Down to the wire...

Socktoberfest is quickly coming to a close, and as I'm waiting for the last clue for the Mystery Sock to be posted at (or around?) midnight Friday, I thought I'd take these moments to post a catch-up blog entry. I'll start with my mystery sock progress...

This is what it looks like after Clue #4. I've since finished the second sock up to this point as well. This marks a coup for me in this Socktoberfest Mystery Sock knitting challenge. In both of the past two years, I went gung ho on clues 1 - 3, but then when I got to the foot clue -- which always feels like the longest part of the sock to me -- I've petered out completely. I didn't finish my 2008 mystery socks until March 2009, and I didn't finish the 2009 pair until February of 2010. That I am on track to finish the 2010 pair not only IN 2010, but within the month of (S)ocktober, well, it's just a miracle! It's a Socktoberfest miracle! ;)

In other sock knitting, I'm still on the gusset increases on my second Riff sock, but I remain optimistic that I will also finish that sock before midnight on Sunday as well.

All of this tiny sock needle knitting is starting to get to my hands a little (ever since I've learned to knit continental when doing socks, I find my hands stay very tense as I knit, I think due to the tensioning needs of the finer gauge yarn), so I decided to cast on another project using US8s.

This is the start of the Caldavos cardigan, pattern by Thea Colman. Can I say that Thea is quickly becoming one of my favorite designers? I loved working on her Nantucket Red design earlier this year, and this pattern promises to be as enjoyable, as far as I can see. Her patterns are very well written, nicely detailed, and I love how she includes notes on how each person can best customize the garments to her own body. I know that is something a lot of us try to do anyway, but if you're a less adventurous knitter, or just aren't confident enough to make your own modifications to a pattern, having those notes within the pattern is a really nice feature. I'll keep you posted on my love affair with Thea and her Caldavos pattern as I progress through it. Right now, my focus remains on these two pair of socks, so it will still be a few days before I made major headway on this project.

And soon there will be another sweater in the works. I can't say a lot about it right now, as it is a test knit, but I will say it will be made from handspun...

This shot represents approximately 24 oz of BFL from Briar Rose Fibers that I (mostly) woolen spun to a heavy worsted weight. The yarn at the back half of the shot is all for the main body of the sweater. The foreground yarn in the rather mustardy shade is, tentatively, set to be the contrast. I'm conflicted, though. Something about the shade of that contrasting yarn just does not jive with the main colors. My other option is to use some Plymouth Tweed in a dark brown, which, colorwise, works much more to my liking, but the spin of the Plymouth yarn is very different than that of my handspun, so I'm not sure how it will look. I'm still toying with the configuration of colors for this project. I know the answer is there. I just need to wait for it to show itself to me. (The answer will not involve either over-dyeing nor buying and spinning yet more fiber, even though both of those options have popped into my brain.)

I will add that this spinning project has taught me one thing: I do not enjoy spinning heavier weight yarns nearly as much as I do lighter weight. DK, fingering...those I truly enjoy. Worsted, I don't mind. This heavier worsted? Meh. Not so much. And I'm just not sure why. I think part of it is because it seemed to take forEVer to spin enough to get the yardage I needed for this project. Granted, spinning finer yarns take a while too, but at least there is more yardage for the effort.

Lastly, a whim...

...crocheted spiral hexagons from leftover sock yarn. As evidenced in my yarn room pictures recently, I have a lot of little leftover balls of sock yarn. I've been hoarding them not only as decorative items, but ultimately to be used for this sock yarn blanket. Now, I love making mitred squares. Honestly, I do. That's often my go-to pattern if I have to make an afghan square or a dishcloth. However, the thought of knitting several hundred of those puppies out of sock yarn just really hasn't excited me, thus I never bothered to start the project. (Well, that and the fact that I already have an afghan WIP that I swore I'd finish before I started any more blankets, however I have this sneaking suspicion that I'm going to run out of yarn before the afghan reaches it's target size, so I've been ignoring it. Plus it's being knit on US11s, which pretty much feel like tree trunks in my hands. I'm not a big needle kinda girl.)

However, I started watching the Round the Twist videocast several months ago, and Carin often shows her little crocheted hexagons that she's making, presumably for a blanket (I'm honestly not sure, but that's my guess). I thought that was a fantastic idea! I'm not a very experienced crocheter, but I do enjoy crocheting on occasion. It's a nice change from knitting. So after the last RtT videocast, I pulled out my Crochet Stitch Bible, found a pattern for a hexagon that looked like I could handle and gave it a go. The next day, I made another one and seamed it to the first. Oh my goodness! These are too much fun to make! I can do them while I'm sitting here at the computer reading or watching something. Easy peasy.

After making the second one, I went and measured my bed, then I came back and did the math. I would need to crochet 1190 of these hexagons to make a coverlet for my queen-sized bed. If I make four hexagons a day, seaming as I go, I could have a coverlet completed in under a year. For whatever reason, that strikes me as incredibly doable. I know, logistically speaking, I won't make four a day, but it's still a goal to work with.

The biggest catch to this theory is that I know I do not have enough sock yarn leftovers to accommodate an entire coverlet. Each of my hexagons have used about 2 grams of yarn, which means I'd need the equivalent of nearly 24 100-gram skeins of sock yarn to finish the project. I'm quite sure my leftovers don't come to anywhere near that. Will need to consider how to beg, borrow, or trade for more, I suppose. But I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

September is off to a good start...

 ...mostly. I'm not counting the cold I've had this week that has been kicking my arse. Moving on...

I finished my Nantucket Red on Tuesday, which is not red but a pretty golden color...

Nantucket Red by Thea Colman done in Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool.

It was a pretty quick project. I finished it in less than a month, and that was in the midst of the house stuff and some other knitting. There are more pictures of it on my Rav project page, along with my project notes. I'm 98.9% happy with it. I am having issues with the sleeve caps laying right...I think I could have made them about two rows shorter and they'd have been perfect, but clearly, that isn't a big deal. The fit in the left bust area is a little snug (yes, just the left...I'm slightly lopsided, LOL) but there really wouldn't have been much I could have done to make it bigger on just that one side without it looking odd. I'm confident that with wear, the Silky Wool will open up and it'll be fine. The only other issue is fixable...I may need to move my hooks/eyes closer to the edges. You can't tell as much in this picture because of the way I'm standing, but they aren't as gappy as they are supposed to be. We'll see how I feel about it after I wear it a few times. Again, though, overall...very happy with it, it was a terrific pattern, and I'm glad to have another Silky Wool cardi to take the place of my February Lady Sweater that is now way too huge on me.

I also finished my first Norwegian Rose sock this week...

I started this sock back in May, after Spring Fling, as part of a KnitGirllls KAL. I started off strong, finishing the foot part in no time, but when I got to the heel, I flagged. It's that whole toe-up heel thing. This pattern called for a short-row heel, of which I am not a fan, so I kept debating about doing a different heel and essentially paralyzed myself with options, so I just pushed the project aside. I finally pulled it out again a couple of weeks ago, deciding to just do the heel as written and see how it went.

Now that it's done, I have mixed feelings about it. The sock is definitely pretty, my stranded colorwork has enough give that the sock fits snugly but comfortably (and I can get it on, which is always a crap shoot with colorwork socks), and the short-row heel is ok, but the pattern called for a "mini-flap" above the short-row heel, which essentially made the heel too high for me and kind of boinks out unless I really pull the sock up, and it will never stay that way. I could omit it on the second one, I suppose, but then the socks won't match, and that will bug me. I could rip out the first one, get rid of the mini-flap and re-knit it, but....hahahahaha! I am not ripping out 6 inches of colorwork. Sorry. Not happening. I'll live with the boink.

As for other projects, I am working on another pair of socks (Norwegian Rose #2 is going to wait a while, I think), which will be a Christmas gift for a friend. First sock is done, second about 1/3 of the way. No pictures yet, though. I am planning to start a Haruni shawl for another gift (I am so on the ball with gift knitting this year...it's amazing!) -- the yarn is wound and the pattern printed out -- and I'm going to start another Traveling Woman soon, I think, for yet another gift, but I haven't decided on yarn yet. In the mean time, I've started a random cardigan with some Lorna's Laces Swirl DK I've had laying around forever.

And I do mean it is random because I have no pattern. This is some of the first yarn I ever bought when I first started knitting a few years ago, but I had no idea what I'd made with it. I finally decided to swatch to see what the colors would do, if they'd pool unpleasantly or what, but the only way to do that for a garment is to make a really big swatch. So I cast on enough stitches to accommodate the back of a cardigan for myself. I've got about 15" now, almost far enough to bind off for armholes. So...yeah...that's what I'll do. And then I'll try to mimic the same design in the front, I suppose. (Really, it's that random.) The sleeves may be a bit of an issue, as I have never tried to fake an entire sweater pattern before, but I know how to measure and divide and count, and I'm hoping that will yield functional and pleasing results. LOL It's actually kind of fun to be knitting something in this way. And I have to say, I LOVE how the yarn is working out. I love how it looks, and I love how it feels. The colors are awesome and not pooling unpleasantly.  So...I'll see what I end up with. Stay tuned!

On the fiber front, I had the day to myself on Tuesday, and though it was one of the days I was feeling kind of punk, I thought, Hey! What better to do today than make a giant mess in my kitchen! So that's what I did. I broke out the fiber and the dyes. By the end of the day, this is what I had...

I've been wanting to learn how to dye roving for some time now...it was on my "to do" list for the last two summers, actually. I've been gathering materials and equipment. I've been reading, reading, reading about the process. I finally decided that the only way I was really going to learn anything was to just give it a go. I chose some Southdown/Shetland cross fiber that, frankly, I don't think is of great quality. It's rough and very neppy and I'm not sure why I thought it was a good idea to buy a pound of it, but I did, so I used some of it as my guinea pig fiber. It dyed beautifully, but it's still a rough, neppy mess that is not the least bit fun to spin.

On the plus side, though, I managed to dye it without felting it, nor burning it. I did, however, use WAY too much dye, thus it took two more batches of fiber afterward to exhaust the dye baths. I also succeeded in dyeing my hands purple during one of the rinses because I forgot to put my gloves on. Live and learn. I feel cautiously optimistic about what I did, though. Next time I think I'll try it on some better fiber. Life is too short to mess with unpleasant fiber, period.

Oh, the reason I had the day to myself on Tuesday is because Kevin took an extra day's vacation for the long weekend. His big project for the four days was digging up his parents' yard in order to install a new water line. We were all over there on Sunday for dinner, and afterward I grabbed my camera and said to the kids, "Hey! Let's go have fun with the ditch!" This sentence would probably seem strange in most contexts, right? It says something about our family that the kids just shrugged and said, "OK!" So...here you have it...fun with a ditch...

Inspired (or Crazy!) - The Home Improvement Edition

In the 17 years we've been married and lived here, we have pretty much done all of the major projects one might need to do on a 30+ year old house. The only big things that remained were replacing the nasty 70s era carpet and redoing the kitchen in it's entirety. (We also haven't replaced the furnace, and, God willing, we won't have to do that. Each winter I pray, light candles and sacrifice a small, random animal to the Appliance Gods in the hopes we can put it off just One. More. Year.)

This year, I got a bug. I decided we HAD to do our floors once and for all. The three upstairs bedrooms, the hallway and the dining room. I hated that ugly old carpet. I hated how dark it makes our house look. I knew it was going to mean dropping a chuck of change, but it really, really needed to be done.

And so, we embarked. But first, I created a Master Plan of how we would proceed. Since many of the same rooms were in need of being repainted as well as refloored, I figured now was a good time to do that as well. (I'm a messy painter, so painting while there's nothing but subfloor to drip on seemed like a great opportunity.)

The week the kids were at camp was when we worked on their rooms. This also involved moving our son's room from upstairs to the room downstairs that has been my yarn room/office since our oldest son moved out in 2004. That meant moving alllll of my yarn out of that room, along with all of the other crap I've managed to accumulate in there. Yikes. It never ceases to amaze me how much stuff can fit into one room! Anyway, moved my stuff out, painted the room, moved his things down, and voila...first room done:

Chris, who is 15, predictably wanted his room painted black. Basement, windowless bedroom? Um, no. We went with a light gray on three walls with the darker gray on the fourth. I then purchased new black bedding and some black room accessories. He was pleased.

Since the kids were at camp, I was able to stuff all of Emma's furniture in the Chris's-still-occupied room (it was literally wall-to-wall furniture!) so that Kevin could work on the floor in there while I painted downstairs. Thankfully, I'd just painted her room a few years ago, and it's still good. Just flooring in there, so it was a good practice room for him to do:

Oh my gosh! Such a huge improvement! We went with an American Beech Pergo, nice and light and really brightens things up!

So, if you're keeping track, you'll realize that at this point, we now had one empty room upstairs. This was part of my Master Plan. With one empty room, we would always have somewhere to go with the things we needed to move from other rooms while they were worked on, and then that room would be done last and become my new yarn room/office.

Our bedroom was next on the docket. Unlike the kids' rooms, which I wanted to get done while they were away, the only deadline I was imposing was to have the bedrooms done before we start our school year on the 23rd. So, feeling relaxed, I moved all our things in the empty room a couple of weeks ago, but I only got it painted this week. Kevin started and finished the flooring today...

Baseboard coming tomorrow (hopefully) and then we can move back in, which will be nice because we are crammed like sardines in the smaller room right now.

This morning, however, Kevin threw a monkey wrench into my Master Plan. Originally, we were going to do flooring in Emma's room, then in the short piece of hall between our two rooms, then our bedroom, then the rest of the hall, then the empty room. We weren't sure we'd do the dining room just now (before September), mainly as a way to spread out the cost of the project a bit. However, today Kevin informed me he needed to work the whole way down the hall into the dining room before he could work over to our room (something about how the boards need to be put down), so that would require the dining room to be done now too.

Now, let's ignore the fact that I don't have the paint for that room yet, and therefore it has not yet been painted so I'll need to paint on top of the nice, new flooring (ack!). Nor had we purchased enough flooring to do all this yet. But more importantly, nothing was moved out of the dining room yet. And can I say that being told this new plan five minutes after waking up and BEFORE I had any coffee was not a bright move on Kevin's part. I may have snarled. Snapped a little even. Mainly, my brain could not get past the thought of where was I going to put this stuff??? Our empty room -- key to making this whole thing work -- was not empty yet! The only other place to go with it all was the living room. And so that's what I did. Moved all the stuff -- my desk top that was temporarily set up in there, all of the book case stuff and the china cabinet stuff and the other random stuff -- into the living room, which now looks like a freakin' flea market...

Here is where I admit that, while I am not a super neat freak and I don't keep a spotless house, large quantities of clutter make me twitch, big time. It's like visual static. And holy moly

Anyway...focusing on what we're getting done, I'm really happy with how it's all turning out. A side benefit of moving nearly everything we own is that I've purged a TON of stuff to get rid of. I filled our front porch last week with close to 30 boxes and bags for the Vets truck to come and pick up. I've got boxes of books to take to Half-Price Books sometime soon.

And today, I boxed up all of my crystal and stashed it on a shelf down in the basement. Salad bowls, wine glasses, water goblets, etc. that we got for our wedding. We are not crystal people. Why I registered for all that when we got married, I have no idea. No, I do know why -- because that's what you were supposed to do! You registered for pretty things! It was tradition! I lectured my kids today, as I wrapped crystal in tissue, and told them...don't register for things that you'll never use! Be yourself, not who someone else thinks you should be. Wish I'd have learned that back then. Sigh.

Amid all the chaos, there is knitting...

I cast on for my Nantucket Red the other night. This is the first six inches of the back. So far, I love it! The fabric has a wonderful drape to it. It is making me very happy. Let's hope that continues!

Twenty-Ten

Or two-thousand ten? How are you saying it? As long as you aren't saying "twenty-oh-ten," you're good. ;)

2010 has clearly started out with a blogging deficit on my part. Ten days into the new year before there's a blog post. That's just sad. By looking at my WIP list in the sidebar, you might be led to think I've been so busy knitting that I have no time to blog. That would be wrong, but I'll explain the much-pared-down WIP list a little later in the post. In the mean time, let's catch up, shall we?

First, there is snow. Lots of it.

Mind you, I am not complaining. I love winter weather. I love being snowed in. I don't even mind driving in it, as long as it isn't icy. And it looks so very, very pretty!

And the birds don't seem to mind it either, especially if I keep the feeders full. This female cardinal was pleased to pose for me, while her bright red boyfriend continues to elude me. As God is my witness, some day I will get the photo I've wanted forever: a red cardinal in a snowy background. I will.


And Muffin LOVES the snow! Oh my gosh, she jumps around and frolics and buries her whole head in it. It's so amusing to watch. She does these very balletic leaps and jumps over the large piles of snow to get to her favorite potty spot. The fact that it is now above the level of her tummy doesn't seem to deter her, nor has the fact that we got her groomed as week and she is no longer furry like this. She just loves being out in it.

And of course the kids are loving it! My grandson is up visiting from North Carolina for a while too, and he's thrilled to have lots of snow to play in, as you just don't get that in coastal NC.

Onto warmer topics, such as knitting! I thought I'd share a few Christmas knits with you now that the recipients have them. For Angela (but modeled here by Emma) there were mitts:


and a matching scarf:


Both were made from Lorna's Laces Worsted...sorry, I don't remember the colorway, but I got both the mitt pair and the scarf (narrow though it be...about 3" wide) out of one skein. The mitts are my Fast & Easy Fingerless Mitts pattern, though I did them in the round. (I've rewritten the pattern for circular knitting...hopefully I'll get it edited and added to the blog soon.) The scarf was from the Dec. 18th page of Yarn Harlot's 2009 Never Not Knitting Page-a-Day calendar...just a simple garter stitch scarf, worked lengthwise.


The scarf pattern was so fast and fun that I opted to do it again for my niece, this time out of some purple Malabrigo worsted, which picked up the accents in her hair perfectly! :)

Being on top of my game this year, I started a birthday gift for my mother-in-law before the day of her birthday (early January birthdays always creep up on me and smack me in the back of the head). We haven't celebrated with her yet, but at least her gift is done!


This is the Chevron Scarf pattern from Last-Minute Knitted Gifts (Rav link) done in Three Irish Girls Kells Sport Merino (colors are Lagoon and Arboretum, from the Pick of the Knitter yarn club).

A couple things about this scarf. First, to me, chevron is not the same as feather and fan, and this clearly is a feather and fan design. Chevron patterns have more definite points to them, such as the V-shaped insignia from which its name is derived, I assume. (Here's a baby blanket I did a couple of years ago in a chevron pattern.) The fact that I feel this pattern is misnamed bugs me far more than it should. I need to get over it. That aside, my second comment about this scarf in its feather and fan pattern is that, while I love how it looks (though I'd have liked a true chevron better!), I can only knit it for so long before I want to die of boredom. Thankfully, the awesome colors of this yarn carried me through the first two-thirds of this scarf. After that, it was simply willpower and the knowledge that the scarf had to be longer than three feet to be useful that got me to the end.


Finally, on Friday night, I deemed the scarf long enough because I just could not bear to knit on it one more inch. Thankfully, it was quite long enough at that point, and blocking gave it a few extra inches as well. Whew! With that out of the way, I decided to challenge myself with a new project. (I know, I know...what about all those WIPs??? Hang on, I'll explain in a minute!)

Part of The Loopy Ewe Spring Fling fun is all of the activities we do on the SF Rav list in the months leading up to Fling. Among them, monthly KALs. This month, it is an Anne Hanson KAL. My initial thought was to try and finish my languishing Caricia shawl (which never got much bigger than it is in that picture) and just not have it count toward a prize for the actual KAL. At least it would be done. But no. Why do something that makes sense when you can do something crazy instead? To that end, I pulled out my Wing-o-the-Moth pattern -- which, to this point, has intimidated me to no end! -- and I wound up the ShibuiKnits Silk Cloud yarn (ivory) that I'd just purchased from TLE last week (like I need more yarn, yeah, I know) and cast on:

Silk Cloud is a 60% mohair, 40% silk yarn, similar to Rowan Kidsilk Haze. It is fabulously soft and has a lovely halo and subtle shine to it. Because of the mohair, though, it is a bitch to rip. So we must ask ourselves: was this a good yarn choice for Lisa's first ever lace-weight lace project? Heh. Remains to be seen.

Wing-o-the-Moth is written for both a full-sized shawl and a mini-shawl or scarf. My original plan was to do the scarf, as I didn't have enough yarn for the whole shawl and didn't want to buy more, and also because I have a dismal record of actually completing full-sized shawls (I reference the long-languishing Caricia again). However, I did have more yarn (by about half) than what the scarf called for, so I'm doing something in between the two. A large scarf. So, instead of doing two repeats of Chart A as the scarf pattern calls for, I did five. And then I realized that I was going to have to do some crazy calculating and modifying of the pattern to get Chart B to work out, since it was set up to work off of two or fifteen repeats of the first chart, not any random number some nutty knitter chose.

Yeah. Following patterns as written is for sissies. ;)

I think I have it figured out now, though, so I am hopeful it will work. I intend to spend my afternoon today finding out. Cross your fingers for me, 'kay?


Oh! About the WIP list...yeah, I decided to move most of my WIPs to hibernating status for two reasons. One, having that many WIPs was starting to make me nervous, like they were creeping up behind me and breathing down my neck. Changing their Rav status doesn't change the fact that they are still WIPs, but it does make me feel less stressed, and that is good. Two, I'm going to participate in the Ravelympics next month, and my plan is to do the UFO event. To do that, WIPs need to be in hibernation for at least a month prior to be considered UFOs, or so I understand it. Thus, I hibernated everything I wasn't planning to actively work on between now and then and I can make them active again as needed or use them for Ravelympics, whichever comes first.

New Project!

Just popping in with a shameless self-promotion.

My good friend Angela and I have started a photoblog together called Variations on a Theme. Each week, we'll be working with a particular theme, with each of us posting no more than one photo per day of something that represents that week's theme to us. We're encouraging visitors to our blog to participate as well by posting links in the comments to their own photos related to each week's theme.

We just finished our first week and had a lot of fun with it. Please come over and visit us!

And yes, I'll still be blogging here, too. Gotta talk about knitting somewhere, right?? LOL In fact, you can be pretty sure some knitting photos will be making regular appearances over at VOAT, too.