Knitting with a View

We had a road trip, and once again, I worked on a project from Knitting on the Road. I started another Hiiumaa sock using the bamboo double points I received for free with my Fearless Fibers order.

I don't mind venturing into the land of double points every so often, but this time I decided I didn't really want to pick up stitches along the heel, so I adapted the pattern to use a Bordhi-style heel. I duplicated the original sock the best I could, placing the increases to create a faux heel flap. I did not use the partridge heel stitch because it looked terrible with the stripes. I knitted with both strands on the heelwork to make the heel extra strong. I love how that finished heel feels.



Unfortunately, I compared the sock to another Hiiumaa, and discovered that my best efforts to duplicate the heel had failed. The heel adds a good inch or more to the length of the sock, and it affects the fit of the cuff. Maybe if I'd used the partridge heel stitch it would have been comparable? Sadly, I'll be tearing out this heel and starting over.



The two-strand knitting, well the purling actually, takes forever, and I'm not sure when I'll bother to do it. Maybe next road trip.

does whatever a spider does

At 10:30, after he should be in bed, he says, "We didn't make a mask!"

And so I did.

<3

I love baby socks.

I love Dream in Colour.

I love the class socks in New Pathways..

I LOVE BABY SOCKS.

Sewing fit

Last night I saw this skirt and I was very inspired. I looked at a lot of photos online, what a gorgeous array of skirts! So tonight I sewed up a version. I think it needs to be a bit longer. It doesn't have elastic in the waist, yet, because I'm out. But I did learn how to do a rolled hem, just for this. Thank goodness for downloadable manuals!

Not knee highs

I've been increasing on Ditsy to make a nice pair of knee highs. Turns out there's some splotchiness with the colours that just totally turns me off. I'll probably rip them out and make them the same height as all my other socks.

Results from the sewing room

I haven't shipped out the volcano pants yet, as I wanted to send a few more things with the pants.

I think I have about 8 more cloth diapers ready to go. Here's a picture of a favourite:



As is customary, I cut up some old shirts to make cute recycled diapers. A couple of the shirts had plenty of fabric left over, but not enough to make more diapers.



So I cut up the scraps and had some sewing fun.

Ditzy Rising

I am now making increases in the back of the legs, and DitzyGoth is getting bigger and bigger.

Fishing for compliments

Me: Your sister's not here to admire the diapers so I need you to do that for me.
TeenBoy: Uhm. I'm not much of a judge of diapers.
Me: A simple, "Mom, those are really cute" will do.
TeenBoy:Mom, those are really cute.
Me: (can't leave well enough alone) They're the colours of your old school uniform. Isn't that cool, baby going pee and poo on your old uniform?
TeenBoy: Urgh.

New definition of HOT PANTS

I soaked the pants overnight in water with a dash of vinegar.

Into the crockpot: 5 cups water. 4 packages lemonade koolaid. 40 drops of yellow food colouring. Mix well, add wet pants. Cook on low until dye is exhausted, which took 2 hours.



Allow to cool in the crockpock. This took several hours. The results were a little splotchy, but that's okay.



Now, on the stove, in the top of a double broiler: 2 cups water. 2 packages strawberry koolaid. Using the gradated dying tutorial, slowly dye the pants bottom to top.




Cool. Rinse. Dry flat. Voila! Volcano pants!

52 books in 52 weeks

I wanted to blog each book I read for this challenge, but I'm having a hard time making time to write up reviews. I just want to knit and sew and read, in the few spare minutes I get.

So here's a quick note before I forget:



The Last Summer of You And Me by Ann Brashares. Bonus! Casual knitting content! I like it when books toss in knitters, without it being a knitter's book. The book followed a predictable emotional rollercoaster path, but I enjoyed it. It also provoked a lot of thought about life and quality of life.



The Third Angel by Alice Hoffman. More bonus knitting content! A twelve year old learns to knit and it's therapeutic. It's been years since I read Alice Hoffman and I'm enjoying rediscovering her.



The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak. Oooh, I did enjoy this book, though it's certainly not an uplifting little tale or anything. Told from the point of view of Death Himself, this book takes us into the depths of Nazi Germany and shows us what life would be like during that dismal period. Naturally, we don't love the Nazis, because readers can't go there even in fiction, but it's an opportunity to contemplate life for every day people under Hitler.



Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman. A charming reread. Knitting content! There's a beloved knitted blankie that is indestructable. I had wondered if my daughter would like it, but there's some bad words and that's out of my comfort zone for her at this point in her life. A reviewer called it Yankee Magical Realism, which is an appropriate label. A couple things, totally minor little points not part of the plot, made me squirm: 1) Chocolate syrup in baby bottles, even if it wasn't condoned. OUCH. 2) A man was "bad" and "spoiled" because the women in his life loved him so much they indulged him too much. I didn't like that the women were at fault for his sloth and arrogance.

Finished!

Finished! But not yet a finished object. Itchy fingers longies, made with bare Wool of the Andes. The remaining ball of yarn weighs 40 grams.



ETA Actually, 35 grams after I crocheted a waist tie.

I'm out of yarn.

Well. I used the 55 gram and the 45 gram ball pictured in the previous post. I'm 2.25 inches shy of finishing these longies and I'm out of yarn. I guess I'll be dipping into that third ball. Good thing I didn't try to make these with just one 100 gram skein!



Like I said, the previous pair of longies weighed 91 grams. The current pair is knitted at the same gauge, but is going flagrantly over 91 grams! This is me, learning that weights aren't comparable from yarn to yarn.

With the last set of longies, I knit each leg one at a time. This time I ventured into two at a time, since I do that with socks always, and have found it a very favourable process.

Tonight I talked to the new mama, and heard that the new baby is doing well, and is doing her business quite reliably on her new diapers. She's way too small right now for these longies, but we all know that will change way too fast.

Where the projects are at.

So I'm in my basement, kneeling on the carpet, taking a photo of my in-progress Ditzy socks. I hear the sound of little voices, and look up to see the face of a neighbourhood 3-year-old peering in through a tiny opening in the basement window. A moment later I hear a bang on the door because his big sister wants to play with my daughter. Not the most articulate kid, he tries, "Why were you in there?" Not the most helpful adult, I answer, "It's my basement. I go there sometimes."



Last week I balled up my new Orange Spice yarn. I have a pattern all picked out, but frankly, over the weekend, I just didn't do much knitting. I didn't do much of anything, except curl up in bed with a book, and some mandatory shopping with each kidlet. Stuff like soilless soil for a science project, repair parts for the drip in the dripless faucet, and fancy gowns that don't fit for an imagined future.

The recipient of the majority of my homemade diapers finally had her baby, a full 2 weeks after her due date. This got me thinking about longies again. It's possibly compulsive behavior. I don't care. I have failed to acquire the perfect yarn for these longies, which in my imagination was just like the previous mentioned Orange Spice yarn, only worsted and not superwash. Then I thought I might dye my own. Then I decided I would knit first, dye later. (Yes, I came up with this idea during a 3am migraine event. Yes, I know I'm not supposed to follow up on those ideas. But I've done some refining of it during waking, saner hours.)

I located my ball of undyed Wool of the Andes, which was used in my pirate mittens. The ball weighed 50 grams. The previous longies I made weighed 91 grams. My unwound skein of undyed Wool of the Andes weighed 100 grams. I decided that rather than graft in the middle, I would just use the 100 gram length, and wound it into a ball. While winding, I found a knot, and so I didn't have a complete 100 gram length, anyway. Now I have three balls of graduated sizes. I do need to break the yarn during the knitting progress, and that will probably come mid-ball anyway. What a pain.

The socks that carnival together...

On Friday, the carnival socks got together for a playdate.

Poor Ditzy

In the early hours of her existence, poor Ditzy broke a needle.


She recovered, though, and is coming along nicely.

The cake is (not) a lie

Ever had a cake of yarn so beautiful that you ran outside on the spot and took pictures of it in your winter garden? No? Oh. Huh.

Acquisitions

OKay, I admit it, this winter I'm stashing faster than I can knit. I'm working on it, I am!

It's no secret that I'm a sucker for stripes, and that I'm fussy about my stripes. Through a well-placed Ravelry ad, I discovered Gothsocks on Etsy.(do you think they handpick their ad-victims? Or maybe "people who also have this yarn should see this ad?" I swear I was targeted.) Wow. I was so taken by their unique stripeageness. I adore dyers that take the extra care to make clean and beautiful stripes. As always when pondering a yarn purchase, I went into Ravelry to see how the yarn knits up. There was only one person other than the dyer who had a pair of socks to see, but I loved what I saw. Now I'm the proud owner of two new skeins of GothSocks.

PS This incoming yarn was the reason I got the last pair of striped socks off the needles in a hurry. I've got a free needle, just begging me to cast on...

Get off of my needles....

...and onto my feet.



This pair of socks was cast on sometime in November. I didn't enter it into Ravelry until this Tuesday, and the only time I blogged it was in a picture of all my recently started projects. Perhaps because I'd already knit a pair in this yarn, they generated less excitement and fervour.



I had initially planned to do a chevron pattern, but these socks were happy just to be stripes. They sat in my knitting bag, and were the pair I grabbed whenever I had a need of mindless knitting. I know I turned the heels in early December at a school holiday singalong. Most of December and January was filled with projects that demanded my love and attention, and these socks have been quiet and solid in the background.

As of Monday, I decided I needed them OFF THE NEEDLES and launched into a determined effort to finish them up. On Monday I was about an inch above the heels. I bound off these suckers last night, wove in the ends this morning, and yes, they feel absolutely lovely on my feet.



Let us once again admire these precise stripes. I can't say enough good things about sKnitches and the lovely dye efforts to bring me such beautiful stripes. Also? Two complete pairs out of one skein. One pair for my daughter, who needs slimmer socks, but still a great deal of length, plus a full sized pair for me.

One Skein of Smooshy, All Gone

Last fall, while working on Jeanie, I had a moment of panic. I thought I might run out of yarn. I immediately ordered a spare skein of Smooshy. I knew that it might not match the ones I already had, but I figured it was a win-win-situation. If it matched, yay! it matched. If it didn't match, yay! I had a new skein of Smooshy for another project. It didn't match.



Last November, I grabbed that skein for a pair of Conwy socks from Knitting on the Road. I worked on it diligently while on the road, and then when I got home, I had them in my "on the go" knitting bag, and worked on them when I had time. I just finished them last weekend. Yay, another pair of Conwy!



The socks each weighed 41 grams. The remaining ball weighed 38 grams. I decided to make some fingerless gloves. Despite my previous troubles with a top-down mitten, these just had to be top-down, because I had no clue how long to make them with just this amount of yarn. I planned carefully, and for once my forethought paid off, and my ideas actually translated well into a finished project.



I knitted the thumbs singularly first, and then the bodies 2 at a time. I added the thumbs to the body, knitting them together, and then decreased down, making a "sore-thumb" style thumb. On Saturday I had to work, which really interfered with my knitting time, but today I spent lots of time working on it, very curious to see just how much I'd get out of this ball of yarn. The finished project isn't as long as I'd hoped, but adequate. And other than length, I love these gloves. But then, I love Smooshy. Have I mentioned it's my favourite yarn?

Finished Object: Coastal Chill Mittens

I have been dreaming these mittens since early December. The dreams started when I was knitting the grey and black socks for my son. I found that once I started knitting up the yarn, I had a very emotional reaction to the colours together, and I realised it was reminding me of the gorgeous sweaters that are knit by the coastal artisans in BC. I read up about Cowichan sweaters and looked at patterns. It was about then that I decided I wanted to make some mittens inspired by the patterns.

When I stumbled upon the New Year's 20% off yarn sale, I decided to pick out yarn for these mittens I wanted to make. I was looking at a traditional black and grey combination, but then I found this blue yarn where I had one light skein, one dark skein, and one that was a combination of the two. While blue isn't traditional at all, I'm not making traditional mittens. I'm making mittens to suit my fancy, and I went for the blue combination. The yarn sat by my computer for a few weeks, egging me on. I just needed to finish a few projects on the needles before I could cast on.

Then on Friday night, I had a sleepless migraine kinda night. There were lots of knitting images going on my head during some of the sleepless hours, and as I was working on these mittens-to-be, I decided I should return to my mitten-knitting roots and knit them top down. I did that for the first several pairs I made, and quite enjoyed it. Saturday I was tired and rather trashed, and didn't do much but knit. I cast on and knit three different options, each of which had an unsatisfactory top. After frogging my third mitten, I decided to return to the bottom-up structure, where I could use decreases to ensure the shaping I desired.

Take home lesson: Don't try to follow up on plans made while in the middle of a migraine. Maybe think it through a little better when things are better?



Had I not had three false starts on Saturday, I might have finished the pair all in one weekend. As it was, I had the first one finished by Sunday night. It's taken me all week to work through mitten two, which was finished last night, and I wove in the ends this morning at coffee.

When I had one mitten finished, I weighed the remaining ball of the 2-colour yarn. The 50 gram ball was down to 25 grams. I knit fearlessly forward, only to run out of yarn on the thumb. I could have striped the thumb, and maybe I should have striped the thumb, but honestly? I'm perfectly happy with the way it is.