I spent today knitting like a crazy person. The two lines you see above appeared this morning, so I rushed off for an early beta with my GP who, unlike IVF clinics, take ALL DAY to get blood test results. Two lines turned very rapidly into two socks. I had just pulled the card out of my camera after taking these photos when they finally called to say that I am officially pregnant. It may not last, heck, it may not even last until my period is due (on the weekend), but it is closer than we have been in nearly two years of trying. And that is something. Quite something.

The question is what will I knit while waiting for Thursday’s follow up result? Because you know it’s all about the knitting…

Pattern: Spearfish Socks
Yarn: Grignasco Bambi Merino Extrafine, shade #680
Needles: 2.75mm Pony Rosewood DPNS, 3.25mm Bamboo DPNs

One question I do have for the experienced sock knitters amongst you. How enthusiastically should I weave the ends? I have woven them in for now but haven’t clipped of the excess in case I ought to do some more weaving first. This is superwash wool so the ends won’t felt into place.

No, I am not talking about my fiber obsession. I am referring to the 4 boxes of home pregnancy tests (with three tests each) that I bought at the super market today. The woman on the checkout clearly thought I was a little unbalanced. She might be right.

I am obviously not doing that well at waiting patiently for the blood test next weekend. The excellent side effect of this restless energy is pleasing sock progress. I knit the second half of the leg on Saturday. Yesterday I knit the heel flap, turned the heel and started the gusset. It’s all down hill from here.

And finally the latest backyard critter to catch Isabelle’s attention, his feelers were twice the length of his body!

Who would have thought that was half the leg done already? It looks too short, but there you go. So far so good. I feel forced to admit that most of my problems with the first sock were almost certainly to do with biting off more than I could comfortably chew and finding the steep learning curve somewhat uncomfortable. The second sock has been far easier. The leg is still a little slower and more annoying than the foot of the first sock but it’s nothing like the chore that the leg of the first sock was. Plus I am far more motivated now that I know how thrilling the finished sock will be!

What has really been far easier second time round is the cuff. I applied a little common sense this time and divided the stitches onto the needles as per the pattern repeats rather than evenly across each needle. Two pattern repeats on three needles and only one repeat on the third. I also had the good sense to actually use some of my ridiculously large collection of stitch markers. I can’t remember how many mistakes I made in the first cuff but I only made two in this one and both of them were fixable on the next round by dropping and rearranging stitches, no ripping required. Yay for stitch markers!

And finally, thankyou all for your kind thoughts for my IVF cycle. The embryo is now on board and the waiting has begun. My posts may be a little thin over the coming week, inch by inch sock progress is hardly thrilling, my mother is visiting and well, all this waiting is more than a little time consuming.

I have whined more than once about how pretty but un-fun to knit this sock was. While I won’t exactly take that back, it certainly got easier as it went along and now that it’s done I find I am far more attached to it than I expected to be. May the second one match.

This is the last of my holiday photos. The holiday knitting was all about footwear - Moss Sitch Shoes and this Spearfish sock. Yes, I am finally working on the sock again. I had finished the gusset as we drove to Murwillumbah early on Thursday morning for a blood test. Who gets up at 6:30am on the last morning of their holiday? Apparently IVF patients do. It was a complete waste of time as the results didn’t turn up until after the test I had the next morning back in Sydney. Though we did have an amazing breakfast at a cafe in Murwillumbah that made it seem all worthwhile.

Anyway back to the sock. As we headed off to the airport later in the day I pulled the sock out and checked the pattern one last time as I imagined myself madly knitting through the instep of the sock. Just as well I did check. Turns out I had been a little over enthusiastic with the gusset and decreased my way down from a large to medium sized sock. I spent the journey to the airport ripping out the last 10 rows or so of decreases and painstakingly picking all those tiny stitches back up. Oops.

Now I really am ready to knit the instep.

Thankyou all for your kindness, it has meant so much to me, really. I am sorry I have been silent for so long but there just hasn’t been much to say, well not about knitting anyway. I did knit three rows 9 days ago - hows that for scintillating knit blogging?

What I have been doing is recovering from the IVF, unpacking, enduring a little food poisoning, unpacking, trying to find a school for Isabelle (so that I can find a preshool), unpacking, fighting off some sort of nasty cold or flu, unpacking. You get the picture. Oh and having more blood tests, because you can never have too many blood draws you know. There is something about seeing new doctors that makes me drivel on like a lunatic, all the while trying (and failing) to at least be humorous since I can’t seem to keep my mouth shut. It takes hours to recover from these little episodes. And this was just a garden variety family doctor that I will most likely never see again. Anyway not much time for knitting. But as the house begins to resemble a home I have begun to ponder when I might resume knitting and I am yet to come to a precise answer.

There have been goodies in the post this week, I am hoping they will provide some sort of inspiration or temptation. I am determined to finish the Spearfish socks but to be honest they aren’t much fun, which is probably delaying my return to the needles. But just look at these irresistible goodies, I will have to finish my socks so I can play with the pretties! In the order that they appeared in my mail box.

Markers from Jenifer, sent as part of the stitch marker swap, aren’t the gorgeous? Just what I need right now.

More Khaki Calmer in the right dyelot! I had to email every single internet distributor listed on the Rowan website to find it so I cannot tell you how happy I am! Sadly while I have been waiting for the yarn to finish Shedir a family member has been diagnosed with breast cancer and is currently waiting to find out if she will be needing chemo or not. This hat was meant for someone else but I will now be sending it to her and wishing that I wasn’t. Not because I wouldn’t love to make her hat, I just wish it weren’t this hat, for this reason.

Koigu! Alison, who mentored me through my first real knitting project has yet again reached out from so far away to enable my knitting.

And finally does anybody know if there is some rule spammers have about spamming you more the less you post? I have been receiving an INSANE amount of spam the last week and I seem to recall a similar pattern in the past. Do the think that if we aren’t posting we aren’t moderating? Ugh.

Is that heel too pointy? It looks kind of pointy to me. Too pointy or not, I confess to being rather pleased with myself for getting it done hassle free on my first try a few nights ago. I thank Knitty for my success in turning the heel, how surprising is that? Not surprising at all. I cannot tell you how I love the Knitty articles. As for avoiding holes in the gusset - check out these wonderful photos. The instructions for the heel in the pattern are completely correct and I am sure more than adequate for someone who has knit a sock before, but I would have been lost without these two resources. It is so cool that you can learn just about any new knitting technique from the web. Funny how that never seems to reduce my lust for new knitting books…

Today’s post is brought to you by the lovely Annette who is playing endless games with Isabelle while I continue my new habit of doing pretty much nothing all day. I am not exactly on bed rest, but neither am I supposed to do anything more exciting that wandering around the house lest I agitate my ovaries. Confined to the house may as well be confined to bed as far as Isabelle is concerned and she is not impressed, though her patience for it all has improved enormously since we explained exactly why I was being so unspeakably dull.

I had an embryo put back this morning. I cannot tell you how exciting that is, all those drugs, all the pain, all the whining about the drugs and pain, actually resulted in a transfer! Which means there is finally some kind of chance of a pregnancy - who would have thought it? Of the 10 embryo’s we had on Saturday the one that was put back this morning was the only one at blastocyst stage so far. The rest have another 24 hours to catch up and hit the freezer, hopefully 2 or 3 will make it. It would be awfully nice to never do this again.

Thankyou all for your kind words. Today we still have 10 embryos - 8 grade one and 2 grade two, which is a far better result than we had dared to hope for. I was so excited I got out of bed, washed the dishes and did four of loads of washing (poor Jesse has to hang it all out)!

Also good was the sudden onset of the ability to sit up again last night. You know what that means don’t you? Yep, 4 repeats of the sock and the start of the heel flap. This sock thing is getting to be quite fun.

We got the house we applied for, we will be moving in about a week and a half - which should keep me nicely distracted through the waiting phase of the IVF, should we be so lucky as to make it that far. I also emailed every Rowan distributor listed on their website (apart from the UK folks I contacted last time) and The Knitting Garden has the right dye lot, so Shedir may yet be finished as planned.

Do you think they will let me knit my sock while I am waiting around in my hospital gown for my procedure tomorrow? I think I may be really wanting my sock right about then.

Would you look at that, two more repeats of the leg. I was going to ditch this sock, try a different pattern with the other ball and then rip this if I liked the second option better. Just goes to show that sometimes it is worth trying once more before giving up. I am getting gauge (hooray!), so I suspect that it is not going to fit. I realise it’s hard to imagine, but I know a few women with bigger feet than me and they are on my Christmas knitting list so if it doesn’t fit I do have options.

This yarn is so darn hard to photograph. My camera really doesn’t like the colour and I haven’t the faintest idea how to help it cope. I wish I could get a close up of those tiny stitches, they are so small and so regular that I find myself chortling stupidly to myself every time I stop to have a good look at them.

Oh and aren’t these markers pretty? They match the sock quite nicely don’t you think? Thanks again Jen.

And finally, for those of you who are interested my egg pickup will be Wednesday lunch time, turns out this IVF thing is for real. We should hear whether we got a house we just applied to rent around the same time. Big day Wednesday.