Well, I finally have an FO to show. Actually, I’ve had an FO to show for the past three days. Just haven’t gotten up the nerve to write about it yet.

The Zombie Socks are done. Here they are…

My Zombie Socks are done. Stick a lighted fork in 'em.

They were a lot of fun to make. I’m pretty happy with the way they turned out. Even though it’s now in the upper 90s, probably for the forseeable future, and too hot even for my hiking anklets. I’m just hoping it won’t be hot forever.

The best parts: I really like the way the variegated yarn works with the dropped stitches. Really, really like it. I also liked the garter stitch border on the heel flap, which also seems to work for me.

The worst parts: Once again, when there are huge distractions going on around me, my ADD-addled brain can’t seem to handle more than a very, very basic pattern done in the Usual Way. So, with everything that went on in the past two months, with the end of school, visitors and the like, these socks took far longer than normal.

My mom’s sweater is almost finished. I have half of the edge ribbing finished, and am almost finished with the other half (just about 3/4 of an inch to go). Then all I have to do is weave in the ends, sew in the sleeves, and block. Oh, and figure out by telepathy whether my mom wants buttons or not on her cardi. She refuses to tell me - if I have to hear “Oh, honey, it doesn’t matter. Whatever’s easiest for you“, I will most likely explode. Really.

I’ve got some yarn and a half tub of fiber left. I’m not sure what it’ll turn into, but I’ll most likely make the last 3 bobbins on there now into three last skeins of worsted-weight 3ply. After that…I’d like to try some overdyeing while the weather’s still good enough to do some outside. But we’ll see. There are only 3 1/2 weeks of summer left to us here.
So…after the sweater is done, I’ll be doing some crocheting. I’d really like to finish the Seraphina’s Shawl, and my d20. And I’ll be starting on something else - since it’s Evil Dad’s holiday present, I can’t write about it now. Shhh…

Stolen from Barb to take attention away from the post below.

1. Who was your first prom date? Um, none. I didn’t go to my prom. The only thing I ever went to that was vaguely prom-ish was in college, a music frat “formal” boozefest. Lots of fun - I can’t imagine that high school would have matched that.

2. Do you still talk to your first love? No.

3. What was your first alcoholic drink? Seven and 7. My family went to the wedding of my mother’s best friend’s daughter; the father of the bride was handing them out in little Dixie cups as people entered the reception hall. I think I was…15, 16 maybe?

4. What was your first job? Womaning the giant Grill-o-Matic at Burger King. I lasted 2 months.

5. What was your first car? A 197-something Oldsmobile Cutlass; aka The Finest Car $300 Could Buy. Hurrican Hugo drove a tree branch through the windshield, thus saving us from roughly $1000 of brake work. I miss that car.

6. Who was the first person to text you today? I only get texts a few times a year, evenly divided between Evil Dad and M, my daughter’s other mom.

7. Who is the first person you thought of this morning? Can’t remember. Whew.

8. Who was your first grade teacher? Mrs. Critten. She was awesome.

9. Where did you go on your first ride on an airplane? We flew from Pittsburgh to Boston to meet my mom’s friend from college.

10. Who was your first best friend, and are you still friends with him/her? Cheryl Edwards. It was in kindergarten or first grade, I think. We lived near an Army base, so people came and went pretty regularly, and she left after about a year. I can’t believe I still remember her name.

11. What was your first sport played? As in voluntarily? Rugby, in college. My left knee held out for about a month or so.

12. Where was your first sleepover? I think it was at a neighbor’s house when I was in high school. We all slept out in a tent - it was summer and it was hot - and we listened to the sound of deer outside until about 2 in the morning.

13. Who was the first person you talked to today? (Evil Dad).

14. Whose wedding were you in the first time? A high school classmate’s - I played flute during the ceremony.

15. What was the first thing you did this morning? Put on PJs and staggered downstairs for coffee.

16. What was the first concert you ever went to? Jean-Pierre Rampal at Carnegie Hall, when I was about 10 or 11. It was the world premiere of Bolling’s Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano. Our family all went with my aunt and uncle - we went out to dinner before the concert and got home incredibly late. I felt like such a grown-up.

17. What was your first tattoo or piercing? No tats. My ears were pierced the first time when I was 23, at a shop on 8th St. in the West Village. My first non-ear piercing was one nipple, in 1997.

18. What was the first foreign country you went to? Canada, on vacation with my family.

19. What was your first run-in with the law? Got pulled over for inadvertently cutting off a cop while driving my girlfriend home after a midnight movie. The only reason I didn’t get a ticket was that the cop felt sorry for me - I totally freaked out.

20. When was your first detention? Never.

21. What was the first state you lived in? New Jersey.
22. Who was the first person to break your heart? Quaz. His idea of being “just friends” and mine were two entirely different things, and it was devastating when he broke things off.

23. Who was your first roommate? Cat, in my freshman year in college. She and her boyfriend loved me because I was gone until early o’clock during the week, and I loved them because they were always gone from 6 pm Friday until 10pm Sunday. It worked out well.

24. Where did you go on your first limo ride? See #20. I have ridden in a hearse a couple of times, though, if that counts.

Every time I’ve tried to embed this, it cuts off the best part. So just go here. If it didn’t hurt so much right now, it’d be a hell of a lot funnier.

Yeah, I missed the weekend. Not quite sure why I said I’d post last weekend, as I usually don’t get to that. But there you go.

I do have some things to show, though…

That’s my Mom’s sweater, almost finished. I did a 3-needle bind-off on the hood, and that turned out pretty well. Just need to do the edging (and can I just say how much I’m looking forward to that), sew in the sleeves, and it’ll be finished. I know that if I say it’ll be ready for her birthday in August, something awful will happen and it won’t be finished for another year - so I won’t. But I’m hoping maybe by the end of the year…

The Zombie Socks are heading into the stretch; just one foot and toe to go, and they’ll be done. I like the stitch pattern, and the challenge of once again translating instructions in my head to something else - and I think I like the way they’re turning out. The stockinette/rib is in stripes, and the stitch pattern morphs the yarn into…something else, which I think looks pretty good. So I’m happy with how they’re turning out.

I got almost no knitting done while our company was here. I might write about it later; to sum it up, the kids had a blast, I actually talked to my sister for the first time in, um, a very long time indeed, and I faced some things about my parents that have been tough for me. So…like I said, maybe later.