Knitting in the Shadows

Of Socks and Blues (or lack thereof)

The Gentleman was pleased with the progress on his Gentleman's Sock...

I was able to get a status check.  Despite my concerns, it was not too tight.  However, it looks to me like we measured just in time!

It turns out that though the pattern I'm using as a guide for the reverse heel business thinks that it was time to start the heel dance, I need about two more rows (which include one more gusset increase).

And thus my vacation begins with knitting projects cooperating fully...

My what? Yes, you saw it... I said vacation!!!!

Yesterday was my last day of work for THREE WEEKS! Yeeee haaaahhhhh.

"But what does this mean to ME?? you ask..

First off, it means that no work will interfere with my ability to blog.... so for the next few days, I'm likely to bore you to death with minutia.

After July 4, however, we'll be "on the road" and my blog=updating access will be limited.  I will be luxuriating in long visits with my parents. ... first in Mid-Coast Maine (any blog readers up that way?) and then in Burlington, Vermont (blog readers THERE?).  While I will be being spoiled, I will not be able to blog much.  Internet access is less friendly (dial up here I come), and I won't have my photo editing software, so I won't be able to shrink images down do a decent bloggable size...(My parents don't have digital cameras, and so don't have such software.)

But. before I go...
here's what My Blue Buddy gave me:

What we have here, from Tsoniki the great pal who totally went OUT OF HER WAY to find knitting goodies for me, even though she's not a knitter, is :
1) a skein of lovely blue Koigu (I'm thinkin' she's been reading my blog -- in which I seem to have been reporting lots of purchasing and knitting of Koigu.... what do you think?),
2) a set of Crystal Palace Circulars (ahhh, my favorites of the bamboo circs),
3) a lovely blue candle (you may recall that I listed C is for Candles several months ago?  more blog reading, for sure),
4) some absolutely gorgeous blue stitch markers, and
5)  something to keep me from getting blue, by adding laughter to my day: Calvin & Hobbes "Scientific Progress Goes Boink".

I win.

Wanna see another view?  Sure you do:

What?

You still can't see those incredible stitch markers?  Okay, how about this:

My Blue Swap Buddy is better than yours... nyah nyah.

And even if she's not, I love her all the same.  THANK YOU Tsoniki!!!

Clearly, it's time to cast on something that needs stitch markers, don't'cha think??

But first, Willow and I are going out for more adventures with the divine though sadly Blogless Elizabeth (honorary member of the Amazing Lace Team).

Blues and Blues on Blues

Today begins BLUE month in Project Spectrum.

There's a blue sky.... wholly unlike the skies we have around here lately in Tornado Land.  I won't bother showing you what's out there right now.

With the beginning of Blueness, I have a new Project Spectrum Swap partner.  Talk about broadening your perspectives!  Not only am I shifting from hunting for all things green, to hunting for all things BLUE..I'm now hunting for things NOT knitting!  My Blue Buddy is a crafter, but not a knitter.  She's even said that she never uses wool!!!! 

Never!

That gave me pause I tell you.  And caused me to put some lovely blue yarn I'd selected from my stash for her right back into the old yarn closet. (Okay, maybe my Secret Pal will wind up with Blue yarn... but my Blue Buddy shall remain yarnless (no... no... I'm not cursing her! really!  She doesn't do yarn!)  But where does that leave me...???

Of course, this will broaden her horizons as well.  She'll get to THINK KNITTING! for me. Perhaps this little adventure will open her eyes to the incredible joy of knitting. I suppose I should be fair, and warn her, that as much as I respect others' right to do things like scrap booking and stamping etc, they hold no interest for me whatsoever??  Beads I could do ... if they're combinable with knitting...(am I in a rut here??)

Okay, Tsoniki ... if you're reading this.... skip the next part... knitting is always wonderful....

As you may recall, I was having a fit of hubris and attempted to redesign a lace shawl on the fly without using graph paper.  Not surprisingly, that was a bust.

So, last night I sat myself down with the graph paper and drew things out... and erased and drew and erased and drew... (thank heavens I don't like to draw with heavy lines!) until I got it done!  I thought...  I was sure it would be marvelous.  I was so cocky I didn't count the width repeats to see if what I'd done was going to fit gracefully where I was in the original pattern (to which I had just added two repeats of the upper pattern).

I smugly picked up the shawl and began to knit the next row, applying my newly designed middle.

Ya know what? It would have been PERFECT if I'd only added ONE repeat of that pattern (which is, btw, 1/2 the width of the middle section pattern).  Adding another repeat to make it work magically with my new design will screw up the ratios again (not to mention using up more yarn than I think I can afford).  I think I know how to adapt for it some, to maintain the visual ratios, but I'm paranoid about running out of yarn.

Of course I could tink back that dozen rows... but that would undo the size change I'd been aiming for.  See... redesigning someone else's pattern is a PITA!

I have come up with a bit of a fix that will get me into my variation on the pattern reasonably well, but it's not as seamless as I'd like; it leaves an obvious spot at the center back that I'd just as soon not be there.

I guess it's back to the drafting table for me... hmmph.  Perhaps I'll stop by the percentage calculator to see where I'd be with the variations I now have in my head.

Meanwhile, on the sock front....

I'm facing yet another frogging dilemma.

It's clearly what I live for.

Here's the current issue.

I love the sole of my Koigu sock:

Alas, I do not love the top of my Koigu sock

In fact, I think I like old the lace attempt better than this one.  :-(
In case you've forgotten, it looked like this:

I've reached the conclusion that neither pattern does a thing for the yarn, and furthermore that the yarn does nothing for the patterns.  In fact, for a few minutes there, the current pattern had me convinced that I no longer loved the yarn! (blasphemy, I know).

So... do I
a) finish them in this pattern anyway, and give them away?
b) frog them and knit simple socks to enjoy the colorway on it's own?
c) set them aside until I get over this foolishness, since I'm too blind to see that the pattern is perfect?

My GREEN package arrived today!!!

Wanna see?  Sure you do!

First, there is this:

Obvious yummies are the hand knit wash cloth and the accompanying hand crafted Lavender Citrus soap from  Angel Farm in Sequim, WA., and the nifty bag of many interior pockets, in the center of which is a removable pin cushion.  Then there's the GORGEOUS Mohair Lux from idena.  But what are those over there next to the Green tea?  What did  Dorothy ...  put in those Green wrapped packages??

I'll bet MY Green Package smells better than YOUR Green Package.  Not only do I have wonderful smelling soap.. I have a candle AND some pot pourri that smell like Summer Moss.  I am a huge candle fan (as you may recall from my  C is for ...   post).  I'll admit that ordinarily I'm not huge on pot pourri, but this one smells nice, and I'm not sharing.... I'll be putting it in my office once the lilies I got for Mother's Day give up.  There's still one stalk (with three blooms) that looks and smells marvelous...

But back to the package...... because she did some investigating, Dorothy knows that I'm a sucker for Chocolate... so there's a chocolate bar in there too.  A deliciously tempting Black Forest Truffle Bar from Seattle Chocolates  Anyone want to hazard a guess as to how long I can resist ripping it open?

On Grey Skies and Green and Lip Gloss

Hey Sandy ... I can't show you blue skies ... but we do have interesting clouds around here....

On the mom front, I came very close to deciding I need to raid my 9 year old daughter's bathroom for lip gloss.  Now, I really don't know how she came to own lip gloss in the first place (investigation continues), but yesterday she presented herself for our monthly dinner out (just us two) with lips that looked like this:

Such a lovely color, I thought (trying to ignore the ramifications of a nine year old with lips like this). I may have to borrow some of that!  But when I put it on my lips, it looked like this:

Huh?   So, how come her lips look all rosy and blushy and stuff, and mine just look pale and thin? Hmph.  I guess I'll leave her lip gloss alone. (and please, ignore those uneven teeth, okay?  One is capped as the result of an unfortunate bicycle accident when I was about 12.  It's sensitive about its imperfection...)

The jury is still out on whether to let her wear it ... she's only NINE for goodness sakes.  I so don't need any  Jon Benet issues going on here.  And little girls in lipstick always make me think of that whole Child Beauty Pageant thing.  shudder

On a brighter note:

In celebration of GREEN, I sent off my ColorSwap partner's package today.   (So I don't spoil Dorothy's surprise, you'll have to click for bigger image)

It was full of yarn and other green goodies, including some beads, and a green plastic bag that holds everything but the yarn.   I liked those beads so well that I'm hearing the matching ones calling to me from the store.  I'm sure I have nothing in my stash with which they'd go, and unless Dorothy sends me some yarn that matches the yarn I sent her, I'm unlikely to have anything to go with them in the near future ... but I covet them all the same.

While I was bead browsing for her package, I also found these:

This is about as close as I can get to the colors.  It's still not right.

ANYWAY ... Even though I swear these socks (what? oh yeah, I went with the Gentleman's Socks with a toe up variant)

read green more than purple, I've started thinking that beaded sock cuffs might be nifty using those purple beads.  Then I put them together:

I'm less convinced now.  I wonder if they have a green set that would work?  Someone stop me before I shop again.

Joys of May

Happy May!

It's GREEN month for those of you following along with Project Spectrum.  And so, I bid farewell to April's yellow with another daffodil,

and turn once again to the beaded shawl that has so much green in it.

I'm participating in the ColorSwap this time around... so I'm on the prowl for lovely green things to send to my swap buddy ----

I'm very excited: First off, I won a PRIZE!!!(I won a prize! I won a prize! I never win and I won) from Cirque du Socks.  I wonder if it was my diligence in pushing through to the end despite the urge to let the due date slide.

Better still, it will have green in it: okay, the pic's not the best - I'l show you when it arrives.

I also anticipate learning who my new Secret Pal will be, as Secret Pal 8  begins. They're having a button contest -- makes me wanna learn how to make buttons, as I actually have some ideas for this one.

However, and you just knew this would happen... this means I have another questionaire to answer.  More things about me you probably already knew... If you're interested, you can find my answers here.  See how nice I am? I'm not making you read the same thing over again unless you're interested.
 

All this fun, and I get to knit too!

Knitting Update

Knitting update --

1) The baby sweater. 

Yes, I finished it a while ago.  But I'd photographed it badly.  And, as it turns out, the darling child for whom it was made arrived on the scene before I got to give the sweater to her Mom... and between my job and her parents visiting, it turns out I won't get to see them until THURSDAY!  :-(

So, I had no choice but to make booties to match.  The bootie in this picture is a bit damp, and so not standing up as well as it could...

When I took the picture this afternoon, I had gotten the second bootie on the needles, but that picture is silly now, as I've finished the mate.  (It's amazing what you can get done sitting around knitting while the kids are playing with their friends in the back yard). I'll likely shoot the pair of them tomorrow.

2) Socks

Yes, I've FINISHED sock one of the amazing Pomatomus socks!

Gotta love that sock!

Here's another view, more revealing, if darkish, of the top of the foot.

And just to prove to you that SSS (second sock syndrome) has not taken over -- even with the advent of baby booties to knit --  Here's the lovely Pomatomus modeling with the second sock, not merely on the needles, but already through the first repeat of Chart 1

3)  The Celtic Shawl is not being ignored.  I worked on her tonight in fact.  she is, however, shunning the camera.  Sorry.

In Project Spectrum news,  our post office has a VERY interesting floral arrangement in the lobby:

I wonder, do THEY know that this is the month for Orange and Yellow?  Did they sneakily make huge green leaves so it will still qualify during May?  And will they give us a giant blue fish in June?

As for ABC... I'm still pondering a good H posting.  Someone (who's blog I would link to if only I could remember who!!) has already done H is for Hands -- knitting hands of course ... so I'm working on another concept ....

Meanwhile, the lone peeper from Tuesday night was joined by two friends tonight.  We watched one of them hopping across the patio in the dark, and were amazed that the cats, sitting with us on the porch, weren't the slightest bit interested.  The chorus should be getting pretty loud in the next few days.

You Know You Blog too much....

When you start seeing blog-worthy things in the mundane stuff of life.

Today, I got the new sticker for my license plate.   So I took the envlelope out to the garage, opened the door to have easier access to the rear of the van and noticed this:

Yes, that's a YELLOW sticker on my plate.  Yellow, for April's Spectrum color of the month!

!

Only a blogger gone mad would have stopped the license sticker appliation project to get the camera...

But Project Spectrum has me noticing Yellows and Oranges in all sorts of places (gee, that's exactly what was supposed to happen), and when the next thing I saw in the sticker placement process was this....

what was I supposed to do???

Take pictures of course...

See, the car cooperates, even if my knitting doesn't, though I DO have another daffie to start --

Since I had the camera out anyway, In the interests of complete blogging for the Project color of the month, I took a tour of the yard and noticed that even without the daffodils (which are all in the front) we still have a bright spot in the back yard:

And of course, the koi pond yields some nice orangey views

Hmmm, that would have been a good shot for F is for Fish.... too bad they were all hiding that week.

Memeless Monday w/ Daffodils

Here I sit in my fully roofed house doing something I wholly did not anticipate ...

I'm knitting in YELLOW!

Yes, I know, it's April, and Yellow is the color of the month for Project Spectrum.  And I know I've got that project spectrum button right over there on the sidebar.

In yellow's honor, I even ate a yellow-topped mini-cupcake at the girls' recital reception:

(And yes, they played beautifully, and NO I didn't get a decent picture of either of them doing it.  I was too caught up in the music of the moment, and forgot to prepare blog photos...).  So I chose, and photographed, a yellow cup cake because I feared that I'd not have anything else yellow to report.

You see, I really didn't anticipate a) finding yellow yarn in the stash and b) finding something I wanted to knit in yellow (certainly not without a serious quest).

However...a blast from the past has brought yellow into my life!

The wonders of blogland never cease to amaze me.  This weekend, a mostly-cyber friend I'd not heard from in literally years, and not seen in longer, ran across this blog somehow, and said hello.  Turns out she's been working on some nifty pattern designs, and has come up with one for a daffodil.  Timing being everything, it turns out she actually needed a test knitter... and I needed some yellow inspiration.... at the same time!

I know it's not much, but here's the start of my daffodil:

Note: in the interests of fairness to her, I'll not be posting many in-process pictures of the daffie.  The next you see it, it's likely to be a done deal.  But I'm so tickled to have found a yellow I'm actively enjoying knitting that I just had to share.

On other needles, I've turned the Pomatomus heel and have just picked up the gusset.

I've made a bit more progress on Celtic Wedding Shawl II -- but not so much that photographing it would be interesting.

The modular shawl remains in stasis while I decide whether I'm starting with a diamond, a triangle or a square.  If either of the latter, I'll be frogging it the rest of the way.

And in parting, I give you Gabriel.  When he got into this chair every thing  you see sharing it with him was already there.  Evidently, he slid under it all to be surrounded by knitted shawls -- the bag in front of him holds the rest of the yarn for the Celtic Wedding Shawl, which is covering his back; his head is resting on the remains of the Modular Shawl; his paw is staking claim to my warm'n'cozy barn shawl (not that I have a barn... but it seems like the shawl version of a barn sweater).

Knitting Progress Reports:

Okay, time to get back to that knitting thing. I seem to be the queen of too much yarn ...  I'm working on a modular shawl by Iris Schrier (the one in Modular Knits ), (which btw I've enjoyed), and find myself having followed the directions to the letter, reaching the end with a garment that's smaller than I want and 3.8 of the original 8 oz of yarn left. Now, I DID fear that it would be small.  But when I looked at the instructions they said that the S/M size would take one hank of beaded rayon, and the L/XL would take TWO.  I have one hank... so I aimed for the medium, and got what seems to me to be ... a kerchief, not a shawl. Certainly not a shawl the size that the model in the picture appears to be wearing....

That made me wonder if in my travel induced fog I'd just plain missed something in the directions.  So I double checked.  The pattern says to repeat the relevant rows until "one side of the diamond measures approx. 10: to 12" (small/medium) or 14" to 20" (large/extra large).  I was pretty sure that's what I'd done.  I went back and measured again today:

The side I then worked the next diamond into was 11" (without any stretching or blocking). The side that was allowed to stretch a bit more was 12".

That should have been big enough.  This diamond is supposed to be big enough to cover my entire back... That means to me that it ought to be at least as wide as my shoulder point to shoulder point measurement. 

The unstretched diagonal measurement here is 15",  which is more than my shoulder to shoulder measurement.

Thus, according to the directions, this should be plenty big.

Sigh.

I've frogged back to the original diamond, and will be reknitting (and probably redesigning, because though I DO want it bigger over all, I don't want that point hanging down my butt.  I hate long points. Thus,  I think I'll be adding some other modules to reshape the bottom edge of this thing.

Meanwhile, the Pomatomus socks are progressing nicely. 

They're reminding me a bit of Clapotis -- the yo's are making a diagonal line in one direction, while the color stripes in the yarn are running the other direction.  All in all, a pleasing affect to my eye.

I've reached the heel flap, and had a brief concern that my modifications (adding a repeat to accommodate my calf and the high arch over which the leg must pass) would result in some evilness at the heel flap point.  Turns out to have been perfect!  I tend to work my heels on 40% of the stitches of any sock ... so I have 84 stitches instead of 72, and 40% of 84 stitches is 34 stitches.  My 36 stitches are almost perfect for my preferred heel size.  Yee hah!

I had hoped to convert these to 2 circs in honor of Cirque du Socks, but have discovered that I have NO circs of this precise size -- and I'm not up for changing by .25 or .5 mm to make the switch.

Meanwhile, Project Spectrum is bidding adieu to reds and pinks as the month of march draws to a close.  In honor of that, I wore my red boots to work today:

April will be hard for me.  I'm not fond of yellow or orange as the main color of anything except the occasional daffodil.  I look dreadful in those colors, and don't know many people who wear them well.  Thus, I have little motivation to work with them as anything but accent colors.  (Can I claim the Orange Knitting I did in February as doing pre-emptive spectrum knitting??)

Tonight's sky was an amazing bridge to yellows and oranges, with the sky to the northeast a magnificent display of pinks and the northwest showed splashes of gold.  Alas, my camera was not with me.  :-(

Farewell reds! I've enjoyed you this month.... and will miss you.  I never did get to starting that marvelous Koigu! Hmm... I may wind up continuing to focus my knitting on reds, while trying to notice yellow and orange around me. 

Until tomorrow, (well, likely Sunday, I'm not up for a good April Fool's post),I leave you with another silly quiz.

 

 

 

 

What Is Your Animal Personality?

 

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