Three, I mean, Four Things

First, I only have one project on the needles: a hat for one of my two trainers at the gym. They've both been really patient with me, as the clueless newbie in class. Thanks to the both of them, I managed to lose 5 pounds in 6 weeks. We start up again in January, so I should have this finished in plenty of time.

Secondly, I made a couple hats over the Christmas break. One was the purple hat for my other trainer. It was a really quick knit, on big needles with aran-weight yarn. I still need to decide if it should have a pompon on it. As I was finishing that one, my sister-in-law said how much she liked it and wondered if I could make another for her. As it happened, I had another ball of the Nashua Isabella in my project back, this one in topaz. Since we were snowed in, I was able to whip out another hat in time for her to take it home with her the next day. Yay for bringing along that extra ball of yarn!

Thirdly, my copy of Colours of Shetland arrived the day we got home from Christmas! I'm so excited. The photography is gorgeous and I want to make just about everything in it. The highlight of the book (aside from the patterns, I mean) is the accompanying text about the inspirations for the patterns. I love that the whole book is a testament to Kate Davies' love of Shetland.

Lastly, I have some yarn I haven't documented, so I thought I'd throw that in this post, too. It's three skeins of Cascade Ecological wool that I got in a trade with a friend. I'm pretty excited to have it, though I haven't decided yet what it will be. I've been thinking I might want to make another afghan or throw, but I'm sure I'll have to get more yarn. Of course, I have plenty of other things in my queue that I want to knit, so who knows where my fancy will take me?

So, short and sweet today. I'll see you all in January. Happy New Year, Friends!

Santa's little sweatshop is closed for the season!

I finally finished all the owls! Like, half an hour ago. All of them now have eyes and beaks, though none of them have pupils - I'm not a masochist, after all. So now I can get to the enjoyable part of Christmas by spending time with family, sharing good food and drink, and exchanging gifts!

Merry Christmas, Friends!

Joy to the World!

I have my laptop back and can post regularly again, instead of shivering in a cold corner of the basement, trying to make do on my husband's desktop. It seems like ages since I've posted, and I've missed it. Every so often, I would think, "I should post that on the blog." But I didn't.

Anyway, I've been knitting Christmas owls like crazy since I was last here. Fourteen total. Fifteen, if you count the one my mom admired so much that I let her take it home with her after Thanksgiving. Six of them have eyes and beaks, which means I have to make 8 more sets in the next few days. This is achievable. At least I think so now. I'm not sure if I'll be singing the same song come Monday evening. Cross your fingers for me.

I also managed to finish my father in-law's socks (just yesterday!) and I'm really pleased at how well they came out. This is the first time I've ever knit socks on size 0 needles, and I think I might want to do more. That size needle is perfect for Cascade Heritage, and my husband is actually kind of coveting those socks, so I think he'll get a pair too. I can't believe I'm committing to making more stuff on tinier needles. I may just start getting manicures so I can get my hands massaged after all that fine-gauge knitting. I wonder if that would qualify for my health savings account. I'll have to check that the next time I'm in the office.

Now that the socks are done, I've cast on a project on big(ger) needles: Cabled Hat by Yuko Nakamura. This will be a belated gift for my trainer at the gym, whose favorite color is purple. The only purple yarn I had in my stash was one lonely skein of Nashua Isabella (now discontinued) in amethyst that I bought before the Knit Nook closed. Since that yarn only has 109 yards to the skein, I had to have a good look through the Ravelry pattern database before I found a hat pattern I could make with so little yarn. I'm really hoping I have enough! This will be a nice project to work on while visiting with all our family at Christmas, especially since it's on size 7 needles. I have one skein of the Isabella in topaz as well, which will come in handy if I finish this hat before the holiday is over.

One other crafty thing I've been working on is getting some art prints I've had for awhile framed and matted. Sometime last year, I bought this set of prints from my friends at Madpixel and have wanted them on the wall ever since. Finally, last weekend, I went to the art supply store, bought some mat board and got busy! I also managed to buy some frames and spent the weekend getting each print in a frame. I hung all the prints this afternoon and was so happy about how good they looked that I staged a little bourbon tableau and took the photo you see below. Of course, now that I've taken another look around their website, there are plenty more prints I need to have.

Well, that's all I have for now. Merry Christmas, Friends.

So much for turning those heels three weeks ago.

Okay. So I intended to keep flying along with my progress on the Salted Caramel socks. Then I signed up for 3-day-a-week Boot Camp classes at my gym. Which is just as tiring as it sounds. I also had a couple sick days in there. And then my mother came for a week's visit over Thanksgiving. And while all these things might sound like excuses, I prefer to call them mitigating factors as to why I only got the heels of these socks turned yesterday.

Yep. It took me until yesterday to get those heels turned. And it's not like the knitting was difficult. It was two heel flaps, two little rounded heels, and two gussets to pick up. Nothing to it. Ah, well. Now they're turned and I can work on the gusset decreases for awhile. I still expect to have them finished well before Christmas, but now I might be defining "well before" as "just enough time to wash, block & wrap them before I get to Christmas" instead of "oh, cool! I have time to cast on for something mindless to knit on while I'm there." I just hope it doesn't turn into "maybe he won't notice me weaving in the ends before I give them to him unblocked."

In other news, I have completed a few more owls, if you consider "completed" as being stuffed and closed up, but not yet having eyes and a beak. After about the fourth owl, I decided I would just get as many knitted as I could and do the eyes and beaks later. Like maybe in the car on the way to Christmas. I don't think it will really be that bad, but I'm definitely starting to get a little nervous about there only being 25 days until the Big Day.

My yarn estimates for these guys have been coming out just about right: 15 grams of wool yarn is plenty. The cotton ones are taking a little more like 18 grams. And then the faux Fair Isle yarn one took a whole lot more because it turns out that yarn is probably a little more like sport or dk-weight than fingering weight. I wasn't sure at the beginning of that one how I'd like, but the more I look at it, the more I like it. I think once it has its eyes and beak and I hit it with a little steam, I'll like it a whole lot. I'll be sure to post new photos once they all have all their bits. I just hope for my sake it's before Christmas.

So, Friends, thanks for your patience between posts. Until next time.

Socks finished, socks started

I think last time I posted I said I'd photograph the FrankenScylla socks and post them this time, so here goes! One day last week I got my husband to hold still for a few minutes so I could get pictures of his feet in the socks (in daylight, even!), because I think socks look better with feet in them. Anyway, he put them on and moved each of his feet this way and that, and then said to hurry up because he'd had just about enough. The whole photo shoot took all of 3 minutes. Maybe 4. Anyway, the socks got photographed, so my job there is done. Way to take one for the team, honey.

In other sock knitting news, I've finally started the Salted Caramels socks, these intended for my father-in-law. I'd been told by my mother-in-law that he prefers blues or greys in his socks, so you can imagine my surprise when I discovered I didn't have the appropriate yarn in my stash! I made a point of checking out all my local yarn shops, none of which had quite the right yarn. (There was plenty of lovely sock yarn, just not the right yarn for this project.) I also took a look at a couple shops in Bloomington & Nashville, Indiana, when we were in the neighborhood a few weeks ago, but struck out there too. I finally ended up ordering two skeins of Cascade Heritage from an online seller: the Heritage yarn is a smooth superwash yarn with good stitch definition and generous yardage that would be just right for the pattern. I got the charcoal grey which I think will be a good neutral so George can wear them with just about everything.

Since I probably won't see him before Christmas and he won't be able to try these socks on as I knit them, I'm taking a few chances on the fit. My husband reckons that the medium size will be right for the legs, and his mother told me George's shoe size, so I feel pretty confident about that. Mostly I was worried about how the cuff was going to fit, so I decided not to do the folded cuff specified in the pattern. After looking around on the internet for a little while I decided that Jeny's Surprisingly Stretchy Cast On would be the way to go.

I watched the video a couple (dozen) times and cast on, and let me tell you, that's a freaking challenging cast on. For the first sock I probably tightened my stitches too much, which made knitting the first round of 1x1 rib, um, difficult. I was actually a little frustrated with it - so much so that I nearly didn't finish that first round. But once I got going on the ribbing and saw how very stretchy this cuff was going to be, I decided I would give it another shot for the second cuff. On that one, I felt good about the tension on the stitches, but then I made a mistake in the ribbing in the first round and made a discovery: you can't un-knit the first round with this cast on. I ended up just cutting the yarn and starting over. Once I got through that first round, it was smooth sailing. I think if you haven't learned this cast on yet, you should definitely try it with thicker yarn and bigger needles. I do not recommend learning this cast on with thin yarn and size 0 needles. I might have polished off a whole bottle of wine after that first cuff. (I don't really remember, but it may be why I wasn't unwilling to start the second one.)

Anyway, once I got through the cuff ribbing, I put both cuffs on one long circular needle (to knit them at the same time) and began the leg chart, which is a really simple pattern of paired increases and decreases. This bit is moving right along and I expect that I'll be turning the heels of these socks by the end of the week. I think these socks are going to turn out beautifully and they'll be just right for my father-in-law. The pattern is enough to keep me interested in the knitting, but not too busy for him to wear. It's a good balance.

Well, that's all I've got for now. Until next time, Friends.

Darn that sock!

Now that the weather has finally become more autumn-like, I've been wearing my hand knit socks. It's so nice to have soft, warm socks to wear in the cooler temperatures, especially when I'm waiting for a bus in the early morning chill. Anyway, with all that sock wearing comes sock washing, and so the other day I gathered something like 7 pairs of socks to hand wash and hang to dry. I didn't hand wash the superwash socks - just the ones that I'm pretty sure are Not Superwash (note to self: knit more superwash socks for yourself). As I was putting the Koigu pair into the soak, I noticed a small hole on the heel, but it was half submerged when I noticed it, so I went ahead and put it all the way in. I'd rather darn a clean sock rather than a dirty one.

So once the sock had dried, I grabbed my darning egg and took a good look at the hole, which was a little bigger after washing than when it went in. There were a couple things going on: along the bottom of the hole, it appeared that one stitch had been dropped about three rows. Then I noticed that the yarn had broken above the dropped stitch in two rows. And lastly, the row above that had pulled itself out of two stitches. After looking at a few videos from the kind folks at Knit Picks, I decided that I would treat the hole in a similar way to their "accidental hole."

First thing first: I took care of the dropped stitch. In the photo, I have a size 000 double-pointed needle in the stitch and the yarn from where it was dropped above. I got it back up the three rows it had dropped and secured it with a locking stitch marker. I then used one of my tiny little dpns to secure the two stitches above the hole that had lost their buddies below. It's difficult to tell from the photo below, but those two fuzzy bits in the middle are the broken rows.

Next I threaded a finer tapestry needle with some of the yarn I had leftover from when I knit these socks (nearly two years ago!). Well to the right and below the hole, I began duplicate stitching to give myself a base for the new stitches I would have to make for the broken yarn. When I got to the part of the hole where I had to create new stitches, I used a dpn, rather than the Knit Picks method of having a thread to catch the new stitches on, because I thought I might be better able to see how to add the new stitches if it looked more like knitting than sewing. (I think if I do this again, I'll probably use the thread method, because it will curve around the darning egg.) Once I had the two new rows, I joined the new stitches to their friends up top and closed the hole. Then I duplicate stitched a couple more rows, just to make sure there was plenty of new yarn to secure the darning.

It doesn't look like the original heel, in fact it looks a little clumsy, but it's not bad for a first try at darning. It feels pretty good on my foot, and I think that as the sock is worn more and washed more, it will begin to feel less like a patch and more like a reinforcement. After all the duplicate stitching, I turned the sock inside-out to hide the ends and used one of my mom's tiny, tiny crochet hooks to pull the broken ends of the old yarn back to the wrong side of the fabric. I think it's ready to wear. I expect I'll soon have to more socks to darn as winter comes along, but I'm not scared! I've done this once now and I'm ready to do it again when I have to.

That's all for now, I think. Next time I'll show the finished FrankenScylla socks and maybe a new owl or two. Until then, Friends!

It's not exactly Rhinebeck.

Every time I open up my blog reader lately, I get to see multiple posts describing people's Rhinebeck preparations: what sweaters they're making to wear there, what projects they're taking along, and all the yarn they're expecting to purchase. I'm not saying I'm jealous - oh, who am I kidding? I am jealous. I wish I were at Rhinebeck (aka the Dutchess County Sheep and Wool Festival). I wish I were making a fancy new sweater to show off. I wish I had a bunch of projects to work on alongside the knitterati. I wish I were buying a bunch yarn. Maybe next year.

But then I remembered that this weekend is the Southern Indiana Fiber Arts Festival, which would be almost like Rhinebeck, but smaller. Since I work on Saturdays and the Festival is a Friday/Saturday deal, I went after work this afternoon, ready to see some sheep, pet some bunnies, and fondle some yarn. I happened to be wearing my fancy new Zori sweater and I was secretly hoping that everyone would be amazed at my knitting prowess.

The Festival is in Corydon, Indiana, about 30 miles from Louisville. After an uneventful drive, I arrived at the town square, which is where Indiana's first Capitol was established. I wandered around the square, taking pictures of the old State Capitol building. It's a nice, old building and maybe if I think of it, I'll get to come back when it's open, so I can walk around the inside.

After I got my fill of the historic charm of Corydon's downtown, I went the few blocks down the street to the Fairgrounds, where the Festival was going on. As it was a little cold and intermittently rainy, I didn't expect there to be too many people there, but I did manage to run into one friend and her daughter, and one of the ladies from the Grinny Possum yarn shop.

I took a lap through all the booths in the first building, then went across the way to the other building to see those booths. Two buildings of vendors. Mostly roving and needle felting supplies, but there were also booths with hand-dyed yarns and some with really pretty undyed yarns. In the no-man's land between the two buildings, there was one farm's booth with two sheep outside in a pen. The poor things were wet and hanging out under a little umbrella in the corner, eating away. One was kind enough to look up when I took its picture, but the other was focused on dinner. I can't say I blame him, I could've gone for a snack.

The second building had an interesting booth with some really gorgeous wooden objects like niddy-noddies, spindles and yarn bowls. There were also angora rabbits, but there was such a crowd (such as there was) that I couldn't get a clear picture of them. After I finished my lap there, I took a walk around outside, just in case I hadn't seen everything. All I found was a horse. I took a picture of it and went on back to the yarn booths to buy some yarn, satisfied that I'd seen all there was to see.

The lone skein of yarn I bought was 8 ounces of undyed alpaca in a rich, gorgeous chocolate color. The lady told me it would knit up to a worsted weight, but it looks a little more like a dk- or sport weight yarn. Once I get past my Christmas knitting, I'll swatch it and see how it does. I remembered to photograph it before I left, while there was still a little light. Sadly, I probably need to think a little more about how I photograph brown yarn, because it looks a little like a fresh, well, you know, but that's the picture I have tonight, so that's the picture that I have to post. Maybe my friends who are good at photography can give me some tips?

Anyway, that's all I have for tonight. Until next time, Friends!