Acquisitions

Why, yes, I am still not stashing yarn frivolously, and all purchases are on a need-to-buy basis. The following yarn is all needed for gifts.


I have a coworker who recently knit the enticing Noro Scarf. I've been resisting the pull of this project for so long, but now that I've seen and witnessed it, I could no longer resist. The biggest deterrent was the cost. When I remembered I had $25 credit at the Loopy Ewe, that did me in. I bought Noro. The Noro is Silk Garden is colours 252 and 267. As always, the Loopy Ewe shipped it immediately by priority, and it arrived very quickly.

4 Monstrous Heels

I really am a fan of the Bordhi heel from New Pathways. I think it's an exercise in excess, but I love the construction. For my dad's socks, I decided to do the Bordhi heel but, like I've often done, only increase every other row. This meant I could use her charts, but needed to construct my own formulas for when to start the increases. I calculated very carefully, and came up with a good number. By Friday I was done with the increases and Saturday I started the heels. After doing the short row heel base, I measured the sock and it came up a quarter inch short of what I'd expected. I went ahead and turned the heel, but even after turning the heel it was still a quarter inch short (surprise surprise). I kept convincing myself this was okay for a number of reasons, like it's just the slipped stitches pulling it in, with a big foot there's more room for error, and such. Mostly I was loathe to rip back all those increases just to add three rows before they started. But I had already built in a half inch negative ease in the length, and this shortage meant that now there was three quarters of an inch of negative ease in the length, and I knew this could mean the sock would be too short and fit weird.

I pig-headedly proceeded, despite my doubts, until I was nearly finished with the second heel. At that point, I was sitting in a cold car parked downtown, enjoying the seat-heaters (my family calls them heat-seaters), listening to S&G, waiting for a carpool of ballerinas to finish rehearsal, and knitting on heels. I started texting Ember about my worries, and as usual, talking it over with some one else helped me figure it out for myself. I knew exactly what to do, and it didn't involve ripping out a third of each sock to redo the increases, although it did involve ripping out two heels.

By evening, I was feeling like I'd been knitting heels all day. Which was totally accurate. After ripping out the heels and getting all 216 stitches back on the needles, I added three rounds of plain knitting after the increases and before the heel stitches. Then I did the heel as before. At the end of one completed heel, I measured, and got exactly my target length. I finished the second heel around 11pm last night, snuggled up in bed, watching The Colbert Report through Hulu on my husband's laptop.

Thee heels are done! From here on out, it's all easy knitting. I just hope that my best efforts with measurements will result in a properly fitted sock. Please fit, sock!

An attitude adjustment

The neon socks I just finished knit up at an amazing speed. I couldn't stop knitting them. I was drunk on the speed. This was particularly emphasized by the fact that I only knit one at a time, since I wasn't sure about the design and only wanted to rip out one mistake. Knitting one sock at a time makes the sock feel like it's flying off the needles.

In contrast, I started a pair of socks yesterday for my dad. Going from socks for daughter to socks for my dad is a huge adjustment! I have to get used to the new adjusted pace of knitting these socks. Consider these numbers:

With the neon socks, I was knitting 44 stitches per row. This meant that every inch took 352 stitches.

With the new socks, at 72 stitches around, knitting both at once, I'm knitting 144 stitches per row. And with the smaller gauge, there are more rows per inch, so every inch takes 1584 stitches.

Unsurprisingly, these new socks seem to be creeping along. But that's okay. I like the knitting, I like the yarn, and I like the pattern. I may not be flying through the socks, but the steady progress keeps me happy.

 

Kiva loan to a yarn store in Bolivia!

This nice little script will show the correct link until she's fully funded, then it will be another entrepreneur. The yarn store can be seen here.

Finished Object: Neon Socks!

Enough complaining! I have completed the neon socks, and the grrl says she loves them.


As you can see in the photos, I abandoned the idea of a picot cuff and went with the very simple but effective rolled top.


These are knit from Baby Cashmerino, which provided the neonest colours we could find. She wanted bright yellow and hot pink, so this acid green and vibrant orange are her second choice.


The sock is a basic sock, no pattern necessary. They're knit toe-up with a short-row contrasting heel. The butterfly on the cuff is from the Kai-Mei pattern I knit recently.

Quickie lil dress

My coworker made the cutest knitted babe. One morning, I had a few spare minutes while waiting for my kids to vacate the bathroom. I grabbed a few sewing scraps and assembled a quickie dress to gift to the little babe. This pictures shows Princess Anne modelling the dress before it was gifted.

I'm getting tired of this

My daughter wanted neon ankle socks in two different colours with a butterfly on the ankle. The butterfly is from the Kai-Mei pattern I just finished.

I started with a picot top and Bordhi's sky-sock construction. My daughter thought the butterfly was upside down. That meant I needed to knit toe-up.


With the second try, I got the butterfly right. I used Bordhi's sidestream pattern.



The sidestream pattern wasn't right for this sock. It made the sock all weirdly shaped and the butterfly was squashed. Also, the picot on the toe-up construction didn't lie right.


Next up I did a standard short-row heel. This roll-top is still awaiting her approval.


I like that she wants socks, but it's really challenging to match both available yarn and my knitting abilities to the things she invents in her brain. I'd love to crank out exactly what she imagines, but it's just not that easy.

Evolution of a Resolution

Okay, I looked at my stash. Really looked at it. It's easier to look at in Ravelry, of course, than it is to survey it, as it's scattered about my house, so I did. I browsed my stash in Ravelry. And I really really acknowledged that maybe I have enough yarn. Maybe I should really really stop buying yarn.

Except there's that sock yarn club I hope to join.

Okay, so I'll stop buying yarn, except for the sock club.

Except that I want to make more socks for my parents, and I might not have enough parental yarn in my stash.

Okay, so I'll stop buying yarn, except for the sock club and for gifts.

And then I got that Jared Flood booklet. And I don't have any chunky yarn for the Quincy hat. I've started one in Cascade 220, but that's not the right size.

Okay, so I'll stop buying yarn, except for the sock club and for gifts and for circumstances in which I don't already have the yarn in my stash. So no more gratuitously buying sock yarn because it's pretty, but if what I have is completely insufficient for the project I've gotta make, then it's okay to buy. But no 'stashing'. We'll see how that goes.

So my daughter described me a pair of socks she wanted to wear. And she wanted them to be neon. Yeah, I don't have any neon on my stash. So I bought this:

Finished Object: Stardust Kai-mei

Acquistions, knitting, and a knitting injury

Things like work and ballet carpools and vet visits and other such adventures habitually dominate my life. For weeks, I've had this delightful book held for me at the yarn store, but no time with the car to actually go get it. On Wednesday I had a forced emergency voyage downtown in late afternoon, so I managed to make a stop at the store and finally get the book in my hot little hands. Made in Brooklyn by Jared Flood is now in my collection. Hooray!


Today I managed to get a great deal of sympathy over my finger injury. Blue bruising and red swelling make for serious owiness. It's actually just blue for Sapphire Sparkle Stardust and red for red Cascade 220, both of which are dying my fingers as I knit.


I have been a knitting fiend all week long. I worked with great diligence on these socks all week, and tonight, they are complete! They are way too big for my daughter, who is modeling them here.

I'm planning a photo shoot for this weekend, if I can, to attempt to capture the beauteamousness of these socks. I do believe they are my very favourite socks ever. The yarn and the pattern are a perfect match.



Next up is gift socks #2. But instead of starting them, I got diverted with a hat. I really wanted to try that famous hat pattern from that Flood book, and I need a hat to donate for the knitting circle next weekend. I figured a little recreational hat-knitting would be a refreshing break between fiendish gift-sock-knitting.

Socks, socks, socks

Okay, yes, I have a lot of unfinished socks still lurking about. And, look, oh dear, three of them are the same as the last time I examined my Unfinished Objects. At least the St. Peter Port Stripes are onto the second heel. I'll progress on them when my next two pair are finished. The Hiiumaas haven't progressed at all, but I have decided not to rip out the heel. See? Procrastinate long enough, and the motivation will vanish. I'll work on them on the next road trip. The spaghetti socks haven't progressed, either, and will absolutely have to be ripped out. I can see getting back to them after Christmas. And snuck in there is another little project. I want some 'plain knitting' socks, which they will be after a little bit of effort. But December is approaching, so I started working on the Kai-Meis instead.

Pretty, pretty yarn

I am knitting with the prettiest yarn! It's called Sapphire Sparkle, and it's more of that non-existent Dream in Color Stardust.


It's very tricky to photograph. Both these pictures make it look brighter than it is. It's a very deep, dusky blue with indigo in it. Total twilit-sky colour. I'm working on the ever-popular Kai-Mei from Sock Innovation. The cuff is so easy. Just 3x3. All knitting-heck breaks loose right around the gussets.

Split Pea Curry

It started in an IM conversation. I was confessing to a friend that on the rare occasion that both children are out of the house, we tend to make a curry run. Since we're the only ones who like to dine on Curry in a Hurry, it's the sensible time to indulge. Plus curry is good for preventing dementia in your later years, and has, uhm, other health benefits, so it's really in our best interests, anyway.

So then I had to google "health benefits of curry" to remind myself of the other benefits. Like warding off cancers! And reducing painful swelling for arthritics. I might not be arthritic, but I do have painful swelling from that encounter with the uneven pavement earlier this week.

Suddenly, I wanted curry. While I can walk from work to a lively business district, there is no curry, except that curry soup at Noodles & Co. I decided that it was too cold to warrant a walk to Noodles, and went to the cafeteria. Look! Curry soup! I finally managed to find a worker who was able to tell me that no, the soup was not vegetarian. Drat! I had a sandwich instead.

So when I got home from work, it was obvious that I needed to make some curry. I started combing through the cookbooks, looking for something that called for ingredients I actually had. I found my answer in Vegan with a Vengeance. Well, it called for a pound of split peas, and I only had three-quarters of a pound, but I rounded it out with red lentils. (I love my scale!) I also had to skip the quarter teaspoon of coriander. I decided that the want of coriander would not keep me from split-pea curry. I even made cumin-fried rice to go with it.

I've been reading food blogs lately, and now I'm supposed to post a very appetising photo of the successful, delicious, flavour-packed curry. I'm afraid it made for much better eating than it did photographing. The lentils weren't even noticed, and while I'm sure it would have been better with the coriander, it was still everything I'd dreamed of.

Evil Hat Heels, Laughing

Pattern: Hat Heel Socks



Yarn: Gothsocks in Evil Laugh





It's so not gothy, but this song is all about Gothsocks, if you ask me:

What is love?
What is love?
I think I know what love is.
I think I know what love is.
I think I know…I think
What is love? What is love?
Mmmmmmm
How do you say…
Delicious?
Delovely?
Delectable?
Devine?
How do you say…
Degorgeous?
Dewith it?
Degroovy?
Define?
Ooh lala lalalalala
How do you say delicious?
How do you say delovely?
How do you say delectable?
How do you say devine?
How do you say deGROOVY?

(Lyrics by Deee-Lite)

Knit-along update

Oh, baby, there's a whole lotta socks goin' on round here. My Gothsocks Evil Laugh yarn is knitting up beautifully. Those colourful stripes are so poignant they make me sniffle. The hat-heel pattern seems to work aesthetically well with self-striping yarn.



I decided to do a garter-stitch toe with no shaping. I learned this in Cat Bordhi's New Pathways. The difference here is I did them top-down. I'm very pleased with the results.

Don't bug me

People, people, I am on a schedule here! I have a knit-along to complete, plus I'm expecting some delicious yarn in the mail, and plan to cast on the moment it arrives.

So I have no time for diversions!

Uhm, that said, I have no real good explanation for this little sock. I knit it up Wednesday night out of leftover Duet Sock Yarn, and attached a travel bug tag. This makes it a trackable item that travels about in geocaches. Sadly, when you send travel bugs out into the world, you have to have low expectations, and be understanding that they may well disappear, but the excitement of watching a travel bug travel successfully means that I'll still send them out. Its travel page is here.


And then on Friday night, I finished up the last leg on this alien. It's been in progress for ages. I added a bilingual mission tag to explain what this alien's goals were, and the tag, and sewed them firmly into the little guy's hand. I knotted it in so many ways, that if some one tries to remove the tag, they'll probably ruin the alien's arm. Not that I want the alien ruined, but I wanted to make it less-rewarding to mess with its mission. And this one's travel page is here.


There was a mega geocaching event here in town this weekend, which is why I rushed these babies out into the world. They were sent to the event, where other cachers picked them up to take them to new destinations.

Okay, distractions over, back to sock knitting!

Celebrate Mercedes

Yesterday, my husband, who reads news in Spanish, read that Mercedes Sosa was failing, and this morning he read of her passing. We spent this stormy, wet Sunday snuggled up, listening to her incredible music.



While listening and snuggling, I was naturally also knitting. The Gothsocks group on Ravelry is sponsoring an October Knitalong, and I absolutely had to join in. Once again, I started with the heels. And while I had intended to knit with Business Time, I got diverted to Evil Laugh before I finished the heels.



Once the heels were finished, I joined the socks and knit the feet two-at-a-time. It's gone pretty quickly today, and I'm almost ready to start the toes.

Finished Object--Opa Socks!

When I last blogged these socks, I was knitting like a madwoman, trying to finish the socks by the end of the weekend.


Fortunately, all that mad knitting paid off, and I wove in the ends about 11pm last Sunday evening.


To refresh, these are hat-heel socks made with Dream in Color Stardust.




I chose to do a reversible cable pattern, just because I like how it looks. The reversibility is an added, unexpected bonus, and the socks can be cuffed or not cuffed.


Also, new shoes! On sale from Lands End for $25.

Mitten shoot!

Today many, many photoshoots happened at our house. The first one I wish to share shows my Monochrome blue-ribbon mittens.