there were numerous sock classes: toe up, top down, two at a time.  What's a girl to do?  I had to see what all the hype was about.  Maybe I would make socks too.  Surely they couldn't be that complicated?  In January I signed up for a February sock class.  Toe up sock knitting, to be precise. 

Let's take a look at the tally

• $100 - Class Fee
• $21 - Special sock yarn, Georgia Peach by three Irish girls
• $20~ - Two small circular needles (not quite sure - no receipt handy)
• $10.50 - Stitch counter

So not counting tax, this particular pair of socks costs about $150.  Of course you can argue that the needles and stitch counter are reusable, and that's true, but still that works out to about $60 a sock.  Then there's the time.  If I had participated in sock wars, I would have been the first one dead.  I have been knitting since early February.  For the entire month of March I have knitted almost every day on the metro, and lots of evenings in front of the TV.  I am about 20 rows shy of completion on my second sock!

What did I learn?  I probably won't make a lot of pairs of socks.  Aside from the cost, the time commitment doesn't seem worth it, and someone is going to WALK ON THEM!!  My goodness, all that labor and it might get ruined.  Nevertheless, I don't believe I wasted either time or money.  I had only ever worked with worsted weight yarn and size 7 or 8 needles.  Size 1 needles will never seem quite as scary again.  I also learned to knit short rows, how to do 4 needle construction using 2 circular needles, and how to do a simple lace/eyelet pattern. 

What I really learned?  Don't look at the return on investment (ROI) for a hobby based on the cost and end product, it's the learning process and the pleasure it brings along the way that counts.

Bragging - we all have to do it once in a while!

My youngest son has a rocky school history.  His road to college has been circuitous, and continues to be fraught with difficulties.  He currently attends an art school in NY, and is in the second half of his junior year on his way to a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in fashion design.  His ideal career would be as a menswear fashion designer.  Does anyone have a job for him?  A summer internship?

But that isn't the purpose of my post, nor are previous academic successes, including several semesters on the Dean's list and President's list.  This semester has been particularly rocky, for reasons unassociated with schooling, and he has been struggling to keep up in classes and stay focused.  One participatory factor in his struggles was that the school required all members of the junior class to submit a portfolio for the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) scholarship competition (http://www.cfda.com/scholarship-program/).  The scholarship program offers financial awards to top students from art schools across the country in several categories and through several competitive programs, the junior class scholarship program being the primary method. 

At my son's school, the work for CFDA started early in the semester, and forced him into many late nights and all-nighters as he worked through his themes, his designs, and technical details.  My son is a perfectionist, having great difficulty in letting go of the smallest detail, and worrying over minutiae others might miss.  His submission went down to the last minute, including major technical difficulties (at one point earlier in the process he lost 4 hours worth of design work when his computer crashed) and files too larger for the printer's computer.  However, he was notified yesterday that the school has selected him as one of five entrants from the school to move forward to the main competition.

This has been a major boost to his mood, since he considers being selected as an honor.  I am glad he sees it that way, since the odds of winning are still only 1 in 10; better than they were before, but definitely not a shoe-in.  So that is my brag!  I hope that in May I will have the opportunity to brag about winning, but in case I don't, I wanted to have this opportunity to publicly state how proud I am of him and his achievements.  He has come a long way from struggling through high school.

The year of the red (dead) oak?

This is clearly the year of the oak tree, at least in my neighborhood.  In our January snowstorm a very large red oak fell on my house, doing 30-60K of damage.  The final total is unknown since they haven't started rebuilding yet.  Though we are living in the house, our roof is covered with a tarp, and our ceiling is open to the roof.

Last night, as Washington received the last of its 1-3" of rain, a similarly large oak fell on my neighbor's property,  fortunately delivering only a glancing blow to the house.  I am grateful that they are only dealing with exterior damage, and that once again, no one was injured.

All this is by way of explaining why no blog posts...  Hopefully I can get back to it now that the excitement is over.