Knits

Just poking my head in to let you know I’m alive. I went up north last week on Wednesday, went into my new job on Thursday and trained a new person and met a number of my new colleagues. THEY ARE SO NICE! It’s such a change (not that most of my current coworkers aren’t nice, but they weren’t so open and helpful right off the bat). As far as the other goal of finding a place to live… I may be found a place. I’m trying to decide right now, otherwise it’s another trip north very soon.

On the train ride up I knit a good bit of my mosaic sock. I waited too long to try it on and ended up having to rip out over an inch of it. I’ll be going up a needle size. I then continued to work on the baby chevron sock and got a lot of it done. I even put it on waste yarn and tried it on after I’d started the cuff. And last night I finished it off and bound off w/ (literally) a centimetre of yarn left. And I went to put it on in all it’s gloriousness to find out… it doesn’t fit! How can this be?! I tried it on well after the decreases and cuff were started. If you have a US 8/8.5 foot and ankles skinnier than mine (fat chance) you can have a sock. Otherwise I suppose I’ll rip it out and go up a needle size there too.

And finally, I am tackling Shedir again (third time lucky?) — this time in Rowan Calmer Kiwi. My cables look awful. I hope they straighten themselves out once it’s all stretched out on a head.

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.

The first instalment of the Socktopus sock club arrived back in December. I really liked the purple, but wasn’t really keen on the yellow/gold and not so much the pattern. However, seeing that the package was designed to be knit with a specific pattern hence each skein of yarn was enough for ONE sock, I knew I’d have to do something similar or find another use. I was taken with the idea of colourwork that doesn’t actually involve carrying two (or more) colours at once and lo if there aren’t a couple of mosaic stitch patterns in the Sensational knitted socks books. Oh and it turns out I really love the way that the yellow/gold knits up; it’s stunning.

The pattern is the Stepped Fret and doesn’t appear to be very popular based on both a Google and Ravelry search, but I quite like it and will do the other sock in reverse (although I’m still not sure if that will appear any different other than the heel and toe). It is very slow going for me since every other round is purled to give it texture so it will be a “at home” project. That means I need to start something else this weekend to take with me on train travels next week as well as a knit night.

I tried to get one last thing finished up for January, but it didn’t happen since I got absorbed in some online reading and conversations the last couple of nights and I’m okay with that; it should be done tonight. =)

Trigger has been sick off and on all week and I think it’s due to a sudden allergy to her usual food. She’s on wet cat food now and is way happier (health-wise) so that’s good. She’d been rather lethargic and whatnot just like we are when we’re feeling bad. Unfortunately I find the smell of wet cat food to be foul (it was previously only a very occasional treat) and also bloody expensive! I’m hoping another type of dry food I’ll begin introducing in a couple days will work for her.