Abort

That was a waste of two hours. I wanted to start one of my sock blank socks-- the rainbow sock blank, with the Twists and Turns pattern from Shannon's Book "How to Knit in the Woods." I was determined to figure out knitting two socks at a time on two circulars. And that was painful. Seriously, I spent about an hour just moving cast-on stitches from one needle to another. Trying to figure out how it was supposed to work. Failing. It was very frustrating. Finally, eventually, I got everything in semi-order and knitted a whole three rows... until I realized I was working from the wrong end of the blank. I wanted to start at red and work my way down through the rainbow. Instead I started at the end. ARRG! So I ripped out the entire thing and am now sitting here annoyed. Yet I am still motivated to make the socks! So I'll try again.

Other news. Finished all the moving pieces for my laptop bag. Now all that's left is felting. I don't have a zippered pillowcase, so I have to wait till I get home to see if my mom or Nana has one I can use. And then I'll get my felting on. I'm excited! Over Shabbat a friend showed me two great bags that she had knit and felted and I was inspired to finish mine. But I don't want to keep running up and down two flights of stairs to the washer in the basement here, so I'm going to wait and maybe do it later this week. Here are all the parts:

So there's the bag, two pockets, two long shoulder straps and two attaching tabs to go on the D-rings.

And, I finished the first of the pair of socks that I am designing for the Ravelry KAL.

SNEAK PEEK!
There's a long entwining cable down the front, and two side squiggly cables, and a diamond flame motif on the back, and zig-zags between the front and back panels that travel from the leg to the toe. It's simple, but cool-looking, I think. I haven't started the second one yet.

Now I am like, all out of projects! So I need to start something. Thus the Rainbow Sock debacle. I'm not ready to start the coat or hat, and I don't feel like finishing the gloves. I could work on the scarf, but... I'll procrastinating. Need NEW!! Yay! I have SsosoOOOOoo much cool yarn to do stuff with this year. It's so exciting!!!

OK. Am going to start the rainbow sock AGAIN.

My Dyeing Day

For the last day of our internship, we headed over to Shannon's and dyed up yarn, sock blanks, and felt scarves and it was UBER fun!! Anything involving mixing bright colors and pretty yarn equals awesome in my book.

Here is the stuff I made!!

The first three are Louet Gems Fingering Weight (sock weight).

This I made with pinks and reds and oranges and I love love love.

Shannon dyed this one with greens and jades to show us how it's done, and she gave it to me. And I love it.


I intended for this one to be more purpley but it turned out pale purple/blue. However, when you look at all the different shades it is actually really pretty.

And then we dyed a whole bunch of sock blanks. I think I talked about what sock blanks are but refresher course: Peice of undyed knitting which can then be dyed to your liking and unwound as it is knit into a very cool sock!

We dyed ten sock blanks. Shannon is writing a book for Knit Picks (maker of sock blanks) on how sock blanks work, and we are going to knit up the socks for her to photograph. So we get to keep the socks afterward. We each are making five pairs. The only thing is we have to make all the socks unmatched. One of the socks is supposed to be in plain stockinette and the other with some kind of pattern. So the colors will match but not the actual patterns. Which is a little funky.







This one is my faaavorite.

We also dyed some felt scarves:


I love the tye-dyed effect. I may give them as gifts.

Dyeing was SO fun. I love making my own colorways. I would LOOOVE to work with a dyeing company at some point!!!

I Block Sock

I block sock.

Block, sock, block!



Sock is blocked.


Yes friends and family (OK, family), I am actually getting into blocking things. I made sockblockers. I.e., I cut foot shapes into cereal boxes, soaked the socks in hot water and wool wash, put em on the sock blockers, hung them on a hanger to get full air circulation, and left em there for a few days. They actually dripped some dye, which I guess makes sense because the color is so deeply saturated, but I wasn't expecting it. Afterward they were REALLY soft, though a little pilled.

Also am making progress on Sheli's bag:


Finished one pocket, am close to done with the other. I made a mistakey on the first. Didn't purl a row at the flap, which makes it easier to fold over. But I'm not undoing it, so whatever. We will deal. On the second pocket, I got really annoyed with carrying the colors along for the million stripies so I decided to just do a few solid blocks. It'll look cool when it's done. So after the pocket, I have to do the loong icord handles, and then felt. I'm a little worried about the felting! Since I've never done it before. I kinda wanted to do it before I left Cleveland but I don't know if it'll work. We'll see. I'm excited though... excited for it to shrink! Because it is sorta huge.


My main project lately has been my Play With Fire sock for the Ravelry KAL. It's been giving me issues. It's a fun, challenging project, but ripping out and re-knitting for swatches makes the yarn messy. So I'm going to rewind the ball before I start so the fuzzy part is at the end, so it should end up being part of the foot, and less visible than the leg. I made a cool cable chart that is supposed to suggest flames, with a thickening entwined cable (from one to three stitches and back to one) and two smaller "flames" at either side (one to two to one stitches). But now I don't know if I should make it a side panel-- which is what I originally wanted to do-- or put it on the front so that the main cable can continue smoothly down the foot. Overall that seems to be the better idea but I am sad to let go of my side-panel idea. However, the side panel would require another inside panel and I was having trouble figuring out what it should be without making it look kind of random. It'll probably be easier and look neater to do a front cable and then figure out something for the back. It will be a pretty simple sock. The only challenging part is that the cable chart is 53 rows long. It's not a hard cable at all, it's just a long repeat.

OK, so I've got to nail it down and start the sample, and it should be cool. I am SO excited to see other people knitting something I designed!!!

In other news, tomorrow is my last day of the internship. We are doing a "dyeing day" at Shannon's-- hand-dyeing our own yarn! I am totally psyched for this.

so busy yet so unproductive

Hey all. Today (every day) I have a ton of knitting to do. But today, unlike other days, I have not worked one stitch. I did some stuff. I made up a chart for one of the cables on the Play With Fire sock I'm doing. But I still haven't done up the chart for the central cable. I need to do that, test it, and then figure out what the heck I'm doing with the whole rest of the thing.

On top of that I still need to finish the bobble feather and fan scarf for Shannon's collection that I started last week. Two weeks ago? Yikes. I haven't touched it in days.

Thursday was my last day at Fine Points. I bought QUITE a lot of yarn to get the most out of my 30% discount.


I got....

1. Noro Silk Garden in this great jade/yellow/blue colorway (bottom middle, under the purple skein and blue ball)
2. Misti Alpaca Pima Cotton and Silk Handpaint in this gorgeous multi (it's the pinkish one touching the little blue one)
3. Muench Family in cream and blue (the cream and blue ones) for baby stuff!!
4. Artful Yarns Dance in pink/purple (it is tucked under the red Malabrigo in the middle), also for baby stuff
5. Malabrigo Sock Yarn (the brown multi- YUM)
5. Malabrigo Lace (the little poison green one poking out on the right)
6. Seven skeins of Noro Iro (all of the big, bulky, multi skeins)

The other stuff is stuff I already have in my stash. The whole thing is my BEAUTIFUL GOURMET STASH!! I also have another, crappier, mostly acrylic stash that I am too humiliated to post on Ravelry, ha. But I probably will one day when I get bored enough.

A closeup of the Noro Iro:

That's going to become a coat. I don't know if it is going to be enough, but if it isn't, it shouldn't be hard to find more because I don't need any specific colorway. As you can see I kind of grabbed seven completely random ones. It is going to be psychedelic.

I'm so sleepy today that I haven't gotten any knitting done even though I really need to.

Another Happy Customer (my feet)

Finished my Karira socks, baby!!



I'm providing both top and side views.




They look pretty sweet. It just occurred to me that I should probably block them, not that I have one of those nifty sock-blocker things. Hm. Anyway... I was in a rush to finish them today finally, because I got some really cool news! I'm going to be designing the next sock in the Ravelry KAL! We just got the yarn today and it is AMAZING! But before I talk about that, I'll finish up with the sock talk.

After I got that "assignment" today, I became really focused on finishing Karira so I could move on to designing the next one. So I just sat and knit. And I was REALLY in the zone. I finished the heel, the gusset, and two whole pattern reps at work. I had the chart COMPLETELY memorized, finally-- just as I'm finishing! But it was definitely useful because having an intuitive understanding of the stitch pattern totally helped avoid mistakes. When I was checking the chart compulsively, I kept losing or gaining extra stitches, finding strange holes where there shouldn't have been, discovering other various mistakes and needing to rip out or backtrack. But since I really GOT the pattern, and barely need to look at the chart at ALL, I didn't make one mistake! For three and a half repeats! (That was the number required to knit the foot.) So that's what I would recommend, haha. Memorize the pattern. Understand the pattern. BE the pattern.

So I finished the foot, but I had some issues with the right toe. Basically the stitches were unevenly distributed across the toe and that resulted in the decrease panels being way too close in the back instead of placed exactly on the sides of the foot where they should be. I was nearly done when I just became too suspicious that something was wrong (I had thought there might have been but figured that I had followed the pattern to the letter so there couldn't be) so I had to rip out all the way down to the chart pattern, rearrange the stitches and begin the decreases all over again. But I'm glad I did. Didn't take that long. Closed the toe, weaved in ends and I am DONE! I'm so proud of myself.

Now-- the sock design that I'm doing!! Today in the studio we got the skein of yarn that Kitchen Sink Dyeworks custom dyed for our next sock in the three-part KAL corresponding to the Steig Larsson books. The first sock matched up with "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo", and the second goes with "The Girl Who Played With Fire." So, the colorway is....


...Fire themed!!

I immediately fell in love with it, so Shannon suggested that I design the sock, and Sarah Jo do the third one. I'm going to do flame motifs. I have some ideas. I'm thinking either a purled flame on a knit background or the other way around in side panels, and small zigzags on the front and back of the sock. So excited!!! It definitely won't be half as complex as Karira. In fact, it will probably be the easiest/simplest of the three. But I figure it'll be a relief for people after the challenge of Karira. It was fun but not easy! I can't believe I'm done-- the socks are really really beautiful.

The only problem with knit socks is that . . . no one SEES them. And your beautiful, intricate knitwork gets sweaty and hidden. I don't know what the solution for this is. Go around without shoes, I guess.

Laptop Bag moving right along

Juuust finished the body of my laptop bag. Here it is:

I did kind of random striping, as you can see. There isn't really a striping pattern. I'm curious to see how it'll look after it's felted. I have never felted anything before. But I really hope it shrinks a lot because here it how it measures up to its future inhabitant, Sheli:


It is rather a lot bigger, so I hope it'll tighten up significantly...

I LOVE the three needle bind-off, by the way; it is so neat and tidy looking.


The whole thing came out pretty tidy, so it's kind of a shame that it will be felted and the evenness of the knitting will be lost :( I'm not the most regular knitter in the world so it's cool that this is so neat. But the felting will make it TOTALLY durable and solid-- no stretching!!

Anyway-- now, I have to do two pockets, four handle tabs, and two loooong straps. The straps I'll leave for last, I think, cause they'll be most annoying (90 rounds of icord).

It's supercute!

My KAL buddy Chaya is working feverishly on hers as well; she wants to finish it by Thursday. I think that is pretty ambitious but it's a quick knit, so it's possible. Her color scheme is also green but it's green and white. Very pretty.

Can't wait to see how it all turns out!

Right Glove

Finished the first glove in the pair! It was a very quick knit, and very easy, too. I probably could have even done it in the round, if I had size 1 dpns free. But those are still involved with my second Karira. Anyway, it fits perfectly and it is sooo soft and pretty. I have to say that I like the way stockinette shows off the colors and shimmer of the yarn much better than reverse stockinette, which is what the glove is knit it, so that's kind of annoying, but it's still very pretty. And I'm not the "reknitting" type. So now I just have to sew in ends and knit the other. Here's pics:
Not the greatest picture but I chose this one cause you can see the cables and rev st. st. pretty well, and the colorway. It's really soft and comfy. I'm excited for it to get cold enough for me to wear it!

Here's one of the pictures I took in progress. Every time I finished a finger I'd try it on. It's a really fun knit. I think it would be easy to convert the pattern to be worked in the round, which would be nice because there wouldn't be any seaming. Maybe my next pair. I just cast on for the second glove.

Haven't yet started my laptop bag, have to borrow some needles. Right now I'm working on the scarf for Shannon's collection. Which is fun, it has a scalloped edge that I like. Feather and lace. The yarn is really beautiful and fun to knit with and the colors are great, though unconventional. And I've put my socks away for the weekend.