kmkat and her kneedles

Even the best knitters -- of which I am not one -- make mistakes.

I have been wanting to make some patterned socks for rather a long time, but most of my sock yarn is not suited to that. For the past couple years I have tried to remember that when buying sock yarn, to greater and lesser success.

This Regia yarn was essentially free in a Webs order last year b/c my total was enough to get the discount; said discount covered the cost of two skeins of this sock yarn.

1. Cast on to make these toe-up, not remembering that the pattern is top-down, and that if I want to make the cool heel pattern I need to knit them according to the pattern.

Frog.

2. Cast on from cuff, work 2" of 1x1 ribbing. Discover that cuff is supposed to be k1tbl, p2.

Frog.

3. Cast on following cuff pattern, work ~1/2". Discover that I twisted the knitting when I joined in the round.

Frog.

4. Cast on following cuff pattern. Work 3 rows back-and-forth before joining in the round to ensure that work is not twisted.

Rejoice!

 

Socks, bullet-proof.

Photo taken with iPad, hence, the poor quality.

I finished these Sunday night whilst watching Wallander*.

Better photos in daylight.  

Yarn: Country Classics Yarn for Sox
Pattern:  my usual, Wendy's Generic Toe-Up Socks, here worked over 48 st. Feet are a little too big (44 st would have been better) and legs are barely big enough, probably because I made them so tall. Shapely calves, etc.
Needles: US#2 for the feet and ankles, US#3 for the leg. I just looked at other socks from this yarn on Ravelry; most people used a US#6, although there were a few 3s, 4s, 5s, and even 9s. No one else was dumb enough sufficiently intrepid to use a 2, though.

Photo styling assistance provided by the ever-helpful En Esch.

En: "I'm outta here!"

I call these bulletproof. Here is an example of their heftiness and body.
I had to whap them back onto the table after they tried to walk away on their own.

* Kurt Wallander is played by Kenneth Branaugh. I would never have believed that Branaugh could be so annoying. He plays the character, a Swedish police inspector, as stoic to the point of being inarticulate. The only time he can put more than three words together is a, when he is discussing the case, and 2, when he is livid. After watching my way through two seasons of this on Netflix I have gotten used to him; either that or he has lightened up a bit on the tongue-tiedness. Also of note is the cinematographer's excessive fondness of wind-blown grasses/rape/other crops. Nice effect the first couple dozen times...

Sunday stuff.

1. Arrow :: shirts.
2. Hum :: ho.
3. Cornerstone :: of democracy.
4. Flight :: of the bumblebee.
5. Music :: box.
6. Determine :: -ist.
7. Analysis :: financial
8. Better day :: tomorrow.
9. Audio :: video.
10. Meditation :: sleep.

* * * * *

I am nearly done with my bulletproof socks. They were not as much fun to knit as I expected. Worsted weight yarn on US#2 needles = hard work. The socks will last forever but I'm not sure they are worth the effort. I think the second pair will be knit on US#4s.

* * * * *

We think winter may be over. It hasn't snowed for over two weeks. (Hope I didn't jinx us with that statement.) Ice went out of the lake two weeks ago. We haven't had the heat on since Tuesday or Wednesday. Temp has been well over 70˚ for several days. I have opted for capris instead of long jeans. Our winter down comforters are just too warm for comfortable sleeping.

Let the summer begin!

* * * * *

I ran out of coffee a couple days ago. Oh, the horror!

Happily, I had put in an order for my favorite -- a 3-pound bag of Alakef French Roast -- at the coffee kiosk in my tiny town. Younger Son picked it up for me on his way here today so I am currently enjoying a perfectly marvelous homemade quad latte.

::sigh:: Life is perfect again...

* * * * *

Cleaning out my blog folder.

 

Muttering through Mother's Day.

1. 537 :: is more than 400
2. Horizon :: line.
3. Episode :: seizure.
4. Character :: -driven.
5. Crossed :: town bus.
6. Shipping :: charges.
7. Jump :: Whoopee Goldberg.
8. Bowling :: Lebowski.
9. Grumpy :: Old Men.
10. Them :: Us.

 

I celebrated my own Mother's Day yesterday -- spent pretty much the entire day in my recliner reading, watching Netflix, drinking coffee/soda/wine (as the day progressed), and knitting. This is Smokey's weekend to work (always with the night shifts) so when he is home he is tucked up in his bed with two dogs and a cat and a box fan for white noise. Today I might be productive. Hard to say, really. 

 

Reading: 
A few weeks ago I read a piece in The Nation by Deborah Kopaken Kagan about her experiences as a woman author and how she was demeaned by the publishing industry. I was so inspired/enraged by her experience I clicked over to bn.com and bought all four of her books to read on my iPad. (I also clicked over to her website and sent her an email telling her what I did; she emailed back that it made her cry.) Anyhow, I want to recommend her books. She came from an ordinary middle-class background, graduated from Harvard, moved to Paris, worked as a photojournalist covering a lot of gritty stuff (ex., she went into Afghanistan alone during the Soviet-Afghan war), eventually married, had three kids, started to write. The woman has lived more in her 40-odd years than a dozen other other people put together. I highly recommend her books, especially Shutterbabe (memoir) and The Red Book (fiction). Her collection of essays, Hell Is Other Parents, is pretty damned good, too.

Yesterday's book was Odds Against Tomorrow by Nathaniel Rich. I had read the first 60+ pages in fits and starts and was not particularly engaged by it, but yesterday I decided to give it a chance to pull me in. Which it did, in spades. Protagonist is a quant who specializes in the odds of disasters; the 3-person consulting firm he works for makes him rich. Then a real mega-disaster hits New York City -- essentially Hurricane Sandy plus Katrina -- and his life changes. Some of the scenes were lifted straight out of the news stories of Katrina. Good book, four out of five stars.

Last night I startd NOS4A2 by Joe Hill. Creepy as hell, that one. I follow the author on Twitter. He is currently on tour for the book and every day posts photos of readers attempting to kill him in various ways.

 

Knitting:
I am enjoying having several projects to hand at all times. A hat, a pair of socks, the top-down set-in sleeve sweater, a scarf of the same yarn as the hat. They are strewn about my chair in various stages of doneness. When I sit down there is the delicious feeling of What shall I pick up this time? Project monogamy, begone!

Stuff:
Remember the humungous external hard drive? I have moved most of my data files over to it and gone into my most-often used programs to direct them to that drive for files. Two programs have me stumped, though: Excel and iPhoto. I can deal with the former, but iPhoto is being a bugger. I have searched through all its menus and preferences and cannot find a place to tell it where to store its files. My internal 160GB hard drive has 76GB of photos. It would be nice to get them all moved and backed up. All suggestions welcome. (I started to email Younger Son yesterday to ask him but got distracted, had to reboot, lost the email, yada yada. So I'm asking y'all.) 

No photos popped into my head to illustrate today's post. Here, in honor of Mother's Day, is a gratuitous one from 1984 of me being a mom to Elder Son.

Mutterings, knitting, cars, computers. And stuff.

1. Interests :: varied.
2. Bloom :: Harold.
3. Ceiling :: sky.
4. Tears :: roses.
5. Jerk :: chicken.
6. Weight :: free.
7. Friends :: many.
8. Camera :: lens.
9. Chicken :: jerk.
10. Hose :: garden.

* * * * *

Other items OTN.

A couple summers ago I bought some worsted weight sock yarn when we were on the North Shore. 

The person at the yarn store told me that one skein was not quite enough for a pair of socks, but that I could get two pairs out of three skeins. Hence, my choices.

During tax season I had decided that, when I had free time again, I was going to focus on knitting down my stash. Lots of good yarn there; time to use it. My priority would be to knit up the yarn that didn't fit into my Rubbermaid bins. Although I had planned exactly what I was going to knit first -- and it was not this sock yarn -- when the day actually came to pick up my pointy sticks, this is what I chose.

Sock The First:

It may not be apparent, but this sock is like armor. I knitted the foot and ankle on a US#2 and the leg on a US#3. Result: very dense fabric. The sock is also a little big on me; I am hoping a hot bath will correct that.

Heather, before you ask, here is the inside:

* * * * *

In other news, Younger Son was here yesterday to work on his car with Smokey. Did I ever show you the car they found for him to replace the 14-yo Chevy Metro he had been driving?

Someone had donated it to a tech school in St Paul, which sold it for very, very cheap, like <$2k cheap. YS is thrilled with it -- sunroof, turbo, heated seats, power everything, plus it all works (except for the speedometer, they are still working on that; he uses the GPS in his phone to gauge his speed).

Anyway, while he was here he installed a new external hard drive for me. My Mac Mini has a 160GB hard drive that is nearly full -- it has been nagging me for several months to delete stuff. I had done that, but it was a stopgap measure at best.

This external drive was one that had been sitting around where he works for a couple years; since his firm went to network storage they had no need for individual backup drives. It may not look impressive, but there are two 1TB hard drives in there. He set it up so that one mirrors the other -- automatic backup!

The copying/migration process, which kinda scared me, but to him was just click click, all in a day's work:

* * * * *

The official ice-out day on our lake was yesterday, May 5, the latest anyone can remember. Transiting geese and ducks and loons and maybe even some swans have been sighted and heard. The trees are still completely bare except that I saw that the swamp maple opposite our kitchen window was blooming. Maybe spring/summer really will come.

* * * * *

Well, there you have it:  the minutiae of my recent life. Knitting has been on my mind constantly -- well, except for when I was fretting about the surgery -- and I hope to have more projects to show soon.

WIP (and FO) Wednesday.

Do I still knit? Why, yes, thanks for asking.

I finished a pair of socks a few weeks ago.

Yarn: Regia Galaxy Color, purchased at Camas Creek Yarn in Kalispell MT when we went to Glacier National Park a couple years ago. When I saw the yarn in the ball I thought it was going to make striped socks that would coordinate with my multicolor striped raglan. These will be fine even without the stripes. I alternated between the two balls to minimize pooling.
Pattern: Wendy's Generic Toe-Up Sock
Needles: US#0. Normally I do the foot on zeros and switch to US#1s when I get just past the ankle, but I forgot. They still fit.

I picked up the Tappan Zee sweater again; it has been quietly snoozing in its bag for a year. For those of you who care but don't remember it, it is a top-down cap sleeve sweater. I had reached the armholes and knit one front a couple inches past that. When I picked it up I discovered that actually, I had knit both fronts to the point where they were ready to be rejoined, so all I had to do was knit the back to that point, join all three parts, and knit away mindlessly until it is long enough or I run out of yarn. Yes, I am knitting as fast as possible in order to finish before the yarn runs out. Don't we all?

(no photo -- it doesn't look significantly different than in the posts linked above, just a bigger blob of knitting)

The Christmas knitting is progressing. A Windschief hat and neck gaiter (that's what cowls were called before they became The Trendy Thing) for our renter. I knit them almost entirely during the annual two-day tax conference last month, or, as I like to think of it, the annual two-day knitting retreat with CPE credit. Here they are posing with Bubbles on my soon-to-be history first generation Maytag washer, piece of crap that it is.

Pattern: Windschief by Stephen West. Delightful pattern to knit.
Yarn: Filatura Lanarota Pure Washable Merino, from Smiley's Yarn in New York. This stuff is surprisingly pleasant considering the El Cheapo price ($2.99 per 109 yd. skein(!)). Truly machine washable, not scratchy. It is a bit splitty because it is 8- or 10-ply and not tightly spun, but with blunt Addis I had few problems. Huh.
Needles: US#6 and #7.

A tuque for Smokey's partner at work. I had no plans to make this one, but last week I was complaining to Smokey that I would be riding in a car for hours in a couple days, and I had no small portable project on the needles. Really, I was complaining, not because I was looking for a project, but mostly just to make noise. However, he said that Peter, his partner on the adolescent psyche ward night shift, was intrigued by the tuque I had made a couple years ago. So I checked my stash and found I still had just enough of the yarn to make another one.

Oh, you wanted to see it as an actual hat rather than just a blob? Okay, here ya go:

Yarn: Phildar Pure Laine 3-1/2 (apparently discontinued), DK weight, colorway 'Corsair', 3+ skeins (350 - 400 yds.).
Needles: Addi Turbo US#6.
Pattern: I got the original pattern from Dale-Harriet in Madison but couldn't find it when I looked. So I winged it.

When that is done I plan to make a pair of mittens, probably from some more of the same yarn I used for the Windschief set, for the teenage boy who has been our hired slave since last May. When one's own sons are not around the house any more, and one's disabilities make it difficult to do certain things, hiring a teenager is the perfect solution. Scotty is a great kid: reliable, cheerful, willing to learn, willing to do whatever we ask of him. When the task is partcularly disgusting, like changing the litter box, we pay extra.

Then there are the medical mittens, slumbering for years. Last spring the woman who designed them for me emailed to offer to finish them (!) She had noticed that their Ravelry status had not changed in a loooong time. For those of you who care but can't remember them either, they are for Elder Son, who was in medical school at the time. He has since finished and is now at UMich in Ann Arbor getting a master's degree in public health, epidemiology. The design has the caduceus on the backs of the mittens; I knat them up as far as the wings at the top but couldn't get that part right. She finished them and blocked them and sent them back. Yarn is Cascade Heritage sock.

 

I still have plans to make a DNA scarf of the same yarn for him. Will it get done in time for this Christmas? Probably not, although miracles DO happen...

There is a also tiny bit of stealth knitting going on, maybe for Christmas and maybe not. Someday I'll show you it. 

Summer knitting.

Note: I found this post in my draft folder, waiting for a picture of the socks. Finally took one.

At the beginning of the summer I came upon a pattern that begged to be made in profusion and sold for benefit of the local humane society, on whose board I sit.

Doggie poo bag dispensers.

Pattern here. Great fun to make and a good use of leftover sock yarn. I made 29, gave one to Matthew and Alex for Ser Percival The Energetic, and we sold...one at the county fair booth. I have hopes for better results at the September dog walk, an annual fund-raiser for the shelter.

Last winter I made myself a Noro hat that I like so well I made a scarf to match. My old Noro scarf was dark, which was fine with my old red coat but too dull with my current dark brown one. This scarf is a bit livelier.

 

The hat and scarf are gone now. A few days ago I got an email asking for something for a silent auction fundraiser for a local candidate whom I support. Not much time to knit right now, so the hat and scarf set went to a good cause. Now I'm wondering if I should recreate them or if I should move on to another scarf and hat for which I have half the yarn I need.

I made a pair of socks.

Please ignore the funny-looking ears on the toes.

Yarn: Online Supersocke Nepal found on eBay.
Pattern: Wendy's Generic Toe-Up Socks.
Needles: Addi US#0 (feet) and US#1 (legs). 

And earlier this month I made baby hats for The Purple Project (or whatever it is called).

1. Valley Yarns Superwash DK in lilac;
2. ditto;
3. ditto with a stripe of Knit Picks Andean Silk; 
4. Lamb's Pride worsted in clematis; 
5. Knit Picks Andean Silk (discontinued) in hyacinth;
6. Knit Picks Swish DK in clematis heather (color discontinued);
7. ditto.

Still have two different socks OTN, frogged the cowl and need to cast on a different (easier) one for Alex. And that is what I have been knitting. (I wrote this on September 3. Alex picked out an easier pattern and it is nearly done. Photos soon.)

Yarn, gift yarn, souvenir yarn, and socks.

Last week I remembered that, while I knit for charity and I knit for loved ones and I knit to create garments for myself, I knit primarily because I like knitting. Knitting is, or should be, fun. The things currently OTN were not fun. What I really felt like knitting was... socks.

So I cast on a pair of socks.

According to the photo metadata, I bought this sock yarn in June 2010 and, going by the other photos surrounding it on my hard drive, I bought it in Kalispell MT.

Here.

Yep, time to knit those puppies.

A couple weeks ago a package arrived in the mail. This was when Smokey was sick with the wound infection that we didn't know about. The package and all the rest of the mail sat in the mailbox at the end of the driveway for several days before Elder Son and I picked it up. I was very surprised to find a package for myself; hadn't done any online shopping in weeks. What could it be?

(Camnesia struck. I have no photos of the package nor of its contents.)

It was a sock kit from Kym, who had surmised from my bulleted blog posts that I was under a bit of stress and needed some love. What a sweetheart! Yarn Hollow merino/bamboo/silk sock yarn and a pattern that I had admired on her blog.

I pondered that yarn for the better part of a week until I figured out a plan. The pattern was written top down using a US#2 needle; I prefer to knit socks toe up, foot on a US#0 and leg on a US#1 or 1-1/2. While we were on the North Shore I figured it out (mostly) and cast on.

Something I have never had before: two different socks OTN.

Both have progressed past turning the heel since I started the post. And both socks are, in a word, delightful.

I needed to wind the hank of Yarn Hollow yarn into two equal cakes before I started the socks, but I had no ball winder, swift, nor scale with me in the mini-mini-motorhome.

LYS to the rescue!

This yarn store was just a few miles up the Shore in Tofte. I had been there before and liked it (photo is from 2010). So I popped in, picked out some souvenir yarn to salve my conscience and earn some brownie points from the clerk, and asked if I could wind some other yarn. The store owner stopped in while I was busy and admired my yarn. Both she and the clerk are very nice people.

My purchases:

   

At left, some Lambs Pride superwash wool worsted to replace the mortar and pestle holders I made last year and which subsequently disappeared. At right, two skeins of Frog Tree Pediboo to make a pair of fancy stranded socks (photo below kinneared with my iPod). I also got a pattern for a baby set because the sample on display were so cute. 

As I was driving home from the North Shore I started counting in my head how much sock yarn I had at home. Not all my fingering weight yarn, mind you, just the yarn specifically destined for socks. I quit when I had counted eighteen (18!) pairs of potential socks at home in the stash. In other words, I really, really, really needed those two skeins of Pediboo ;-)

Knitting! (5)

While I was knitting that Montego Bay silk scarf I found myself experiencing an almost visceral urge to knit socks. Fingering weight yarn! Tiny needles! I wantwantwant! However, I mananged to keep that feeling in check until the scarf was f-i-n-a-l-l-y finished.

Definition of a scarf: a knitted object four to twelve inches wide and only as long as the knitter can maintain sanity.

Ta da!

Yarn: Lang fingering weight 80/20 wool/nylon. Most of a skein of Oxford gray (83.0003) and about half a skein of ruby red, plus about one-and-a-half spools of the gray nylon reinforcing thread that came tucked into the center of the gray skein. The heels and toes are the red fingering weight yarn with the gray reinforcing thread; the feet are the gray yarn; and the legs are both the gray and the red yarn.
Needles: Addi Turbo US#0 circ (foot and first four rows of the stripe pattern); an anonymous bamboo US#1.5 circ that I bought in a lot on eBay (legs).
Pattern: Toe up using Wendy's Generic Toe-Up Sock Pattern until the round before the stripes start; then a modification of the sock pattern in Knit One Below by Elise Duvekot. Her socks were knit top-down; I prefer toe-up. Details of my mods are on my Rav page.

The gauge of the knit-one-below stitch is significantly bigger than stockinette. I did some judicious decreases (trial and error, three times) to get the ankle big enought to be easy to put on but not so big as to sag, plus I used a larger needle on the leg as I always do. If you look carefully you can also see the errors in the initial rows of the pattern. I wanted to plan my stitches so that I didn't have to do the knit-one-below into a stitch that had been a decrease in the previous round and apparently that was a bit more than my brain could stand. (Note to self: If I had used pencil and paper to plot it out it would have been a lot easier.) But once I had knit two or three rows of the pattern stitch I balked at ripping it out to fix it.

You may wonder at my choice of colors that are, to put it charitably, less than exciting. Well, I have a pair of socks purchased many years ago that are light gray with red toes and heels and a stripe/ribbed pattern on the legs. For some unknown reason I have always loved them. Now they are wearing out and I wanted to replace them. When I dug into my stash of solid sock yarn I had only one skein of light gray and I didn't think that would be enough. Wrong again.

 

WIP Wednesday Thursday.

Not the only thing on the needles by any means, nor necessarily the most interesting, but the one that I had a photo of. If there is interest I will write up the pattern (but only for those of us with size 8.5 narrowish feet).

FO, socks.

I finished two pairs of socks.

Yarn: ONline Supersocke 100 Nepal, the enchantingly named color 63, most of one 100-gram skein; toes and heels reinforced with red Lang reinforcing thread. I saw this yarn on eBay and had to have it.
Pattern: Wendy's Generic Toe-Up Sock, worked on 60 stitches. I consciously tried not to knit too tightly but overdid it a bit -- these socks are a bit roomy.
Needles: Addi Turbo US#0 for the foot and ankle, US#1.5 for the leg. 

I started these socks the night before I started back to work in February and didn't finish them until after tax season was well over. Hard to do anything except eat, sleep, and work during tax season.

Yarn: Premier Yarns Serenity Sockweight (50/25/25 merino/bamboo/nylon), aquamarine, most of 2 50-gram skeins. This yarn is supersoft because of the merino/bamboo.
Pattern: same as above, worked on 64 stitches instead of my usual 60 because this yarn is thinner than most sockweight. That may have been unnecessary/overkill because the socks are slightly roomy.
Needles: Addi Turbo US#0 for the foot and ankle, US#1.5 for the leg.

I started these on the subway from JFK to our hotel last month; finished the first and cast on the second on the plane home; finished the second a week or two later.

My sock wardrobe swells... 

If you can't knit big, knit small.

Many small projects are flying off the needles these days.

First was that headband for #2 Son's GF that turned out to be too narrow. I did some calculations, figured out a different edging, and decided that a cable worked in a panel of 14 stitches should be just about right. Paging through my Barbara Walker books, I came upon the perfect cable.

A closer look:

It fastens in the back with a button, a la Calorimetry.

I was inordinately clever with the button loop, if I do say so myself. As described in the post linked above, I had done a provisional cast on and worked until the length seemed right to begin the last bit, where the cable panel ends and the whole thing narrows down. I pulled out the provisional cast on and picked up those stitches (on the same circ, so for awhile I had both ends of the headband on the needle). I worked the narrowed end, improvising how to do it neatly and took a few notes so I could replicate it at the other end. When that was done, I tried it on my head and determined that it needed to be a bit longer. (My head is exactly the same sIze as GF. Isn't that special handy?) Another 20 minutes of knitting and the length was right. I followed my notes and decreased down to six stitches.

Next comes the inordinately clever part.

I put three of the stitches on a holder and made the button loop by working about an inch of i-cord on the other three stitches. Then I flattened the i-cord and kitchenered those three stitches to the first three stitches, thereby closing the loop. It turned out perfectly. Cat hairs added for verisimilitude; everything I knit includes animal hairs.

This is an awfully lot of blather about what is really a very small project, but since I designed it myself (and it turned out) I'm feeling rather proud.

* * * * *

Next up was the second hat for Warm Hats, Not Hot Heads. It is 2x2 rib, almost identical to the first one except that it is deep slate blue instead of brown. No photo, just use your imagination. I finished it Friday night. Given the fireworks in Madison this past week, I think WHNHH is a very timely endeavor.

* * * * *

After finishing the hat I knit on a sock for awhile. The Sunday a couple weeks ago before I went back to work I sort of panicked about how much the job would cut into my knitting time. Ack, less knitting time! What to do?

Clearly, the solution was to cast on for more projects: the headband, above; the hat just mentioned, the sock, and another little experiment that may or may not ever see the light of day.

Here is the sock in its present state of UFO-ness.

The sharp-eyed among you may notice that, while the toe of the sock has been reinforced with red reinforcing yarn, the half-done heel... has not.

Oops.

I was working on this Friday night at Knit Night at the Yarnery in St. Paul, a delightful place to be and to which I was introduced a couple years ago by my friend soxanne. (We met at a Yarn Harlot event when her friend canceled because of bad weather and I ended up sitting next to her. We chatted and discovered that we both had blogs, and the rest, as they say, is history.) This is only the second time I have been able to attend Knit Night, but my work schedule this tax season -- which I have lain out in exquisite detail -- may permit me to attend at least one more time. I say, Yippee!

Anyway, I was knitting away on the sock whilst chatting and was congratulating myself on how well my short rows were working... and totally forgot about the reinforcing thread. I hope my short rows work as well the second time around...

* * * * *

Last night I cast on for the second pair of felted slippers for my friend Colleen. It is a really fast pattern. I did the entire first slipper last evening, and I was in bed by 11:00.

Please excuse the shadow, bad photographer.

I should be able to finish the second one tonight, no problem. I'll see her on Wednesday morning; getting them felted and dried by then should be easy.

* * * * *

The latest thing I cast on is this, which will be Citron when it grows up.

It will be a gift to our assistant librarian (sssh, if you read this, don't tell her -- she has no idea she will be getting it). The yarn is a skein of Misti Alpaca fingering weight I bought a couple years ago on our anniversary trip to the North Shore. Souvenir yarn, ya know? It took me several weeks of hard thought before I could give it up for this scarf. The color is absolutely perfect for her (she has red hair and wears a lot of browns), but I had previously decided that the yarn was going to be the bright color in this scarf for me, with charcoal for the contrast color. I had seen it (I think) on sophanne's blog and loved it. Really, though, it is better for the gift; I am not entirely sure I could wear a wool/alpaca scarf indoors without sweating to death. Plus, I have wanted to knit Citron ever since I first saw it. And I'm not the only one -- there are 6,102 projects in Ravelry!

Relax, I'm much better better now.

Whew. If you want to be really appalled, read Marianne's comment on that last post:

"jeeze louise, I hope you're feeling better! Bobby had an episode similar, ended up in ER with a kinked intestine, one of the interns dubbed him Tasmanian Devil (he sounded just like him, the cartoon character) he spent a couple of nights in hospital getting morphine shots to relax and unkink (which it did), he wasn't complaining :^)"

So, moving on...

Do you read The Bloggess? Cuz today's post is frickin' hilarious. And the comments on pretty much every one of her posts are as funny as the post itself. My favorite comment on the linked post:

* * * * *

Hey, ya wanna see some knitting? Cuz I got some. I finally finished these socks while we were on last week's mini-vac.

Oh, you want to see the ENTIRE pair of socks? Well, all righty, then.

Yarn: Berrocco Vintage (50% acrylic/40% merino/10% nylon worsted weight) in 5182 Black Currant (red), 5187 Dungaree (faded denim blue)(no longer available at Webs), 5177 Douglas Fir (green), and 5192 Chana Dal (gold). I bought one skein of each from Webs plus one of 5185 Tide Pool (bright teal) with the idea to make several pairs of multi-colored socks until I used up the yarn. I was also curious about how an acrylic blend would wear and feel in socks. The first pair I made from this yarn demonstrated that it is not warm as the equivalent weight of wool (Duh) nor does it breathe quite as well (Duhx2), but it is still acceptable (Whew.).
Needles: US#2 from the toe to the ankle, then increasing one needle size every inch or so until I was using US#4.
Pattern: Wendy's Generic Toe-Up sock. I love this pattern.

Yes, there were a LOT of ends to weave in. Wanna see a few?

No, it was not the excessive number of ends that kept these OTN for six months. I ran out of the red and waited to order another skein until the next time I placed an order with Webs. But, silly me, I didn't double-check the color name and number and ordered Black Cherry instead of Black Currant. Black Cherry turned out to be a perfectly nice color and one that I will use eventually, but it was much darker than Black Currant and would not work in the socks. So I had to wait until the next Webs order.

This pair of socks, just like the first pair, were inspired by Kristin Nicholas's socks in Kristin Knits. I am enchanted by her colorful-ness. Such fun. I am also enchanted by the notion that knitting can be about playfulness and not just tastefulness and usefulness.

1.2 Socks.

It occurred to me that perhaps I should remind everyone that I DO still knit. Currently OTN:

 

Notice the distinct lack of suntan, plus the remnants of that itchy rash on my legs. Ewww. Back in June when Smokey was doing the daily wet wraps of my arms, I was not as diligent on my shins. Working on that now.

Remember the multi-color striped top-down raglan? I tried it on after posting its progress earlier this month, and guess what? It was very nearly long enough -- only about two inches short! Finding out how close I was to finishing gave me some impetus to resume knitting. We are going camping again next week -- North Shore of Lake Superior this time -- and I hope to finish it once and for all then. Stay tuned...

Sock projects,

I dug through my sock yarn stash to decide on sock projects to bring along on vacation.

(Photo taken after I had already plucked The Chosen Yarns.)

The first choice is some Mountain Colors Bearfoot, colorway Juniper, that I won in Lisa's snow melt contest last year. This yarn cried out to be knit concurrently with the Noro striped sweater for which you saw the yarn yesterday. Don't you agree that a pair of socks from this lovely stuff would be the perfect accessory for that sweater? Yes, I thought you would.

I wound it into a ball on Saturday, but decided I should swatch and throw the it into the laundry just to be sure it would stand up to my rather careless care of socks. (I don't refuse to hand wash socks.) If it proves to require more tender care than I can provide I'll save it for a lacy scarf, and instead bring along this, purchased here, which would also be great with that sweater and which I swatched and washed last year:

Both of those yarns are dark and thus suitable for daylight knitting. When the light is dim, say, in the car after dark when I am using my headlamp, these aging eyes prefer that I work with light-colored yarn.

Behold:

 

That is Opal Starken Zarkus, colorway 2006, bought somewhere in the past year. This yarn marks my efforts to purchase sock yarns that will produce socks whose colors blend in my wardrobe rather than scream COLOR! FUN! I love Opal yarn for socks; it feels like no nonsense, like it will last forever.

Just in case the Opal socks knit up so quickly that I need a second light-colored sock project, here we have Trekking XXL, colorway "Clown Barf" 156, purchased here and which color marks my inconsistent approach to the color theory mentioned above. Trekking has much the same feel to me as Opal. "This is sock yarn."

New socks!

These have been my carry-along knitting for a couple weeks. They went fast.

Yarn: Schachenmayr Regia Sport
Pattern: Wendy's Toe-Up Sock and Jeny's surprisingly stretchy bind-off
Needles: US#1.5 (2.5mm) for the foot and first ~2" of the leg; US#2 (2.75mm) for the rest of the leg. Worked on 52 st.

Sport weight yarn = a quick pair of socks :)

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Last Wednesday I attended an all-day workshop for newly elected and repeat county supervisors. The board chairman drove, a new supervisor called shotgun, and I claimed the back seat.

Why, oh why, do people schedule workshops to start at 8:15 a.m. when they know that participants may have a 2-hour drive to get there? Especially when the workshop is scheduled to end at 3:30? I brought a pillow and blankie so I could sack out in my back seat for the first part of the drive.

When I woke up I cast on for another pair of socks. This -- except for about 1/4" -- is what I got done on the drive there, during the day, and on the drive home.

 

You can get a good view of the surgery scar from the broken ankle, plus the discolored skin that seems to be another result of that mishap. And then there is the rash eczema (right above the stitch marker) that appeared after the cast came off. It seems that I was allergic to the titanium plate and screws that were used to secure the break while it healed. Because I waited too long to have them removed, the bone had grown around the long screw and it had to stay in. I will have this spot of itchiness... forever. I have had eczema since I was a child (although it abated when I hit adulthood) so I am used to the inconvenience.

Ahem. Back to the socks.

The toes and heels are some Lana Grossa Meillenweit Mega Boot Stretch I had left over from a pair of double-stranded socks, reinforced here with some Lang woolly nylon yarn/thread. The main yarn is KnitPicks Felici Sport. KnitPicks may label it sport, but it is so thin and loosely spun (and soft; 75% merino/25% nylon) that I am treating it like fingering weight. The foot is on a US#0/2.0mm needle, the leg will be on a US#1/2.25mm needle. Knitting the yarn tightly should compensate for the looseness and softness, I hope.

Socks.

Another blogger, not a knitblogger although I think she does knit occasionally, linked to Sock Dreams. I saved a bunch of pictures of their socks for future sock inspiration.

 

That last pair in the larger screen shot look remarkably like my multicolored striped raglan sweater. Hmmmmm...

One last screen shot for a certain knitblogger who likes cats and purple and is dressed almost always in black...

Random Friday.

I found myself thinking in bullet points on Thursday afternoon, which led me to this post. Of course, once I started typing, the individual bullet points got longer. As #1 Son says of himself, I can't even say hello in 25 words.

* * * * *

Remember this delightful carved wooden shawl pin that I am using to close my kimono sweater?

 

As I was putting the pin into place yesterday, I suddenly realized that the corkscrew-shaped end would enable me to screw in the pin, thusly:

 

...which means the pin Stays.In.Place. That was a bit of a problem the first few times I wore the sweater.

Damn, I'm good...

* * * * *

(Oops. I seem to have forgotten the other bullet points. Hmmm...)

* * * * *

(Oh, yeah.)

* * * * *

Smokey and I are going to enjoy a free night at the local casino hotel on Thursday night, which is TONIGHT as I type this but will be LAST NIGHT as you read it. Got that? Not that it matters.

I have three four small knitting projects that I will bring to work on tonight/last night while The Bear is happily dropping his quarters into the slots.

1. Second pair of colorful socks.                                   B. Chemo hat.
 

iii. Second cuff.                                                              IV. Medical mittens. (IV = medical, get it?)
 

1. Coming along nicely. These are my fall-back knitting right now; completely mindless and satisfying. ETA: just tried on the first foot -- it fits perfectly! Unlike the first pair of colorful socks, both of which turned out to be about 1/2" too long despite my careful plotting.

B. By request for an internet friend for her friend who is going through cancer treatment for the third time but the first time with chemo. Friend, very dignified, is more worried about losing her hair than the cancer. Chemo hat to the rescue!

iii. You haven't seen these. I have a 10-year-old fleece gray and white pullover that I love, but the cheap white knit acrylic cuffs are falling apart. These replacements will give the pullover a new lease on life.

IV. Yeah, these were supposed to be for Christmas for #1 Son. But when he told me he no longer has time to go running and hence has no particular need for them, I sort of lost interest. Then I got to a slightly more difficult part of the pattern and had screwed it up and was going to have to tink back a couple rows and needed to reprint the pattern but my toner cartridge was empty and I didn't have another and beside the dog ate my homework and the cat threw up on it. New toner cartridge now installed, pattern reprinted, and it's time to finish these suckers. Plus they are occupying my #0 and #1 circs, which I might need again someday.

I predict that numbers B. and iii. will be done by the time I come home tomorrow/today, the socks will have grown a bit, and the mittens will still languish.

Digression: I tweaked the color in the photos to correct the yarn color. Notice how different the color of the chair pad is in the different photos. Also: the blue in the socks and the mittens is NOT the semi-fluorescent blue it appears to be in the photos. I Could Not Make The Blue Behave.

* * * * *

If you are unable to shower, say, if you are camping in a place without showers or are running very very late for an appointment, acne pads -- the ones with salicylic acid -- work pretty well to swab out the stinky bits. We keep the generic ones from Wal Mart on hand; they have 7% sal acid, which is pretty strong.

You're welcome ;^)

* * * * *

I had another run-in with Da Yeep last Friday. Smokey had used it the day before to plow three driveways, charging around in 4WD. When I drove -- very carefully -- to the next little town and back, the brace holding up the plow lost its hold-it-together thingie (technical term) and the plow dropped to the road surface. If I had tried to drive it like that I would have broken the plow. Smokey was in Minneapolis, his cell phone was off, and his other phone (internet phone) was not set up to ring in the room where he was sleeping after his double shift. I did get hold of Lennie The Wonder Mechanic, who sent one of his guys with a wrecker to lift the plow blade and chain it up so I could get the vehicle home.

Smokey drives Da Yeep with reckless abandon, even as far as to Minneapolis and back, and never has a problem. I drive it five miles and end up stranded or some such. I'm cursed, I tell ya...

* * * * *

Have you seen these socks, just added to the latest issue of knitty.com? I was completely smitten at first sight. Even though I generally prefer mindless knitting, these might just be worth the effort. As soon as I finish the second pair of colorful socks and free up the #0 and #1 needles from the medical mittens, I plan to make these. Stay tuned. There are sure to be some, er, colorful metaphors flying around.

What? Another FO?

It's a pair of socks, though, so don't get too excited.

Not impressed? How about this shot:

 

I was inspired by the colorful socks in Kristin Nicholas's Kristin Knits, of which I tragically have no photo. Suffice to say, hers were far more colorful than mine, but I would have had little use for socks in lime and fuschia and canary yellow. The colors above are more my style.

I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille...

 

 

 

The single row of gold yarn at the cuff kinda got lost when I put them on, darn.

Yarn: Berrocco Vintage (50% acrylic/40% merino/10% nylon worsted weight) in 5182 Black Currant (red), 5185 Tide Pool (teal), 5177 Douglas Fir (green), and 5192 Chana Dal (gold). I bought one skein of each from Webs plus one of 5187 Dungaree (worn denim blue) with the idea to make several pairs of multi-colored socks until I used up the yarn. I was also curious about how an acrylic blend would wear and feel in socks. Today I found that it is not warm as the equivalent weight of wool (Duh.) nor does it breathe quite as well (2xDuh.), but it is still acceptable (Whew.).
Needles: US#2 from the toe to the ankle, then increasing one needle size every inch or so until I was using US#4; cast off with US#5.
Pattern: Wendy's Generic Toe-Up sock. I love this pattern. For the next sock, though, I am going to make the heel deeper to lessen the stretching over the top of the instep. That has not been a problem with the previous socks I made from this pattern, but the combination of worsted weight yarn and small needles in this pair seems to require it.

All in all, socks that are quick to knit and fun to wear. Stay tuned for the next pair, already OTN...

Jumpers. Knitting.

"Pringle of Scotland has commissioned artist David Shrigley to create a humorous short animated film about life behind-the-scenes at Pringle to celebrate the brands return to Milan Fashion Week.

"The animation, showcased during Pringle of Scotland's menswear show in Milan on 18th January, depicts the making of jumpers and cardigans over the past 195 year history of the Scottish brand."

Found via modeknit's tweet yesterday.

* * * * *

Yes, there is knitting going on here at Chez Kat™.

 

No, it is not ready for prime time yet.