Cheap Shoes - As Well As Knitting Redos

In Shoes:

I don't normally shop at Walmart, but every now and then, I break down and do it. For those of you who are still wanting a pair or two of cheap sandals to show off your socks this winter - or who just can't get enough of wearing sandals, you might want to make a dash over to your local Walmart store to pick up a pair or two . . . or three of sandals on clearance. I have really ugly feet but I can't bear to turn away these Earth sandals for $9.00. Yep, $9.00! And they feel more comfortable than the expensive sandals I've bought in the past. If you don't like this style, there are many many styles on sale. They also have cute and cheap tennis shoes. I bought a pair of Danskins earlier in the summer that are my favorite pair of tennies EVER. They are beige and I wear them when I do my treadmill.

But isn't it weird when a person like me, even one with ugly feet, is so into displaying their knitted objects that they deliberately go out and try to find sandals to wear year-round merely to show off hand-knit socks? Weird, but only a knitter could possibly understand that! Four years ago, when I first learned to knit socks I even got crazy enough to go buy a pair of these awful clear rubber boots. Do you remember those boots? Aggghhhh . . . bad idea. No amount of sock pride is worth the hot sweaty walk-around in those boots.

Now back to knitting, you remember I was working on that felted bag - and I was worried that it wasn't big enough and thick enough? After much angst, I decided to rip it out and start over again with double strands of yarn this time. And I decided to make it bigger - 10 stitches bigger (these are big stitches too - on size 10 1/2 needles). Right, yeah, and now I'm almost finished with the bag's rectangular base. And it looks huge . . . really huge. I feel like I'm knitting a small truck rather than a carpet bag. I keep telling myself, it will get smaller when it felts . . . it will get smaller . . . yeah. It won't be a suitcase, it will be a knitting bag. Really. And I want it big. I like big bags. I want to be able to carry big projects, like the many sweaters I intend to knit this winter.

Yeah, and I hope I can still lift this bag when it's done. It may need to be felted 25 times with an industrial strength washing machine. Err . . . yeah, it will be okay, really it will.

Many of you still want to get on Ravelry and haven't received the invite yet. It's a fun tool, I admit it, but I wish I'd started loading my photos onto Flicker before I arrived at Ravelry. So if you haven't done that yet, you might want to start by doing that. Some really organized people like Elysbeth have even loaded all of their yarn stash - yes, photos of each, onto their Flicker account so that when Ravelry eventually opens up the online yarn swapping area, they will be able to participate. I'm not that organized yet. I'm still trying to just find, photograph and upload whatever projects I can find that haven't been given away, thrown away or worn away. And sadly, in the four years I've been knitting, I haven't produced all that many finished projects. Not as many as I imagined anyway.

But if you are more prolific than I am . . . you might want to start photographing and downloading onto Flicker while you still have time. From what they are saying, in a very short time, they are going to finish doing the Beta testing and will upload it all onto a big server and let everyone in at once. It won't be long at all.