Saturday, November 17, 2007

Way Too Close!

It's another Saturday afternoon in Knoxville Tennessee, home of the University of Tennessee Volunteers. Saturdays in November mean football around here--serious football against long-term rivals. Today was no exception as the Vanderbilt Commodores traveling east from Nashville for the big game. As a Vandy alum I can attest to the fact that playing Tennessee is *THE* game of the year. The football game they want to win above all others. Tennessee is not as serious about Vanderbilt, saving such emotions for teams like Florida, or the Head Ball Coach Steve Spurrier (currently at South Carolina). Citing the last 3 years as evidence, the Vols need to be much more concerned about playing Vanderbilt, cuz' their football team is no longer the cupcake it once was.

I was concerned by half-time when our offense was faltering badly in the 2nd quarter and Vandy was ahead 17-9 at the half. A good start in the 3rd quarter had Vandy up 24-9 and left Vol fans worrying where the offense had disappeared to. Then it happened. Just as I was considering turning the game off and taking a nap (I've got a little virus and am feeling a bit under the weather) the infraction occurred. TN had the kicking team out on 4th down to punt the ball when a VU player ran into the kicker. One roughing the kicker penalty later, TN had moved up 15 yds. and had a fresh set of downs to try again to move the ball downfield and score. The tide turned and the offense began to click. They scored 16 points in the 4th quarter and the Vol defense played fiercely to stop teh 'Dores from scoring again. The Vols win in a miracle comeback!

Intense ball games are great for making progress on knitting projects. Instead of fidgeting I knit faster. The result today was another pair of finished socks--the Monkey Socks designed by Cookie and published in Knitty. I remember seeing the pattern when it was published about a year ago, but it wasn't until I saw how many people on Ravelry were actively knitting Monkey socks that I really thought twice about this pattern. Now that I've knit my pair, I totally get why as this is an awesome pattern! Lots of texture, very attractive, yet not at all hard to execute. The lace pattern was easy to remember and the knitting went quickly--even without a close fottball game to spur things on :-)

I'll post more pictures once I get some taken. For now, I'm trying to decide which socks to knit next. I'm leaning towards the new Mona Schmidt pattern in Interweave Knits latest Holiday special issue--"Socks for Veronik". I think they'll be a good match for the skein of Dream in Color Smooshy that I bought a few weeks back. Smooshy is a very appropriate label for this yarn which is why I'm anxious to have socks knit from it. yum...smooshy socks :-)

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