Mittens and socks and procrastination

I finished up the mittens. They are intended for my Eldest Granddaughter. While working on them she kept saying,
"Who are these for?"
"I don't know yet."
"I think they should be for me."
"Oh?"
"Yes, see they fit."
"Hmmm, we'll see...."

So, once I finished those, I thought I'd go back to my regularly scheduled knitting. Wrong. Third Son called to say he has a job interview for becoming a truck driver. He has worked for a chicken processing place in TN for years now as a chicken catcher. First he caught chickens in big barns by hand...yeah, that's right, chasing them around and catching them. Then the bought this big machine that does it. (Trust me, you really don't want to know any of the details of this.) Let it suffice to say, the pay was good and he could support his little family.

Big processing company decided to contract out the chicken catching. Rather than give up his time at the company he took another job there. Again, trust me. This job required standing still on cold concrete floors with rubber boots on. I told you to trust me. And a significant cut in pay. He tried it out for a couple of months and decided he really needed less yuk and more money. Hence the job interview. However, he'd really like to keep the chicken job till after the first of the year when he can get a two week vacation check.

So, I grabbed 2nd Son's birthday present of wool socks and shipped them off to 3rd Son to help keep his feet warm. I'm now knitting 2nd son a birthday present.
These are made with Patons Shetland Chunky (a wool acrylic blend) in Charcoal. Which will probably be more acceptable to 2nd Son than the WoolEase oatmeal ones I gave to his brother. (Thank goodness none of my children read my blog!) However, I tell you this, I'm a convert from WoolEase (20% wool, 80% acrylic) to Patons Shetland (25% wool and 75% acrylic). It's soft, smooth, silky and what pleasure to knit with. The WoolEase is scratchy although it does soften a bit with washing, but nothing near the Shetland. It's a bit more expensive, but really makes a difference. It's better than Plymouth Encore, too, IMHO.

I decided on an afterthought heel as the two skeins I bought is not going to make two socks, and I'm not sure there is another skein of charcoal at JoAnn's.... Will check today. Anyway, that puts all my other Christmas knitting on hold till I get these socks done. Fortunately socks don't take long, especially with big yarn!

So, a few days ago, I found this somewhere in someone's blog or forum post.
I sent the link from Dragonfly Yarn Shop to F and asked, "How hard can it be?" His reply was for $20 and a some time, not hard at all. So, it'd cost about the same to make as to buy. But more fun to make it yourself!

Then today at PennyKnits I saw this:
Now this one is a whole lot cheaper and the only draw back I can see is that it does dictate the size of the ball of yarn you can put on there. Will discuss this with F today and see what he thinks.

Not that I really need either of them, but hey, neat knitting stuff is what it's all about, yes?

I hope all of you that celebrate had a good Thanksgiving. We had a good one, good food, good company and I even won the game of TV Scene It we played!