It's a family thing - part 2

Rich's dad and I were chatting after the game yesterday and the topic of Lee's e-mails came up (Lee being Rich's brother and Rich Sr.'s younger son). Me: "Yeah, Lee's e-mail apparently said that folks might want to 'bring a change of clothes to ware [sic] for afterwords [sic]' and I was thinking that technically the spell-checker might not always catch those, so he needs something else to catch stuff like that."

Rich Sr.: "Yes, Lee needs a secretary really bad."

Me: "Yeah, really badly."

Rich Sr.: "Well, at least you see where he gets it from."

It's a family thing

Ben and Jay after the game Today we drove out to the very snazzy Charlottesville Ice Park to play in a charity game for Richmond Hockey Fights Cancer. It was sparsely attended so we only sold a few t-shirts, but the game was well-played by everyone and a good time was had by all.

I got to spend some quality time with Rich's dad and uncle while we watched the game and took a few photos. The nicest photo, though, was the one I took above of Ben and Jay. Their dad is a cancer survivor and everyone in the family is an avid hockey fan. Jay hunted me down to have me take a picture of him with his brother so he could put it on his MySpace page and show his friends and dad.

It's been a long day and the Puddin' and I are both exhausted, but it was a very "up with family" sort of day and one I was happy to be a part of.

Let's talk about socks, baby.

I have been dabbling in knitting for over a year now. I keep all my projects fairly small since I'm convinced at any moment that I'll run out of steam and just punt on knitting as a whole. But so far, it's going well. I've finally decided to take the plunge and make a pair of socks. I must be the last knitter on the planet to tackle this project, but I wanted something that was still small in size, but a little more than a random bag for scarf.

Last year, I bought a commemorative knit kit from the American Red Cross. It was spendy, but I justified it by $20 being a donation and $5 being actual materials. The kit comes with one skein of olive drab wool yarn (that doesn't feel very woolly, but I'll believe them), 4 plastic red double-pointed needles (ick, plastic), a plastic darning needle, and retro instructions explaining which Red Cross facility I can deliver my socks to when I'm done.

I'm going pretty slow, but haven't hit any snags yet (HA! snags!) so I hope to have two socks done by Christmas. My wildest dream would be to make socks for gifts, but I know better to think I can go much faster than I am and then there's always the dreaded "Second Sock Syndrome" to fight. I could have gone with two circular needles to avoid that, but wanted to go all old school for my first pair and see if I can follow through on them.

Here's my progress so far (click the picture to link to the Flickr set of my first few stages). I'll be sure to update once I have any more exciting sock news!