Too much work and no knitting leads to a very boring blog.  Hopefully there won’t be another work week like this for quite some time. 

Before life went insane two weeks ago, I teased a large shipment coming to my house.  Yes, I did receive two very large boxes of yarn. 

It wasn’t quite 38 pounds, but it was about 31.5.  You see, I’d organized a KTog group order of yarn from Elmore Pisgah’s online store.  I have to say that I was very please with the ordering process.  I placed my order on June 10th, and the order arrived at my house on June 14th.  There’s not much else to say, so I’ll leave you with photos of the yarn.

Colors below are Teal Blue, Yellow, Daisy Ombre, White, Delft Blue, Cream, Tea Rose, Sea Breeze, and chocolate.

Colors below are Shocking Pink, Yellow, Black, and Pink Lemonade

Colors below are Camel, Burgandy, Raspberry Swirl, Light Grape, Shades of Green, Sour Green Apple, Apple Green, and Bubblegum.

Colors below are Sunburst, Mar-Di-Gras, Fiesta Ombre, Black, White, and Dalmation.

About a week ago Kelly had an interest in knitting the Bayerische sock from Eunny Jang.  She thought it would be fun it other members of KTog would join her in a knitalong.  Since I was looking for a new sock project, and had some plain colored sock yarn, I decided to jump right in.  Michelle, Melissa, and Kim decided to come along on this adventure too.

As of Sunday evening, I’ve made some decent progress on the sock.  I’m beginning to worry about how much yarn I have.  I was concerned about this from the beginning, so I only knit half the number of rows of twisted rib.  Now, I may only knit three repeats of chart D on the leg and then begin the heel.  I’ll weight the yarn and the sock as I get to the end of the third repeat and make that decision.

The other concerning fact about my yarn usage is the width of my sock.  When we were at our knitting meetup the other night, my sock was significantly wider than the other socks.  While I didn’t do a gauge swatch, I’m knitting with my Addi Turbo size 0s.  I refuse to knit socks on a smaller needle.  A size US00?  I don’t even own needles that small.  Even if I did, I might refuse on principle.  No garment other than lace should be knit on sizes that small.

Overall, it is surprising to me.  I used to be a very tight knitter.  In most patterns I had to upsize the recommended needle by 2 sizes to get the correct gauge.  I made an effort once to loosen up my knitting, but now it seems I’ve gone overboard.  I’m now going down needle sizes to make gauge.  Am I the only one with this problem?

Today, I finally got around to blocking the Handsome Triangle Shawl from Victorian Lace Today. Once it dries, I’ll find a way to take some nicer photos of it.  In a previous post, I’d hoped to have this shawl blocked more than a week ago, but life threw me for a loop that I wasn’t prepared for.   

When I started the blog, I swore that I’d keep it to mostly knitting content, that the world didn’t need commentary on my daily life.  But, the last ten days have been tough, and I think it would be helpful to get it out. So…

Warning - no knitting content follows.

(more…)

I’ve never really been one of those knitters with eight million projects going at the same time.  I tend to be faithful to one “big” project and maybe a pair of socks.  Items in my works in process pile usually get finished before I begin a new project.  Usually.

Back in early January, I cast on for the Handsome Triangle shawl from Victorian Lace Today.  I raced through the shawl.  The pattern was easy to memorize, the yarn wonderfully soft.  It was such enjoyable knitting.  The yarn was handling the texture of the lace nicely.

Within a few weeks of knitting, I made it to the last pattern row.  I consulted the book to see how the bind off should be handled and there it was…*ch8, sc into next shawl stitch, ch4, sc into next shawl stitch*.  How had I missed this?  The shawl called for a looped crochet bind off.  Now, I have some basic crochet skills, but my crochet is not as even as my knitting.  I did not want to ruin all of my hard work with a wonky edging that wasn’t to the same quality as the rest of the work.  The best thing to do, I thought, was to set it aside for a few days while I decided what to do about the edging.  That was back in January.  Tuesday night I dug through my knitting area trying to find my chibi to graft the toe ends of my Monkey socks.  While looking, I found the shawl hiding in a box.  It looked like this.

There it sat, still at the last pattern row, on live needles, waiting for the bind off.  Five months of sitting in a box, not being worked on.  I decided to do something about it.  Last night I started weaving in all of the ends.  Sure, it’s a bit more procrastination before working on the bind off for the shawl.  But, see all of the messy ends in the corner of the photo?  There’s quite a bit of work to be done on this thing.  My goal is to finish the bind off for this shawl and get it blocked this weekend or early next week.  Making my goal public makes it more likely to be finished.

In the spirit of confession, I’ll also confess to the following.  What could it be?  It’s tracking information from UPS.  I’m receiving two boxes today, 19 pounds each.  What on earth could this have to do with the knitting blog?  It couldn’t possibly be yarn…could it?

I love simple things.  I love to knit, and I love trivia/puzzles/games.  I’ve discussed this in previous Web Wednesdays.  This category will often revolve around these two subjects.

Today’s Web Wednesday is another trivia podcast, Music I-Quiz.

Anna does a really fun, 20-question music podcast.  Each podcast has a theme, and the songs and answers are all focused on the theme.  The current episode is her second “Little Miss I-Quiz” theme, where you can send in your answers to try and win a prize, and the title of Little Miss I-Quiz.  Be sure and check out previous episodes so you can hear the usual format, where you get the answers in the podcast. 

I finished a project this evening.  After finishing the baby blanket, I decided not to jump right into a lace project.  Instead, I cast on for a pair of socks.  I love knitting socks, and have been knitting them since my very early days as a knitter.

I decided to knit Monkey based upon recommendations from some friends who recently knit up the pattern.  I’ll agree that it was a simple to memorize pattern, and enjoyable knitting.  Like most of my knitting, however, I did not follow the pattern exactly as written.  First, I knit the pattern at a slightly larger gauge than the pattern called for, based upon how I like the Socks that Rock when it knits up.  Second, I did not complete the plain knit heel.  Instead, I substitued the Eye of Partridge heel.  Last, I like a rounder toe, so I modified the toe shaping to reduce to 8 stitches before grafting.

The yarn is a bit more pink than I had hoped would end up in the finished sock.  But, overall I’m pleased with the way the socks turned out. 

Pattern: Monkey, Winter 2006 Knitty
Yarn: Socks that Rock Lightweight (100% Superwash Merino)
Quantity: 1 skein, 360 yards / 329m
Color: Waterlilies
Needles: Addi Turbo 2.5mm

Started: May 26, 2007
Completed: June 12, 2007

There has been a bit of stash enhancement lately, all sock yarn.  First up is the yarn I purchased in Madison over Memorial Day weekend.  At Lakeside Fibers, I purchased Tofutsies in the color 724, Foot the Bill.  When I compare the size of the ball of Tofutsies with any of my other sock yarns, I find it difficult to believe that it has 425m.  The ball of yarn is very small and dense.  But, the yarn feels super soft, and I can’t wait to work with it.

At ‘Tis the Season, in Middleton, I purchased some Trekking XXL in color 69.  I haven’t decided if this will become socks for me or not.  It’s a little drab compared to most of my sock yarn.  Perhaps it will become socks for my husband.

Finally, this last one doesn’t really count as stash enhancement.  Back at the end of March, KTog had a yarn swap party.  At the party, Donna made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.  She offered up some of her custom dyed yarn from her Etsy shop, MySmallWonders, in exchange for some handdyed loopy mohair that I had.  I finally picked the yarn that I wanted, and Donna brought it to KTog on Tuesday.  This is the Dew on the Violets colorway of her fingering weight yarn, with about 383 yards.  It is an 80% Wool, 20% Nylon blend.  I was wonderfully suprised by how soft it is.  I may just need to get more yarn from her.

Now, there have been times in the past that where I’ve tended to buy sock yarn with similar colors, but nothing like this has happened before.  I can’t believe how close in color these two yarns are.  The yarn from MySmallWonders does have a bit more variation in color than the Tofutsies, with some subtle pinks and yellows mixed in.  But, all I see when I look at them is green, turquoise, and purple. 

Today’s Web Wednesday is knitting related.  One of the newer podcasts that I’ve been checking out is the KnitPicks podcast.  It is interesting to hear the stories of some of the employees of KnitPicks, I sometimes wonder what it would be like to work in a knitting related business. 

Most interesting to me so far has been Episode 4, Wool:  from start to finish.  In that episode, Kelley discussed the characteristics of the fleece from different type of sheep, and how that effects the end yarn.  I’ve often heard of crimp and staple length, but never really thought about how it applys to the yarn.  As someone who isn’t a spinner, this was really informative.

Check it out at http://www.knitpicks.com/content/index.php/cat/podcast/

This is a baby hat I finished pre-blog.  For me, this hat pattern is my standard baby gift.  This one is going to be gifted tomorrow, so I thought I’d photograph it first.  Since there are no small children here to model, Mr. Puffin volunteered to be my model.  The baby is already a few months old.  I hope the hat still fits him.

 
 

Last week, I was luck to get in on a deal at Amazon.  They were offering the two-pack of Knitting Nature by Norah Gaughan and Last Minute Knitted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson for only $10.98 (this deal is now sold-out).  Being a bit of a knitting book junkie, I couldn’t pass up this deal.  My books arrived on Friday, and I finally got a chance to sit down and look through them.  While these books are not newly published, I still will comment on them.

The first thing I noticed upon looking throught Knitting Nature was the size of the sweaters.  The book features a lot of oversized garments; in many of the patterns, the smallest pattern is a size 40 chest.  There is an interesting mix of designs in this book.  With the weird asymetrical edges on a few of the garments, I can’t imagine what body type they would be flattering on. However, a few of the patterns have ended up on my future projects list.  When I first flipped through the book, I couldn’t help but love the Ram’s Horn Pullover, below on the left.  This one is definitely on the must-knit list.  I also really like the Phyllo Yoked Pullover on the right.

There were several additional patterns that I enjoyed and would consider knitting.  The Serpentine Coat on the left would have to be shortened to a normal length cardigan.  The Honeycomb Henley has a bit too much ease on the model, but would be cute if it fit closer to the body.

Finally, I can’t explain it, but I am attracted to the Cowl Pullover.  Each time I flip through the book I stop to look some more.  I doubt that I’d ever knit it or wear it, but something about it calls to me.

Of course, as it seems to happen in my world, I seem to not love the popular patterns from this book.  Browsing the knitalong, it seems very few people are knitting anything from this set of patterns.

In the Last Minute Knitting Gifts book, I did not find as many patterns that I enjoyed.  I think the Sweater and Sock minis is adorable, but who doesn’t love knitting in miniature?  The Hourglass Sweater is a nice, basic raglan sweater.  Overall, I don’t see myself knitting from this book very often, but I’ll keep it on the shelf.