4 Dpns

All things electronic have been put on hold recently with the wintry snowstorms we've been getting rather regularly. Instead, with the inspiration of my friend Hollaye, who decided she wanted to learn to knit socks and found a knitting tutor to help her, I've also been learning to knit socks. I'd tried to knit them before, but my knitting tension is so loose, I would lose the doublepointed needles; they would just fall out of my stitches. So I gave up. But with the basic pattern Hollaye got from her tutor, and a determined effort to control my tension, I am finally knitting SOCKS! on 4 double pointed needles.

This may have been a mistake, because it seems to be addicting. I don't know if it's a passion for knitting socks as Hollaye claims, or just wanting to have warm feet. Handknit wool socks + wool clogs=warm feet. And that is not a bad thing in NE Minnesota or Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

















If you've a desire to learn to knit socks, I found a very helpful tutorial online Silver's Sock Class. It has good step by step illustrations if you need a visual reference and I found it a great help.

The Downside of Social Networking

During the More Things on a Stick program, one of our projects required that we explore sites that let you make scrapbook pages, like those applications Scrapblog or Smilebox.

I discovered it was rather fun to make scrapbook pages, but did require some planning in advance. You need to have a selection of photographs, a theme, and some doodads for embellishment. I used both Smilebox and Scrapblog to produce projects. While exploring Scrapblog, I was "friended" by an obviously talented person who kindly offered encouragement and advice. I've been too busy to go back and do any more pages lately, but have received notices of new pages made by friends. The notice I got today made me go look at the page which was posted yesterday. I was dismayed and horrified by the necessity for her post which I have included below. Since I've seen the same kind of snarky comments on some of the blogs I read, I understand the reason for her direct address to this kind of snarkiness. It is an unfortunate downside to social networking that, thankfully, happens less frequently than sharing expertise and admiration for people's efforts. It seems there always has to be one rotten apple in the basket. I admire this "friend's" direct approach in confronting her snide critic.