Needles & hooks

2-sock Addendum

Just wanted to clarify something about the baby socks I wrote about in the last post. 2 socks at a time from the same ball of yarn is fine. I usually knit my socks this way if I’m not trying for twins in a self-striper. You make a center-pull ball from the yarn and knit one sock from the center and one sock from the outside of the ball. Easy. Sometimes it gets a little twisted around itself, and you just untwist as necessary.

The trouble I had was trying to knit two socks at a time from 2 balls at a time. I was using both balls the same way - knitting one sock from the center of each, and one from the outside. And what with the fact that I was knitting one yarn every round and one yarn every other round and the twisting and the solid color ball was disintegrating, well, it was a scaring mess very quickly.

That’s two different balls (all though the solid burgundy has completely lost structural integrity (seriously, it’s burgundy, not brown)):

Now I’ve been thinking about the topology of the thing (and if two socks from one ball makes your head spin, don’t think about this), and I think it should be possible with a little care and a little more planning. But I was going for quick and dirty, and it just didn’t seem to be working. Of course, I spent about an hour with the separating and untangling and rewinding, so with my maybe 10 rounds that I’d knit, I’d have probably been ahead starting over. But they’re done now. And I’m putting it out of my head.

Comments: 0 — Posted under: Knitting

The Kitchen Sink Post

I got lots to say, so this post will be all over the place. Hold on to your needles, it could be a bumpy ride.

Baby Socks!

First up, a FO for you. Remember this:

When I went to Webs on Glove Tour ‘07, I brought the tiny bit of yarn I’d attempted to make socks with before and found a nice ball of Rowan Cashsoft DK to go with it to make full sized socks. So again, I started my two-at-a-time-toe-up socks, deciding that I should just use little fair isle accents of the multi-color yarn. I started each sock from opposite ends of each ball. And pretty soon, I had this:

And I learned that you really should only do that with one ball at a time, because you just can’t untangle. So I wound out huge amounts of the solid color and cut the yarn and went through heroic efforts to untangle each separate ball and rewind. There are no pictures of this process, because my hands were busy with the yarn, and my cat is too lazy to be bothered with the camera.

Finally, I ended up with these:

They’re slightly fraternal, and you can see how well I managed to match the dark burgundy shade of the multi-color. Because there are huge sections of “solid” on each sock. Fair isle with identical shades is pretty forgiving, just not all that satisfying. In the future, I would just cut the yarn and start up at a new color, but I didn’t want to rip these out yet again. How many times can you rip out baby socks, seriously?! And in the end, I only used about 1 color repeat on each sock, so I still have plenty of that micro ball left. So it’s going to the mom along with the left over Cashsoft (now in 3 mini balls as well) and she can decide what to do with it.

Documented Cotton Allergy?

That out of the way, I’ve moved on with the Princess Coverup that I showed you this swatch for:

Working from my measured gauge and the measurements of the recipient, I added a pattern repeat to all the pieces to make it a little wider. Now I’m fearing that my gauge swatch lied and that it’s going to swim on her. Not necessarily what you want for a swim-coverup. I’m doing all 3 pieces at once so they will all be the same length and here’s what I have (about one full pattern-repeat):

Knitting away on it today, my nose started itching. Sort of the way it does when I handle bunnies. Uh-oh. It’s made with Debbie Bliss Pure Cotton, and I’ve never had issues with cotton before. Then I looked at my pants:

Clearly, this yarn is shedding just like a bunny. Fortunately, this project has to be quick. Unfortunately, I have two cross-country flights coming up, also known as enforced knitting time, so we’ll see what happens to my nose in the Mile High Knitter’s Club.

Exercise in Restraint

Thursday was the beginning of the summer clearance sale at my LYS. In the past, I have been very, very bad at this sale. Shopping it takes dedication. They sell all their close-outs in sealed bags, usually of a single color, and either you buy the bag, or you don’t. No buying single balls. In some ways that’s frustrating, because I might want to buy a few balls in a variety of colors. However, sometimes you just find yourself buying way too much of everything because “wow, a whole bag of Aurora 8 in my favorite color?! And in my other favorite color?! Oh look, I love that color too!” (And the sales staff remembers you doing it for years, hi Pat!).

Anyway, what with planning to move and with the recent excursion to Webs, I didn’t go on the first day. Although I pass the store on my way to work and that morning I passed by right as it was opening. I really had to think twice not to stop. I went back on the way home on Friday and ended up with only one thing I couldn’t put down:

That’s 9 balls of Andes in a blue jeans/melon colorway. No, I have no clue what it will be. But that’s never been an obstacle in the past.

Glove Infamy

I also showed off my Moo cards when I was at the store, and, well, outed myself as the creator of The Glove. Turns out not only had the staff heard of it, but so had the other customer who was checking out when I was! And the suggestions keep pouring in on where I should show it off…Stitches, Rhinebeck, Manchester. If only I could send it off on a trunk show, but really, you need the chair to fully appreciate it, and that just doesn’t ship well. Maybe I could send it off on a good-will tour — trusting on the large vehicles of knitters everywhere to cart it from one store they shop at to another, sort of a perverse chain-letter (or Geocache Travel Bug) until I meet up with it again at some distant store in the future. But anyway, few yarn stores I’ve seen have room to display it anyway. It’s just too huge.

A couple of Glove sightings:
sparklej
The Harlot

Okay, with that, I’m going back to knit and ponder cotton and bunnies. Amazon.com and Tivo have a new thing that lets me “rent” movies from Amazon and download them to my Tivo. This weekend, a bunch of movies starring Oceans 13 stars were 99 cents. The Good Shepherd is up next.

Comments: 10 — Posted under: Knitting, Almost Random, Retail Therapy