Knits

I don’t have a lot to show or say right now despite many evenings of knitting.

First I think I am going to blatantly rip off Two Black Sheep and use song titles for post titles because I really hate trying to think up post titles. I am also going to blatantly rip off Sknitty (and many others) by using the title FO: [project name here] when I have finished objects to post. This will all start with the next post.

I do have one finished object… the Lake Park hat which I mentioned back at the end of September. Knowing I was going to run out of yarn, I set it aside until I decided what to do with it. Turns out a very kind person in the US had quite a bit of leftovers in the same dye lot and sent them to me for nothing but good karma. Now I have a little over one ball to use on something else! The hat came out a bit snug, but it’s nice and warm. You can’t see the “leaves” as well as I’d hope, but oh well…

Next, I’ve made some progress on my Stepped Fret socks - I’ve turned the heel and am decreasing the gusset. I also started a pair of socks using some yarn I was trying to destash - Regia Crazy Color 6-ply. I had originally bought it for some gloves/mittens, but then decided I couldn’t be bothered hence the destash. I decided to actually knit some socks with this because I thought the heavier weight might mean a finished object faster. I’m using a baby chevron pattern and having some technical problems so it’s not progressed as fast as I would’ve liked.

I don’t know if you can see it in this picture (click to make supersize), but the knitted column that falls between the two yarn overs (middle of the sock), is coming out in a zigzag. It’s not as apparent when the sock is stretched on the foot which is good (because I generally don’t care what a sock looks like off the foot), but I’m wondering why this is happening as I can’t think of it really happening before. Is it the yarn? Is it something with my technique? I’ve tried a number of things to correct it —
twisting the stich when I knit it,
if I knit it normally then on the following round, I twist that stitch
twisting the yarn overs

and nothing seems to actually help. It seems the best to just knit as normal on all rounds.

There are mirrored decreases too — a k2tog followed by a ssk. The ssk was looking very wonky too so I’ve cleaned it up immensely by doing my usual slip 1 knitwise, put it back on the left needle and then k2tog through the back loop; on the following round I then knit the decreased stitch through the backloop.

These socks have lots of little experiments in technique in them.

The other thing I tried was slightly different short row techniques for the heel turn. Since I knit the backwards heel flap because of my high instep, I just use the short row to get the heel cup. I used the double wraps as chronicled by misocrafty and Cosmicpluto — the difference being misocrafty passes the wrapped stitches over the knitted stitch while Cosmicpluto actually knits the wraps. [Click for big.]

Again, it may be hard to tell from the picture, but I certainly found a difference in the techniques in my knitting — especially when picking up the stitches on the knit side. On the left, the baby chevron sock, the knit side pick ups and subsequent psso came out loose every single time (I re-knit this turn 3x) with very visible holes — the exact thing this technique was to help remove! On the right, the stepped fret sock, the wraps on both sides are much tighter. I did find it difficult with both techniques to actually pick up and put the last set of wraps on the needle.

Anyway, I’ve re-knit the baby chevron heel cup again and it’s much better.

I’m away again this week for work and house hunting! Fingers crossed I find something so I don’t have to make another trip north. It will be another item to tick off the list and make me feel less crazy. As for Trigger, I spoke to soon last weekend. She was still sick through most of this week, but is now on some medication and will hopefully be back to normal very soon. I think the long course of antibiotics may have wrecked havoc on her intestinal fauna and she needed some probiotics to get things rebalanced. Fingers crossed there too.

…and nothing to show for it!

Isn’t it frustrating how you can knit and knit and knit and yet you don’t really see any progress? I guess it doesn’t help that I’ve had project ADD this weekend. I’ve mostly worked on my cardigan. I haven’t secured my additional balls of yarn, but I have several good leads. I’m going to finish up the fourth ball and then start a sleeve and see how much cardigan and sleeve I get in order to determine how much yarn I need. I don’t want to get two balls to find out I need three or vice versa. Also, I seriously, seriously need to learn continental knitting because it seems to take me days to purl a row.

I’ve also finally turned the heel on my second Charade sock. This has been sitting untouched for quite some time and I’d really like to get it finished. I need to pick up the gusset stitches and proceed. Hopefully I’ll get most of that done this evening… I’ll first focus on finishing up the fourth ball of yarn for the cardigan as mentioned above.

I also started a hat because it’s hat weather. But you know what, I don’t think I have enough yarn! Argh! I’m using the same yarn I used for the Marigold hat and I’m just shy of 50g since I had to use a bit of a second ball for my sister’s fat head. Hopefully I’ll be able to get a decent sized hat from this even if it isn’t one as long as I’d like. I’m doing another Marnie Maclean pattern - the Lake Park hat. She’s got matching fingerless gloves to go with it too, but I won’t do those.

I purchased my first Posh Yarn this evening. Annoyingly I put the one colourway I wanted in my basket and two others and then decided I didn’t want both of the others so I went back to see the colours to decide which to keep and in those few seconds, someone else snatched up the one I really wanted. Argh. I bought something similar though. I plan on making a mini-scarf with some of it.

Speaking of mini-scarf, have you all seen this? The Pidge. It’s all over the Ravelry knitting forums. Apparently they quickly revamped their website to remove mentions of the actual yarn they’re using (Karabella) and pictures of the people “hand knitting” the items. They are actually knitted on a loom of some sort and, according to some people who are experienced with said loom, the stitch pattern they use is a very basic one and thus it takes maybe an hour or so for someone to “knit” the mini-scarf. I mean, more power to them really since they’re getting press and people are paying several hundred dollars for the convenience of a simple item, but I think their information is rather misleading.

Other things I’ve managed this weekend:

• Photographed & listed several items of clothing on eBay that I decided to get rid of back in August — many of them still with tags or otherwise unworn.
• Baked a butternut squash for the first time. Half of which made it into risotto; the other half will be made into soup this evening.
• Usual household things like laundry although you really probably couldn’t tell since as much as I tidied, I also made a mess.
• Watched Reality Bites for the first time since the mid-1990s. It really made me feel like I was back in Santa Cruz.

Trigger is on the mend. She’s not really amused by the twice-daily antibiotics, but the swelling is almost gone. She is impressed with the high frequency of mushy food and/or food with some chicken broth on it.

Oh yeah, I cut off most of my hair last week. Actually I paid someone to cut it off for me because I’d look bald-ish if I’d done it myself. That’s my signature pose.