SAM3 - April done!

Ooops, long time no post. Sorry, didn't mean to fall off the face of the earth. Blame it on a combination of busyness at work, a nasty spring-time cold, and new glasses.

Not much knitting got done, but my April socks did get finished.



These are based on the Kansas Harvest pattern from the Townsend Knitting group. The original pattern is written for DK weight yarn, but I re-worked the numbers to use fingering weight and to fit my foot.

The pattern calls for a bunch of 1-over-1 cables. I decided I wanted to use twisted stitches instead of cables for both the grain heads and the stems.



Although the pattern calls for K1-P1 ribbing at the top, the picture shows K2-P2. I decided to use twisted stitches in the ribbing as well. As written this would have resulted in the ribbing not aligning nicely with the pattern. By starting the pattern stitches on Round 11, I was able to have them flow smoothly together.



I decided to use the eye of partridge heel flap instead of heel stitch.



One thing I really liked about the pattern as written was how the rib stitches flowed down from the leg into the instep. Of course, that's the part of the pattern I misread. I should have carried the twisted rib from the previous pattern instead of starting a new one. (sigh) The way I did it, it looks clunky.



But the yarn I used is nice and sproingy ...

... and the ribbing helps the sock conform to the foot.


No, my foot doesn't have that weird hump in it. That's my hand holding it open a bit to show the ribs.

I really like this pattern stitch. It looks great up close and personal, but you do have to get up close and personal to see it properly. In the future, I may try something similar but simplified a bit.



The light today is kind of funny - sometimes bright, sometimes subdued. I'm quite smitten with the effect it is having. Some of my photos came out sharp and warm ...



... and others cool and velvety.


I'm loving the play between the pattern stitches and the plain stitches on the bottom of the foot.

I'm also loving the total randomness of the colours in this yarn.




Oh, did I mention the yarn? Hand-dyed, expertly and exquisitely, by Jessie and available at A Piece of Vermont -- if you can beat me to it.

That's been the sum total of my knitting this month. I've not even started on my scarf for the ISE. Gotta get going on that. Yikes.

Oh, and there's a winner in the contest in my last post, but I haven't yet written them to so advise. The actual answer is that it's a dying blank. You paint on the colours you want, then unravel it and knit it up. What a great way to make stripes or gradual gradations! Which answer entertained me the most? Guess you'll have to wait just a bit longer to find out. :-)

Mail & Miscellaneous

My mail box has had another very good week.

Mail No. 1: I recently won a blog contest over at StarzAbove and look what she sent me!



Some wonderful roving! I don't spin, but I've always wanted to try thrumming, and this will be perfect. Some cookies! I love chocolate and mint together and have somehow already managed to scarf down half the box. And ..





Some sock yarn! I'm thinking it's hand-dyed, in a gorgeous slightly variegated mixture of subtle greens and browns. This will make some Very Handsome Socks! :-) The package was a most welcome break in busy week -- thank you so much, Starz!

Miscellaneous No. 1: Several people asked where I got the Apple Pie yarn that I used in my March socks . That, along with this ...





... came from Pick Up Sticks . No affiliation-yada yada-blah blah blah, but I must say that I have made, ummm, several purchases from Connie and have received excellent service every single time. I highly recommend her. On the yarn itself, several people mentioned that they have had a knot problem with it. I didn't have any knots, but just so's you know, m'kay?

Miscellaneous No. 2: Locals might be interested to know that another yarn store in Ottawa finally got some Koigu. I feel safe in sending you to Yarn Forward on Bank Street because ...

... I've already been there.

Miscellaneous No. 3: I finished stringing the beads for my ISE4 scarf.

That is 427 cm., which is 168 inches, which is 14 feet, of beads. There are 10 beads to an inch, so ... 1,680 beads. I now understand why people who work regularly with beads get a bead spinner. Onward!

Mail No. 2: Thanks very much to everyone who offered to trade me for their Monsoon STR yarn. Blogless Elizabeth, with whom I traded my previous club yarns, came through for me!

Me likes it! I likely won't do the Inside-Out pattern, but who knows. I'll let it marinate for a while.

Elizabeth also sent me something else, along with a note that said, "If you don't know what it is or how to use it, LMK!"

I don't really KNOW, but I do have some guesses. It's an open-ended knit tube, with the ends unfinished, 229 cms or 90 inches long, 12.7 cms or 5 inches across, so 25.4 cms or 10 inches around.

I love mysteries, and I love contests, so closing off the circle in this post, a Contest! Email me (address in the sidebar) your best guess -- I said best, which doesn't necessarily mean correct -- as to the use of this object, and in two weeks time I'll pick a winner and send them some sock yarn goodness!

SAM3 - March - done!

It`s been a busy month, with not much time for fibery fun, but I did manage to get my March socks finished, thanks to a couple of DVDs last evening.

I used a new-to-me yarn, and it's Canadian! Similar to another well-known Canadian yarn, this has short bursts of colour.

This is the Winter`s Dawn colourway.

The unusual fibre content initially caused me a little bit of grief gauge-wise. My first attempt was too large, as the yarn doesn`t really scrootch down as much as an all-wool yarn would. My second attempt was too small, as the yarn doesn`t really stretch as much as an all-wool yarn would. But my third attempt -- just right!

Although I found the yarn to be a little bit splitty in places, and a little bit underspun in other places, I love -- LOVE! -- how the colours came out.

The fabric feels absolutely scrumptious and has a terrific sheen to it.

I haven`t had a chance to wash them yet, but it will be interesting to see if the yarn blooms at all, given the mohair content. And, with the mohair, silk and nylon, I fully expect these to last a long, long, long time.

In the Other News Department, I had originally planned to do a nice, thick, cabled, wool scarf for the International Scarf Exchange 4 . Then I got my partner`s info, and she lives in a climate that probably wouldn`t really warrant such a beast. Time to revamp. I`m thinking I`ll try something with these.

Drive-by Post

Just a quick post to note a few things:

Eve is looking for some people to take part in a fun li’l comic-readin’ study. Pop on over, sign up, read a few comics, get a few laughs, and answer a few questions. Simple, eh?

I signed up for the Blue Moon sock club last year. You didn't hear anything about it here because, well, frankly, I found all the selections to be ugl not to my tastes. I was lucky enough to be able to trade some of it away, and I haven't even been tempted to knit with the rest of it. Naturally, I didn't join the second round because I didn't want to make the same mistake again, and naturally, the first one out this time around is freaking gorgeous. Figures, eh?

Seems that something is getting close to completion. Time to put down the knitting needles and pick up a needle of another sort. Wish me luck, eh?

SAM3 - March done!

During the grey days of February, I just had to do something with colour, so I got a head start on my March socks.

It's the December selection from Spunky Eclectic -- a colourway called Good Morning.

Here's the pair.

As I was knitting along on the first sock, I noted how the colours came in nice short bursts. It reminded me of Koigu. The colours were indeed very much like a beautiful winter sunrise.

I love it when hand-paints come out just the way you hope they will -- love it, I say.

And then ... as I wound the second skein, I noticed that the colours didn't seem to look the same as in the first skein. There were longer lighter sections, and the colours didn't seem quite so bright. Crap! What to do? I was in totally smitten with the first sock, but alarms bells were ringing in my head.

It seemed that one end of ball two was a little lighter than the other, so I re-wound it so I'd be working from the darker end. Since the part of the sock that I see the most is the toe and foot, I started with the leftovers from the first ball and went toe up. I didn't get all that far. The ends sticking out show where I had to connect the second hank.

You can see it coming, just like a train barrelling down the tracks toward you at 100 kph. I know that when working with hand-paints, you should work with both balls, alternating the strands. Frankly, for socks, that's just frustration up with which I am not prepared to put.

Lesson learned, though.

Sock 1:

Sock 2:

Well, for a short while it was on the way to becoming one of my favourite pairs of socks.

SAM3 - February - done!

Not much knitting got done this past month, but I did manage to turn this --


-- into these:



The yarn is Lorna's Laces in the signature Quadra Island colourway from the Fun Knits Yarn Shop. It's a great mix of blue, sage, purple and charcoal, and the yarn feels wonderful, just as you'd expect from Lorna's.

It's a standard 72-stitch sock, with 2x2 ribbing at the cuff, 6x2 for the leg, and I carried a few of the ribs down the instep, just because I wanted to. I like how the 6x2 ribbbing helps to break up the slight stripey-ness that happened on the foot.





Fun Knits also carries the Smoke line of Opal, which I hadn't seen before. It has some great "guy" colours -- I might have succumbed to a skein or seven.

Even though I haven't been doing much actual knitting, I have been doing a bit of reading about knitting. I haven't yet seen the new IK sock book , but Canada did finally get Balls.

I've been waiting for this one for a while, and I was quite happy to finally find it. There's some very nifty stuff in there, including some socks! Some of it is a bit too fashion-forward for my staid little self, but the vest and the Aran immediately caught my eye as being very nice. There's also quite a bit of good technical stuff in it as well, so it's a welcome addition to my library.

I also picked up this:

I was fully prepared to *not* like this book based simply on the title, but it actuallly has some nice stuff in it. No, I'm not getting a dog, so I can't use half of the patterns, but most of the sweaters are quite wearable. I was particularly impressed with the range of sizes -- some of the patterns go from a 32 inch chest all way up to 60 inches. For those of us who aren't built like linebackers, this is Good News.

In the Other News Department, the International Scarf Exchange 4 is now taking sign-ups -- woo-hoo!!

I am now going to turn on the television and try to ignore the fact that many of you will be revelling at Stitches West.

Les Victoires

Thank you all for your warm wishes on my blogiversary, and thank you, also, for playing along in my little give-a-way. The original intent behind starting this blog was to help keep me on track on my various projects. I'm not so sure it's been successful on that front, but it's certainly been a lot of fun. Now if you'd all stop posting your wonderful projects and patterns and beautiful new yarns in am effort to lead me astray, I'd appreciate it. (Kidding!)

Many of you were able to guess the correct landmark number of comments, but one of you was actually home sick in bed and rather than knit actually took the time to count them. That's dedication! I was glad to see that Mr. Random Number Generator thought that dedication should be rewarded. Earthchick, you won by guessing the correct number -- 1500. And Meg, you won by actually posting the 1500th comment. Congratulations to you both! Earthchick seems to be veering a little bit into the sewing side, so I'm hoping to tempt her back into knitting by sending her some yummy yarn. And Meg ... well, you see, Meg seems to have this awful fascination with, um, well, what can you say ... novelty yarn scarves. I'm sorely tempted to send her the most novelty-ish yarn I can find so she can make one for herself rather than just stalking other peoples'.

This week in knitting: I wasn't going to join this round, but one look at my sock yarn stash said I better keep going, so I clicked away and am now a member of Sock-a-Month 3. That meant, of course, that I had to get started on some socks. I managed to get two done past the heel turn. I didn't like the fit of one, so I ripped it. I decided on a different pattern for the other, so I ripped it too. Hence, no new knitting to show you. I think every post should have at least one picture, so I guess that means that I have to recycle some previous FOs. :-)

CarrieK asked to see the inside of my Fake Isle Hat. Her wish is my command:

Complete with darned in end up at the top.

I will admit that the colours are starting to grow on me .... a bit. I do wear it, and it helps that I can't actually see myself when I'm wearing it.

And I've been obsessing about that cat's eyes -- you know, like I really have nothing better to do. I found something else that I like a little better.

They're still kind of spooky, but hey, I'm calling him done. Does anyone else find it strange that I can obsess over what constitutes the eyes, but then can blithely just glue them on over top of the old eyes with nary a care?

Oh, and that's snow you see in the background, not lint. ;-)

The Cat 'n the Hat

I seem to have joined another knit-along - Cover Your Head



As you may guess, this KAL involves hats. As you may also guess, since I'm working on my stranding, I knit a stranded hat -- the Fake Isle hat from MagKnits.

Now, before I say anything else, I should indicate that there have been some wonderful examples of this hat posted about blog-ville. For example, look here and here, to point out just a couple of them. I warn you now that what follows is not what I would consider a wonderful example of what is really a wonderful pattern.

Before I show you my monstrosity, let me state here and now that I really don't like 16" circular needles. Yes, the stranding goes much smoother without the joins you get from DPNs, but I find knitting with that short a circ to be hard on the hands. However, since my head is nowhere near 24", I guess it's a "suck it up" type of situation.

Brace yourselves:



I attribute the lack of wonderfulness purely to my own poor choice of colour of Kureyon. I was trying to expand my colour horizons, and I think I went a bit too far. I am so not an orange, green and purple kind of guy. This is Kureyon No. 185, and pattern colour is Patons Classic in Dark Natural Mix. I originally tried to use a dark brown, and it worked at the beginning, but it kind of got lost and I had to rip back and go with something lighter.

As I was knitting along, I began to get concerned about the depth of the hat, as I wanted something that would cover my ears. Midway through, I switched to the row counts for the larger size, hence the three row stripe in the middle. I wish I would have thought of that sooner and made the lower one three rounds as well, because it looks weird with them different, but there was no way I was going back again.



On the plus side, I was able to practice catching floats, and I think I figured out what I was doing wrong before. And then I got cocky and played with the patterning on the top so I wouldn't have to catch them any more. I added that little dagger-type shape so it looked a little less like a flower.

Now, I'm really not into fashion that much, and I generally wear what I like and what feels comfortable. Yes, I am probably a prime candidate for What Not to Wear. Clinton and Stacy, come and get me any time. But, despite my lack of fashion sense and my need to keep my ever-increasing forehead warm, while I have worn, and will continue to wear, this hat, I admit that while doing so I feel kind of like this:



Turning now to more pleasant things, thank you for your suggestions for alternate cat eyes for my Fibre Trends Here Kitty Kitty kitty cat. I liked very much the idea of embroidering them on, and I tried. I really did. I will not tell you how many hours I spent trying. In the end, I had to cover them up with little bits of felt.



Kind of spooky looking, but better than what's underneath. Whiskers on kittens are a favourite thing, so I couldn't leave them out. Monofilament gives the right kind of translucent bristliness.

And just to prove that my toy cat is cooler than I, here he is, sitting in the snow.


In the Other News Department, when I switched over to the new Blogger, I noticed that I was coming up onto my first blogiversary, so I guess that means it's time for a contest!!! I liked the idea of a "500th comment" thingy, but after adding up my comments, I realized I missed that boat -- by a long shot. I had no idea you guys were so chatty! :-)

So here's the deal: I am coming up on a different and higher landmark type of number for comments. Email me what you think this number is (email addy is in the sidebar) and I'll put all correct answers in a hat (possibly the one above!) and pick a winner. In addition, the person who leaves that actual landmark comment will win. So two prizes, one for guessing the number and one for being the number. What will you win? I'm thinking ..... sock yarn. I'll pick something nice especially for the winners. Fair enough?