Frogging the socks

I live NW of Houston just north of a town called Tomball. Up on the NW side consider The Woodlands and the Magnolia area. Living out of Harris County has it's perks with the lower taxes and insurance rates but it is a drive into Houston. The Memorial/Katy area and Kingwood are nice places also and closer to Houston. Not sure where you need to commute into and that should be a consideration. Some highways into town are notorious as being bad.

On the afterthought heel issue: Charlene Schurch's Sensational Knitted Socks has one group of patterns that features what she calls a "forethought" heel -- done in the same way as an afterthought heel but at the time you get to that area rather than coming back to pick it up later. You basically stop at the point where you want a heel, use a provisional cast-on to cast on on another needle half as many stitches as your total, and then use those stitches plus half the sock stitches to do a toe (which is all an afterthough heel is), and then pick out the provisional and use those stitches plus the other half of the sock stitches to finish the sock. Just another interesting variation!

I've already shared with you via email some of my thoughts on schools, but I have more things to say! The Magnolia area, as someone else mentioned, is not bad, but it's pretty far out of Houston proper; it's really nice if you're into more of a "country living" style, and the schools are supposed to be good. It's a very fast-growing area right now, so this would be a good time to get into it, if that's where you want to be. Kingwood would also be good. Katy, not so much. The schools are really good out there, but getting into town on the Katy freeway is a *nightmare* -- it can be backed up for miles at midday on a weekend, much less what it's like during commute times. Hopefully it'll be better when they finish widening it, but right now it's a mess, and it's going to stay a mess for a while. If you were going to work out there as well, I'd consider it, but otherwise I wouldn't. The same goes for the Sugarland area, southwest of town -- great if you work out there too, but hellish if you have to commute from there. And for goodness' sake, don't live in the Galleria area; nothing good can come of that.

Here, take a look at this site: http://traffic.houstontranstar.org/layers/

In particular, look at the construction camera pictures on the Katy, and look at the historical speed data. Notice that even the *inbound* Katy sucks in the afternoon! And that's 2004 data, *before* the construction started.

I used to live in Spring, about 20 miles north of Houston, and my folks still live there. It has very good schools and also a very nice little LYS! And there are lots of craft-oriented stores in Old Town. (The LYS is just outside of Old Town). As someone else said, it depends on where you need to get--traffic there is gnarly. But Spring's a great little town and even has a health food store!

Glad to hear that you stopped knitting the socks you didn't like. Life's too short. Smile and knit.

I recently tore out a Six Sox sock, and am sure glad I did. I'm sure there are other Six Sox patterns in my future, but that one made me unbearably unhappy. Even though the first sock was 95% done, it was a joy to tear it out, while realizing that I didn't have to knit the second sock!

Sometimes frogging a project is very freeing. ;-)

We lived in Cypress for three years... nice area, out 290 towards Austin and about 30 minutes from the loop and downtown. My husband worked for Exxon (on Katy Freeway, inside 8) and the commute was not bad at all (especially compared to his current hour and a half!)