Knits

I got my Ravelry invite this morning (I’m n0nnahs there). Despite feeling like total crap with cramps and a headache that was on the verge of a migraine, I quickly explored it and added a finished project JUST TO SEE. OMG. I still need to do a lot of exploring and obviously a lot of filling in information. It’s just so clever. I won’t reiterate what everyone else is saying, but really, so clever and useful.

And I do have finished objects.

I finally finished my Saucy socks. Properly finished. Ends woven in, washed, and on my feet actually because I was trying to take a semi-decent picture in the fading light. I won’t add lots of details here since I put them on the project page. My socks differ from the pattern in a few ways:

• I used a finer yarn so it mean to make socks that fit, I had to add a 4th horizontal repeat
• I didn’t do a Eye of Partridge toe, but I did do an EoP heel and I don’t know if I misinterpreted the instructions or the yarn just doesn’t work with it, but it’s Meh
• Because of the additional repeat, I ran out of yarn so I’ve got contrasting toes. Unfortunately my gauge differed between the two socks so the toes are also uneven, but it’s all good since they’ll be hidden in shoes.

All the Saucy details here.

I also wanted a quick project so I knit the 4 Corners Dishcloth (that opens the pattern in .doc). Dead easy to knit. Knit it up in an evening although I didn’t join up the piece until the next day. It’s much smaller than I expected, but it is very cute and quick so it will probably make more appearances for last minute gifting. It also only uses about 35g of a ball of Sugar n’ Cream meaning there’s enough left to use the yarn for a matching cloth w/ another colour (like the Ballband dishcloth). I hope that made sense. Dishcloth details? You got it.

It’s only Thursday, but it feels like Friday. Bring on the weekend. Although… what to knit next?

I have a voodoo ability when it comes to making it rain. Seriously. I notice that it is bright and sunny and warm so I put washing in and days later, it finishes (honestly, can someone please explain to me why washing machines in this country are half the capacity yet take twice as long to do a load of wash?). I grin and wander outside with an armful of wet washing, sun in my eyes, and pin it up. I go back inside, make a cup of tea, settle back into whatever I was doing and within five minutes, rain. I don’t mean a light little sprinkle that you can ignore. I mean rain. ARGH. A mad dash outside to pull it in as I sigh to myself about once again being tricked by whomever is in charge of such things.

Anyway…

I finished something. A tea cosy. I know, awesome. Last week I decided I MUST HAVE A TEA COSY because, as my friend Don pointed out, I’ve turned 80. I started knitting one right then and there - ignoring the fact that I was nearly done with my Saucy socks. I even had a false couple of starts with the tea cosy. First I was going to use Twilley’s Freedom Spirit, but quickly realised it wouldn’t be a quick knit because the yarn isn’t heavy (and I didn’t have a second ball in the same colour to double it up) and I was going about it the wrong way (making a long, narrow band vs a short, wide one). I grabbed the other Twilley’s I have, Freedom wool, and cast on. A few rows into it I realised that despite changing my technique to short and wide, I didn’t adjust my stitch counts. Oops. Good thing chunky yarn knits up quickly, eh?

So it actually took me the whole night of knitting (including making dinner, doing dishes) to do the damn thing. I made it up on the fly. I hadn’t actually ever felted Twilley’s before, but I knew it would easily felt and figured I’d lose about a third of the size so after a few rows, I began increasing every other row to get the largest circumference and then decreasing the same. Because my tea pot is rather small, I knew it would be too fiddley to try to have a buttonable flap like some of the examples I found. My solution was to seam up 1.5-2″ on either side, felt and see how it fits. Well, it shrunk more than I expected so I had to cut one of the seams completely (no big woop) and stretch it all out so it would easily slip on and off the tea pot. I ended up having to put it on upside down from how I wanted, but it’s fine - the multi-coloured stripe doesn’t look as heavy as it did prior to being felted (I’d wanted it to be at the bottom because of how heavy it looked).

Don’t ask me about dimensions before and after because I was so anxious to felt that I completely forgot to measure.

Does it work? I don’t know, I haven’t had any tea yet. Well I haven’t had need to make an entire pot of tea.

And my Saucy socks. They came really close to being done on Saturday and then I tried them on and either my toes have gone anorexic without talking to me about it or something went wrong with my gauge. Poop. The toe was so baggy I ripped it out. It’s still a bit baggier than I would like, but I realised that on the whole second sock my gauge went funny. I don’t know if this is down to using different needles (the first was knit with Brittany Birch 2.5mm and the second with Lantern Moon Sox Stix 2.5mm) which are ever so slightly different in size (seriously like 2 atoms different - I have super SEM vision, I can see things like atoms) or I just decided to knit loosely. In many ways it’s okay because the first sock is a bit tight (it leaves indentations when I wear it - yes I have sat around in one sock, don’t lie and say you haven’t) and the second one isn’t so terribly loose that it can’t be worn.

God I am so sorry I can never shut up. I really am not so verbose in person.

I’ll add full details re: the tea cosy to my finished objects a bit later.

I’m off on business for a few days. I hope that all the travelling and meetings don’t make me so tired and cross-eyed that I can’t knit otherwise I will be very bored.

We’ve been having absolutely crazy weather. We had thunderstorms off and on today, but they literally lasted under five minutes and then the sun would shine and dry things out. Luckily I made it to and from work without getting wet today; yesterday I wasn’t as lucky as I had to change into my spare jeans while the trousers I wore to work dried out.

I’ve begun my second Saucy sock and have done one pattern repeat. I need to look at the one I’ve already knit to see how many repeats I did, etc. so I can continue to work on it while I’m away. I’m going to take some other knitting — more socks. I haven’t decided which yarn or pattern yet. I thought about giving the Knit Picks¹ Memories a go, but I don’t have time to play with it and I don’t really have room to take a variety of needles, etc. I might take another colourway of Piece of Beauty — Dark Matter — but again, what pattern?! I better get browsing my collection.

Other knitting related things:

• Girl from Auntie is clearing out a bunch of her stash. Lots of nice things going.
• Having recently added a bunch of new-to-me blogs to my blog reader, I am happy to see a new e-publication being put together to highlight blogs in the knitting / fiber world that may not be widely known. For information about this e-pub — Yarnival — see the entry at Needle Exchange.
• Vaguely knitting related since it has to do with this blog — I’ve changed the theme and have been fixing my categories. There might be a few hiccups if you’re actually visiting my blog vs reading through a reader as I play with the code running some of the navigation.

And some miscellaneous things:

• I’ve begun renting the Arrested Development DVDs. I knew the show was funny since I’d seen a bit of it back in the US, but man, I’m glad I decided to rent these. So funny. Too bad so many people would rather watch the same boring reality shows over and over rather than something clever and witty.
• As I’m leaving for a few days, I had to eat some things that would’ve surely gone off before I got around to using them on Saturday (won’t be home until lateish on Friday). That meant a giant pile of asparagus and raspberries (not all at once). Below is a raspberry meringue. It was so good I might have another one…

Happy 4th of July to those readers in the US and any ex-pats that might read this. Eat a hot dog for me!

1 Knit Picks has a clearance on some of the colours of Memories. They also have a new self-striping sock yarn called Felici.

I have always been lousy at estimating anything. I always am at the extremes, never close. I’ve always blamed this on some lack of depth perception and other mental disconnect. Maybe it’s one of those things that because I know there are tools available to measure whatever it is I want to measure, it’s never seemed important to me to be able to eyeball things or “guesstimate”. I know it actually is handy to do so, but I just can’t seem to get the hang of it. Which brings us to my progress on knitting…

I had expected that not only would I finish the second sock for my Sockapalooza Pal, but that I would cast on for the second Saucy sock and get well into it before Sunday became Monday. Neither of these things has happened yet. I suspect this evening I will get very close to finishing the second Sockapalooza sock if not outright finishing it (sans weaving in ends). I thought I would’ve finished these things because I was meant to be on trains for about 6 hours last Thursday and Friday as well as away from my computer. However, since I was ill, I didn’t get as far as I thought.

Yesterday I spent about three hours on trains and didn’t knit a single stitch. I could’ve easily have been near completion of the Sockpalooza sock if I had done anything, but I had unexpected company one direction and was way too tired the other. Next week I will spend a ridiculous amount of time on trains plus two nights in B&B/hotel accommodation and without a computer for nearly 3-days so I need to be sure to bring a couple of things to keep me occupied. There definitely won’t be much knitting around these parts after tomorrow night since I’ve got a friend coming into town.

I’m still incredibly exhausted due to the cold and work-related stress (that has now passed, but I’m still suffering the ramifications). I’m just not sleeping well and have to fight the urge to put my head down and go to sleep at all hours of the day in the hopes that when it comes time to actually go to bed, I can.

So right now it’s back to mindless Scrubs DVDs because they keep me entertained and I don’t have to pay attention since I’ve already seen them several times. It makes for great knitting time.

Oh, but quickly, Firefly has been trying to organise a From sea to shining sea blog ring as a memorial to her brother who passed away a few years ago. She is looking for people from every state to write about what they love about their state, maybe some of the hidden treasures, so she can have a blog ring available on the 4th of July so visitors can travel from sea to shining sea. She has 19 of the 50 states covered so if you’re interested, have a look to see if she needs someone from your state - of course she’s also happy to have more than one person from each state. And you don’t have to be a knitter/crafter/whatever to participate - you just need to have a blog or journal of some sort.

1. I come from a state (California) where smoking in public places like restaurants and hospitals has pretty much been the norm for a couple of decades. The smoking ban went further to eliminate it from most bars/clubs and to put exclusion zones around buildings / air intakes into buildings which essentially made it so you had to stand in the middle of the road to smoke. Amen to that! I hate smoking. So I am glad that as of 6am on 1st July, a similar ban comes into effect here in England (it’s already in place in the rest of the UK). This means I can take my knitting pretty much anywhere and not have to worry about it sucking up second hand smoke. Although the gardens at the pubs and restaurants will now probably be choked with smokers…

But why mention all of this?

Well, it still gets me to see so many people smoking. To see the guys building houses with a fag hanging out of their mouth while they hammer away or build a wall w/ brick and mortar. You don’t see this in California because you aren’t supposed to smoke “on the job” (you can go for a cigarette break) and because houses in California are built from wood so it’s a wee bit of a fire hazard. So there’s this theory here in the UK, that if you hire a builder to do some work that involves concrete, the concrete won’t set if you hire a non-smoking builder because what helps it set is all the ash and butts from all the cigarette’s he will smoke while doing the work.

Again, what are you on about, Shannon?

I have a theory that knitting doesn’t work out unless there’s the right proportion of cat hair involved. I really hope my Sock pal is not allergic to cats because even once I give her socks a wash, there will still be cat hair in them because it’s knit into the things.

2. Oops I did it again…

Contrasting toe(s)… it’s all the rage, right? I actually have some yarn in shades of blue that is similar and would actually probably look quite good, but seeing I have so much of the other I figured I’d use that and hoard the blue for a pair of toe up socks so we don’t have this problem again (except on the mates for this sock and my Sock pal’s sock).

That’s one Saucy sock down. It’s a bit baggy in the leg and probably a couple rows too short in the foot, but I actually ripped the toe back a couple rows since it came out too narrow. I guess I could’ve just knit a couple more rounds without decreasing, but I am dumb and honestly only just thought of this… it’s not too late, I can rip out the grafting and do this and I probably will since my toes do feel a bit scrunched.

You know, this pattern is almost identical to Monkey so which came first? I think it is Monkey, but upside down or vice versa. [I actually just held my sock up to the screen upside down with the Monkey pattern pulled up and looked at them side-by-side.]

I think I need to not knit the cable stitches so tight - I tried to be loose when I realised this, but sometimes it just seemed to tighten up on it’s own…

3. No wonder my cat is so fat

Are you about to eat a 3 Musketeers bar? You better share… — SHARE or I will chew your face off tonight — *Homer Simpson noises* Oh that’s so good

Trigger is obsessed w/ some types of chocolate - 3 Musketeers being one of them. A friend sent me 3 bars and she could smell them through the padded envelope and wrappers.

4. News stories

This one about a Bowhead whale makes me sad.

And this one about a new law in Louisiana is also sad, but in a completely different way because, Hello? What century are we in?!

Last week was wonderful. We arrived into Belfast to bright blue skies and warmth - we’d left behind grey and wet weather. And the entire week, from Belfast to Dublin and back to the Northern Ireland coast, we had nothing but bright blue sky, sunshine, and rather warm weather. In fact, for us, it was beginning to get too hot territory.

Before we left I did manage to finish up the first sock for my Sockapalooza pal (okay the ends need weaving in, hush). I took plenty of yarn for my trip - enough to do THREE socks. Like that would happen, but you never know. In fact, as we sat in the airport waiting to board the plane, I cast on for Saucy and had knit the cuff by the time we landed (I am a slow knitter). As I sat listening to The Boy give his talk to a user group in Belfast that evening, I continued working on Saucy. One of the coordinators of the user group said that on several occasions when they’ve brought in a guest speaker whose travelled some distance, said speakers wife/girlfriend/partner sat in the back and knit away. Hehe.

On the drive down to Dublin I continued knitting away - Saucy is wonderfully easy to memorise after the first few rounds.

Wednesday evening involved A LOT of wine courtesy of a very rich man who sells a very popular computer operating system - he wasn’t there, but someone w/ a corporate credit card was… Because of all the drink on Wednesday evening, my plans for Thursday essentially went down the toilet. I’d been in Dublin back in September and done a lot of the touristy things then so I had planned on getting the train down the south coast a few miles and walking back up leisurely like with breaks of sitting and knitting along the shore. That did not happen. Instead I visited Windmill Lane (famous for being the location of the studio where U2 first recorded) and The Book of Kells at Trinity College (very disappointing I must say although the Long Room of the old library is very nice). I had naps between those things too, by the way. Late in the afternoon I treated myself to a nice coffee in one of the (very posh) hotel lounges and knit away. I was nearly done with the leg!

The drive back to Northern Ireland I didn’t really knit at all since I was just feeling too tired. Once we got back to The Boy’s parents’ house and settled in, I broke out the knitting. His mum was very impressed. I knit away for quite awhile. It doesn’t actually get proper dark until about 1130pm so it’s very easy to lose track of time! Anyway, I turned the heel and as I started knitting the instep and gusset, one of my needles broke. Boo. That put an end to my knitting and it was only Friday night. I did bring other needles, but 1. they were great big long things instead of the nice 5″ DPNs I was using and 2. I stupidly brought the same size and I clearly needed to go down a needle size anyway. Ah well.

Saturday saw a trip to a folk park where they had a special Wool Day event. It wasn’t exactly what I expected and should it have been held in the US, it would’ve been different and bigger and better (and not just because everything is bigger is the US). It’s all to do with the lack of community in general in these parts, but especially in the knitting / crafting world. I bet they didn’t even know it was International Knit in Public Day… I didn’t knit in public due to the broken needle, but I’ve never had an issue with doing so (I did so in front of at least a hundred geeks on Thursday evening as I waited for The Boy to come out of his talk).

Windmill Lane — Stone house at the Ulster Folk Park — White Rocks beach in N Ireland

Anyway, back to catching up, AGAIN, with all the blog posts, comments, and emails. I had barely caught up when I left and I started catching up last night (got it to under 30 blog posts) and it’s creeped back up to the mid-30s! So yeah, sorry for being so wordy! The full set of my photos is on my Flickr site - Ireland / N Ireland photos. And if you haven’t seen, Felicia of Sweet Georgia has made a post that includes information about photographing textiles which is really very good!