10.31.07
Posted in knitting, socks at 11:22 pm by wendy
I have been.
Also, I got my copy of IK Winter 2007 today in the mail. Yay. Nice lines, simple, a good article on sleeve cap shaping design. The designs remind me of the ones I find flipping through the vintage mags, so that might be a reflection of Eunny Jang’s tastes, but I like it. Why spend all that time knitting something that’s out of trend by the time you’re done?
Also, all hail the full figured models! Or, if not full, well-equipped. Yay dirty pillows!
I finally finished the Cedar Creek Socks–the dragging of the project only indicates my crapulence in time management (and maybe a little of the size 11 on US size 1 needles) and have assembled almost all the ingredients of the apologies for being so late package they’ll be journeying in.
I really love the stitch pattern & the cute picot edging, although I think I’d follow your own numbers for lengths on the heel flap and toe shaping.
I used chart D of the Rogue pattern repeated 3 times for the body of a hat I made for my second cousin. (The son of my cousin). I sped up the decreasing of the pattern toward the end. Don’t worry, it doesn’t look conehead on and it fits him perfectly. (shot below is of me though, he was fussing when they tried it on him).
I stopped by Two Sisters and Ewe and snagged some of their Lana Gatto’s Berroco Suede lookalike that was on sale and paired it with their other yarn (the name escapes me) that mimics Berocco’s Plush but with longer fringe and a higher pricepoint, and made some Uggs. Don’t ask me why. I think they are cute on babies.
It’ll be a while before they’ll fit the recipient, but hey, they’re Uggs. (whatever that means)
While I was supposed to be studying for my FAA written exam, I knit this:
Marnie Maclean’s Halley Comet Hat.
I love the top, but it totally looks like crap on me. You need long hair (or at least enough for a little flip out the bottom) to look good in this. But it was nervous avoidance random holiday gift-knitting anyway.
There’s been other knitting, but I don’t have piccies.
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07.22.07
Posted in books, knitting, socks at 8:38 pm by wendy
I have to admit, I haven’t been following the Tour. I’ve checked the paper every once in a while, but I’m not seeing much around, not like last year where it seemed the Tour was everywhere. I guess the lack of Lance is a biggie for the networks. Or I’m just oblivious. Equally likely.
So, I took my rest day yesterday, and the day before was a slacker day, maybe only a half hour of spinning. Instead, I started on my Sockapalooza socks. I cast on on Sunday, knit the picot edging Monday, and here it is Wednesday:
I haven’t felt like I’ve had much knitting time, so in my opinion, I’ve been whizzing along. As of writing this sentence (the above was written Wednesday, at a cafe with wifi, & now we’re back home with my wonderful own broadband wifi) I’ve finished the heel flap and am picking up stitches for the gusset.
I love this pattern–it’s the Cedar Creek Socks designed by Kaci Kyler Hayes, and it’s the perfect pattern for variegated yarn. Simple enough you memorize it quickly so it’s good take-along knitting. But between the four row repeat and the variegation in your yarn, it’s still not a dull knit. I’ve not done a right twist slant the way this pattern has it before, it’s ingenious and creates a wonderful depth and texture–and flexibility.
I originally took this yarn with me to Oregon as my only knitting. Carefully I packed the yarn, the needles, made a photocopy of the stitch repeat I wanted to use on the toe-up socks I planned…and left the the 16 row stitch pattern behind. So on the plane, at 9am, making reassuring mooing sounds to the alcoholic bull next to me from Kansas City, I tried to decide on a new plan. I was wearing my favorite cabled sweater, so I mimicked those in the sock after making the requisite increases. Meh. Cables are not as flexible, and flexible is important when making socks for a stranger. But ribbing is blah. And then I was there, and present in the moment and…
So I started my Sockapalooza socks for reals this time on Sunday, the 15th, and they are due August the 2nd. I am hosed. Other knitters would be fine, but me, yeah I’m hosed. I’m still going to try, and August 1st, I will contact my sockapalooza partner again and let her know that I am a lame-o, but just a slow sock knitting lame-o, not a swap finking lame-o.
Not like my Sockapalooza pal, who sent hers early–I got these beauties in an envelope from Canada:
It looks just as cool inside out. (sock on left is inside out)
So between this and Harry Potter (I’m done, but no spoilers here, since I bought a copy for Nick too we now have a spare–if you’re local and you want it, holla), I stopped caring about the Tour de Fleece. Whoopsie. Still, in tribute to my fallen goal, when I spin, it will be the merino-possum, and I won’t spin anything else until it is all spun up.
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12.25.06
Posted in Tutorials, socks, stupefied at 12:02 am by wendy
Wait, wrong holiday?
The “benefit” of sharing our house with wee four legged savages is the occasional surreal treat of stepping on an eyeball in the fog of a groggy morn. It was startling realistic at 0530 in the morning peeking from between my toes.
I believe it came from one of the many mangled stuffed toys around here. If I find the poor thing, I’ll make it an eyepatch.
No, probably not.
On a cute, not creepy note:
A wee short row toe, which became quite shortly thereafter
A ridiculous pair of baby socks in one of my tidepool colorways, with a ruffle like a sea anenome.
They look very goofy and very Dr. Suessish-shaped, because of the ribbing pulling it in at the arch and ankles–I wanted them to be unkickoffable. The sole of the foot looks like a peanut because of this, with the short row toe and the short row heel and the ribbing in between.
I used some store bought baby socks as a sizing guide, the feet measure 4 inches long, with a circumference of 3.5 inches, although the ribbing flexes them out to wider.
I used 22 grams of sportweight yarn (Louet Gems Opal, 1,024 yds/lb). About 50 yards of yarn if my math is right…so definitely something to eat up the leftovers…
So, it’s not so much a pattern as a recipe, if you’d like it here’s the pdf. The short row toe hoopla takes up most of the space, but don’t let that turn you off a short row toe. Seriously: favorite.sock.method.ever.
I also made the short row toe thing a pdf so it would be printable without all the other crud of my blog on it. It is here.
BTW–this post was composed and posted using a plug-in I was twigged to by KnitSteph. The editor is awesome and I can set my categories from here. Freaking cool. Go Mozilla!
Merry Christmas & Happy Monday!
powered by performancing firefox
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12.12.06
Posted in Tutorial Tuesday, Tutorials, knitting, socks at 12:08 am by wendy
So, one thing I’ve learned lately is doing a short row heel, without holes. It started of course with Wendy’s knitty.com toes tutorial. But I guess I just didn’t get it, I kept making a holey toe. After ripping and reknitting and ripping and reknitting, I figured it out and thought I’d share it. Because I know I’m not alone in this.
But of course, Google shows me a slew of results that looks like they might have helped me out. But nobody did it the way I did it, right? Hermmm….Nope. She does. Well, sort of. Not exactly. But her pictures are excellent and her method works for her.
But I took pictures, and wrote down directions, and made the world’s cruddiest tutorial video (dog interrupted) so dang it! I wanna do it. But the bottom line is: pick up and knit the wraps from the purl direction, from the front of the stitch, from right to left, however you’d like to phrase it, and purl the wraps that same way…you won’t get holes, and while my sides don’t look exactly the same on both sides, they look close enough and no holes, so I’m happy.
Here’s the long version though:
Step 1:
With waste yarn and a crochet hook, chain several more stitches than half the total number you’ll be using in a round for your sock.
Meaning, say I want to knit a sock that’s 42 stitches around. So I chain 21 stitches (half of 42 for those math wizards out there. Also, it’s easier if this “half of total” number is divisible by three, you’ll see why in bit) plus three, four, five more stitches, for no more reason than insurance that I have all the little back loops I want and then some to choose from.
What do I mean by back loops? These are back loops:
The same view without my awful Photoshop interference:
The other side, the smooth side looks like this:
(If all this is buggin’ your eyes out, you can always cast on stitches with a contrast yarn, knit a row, then change to the yarn you really want to use, knit across and go to
step 3, where you’ll purl across that row and then begin
step 4.)
Step 2:
Pick up and knit those back loops, picking up and knitting half as many as the total stitches in the sock round as thou heart desires. (For our example, 21.)(Pick up and knit just means you insert your needle into a back loop, wrapped your yarn around the needle in a knitwise [clockwise, left to right] direction, then moved on and repeated the process with the next back loops in just the same way.)
Okely-dokely?So, after you’ve picked up and knit through the back loops, you’ll see something like this:
When you turn it around, it’ll look something like this:
Step 3:
At this point, pick up a second double point needle and purl across that row of picked up stitches. And thusly, the short row madness begins.
Step 4:
For this example, we have 21 stitches.
So, this next step, on the knit side, is to knit across 20 stitches. (If you are using a different number, say, 36, than make this number less one, as in 35)
Bring your yarn between the needles to the front, as if you were going to purl the next stitch.
Slip the next stitch purlwise. (from the front, from the purl direction, from right to left, however you prefer to phrase it.)
Turn your work, slip the just slipped stitch (so with all this slipping, the stitch is never twisted, the orientation/directions of the legs of the stitch does not change) from left to right needle, and move the yarn so the yarn is now held in front of the work. You have now wrapped the stitch and are ready to purl 19 stitches across the row, or rather, stopping with just one stitch left on the left hand needle.
Step 5:
Having purled across the row to the stitch before the last slipped and wrapped stitch, bring yarn from the front of the work to the back, as if you were going to knit the next stitch. Instead, slip it purlwise. Turn the work, and slip the just slipped stitch back to the right needle and bring the yarn from the front to the back, wrapping the slipped stitch.
Knit across to one stitch before the last slipped & wrapped stitch (18 sts for our example) and repeat the yarn movement, slipping and wrapping as outlined in Step 4.
Repeat steps 4 & 5, each time wrapping the stitch before the last wrapped stitch, (wrapping is the word to concisely describe that moving the yarn, slipping & yarn moving process) and you will notice a lovely wedge forming, with the wraps around the base of the slipped stitches on the needle:
Repeat these steps 4&5 until two-thirds of the original stitch number have been slipped and wrapped, that is to say, one third on each side. For this example, that means 7 slipped and wrapped stitches on each side, with 7 perfectly normal, perfectly innocent looking stitches in the middle. If your number is 36, it will mean 12 slipped and wrapped stitches on each side and 12 in the middle.
You will have the same number of slipped and wrapped stitches on the right and left of your sexy stockinette toe wedge and be ready to knit on the right side.
YOU WILL. I COMMAND THIS FOR THE SAKE OF THIS TUTORIAL. There are pictures below these steps of working double wrapped stitches, but for the sake of seeing direction clarification, you might find them helpful.)
Knit across to slipped and wrapped stitch. With yarn held in back, insert needle tip from purl direction, first through the stitch on needle then (still from purl direction) into the wrap laying down around the base of that stitch. Knit these two together as one stitch. Bring yarn to front, slip the next stitch purlwise, and turn the work (the just slipped stitch now has two wraps). Bring yarn to front and slip the just slipped stitch from the left to right needle.
Purl across the work. The first wrapped stitch you come to, insert your needle tip from the purl direction into the stitch on the needle, then down into the wrap, again from the purl direction, just like Step 6 but this time your yarn is held in front. Purl the wrap and the slipped stitch together as one.
Bring yarn to back of work, slip next stitch, and turn work.
Slip just slipped stitch to right needle and bring the yarn to the back in preparation for knitting across the row to next wrapped (now double wrapped) stitch.
Knit across row to double wrapped slipped stitch.
To avoid holes, here’s how I pick up the double wrapped slipped stitches:
I pick up that slipped stitch which is on the needle, and then I insert my right needle tip from the purl direction into the wraps laying around its base and spear them with the left hand needle to knit them all three together through the front:
After knitting the two wraps and slipped stitch together through the front, or from the purl direction, bring the yarn to the front of the work, slip the next stitch, turn the work.
Step 9:
(on purl side) Bring the yarn to the front, slip the just slipped stitch, and purl across to the double wrapped stitch. Insert needle tip from right to left/from purl direction/through front of all three stitches and purl all three together.
This picture has a single wrap being lifted to be purled with the slipped stitch, instead of two wraps, but it is essentially the same ol’ thang:
Bring yarn to rear of work, slip next stitch, turn work.
Repeat steps 8 & 9 until all stitches have been worked.
Now you should have a really cool toe cup in your hands, with half of your total desired sock stitches on a needle, and the other half held at bay by your provisional cast on.
Unzip the the crochet cast on or otherwise undo your temporary cast on to get to those active loops, knitting across them, and placing a marker to indicate the beginning/end of the round, joining them to their long lost brethren on the other needle(s).
If you have a tendency toward hole-iness in these matters, you may wish to m1 or increase by knitting in the front and back of a stitch or otherwise create a stitch at each side between the two halves and knit the extra stitch together with another stitch from the toe halves.
From there on you’re on you’re own.
You can go wild with stockinette stitch and then when you are two inches shy (this number depends on the gauge you are knitting at, measure the depth of your own toe cap and plug that number in where the “two inches” was) of the length you want the foot of your sock to be and just repeat the short row toe process for your heel.
Then you can do stockinette stitch up to where you’d like to start the ribbing. Dead easy mindless knitting sock, and there should be no running out of yarn if you make sure you don’t use more than half of what you have available.
I hope this helps someone save some time, somewhere. If you’ve spotted mistakes, give me a shout so I can fix it/them, por favor.
Also, if anyone can reccommend a text editor for blogging–I love almost everything about Wordpress except for this crappy text editor. Rich text editor keeps deleting my spaces and paragraph breaks, and it seems like every time I fix something, something else will pop up that I didn’t even put in. And when I go to fix that, previous formatting gets lost. I use the rich text editor and tweak it in the html screen, and between the two…I’m seriously ******.
I just wasted a ton of time deleting strong tags. And I dread to hit the update button because I know it’s just going to get worse. The formatting of this entry is ridiculous and barely readable. I’m sorry. And why are strong tags in a post affecting my sidebar?
I give up on this for tonight. Maybe I’ll rewrite it in blogger and repost it. This has just become a farce, as I’ve spent more time trying to fix the formatting and having it get worse every time than I did in writing the post, and I have to get up at 5.30am to work, so that’s it. Ya basta.
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11.16.06
Posted in dogs, knitting, socks, spinning at 8:34 pm by wendy
I mean, I must be, since it seems like forever since I’ve posted. I must have a ton of cool things to post, and no dog pictures at all, yeah?
These eyes say, “yeah, right.”
I have been knitting:
Does this look delicious to you? Because apparently Snuggle thinks so. I found him chomping up the stitch marker end of one of the Denise cords on this after taking it onto his favorite sofa. His chewing broke off the connector and rendered the cord useless, which is a bummer, but I am glad it wasn’t the needle tips he chose to chew on.This is Snuggle’s favorite sofa, in case you’re curious:
He matches it well, if you can spot him in the back. After I took this picture, he rolled and wedged himsef in between the bottom cushions and the back of the sofa and started to freak out a little. I held him still and moved the cushions away so I could roll him gently over onto his side and he could get off the couch.He did and gave the couch quite an aggrieved look.And he’s one of the smarter ones.
The stains on the sofa are from the day he bit his tongue and ended up getting blood everywhere, in the oddest places. I didn’t knit anything or wear favorite clothes for two days because there’s really nothing you can do with those little cuts than soak the food and wait for the cut to heal, and he still such a puppy he says “hi” constantly with his face into everything.
And I’ve been spinning:
This is some of the
50/50 80s merino/tencel fiber, handpainted and spun to a fingering weight single, destined to be plied with its other half.And last Thursday evening I started the first sock I’ve ever designed myself (whee!).
I tried a couple different versions of a short row toe, first the one from
Jessica’s Falling Leaves sock, then the short row toe from
Lucy’s Wendy’s tutorial on Knitty. I ripped, reknit and ripped and reknit and… but by Friday evening, before leaving
Mary-Kay’s goodbye San Diego knitters gathering, I finished a version I felt I could live with, and once I got past overthinking the short row toe, the rest of the sock zoomed along. It’s been done all week and I’d like to show you the back but it’s hard to get a good pic of the back of your own foot and leg, and Nick and I don’t seem to have much shared conscious daylight time lately for taking pictures of knitwear.
I wanted to make a fairly simple, fairly pretty sock to test my handpainted sportweight sock yarn. I waffle about put up amounts–I think people like big skeins, but at the same time, I know I don’t like paying for yarn I won’t use, I like to buy in smaller put ups if that’s the amount I need. But I wanted to make sure it was actually possible to knit a sock from 125 yards of sportweight.I knit loosely, so I used US3 Inox dpns (which I really, really like: kind of cold when you first pick them up, but they warm quickly and the tips, friction, and lack of flex really worked for me) and that produced a fabric I liked.My feet are around size 6 US, although of course it depends on the shoe manufacturer because apparently when it comes to making garments for women, the watchword is “inconsistent sizing.” I started with 57 grams and ended with 20 grams left over, so I feel confident that 125 yards is a good put up amount, enough for a pair of gloves or a good size sock. Please let me know if folks out there feel strongly otherwise.
I’ll be testing the pattern for accuracy with the second sock and including it as a free pattern, either on the site or with purchase of the yarn. Whee!
On another note, is anybody else just blown away by how fast this year has gone by?
I cannot believe it’s nearly over. I went through my various “my goal for this year” posts and I am frankly embarrassed. I suck. I have a month and a half to spin and knit a cabled sweater for Nick and comb out the Karakul lamb fleece I bought from Robin Snyder (Flying Colors Ranch, no website but you can contact her at sheeples[at]worldatt[dot]net), dye it with natural dyes and build a loom and weave a little bag using Working With the Wool as my guide.
And I had other goals, really good goals, goals it should have been no big deal to maintain/meet, goals that would have…well, it doesn’t bear thinkin’ on. In fine family tradition, I am going to pretend my failings don’t exist. I am perfect. I never make mistakes. I love me. Yes indeedy. Sigh.
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