SockTart

Turned off the Livejournal crossposting plugin. It doesn’t allow me to specify that the default be set to “off”, or to specify which authors can crosspost to which journals….it just wants to crosspost everything to my livejournal by default.

And while it’s nice that someone mistakenly thought I’d gotten some work done on a sweater….I’m still not up to that challenge yet. I’m still enjoying socks, thankyouverymuch.

If another, more specific, crossposter becomes available…maybe I’ll switch back. For now, I go through the inconvenience of updating two blogs. Hee.

I could be finished durrow now, but I am not. I ended up getting this idea on how to do waist shaping, because while I love cables I have a real fuss with them being… boxy, bulky, straight up and down.

But I was staring at the cover of the winter 2007 Interweave knits, and thinking about rogue, and it hit me. While I sat down and watched a few episodes of battlestar galactica, I freestyled myself a piece that goes from 8 stitches wide to 25 and does what I want it to do. now I just have to do it much more nicely.

So I start writing in the knitting blog as I am ending a project - my first sweater.

My first Sweater was a journey into tears and pain - not being satisfied with doing something simple, the only project that gave me a thrill was a pattern called Durrow. The cables on the arms just filled me with avaricious glee. But since it was my first sweater, I decided to be prepared for the chance that things did not go well. This means that I went cheap on the yarn. My choice was Briggs & Little Canadian Heritage - 100% wool in the good old scratchy yarn tradition, and 220 yard skeins at 5 bucks a go. I picked up 5 hanks of black, since I figured no self-respecting yarn punk would knit a first sweater in anything but black. I merrily knitted the front, the back, the sleeves, and seamed it all together.

Those of you who have knit Durrow already know what happened - the neckline was the size of Lake Ontario. but that wasn’t enough disaster for this yarn mage, oh nooo. my back, my front, my sleeves, they didn’t line up properly at all. I have no real idea what happened. It frustrated me so much I declared that I was swearing off sweaters forever.

And yeah, that lasted for about three days. then I pulled the pieces apart and started casting on to make a top down in the round sweater with raglan increases, starting the durrow cable panel on the arms as I went along. I was totally flying by the seat of my pants, freestyling everything but the sleeve cables.

But I lost interest in the sweater and left it half done and on the needles for months. literally, I had touched it since last year. Then Thursday night I picked it up and went on the Sleeve Island Death March, relentlessly going after that chart just to get it done. I’m off sleeve island now, and I’m just going to knit up the body until there is no more yarn left.

The Sweater is going to look like hell. Once I get photos published of it I will have saved myself from requests for boyfriend sweaters forever. But I will have finished my first sweater, a challenge that took eight months.

And guess what? I’m going to do another. But I just don’t learn to take things slowly, at all, so I’m going to design one.

Top-down, seamless, in the round construction.

OF COURSE.

My hand is doing a lot better today. They let me use some banked time at work yesterday, so I came home and watched some TV and read the ‘net for awhile, until most of the stinging subsided. Today, it’s just tender when the burn/scald is actually touched with some sort of pressure. This means I can knit again! The float of yarn against that hand isn’t enough to hurt me unless I have absolutely NO slack.

So Robin’s socks are growing again. If they were MY socks, I’d be thinking of turning the heel, but as they need to fit a size 11 man’s foot, this isn’t happening for another inch or two. I’m really quite appreciating the two-socks on two-circs method.

This afternoon we’re apparently doing a little shopping, and at some point this weekend we’re doing some spring cleaning. It’s rather grey outside, so I’m not sure whether I’ll get to do any gardening. It’s such a drab day, in fact, that I’ve been yearning for some sunny, banana-yellow yarn…and I’m SO not a fan of yellow! I guess we’ll see how the day shapes up.

So…I scalded my right hand. I was taking plastic wrap off the veggies I’d been cooking. Stoopid me, I didn’t use a long knife to pierce the plastic wrap.

I’ve spent the evening trying to get over the burning sensation. I have a cool glass of water to dunk my fingers in, and a cold gel pack. I’ve taken Advil.

My fingers hurt like a son of a bitch. It’s taken me about 10 minutes to write this much.

So much for knitting for the next couple of days

IMG_1138

Originally uploaded by macgrrlx.

So….a few months ago, when I was over at Mum & Dad’s place, Mum is somehow reminded that I like to knit socks. So she tells me to come downstairs and proceeds to dig a couple of balls of sock yarn out of her small stash (she also gave me about 12 small balls of some other sort of wool, which I am procrastinating on deciding what to do with).

My reaction was to look at the ball band, which is a decidedly 70’s style of design, and say “Wow, Mum…how long have you had these? They look vintage!”

Her response? “They’re not that old”.

Now…I don’t think my Mum realizes how long she hoards things. I’m pretty sure she likely bought these balls of yarn when they were new. She won’t admit to me (or maybe she doesn’t remember) when that was. The only thing I can find online is that Lady Galt Kroy, 3-ply, 85% wool, 15% nylon….are “vintage”.

What *I* want to know is…..HOW OLD IS THIS YARN?!

I’m thinking I may use one of the patterns from Knitting Vintage Socks on these puppies….

One of the gents that I work with lives on a farm. Today he mentioned that his wife spins. Apparently she spins all sorts of fibres, and knits as well. He has a hat somewhere, made out of dog hair (or so he says).

So I’ve asked him if he’ll check with his wife as to whether she’d be willing to handspin me some sock yarn, and how much it will cost. Yay! Hopefully he’ll have some good news soon

I’m pretty sure that he’s mentioned her spinning to me previously, but I, in typical fashion, forgot. Be cool to make someone some handspun knit socks for Yule, tho

Summer of Socks

You know you wanna.

Oh Cheeeeelseeeeeaaaaa!

(dangles DVD)

I have new Costume Pr0n! Marie Antoinette by Sofia Coppola. Droolworthy gowns with an 80’s soundtrack. Aw yeah….

Knit night next week? Maybe we can get Morgan into it….

Mischief and The Sock

Originally uploaded by macgrrlx.

So, I finally got the pictures off my camera. They made it onto my Facebook, but decided to play around with flickr and see what it can do. Apparently quite a bit. Knifty!

This is Mischief, the resident bipolar tabby, checking out the sock I made for my sis-in-law for Yule this past year. At the time, it was still in progress.

Chels? This is a pic from the night Peter’s books put Missy into the throes of passion. The pics didn’t really come out all that great.