E-I-E-I-OOOO

Okay, kids, why exactly does Ronald McDonald have to wear those shoes?

The critics are still debating and I know the current theory is that he's stuffing the toes with an extra chicken nugget or two for safe keeping... or maybe it's the body parts of that filmmaker who blasted them with Super Size Me, but I've got the real answer. Just call this the Smoking Gun Knitting blog.

His father, Old Father MacDonald, actually was getting busy with one of the ducks down on the farm and little Ronnie's feet are flat, webbed and kinda wide in the toe/webbing region.

And just to show my support, I've knit him a sock.

This is my first foray into the sock knitting world, and you can easily see why I've not gone back until the Olympic challenge was issued. See the toe region, where one is supposed to decrease? My stitch numbers got smaller, but the sock got bigger.

Let's excuse the hideous choice of yarn color for a moment and just admit that this is pretty much agony of da' feet. (Sorry, just thought I'd use that pun and get it out of the way. You know you were waiting for it, Laurie.)

So before I attempt to redeem myself, I feel a little justification is in order. See, I was taking my sock knitting class with my ex's mother while we were in our wonderfully entertaining on again/off again phase. The weekend we worked on gauge went sorta like this:

Friday night: the hottie with the most amazingly soft J Crew t-shirt ever snuggled up to. Not so smart, but really, with a t-shirt like that stretched over muscles like that, he didn't need to be able to construct a complete sentence.
Saturday morning: "Leslie, you look sleepy." "Oh, I'm fine, I was studying late last night. Let's knit socks!"
Saturday afternoon: trompsing through the woods with the oh-so-sweet boy who designed and built his little log cabin in the middle of the nowhere, trying to convince myself that I liked him, even if he was too short and a horrible kisser
Sunday afternoon: coffee with the mysterious Romanian with wonderful stories of living in South Africa and a framed picture of W on the wall. (I hate it when the hotties are politically confused.)

So, see, it's no wonder I was a loose....

....knitter!!! *cough, cough*

But, alas, a new era has come upon my knitting life wherein dating has been replaced by dissertating. If reading about Victorians won't get you to tighten up that loose gauge, I don't know what will.

So, on to swatching with the real yarn. For attempt #2 I tried 60 stitches with only 2 rows of 1x1 ribbing at the top. Liking the yarn, not liking that ribbing. But, I have at least decided on a casting on plan.

Come Friday afternoon, this knitter will be casting on 64 stitches on addi Turbo size 2.5 mm 40" needles to do mistake rib for about an inch before settling into stockinette.

And for the literary types out there, catch the theory of the novel reference there? Swatch #1 was pictured with Ian Watt, 1957. Swatch #2 gets Michael McKeon, 1987. Betcha can't wait what theorist gets to be a shining star once I start the socks for real.