The socks, they are finished...OK, so it turns out I'm not dead until the socks arrive, so I kept knitting, hoping to take someone else out before I died, and look: I have.
And they are not, as you might notice, stripey or in the least colourful.
There were a few *ahem" hiccoughs in the Sock Wars Universe. Allow me to ennumerate:
1, Hurricane Gordon, or the remains thereof, sideswiped the Yarn Monkey, our Commander in Chief and knocked out communications. As any General knows, communications are critical and without them a war is not going to progress smoothly. Our esteemed CinC did well, posting pattern, errata and list of assassins and victims to her blog, but without a head, many of us are running around like the chicken's body after the chopper has done his job.
2, When I realised that I had missed the start by a good 36 hours, I feverishly began winding and dyeing wool. It worked well, although I limited myself to two colours.
3, I logged on to the forums on Saturday afternoon to read that at least one knitter had MAILED her socks at 11.15 that morning. I had yet to dry my wool, wind it into balls, or cast on.
4, In my haste, my yarn and I had a bit of a misunderstanding about its ability to survive a ride in Sir Tumble-Dryer. I was sure it was Super-Wash. It informed me, a little too late, that it was not. (If anyone needs two balls of pink and blue solid fluff with which to stuff toys, let me know and I'll mail it off).
5, I rushed to the yarn store to buy a replacement only to again bewail the fact that I have a yarn store in walking distance, and yet it sells so few tempting yarns, especially in DK (acrylic city!). I saw something nice that seemed to have the write stitch guage on the label, even if it looked a little thick, so I bought it, at considerable cost.
6. I spent precious time on Saturday afternoon, closetted away from the family, swatching with my new yarn. Hopelessly out of range.
7. I rummaged in the stash and found a wonderful Knit Picks Elegance in Coal (Black) that I have already knitted one hat for the husband out of, and that I would never have knitted socks from except for the fact that it was an emergency. I can only hope that my victim treats them gently, as they are cashmere and alpaca. Not exactly hard-wearing sock yarn, but hey, they felt fantastic to knit.
8. I stayed up past midnight on Sunday grafting the toe of the first sock, and woke up, bleary eyed to an email entitled "Are you prepared to die?". It was unnerving and I might have deleted it, except that it was exactly the kind of email I was looking for. My assassin must have been one of the lucky dossier-receiving types as she never asked me for my address and indicated that my socks were in the mail. She also advised me to keep knitting, in order to take out someone else, the thought of which was an immense comfort in the face of my own imminent demise, I must say. Plus she's an ocean away, so I reckoned she was on to something.
9. Part way through the second sock, on Monday, I emailed my victim to ask for her mailing address. Here I am at 12.30 AM, Wednesday,
still waiting for a response. And the socks, they are ready to do their deadly deed.
10. I left a comment in the blog of my victim's potential victim, to see if she had had any taunting from her appointed assassin. I also emailed her. She must think I'm stalking her because I haven't heard from her either. But that was just this evening and I think she might have been in bed or offline, what with the time-difference and all that.
So, I'm pretty pleased that I am at least in the position to take someone out, but a little disappointed that I don't get to scurry to the mailbox, package in hand right now (and I would, you know).
Poor yarn-monkey. If I'm a little disappointed, imagine how she must feel, having set this all up only to have a hurricane rip through her powerlines at the very hour and minute the Sock Wars day dawned. Since she has posted nothing recently, I'm assuming she's missing the whole thing. Poor, poor monkey.
