Socktoberfest!

I started these many months ago and finished last night.  I'm pretty sure I used the Formula Toe Up Socks for All Sizes by Lisa Kay, for the lattice pattern, but did my own Turkish cast on and heel.

Yarn: Socks that Rock, given to me my Olga
Colorway: Korppi
Needles: US3

Merlot Vine Socks, Finished

Finally done, though a little late for Socktoberfest.

Yarn: Twisted Fiber Arts, colorway: Arial
Needles: US 1 DPNs
Pattern: Merlot Vine Socks, Anne Hanson; Yarn4Socks Sock Club, October 2007
Modifications: Added a couple of lace repeats. Had a LOT of yarn left over. Love the lacy rib cuff.

WIP Wednesday: Merlot Vine Socks II

I completed the foot of the second sock and 1.5 repeats of the lace pattern on the leg.

The little leaves are less than an inch long and quite pretty, but they are somewhat obscured by the dark color of the yarn. The leg is quite stretchy, so maybe they will show more when I wear them. I think this will be a good pattern for the lime-ish colored Smooshy I bought in Seattle. When the leg is finished the effect will be of little vines crawling diagonally up the leg. Lovely design, Anne!

WIP Wednesday: Merlot Vine Socks

Socktoberfest means it's time for another pair of socks for me. Haven't made many this year. This one is Yarn4Socks' October offering, Merlot Vine, designed by Anne Hanson, author of the Knitspot blog. The nice thing about this sock "club" is that one doesn't need to subscribe. I just bought this single kit. I fell in love with the yarn when I saw it on Anne's site several months ago. The colorway is "Arial," 100 percent superwash merino, fingering weight from Twisted Fiber Arts.

I love knitting with this yarn. It's the tiniest bit splitty, but I can easily live with it. More importantly, the dye completely saturated the base yarn, so there are none of those white spots or pale areas one finds in some other skeins. The pattern is lovely too, though a bit obscured by the yarn.

This is the first time I've done a short row toe that begins with a provisional cast on. I used a splitty waste yarn on the first sock - a mistake. A very irritating mistake. I kept picking up the yarn through the bump instead of under and it was impossible to unravel the waste yarn. Curses! The green yarn in the background is my "Seattle yarn." I'll blog about it later. I was on the plane back home when I started the second sock. All I had was this "Seattle yarn" to use as waste yarn and no crochet hook. First I tried to do a turkish cast on for the required 34 stitches and discovered quickly that it doesn't work. I used a seaming needle with a crooked tip in place of the crochet hook to make the crochet chain from the "Seattle yarn," and once I got the hang of it, it worked well.

It's hard to see the crochet chain in these pix because the waste yarn and working yarn are similar color.

I've had lots of left over yarn from other socks, so in an attempt to avoid this, I put the first sock on waste yarn without cutting the working yarn after the required number of leg repeats and cast on the second sock from the center pull. I can add more leg repeats with whatever remaining yarn there is.

Barbara flattered me enormously by nominating me a Rockin' Girl Blogger. Thanks Barbara! I haven't rocked much this spring and summer because I've traveled almost every month since May, mostly for work. I haven't kept up with your blogs or mine, or anything else it seems. I haven't kept up with knitting either. I have a gizillion almost finished pieces that, frankly, I just don't feel like working on. I've been to Lansing, Michigan, including a quick trip to Detroit; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Tucson, Arizona; San Francisco; twice to El Paso, Texas and Las Cruces, New Mexico; and twice to Seattle, Washington, and managed to visit yarn shops almost everywhere. I bought "souvenirs," of course. I wrote about Woven Arts, Unravel and Artfibers. I've also visited Loop in Philly, and So Much Yarn in Seattle, City Knits in Detroit - I will write about those later. They are beautiful shops with lovely, friendly staff. I should also write about El Paso's little yarn/shop cleaners, but it needs to be seen to be believed and I don't have pix. I guess it doesn't really look funny, but it's a strange concept.

My laptop crashed before my trip to Seattle last week, so that didn't help! I turned the dang thing on one morning and the screen stayed black. I totally panicked! I hate to admit it but a good portion of my life is online: I telecommute one day week, pay bills, read newspapers, shop, read and send e-mail, I take it with me on all my trips, and there's my online knitting life too, of course. I just sat and stared at the black screen for about 5 minutes before I summoned the presence of mind to call Dell. They are going to replace the motherboard, and I've borrowed a laptop from work in the meantime. They say that I won't lose any data, and I pray this is true. I swear I'll throw a fit if I have to reload my music and postcasts on iTunes. I don't throw fits. I usually roll with most things, but just the thought of it...I'm going to start looking for those hacks that allow one to transfer data from an iPod back to a computer. I hear they work. I'll give the laptop another 18 months after the motherboard replacement, then it will probably be time for a new one. It's only 3 years old. Don't any of these machines last longer than that?

Yarn Pr0n Friday: Karabella, Vintage Cotton

In honor of spring it's Karabella Vintage Cotton, 100 percent mercerized cotton. It's as soft as silk!

The lighting makes these skeins look like two different colors, but it's from the same dye lot. It's dusty pink - a kind of 1930s shimmy pink. It's almost still too cold to think about what tank top I'll make out of it. Any suggestions?

Not much knitting going on here. Just RPM using Sundara's Bird of Paradise.

I like the yarn. I think. I like RPM too, but not together. I'll probably frog.

Lost my Knitting Mojo

don't know what it is. I've been working on these Pomatomus mitts and though I've looking forward to wearing them, I'm really sick of knitting them. I've totally memorized the chart. I can put them down for days and figure out exactly where I was when I pick them back up. That's too much. I debated making gloves because I'm going to have lots of yarn left over, but I really don't think I could make it to the fingertips. I'm using Sundara Superwash Merino "Black over Plum."
It's really hard to take pix of opera length mitts on your own arm.

In the meantime I've finished these. Like the gloves, I finished them weeks ago but didn't get around to taking photos. Too cold to take my socks off. Not much comment about the Marble Arches. You've seen a gazillion of them. They're made of STR Pink Granite. Not much comment about the Monkey socks either. I like them, but don't feel the love like everyone else. I used Sundara "Gray over Periwinkle."

OK, I know I'm starting to sound whiny. The new STR Sock club yarn arrived and it's beautiful! It's shades of purple (my fave) and green. So far I can't get shots that do it justice, but maybe by Friday.

In the meantime I'll leave you with these designs from Sophia Kokosalaki found on Style.com.

Yarn Pr0n Friday: Sundara Yarn, Grey over Periwinkle

100 percent hand-dyed superwash merino wool by Sundara, knit into a Monkey sock.

It seemed positively flimsy after knitting with STR, but I've come to appreciate their differences.

Yarn Pr0n Friday: STR Pink Granite II

Here's the first Marble Arches sock, made of STR Pink Granite. I think it's the medium weight. The hand is very firm, and will likely be a very warm socks. I'm knitting it with US 2, 12" Boyes circs. The firm hand, my tight knitt ing style, and stiff needle cables all combine to make my hands hurt after a while. Still, it's a pretty pattern and fun to knit. I finally got the PGR heel down. Turns out I wasn't following the instructions to the stitch in my other attempts.



My Huge Swatch

I started my I Have Dream cardi last night with my new Addi circulars. (Thank you, Olga!) Unfortunately, I can't get the right gauge with the size required or the smaller circs, so I cast on with fewer stitches so that I at least get the correct width.

I don't like the severe roll that you see at the bottom. I made a swatch with one purl row to correct this, but at 3 stitches per inch, the purl row was too obvious. Given my experience with re-knitting entire sweaters, I've decided to knit the entire front left segment to see if I my adjustments give me the proper dimension, and to then block it to see if it corrects the roll a bit. If it doesn't work, I'll frog it. There's a bit of a roll in the picture of the finished sweater, but not this big.

Thank you all for your kind words about my MK cardigan!

Buttons, Socks and Pins

Olga and I went yarn and button shopping yesterday. I'll show you the yarn Friday. I found the perfect buttons for the Michael Kors cable cardi at Aylin's:

Sleeves, back, and left front finished, I can now start the right front. Wish me luck.

It was nice to have company while prowling yarn shops, especially with such accomplished company. Olga is a designer and has great ideas and suggestions. She convinced me to buy some Rowan Yorkshire Tweed (it's purple, so I was an easy sell!) for a pair of gloves, and suggested an interesting design. She even turned me on to this great Japanese ice cream.
We got it at Trader Joe's. Each small serving, about two tablespoons, is covered in a chewy dough. The flavor pictured here is green tea and it's delish. The chocolate is even better.

I finished the first Flow Motion sock last night. I think I'll have enough yarn to make the leg longer than the pattern calls for, so I'll cast on the second sock from the center pull when my second set of Addi US3s arrive, then knit each one until the yarn runs out. It was hard to take pix that properly show the instep design and the heel flap. (Click each picture for a better view.) Now I appreciate the strange angle of the shot in VK.



I love the pattern on the leg and appreciate the ingenuity of the design, but, you know, it's not exactly a fun knit. Though Pomatomus didn't have a memorizable pattern, watching the pattern evolve produced a certain hypnotic effect, while knitting Flow Motion does not. Perhaps that is because the pattern isn't evident while you're knitting, thus you don't get the same sense of accomplishment as you progress. The best part of knitting this sock was the heel flap because you don't have to pick up stitches. I pick up stitches just fine actually, I just don't like to do it. I always fret when the picked up stitches aren't even, rip and pick them up again, though it's just a sock heel that no one is likely to see. I hope I don't develop second sock syndrome.

Thanks to fellow blogger Bekka, who sent me this beautiful flower pin!


It's simply gorgeous!

Socks and Gadgets

From this commuting sock project with DPNs piercing the bag:

to this:

I read about this DPN holder in VK, Fall 2006, and ordered it from Woolworks, Ltd. As you can see below the needles are inserted into the tube and closed with a cap.

Now that I have it, I would have been better off with one of those one-piece jobbies - fewer things to lose on the bus or Metro. I didn't expect it to be so rough-hewned.

It looks like an amateur metal worker made it. Nothing against amateur metal workers, but one would expect the holder to be sleeker and show no evidence of soldering.

The sock attached is my Grey's Anatomy KAL Jaywalker. When I reached the toe I realized my stitch count was off and had to frog back to the heel. So much for actually watching Grey's Anatomy and knitting at the same time.

I couldn't resist casting on Cat Bordi's Flow Motion sock from the same VK, Fall 2006. I love the pattern on the instep:
It's slow going because the lace pattern is not memorizable, though there's a certain logic to it. I probably won't even have one done for the end of Socktoberfest.

The real genius of this pattern is the heel flap on this toe-up. You don't have to pick any stitches!

The yarn is April Showers superwash merino from Brooklyn Handspun.

Knitting, Knitting, Knitting

Another pair of socks completed.

Pattern: Anastasia (PDF), by Pepperknit

Yarn: Cherry Tree Hill, can't find the ballband, so I don't know the colorway

Needles: Two Addi Turbo 16" Circs, US 1

Modifications: I used the Lana Grossa Jojo short-row heel (PDF) instead of Wendy's as written in the pattern. Still not entirely pleased with it. This pattern requires EZ's sewn bind off, which I loved. It's easy and relaxing to do and much stretchier than my usual. I used the Turkish cast on. I loved knitting these socks. I have a lot of yarn leftover. I may re-knit them with the extra yarn later.

Third and Fourth Time are Charms

My third and fourth attempts at the Lizard Ridge squares were much, much better. The yarn in neither skein broke nor was excessively thin. I've memorized the pattern now, so this afghan might become a commuter project after all. These squares are addictive.

Addendum: The colorways are 139 and 95, respectively.

Thanks to everyone for all your kind comments about the Pomatomi! I'll respond personally as soon as Blogger allows!

Two Pomatomi

Just in time for Socktoberfest!

Pattern: Pomatomus

Yarn: Brooklyn Handspun Hawaii Joy

Needles: US1 Bamboo DPNs

Modifications: None