Needles & Hooks

If you look at knitting blogs at all, I’m sure you heard about the Socks That Rock sock yarn club scam. Well, I was one of those scammed. I so enjoyed being scammed last year that I decided to be stupid and do it again. Imaginary yarn never looked or felt so good!

Last we saw my Rock and Weave socks, all they needed was to have their ends woven in and some buttons affixed. Both got done. I have the cuff folded down on the one on the left because the back side of the stitch is pretty cool too.

And here’s a shot of just one where you can see that the cuff gapes a little at the bottom. I think it might be a little too long on that end. Nothing to do about it now.

Good thing those are done. Now I just have to finish the other sock club pair I have on the needles and then I can think about the new kit I got in the mail the other day. Not that I can start it until next month, because this is a finishing month…

The other project I have to show you tonight is the scribble shawl I played around with. Before:

After:

It’s another one that just wasn’t working out. I wanted to feature the red and silver yarns. But the gauge is really too tight to be scribble lace and the black yarn is too thick. I think I’ll get some laceweight black and try again on bigger needles. Someday.

Tonight I received the new issue of Cast On in the mail. And reading the article about the new instructions for the Master Knitter’s program, I remember that I started that once and never sent it off. In fact, I did everything but write the report, even though I knew exactly what I wanted it to say. I think it’s been about 2 years, so there’s no way I could take it up again without redoing all the swatches. Anyway, I guess I should ask for a new set of directions and see if I want to take it up again.

However, I am making progress with some of my other UFOs.

I picked up Mermaid again. I think my gauge might be a little too loose now, but I think it will look okay in the end. I’m almost to the last page of my spreadsheet and I laid it out last night and I think it’s gonna measure up okay. Hopefully I’ll finish the body for real soon.

And over the weekend, I had some knitting time while waiting for and during a pedicure, so I made some progress on the third installment of Rockin’ Socks.

Here’s 2 repeats of the pattern:

It’s lacey and open, but really looks like ribbed entrelac:

As for the 2nd installment, they still need buttons. I thought I had the buttons, but I realized that I only have 3 buttons, not 4. So I need to go shopping, and I need some quality time with box of neglected knitting.

In the meantime, here’s what I did with some of the leftovers of Fairgrounds:

I’ve been thinking about using leftover sock yarn to make a blanket of Weavette squares. I think it might be too thin with just one strand woven. But perhaps too thick to deal with doubled. So I’ll have to think some more.

So, it wasn’t an official race. I did have an early lead, but I also had a few distractions. And as I expected, Bron finished her Ballet Cami before I did. Go over and take a look and congratulate her. Really, I wasn’t feeling deathly competitive, it was more like the way I’d race with the other smart kids in classes — mostly good natured, spurs everyone on to do better.

But I did finish the principal knitting on my own tonight:

There’s ends to weave in and crochet trimming to do, not to mention figuring out that booby cinch thing. Bron didn’t do that on hers, feeling it was already a little too low cut. However, for me, it’s been the Summer of Cleavage, so I’m gonna cinch the hell out of it.

After I did the 3-needle bind-off at the shoulders, I tossed it on to see how it fits. It’s very close fitting, but I noted that my gauge swatched relaxed when it went through the washer and dryer. So I made this one with that expectation. And it must look good, because I wore it downstairs and my husband looked at me funny and asked if I’d changed my top. A few beats later, he noticed the strands of yarn hanging all over it and realized it was the item I was knitting all weekend.

The other news is that my latest Rockin’ Sock Club kit arrived on Friday. I wound the yarn up into a ball and tossed it into a bag because I went down to NYC for the weekend. I spent several hours on Saturday at a gabfest and mostly knit on the Ballet Cami. But I did swatch up the new Peaseblossom. Here she is wound into a ball:

What’s that project you say? It’s the Ballerina Camisole from the latest MagKnits. I saw it, I liked it, I noticed that it used Knit Picks Shine Sport, which gave me an excuse to order the Options needles. So I did. And I sat around at a party chatting with people yesterday and started it.

So far, I’ve got about 7 inches knit:

Yes, I’m totally loving the needles. Well, I’m not really noticing the needles. So as far as I’m concerned, they’re perfect. Actually, that’s not quite true, every once in a while, I notice how pointy the needles are. So very pointy! And the best part? When I finished the ribbed hem and had to switch to larger needles, there was no two-circular awkwardness, I simply changed the tips!

Also, I started this with a tubular cast-on. In the past, I worked the one described in the back of Interweave Knits. It was fiddly and always a little too loose. This time, I grabbed Nancie Wiseman’s “The Knitter’s Book of Finishing Techniques” where she uses a provisional cast-on to start it. I liked it much better than the one in Interweave. And it looks so good:

In other news, I finished the principal knitting on my Rock and Weave socks today. I have some ends to weave in, and I need some buttons. But they fit! So I’ll get some buttons and then give them a proper post of their own.

…now includes a casino:

On Saturday, I went to the Mohegan Sun Casino in CT to see They Might Be Giants. While waiting for the show to begin, I worked a little bit on my Rock and Weave socks (gah! the camera phone takes bad shots!). I back to working on the gussets. Have a big plane ride on Friday, so maybe I’ll get more done then.

I finally decided on my striping pattern and the colors I’m using and had to get my butt in gear because the yarn has to be mailed on Monday!!

This is what it looked like after I wound it up last night:

Today I mixed up more dye and dunked each subskein in a dish of water, dye, and vinegar. After my far too saturated navy blue, I started slowly. What I didn’t expect was that the “good” yarn I’d bought for the swap sucked up dye like it was going out of style.

What you see in this shot is the dark blue yarn in a dish of clear water. Water that only a couple of minutes before had been filled with dye as dark as the dish you see to its right. I’d pick up the yarn, squeeze out the extra water, swap the dishes, and put the yarn back in. In almost no time, the yarn soaked up all the dye and the water was clear.

As you can see in this next shot, after I repeated that process many times, it got darker. There’s the light blue I used too.

Several trips through the microwave and a bunch of rinsing and now it’s hanging up to dry. It’s dripping madly right now, causing my cat, Mough (with a fascination with water), to keep an eye on it and tell me about the progress. Hopefully it will be mostly dry tomorrow so that I can package it up.

Also tonight I ripped back Mermaid. Somehow, I have one more stitch than I’m supposed to here, but I don’t feel like ripping back further to figure out why. One little stitch won’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

And since I was in a ripping mood, I also ripped back my Rock and Weave socks. You may remember, they were too big when I tried them on. Well, I’ve ripped back several rows on the heel flap and I’m ready to turn the heel and get back to working on the foot again.

That’s all for today. Aside from finishing up the dyed skein, I have to do some real work tomorrow, so I won’t be having much fun. But I will leave you with one last piece of wisdom. If you’re dyeing and have vinegar in a glass and water in a glass and need to know which is which, don’t sniff too hard. The vinegar hurts.

So, I told you in my last post that my Rockin’ Socks were too big. That was posted from my work trip to Los Angeles. I knit to the end of the gusset on the plane and took a moment to try them on before I flew back home. And abandoned the whole thing and packed them in my suitcase. I had no camera with me then, but now I can show them to you.

You can see it bunching up on my ankle. But even more telling is this:

I pinched a good 16 stitches out of it. My gauge is spot on, and it measures 8 inches around. And so does my foot. But socks need negative ease. So I need to make them smaller. They’re good around my ankles, so I’m leaving it the way it is there. But the heel flap could be shorter. So I plan to make that smaller and then reduce the gusset more than it is. I don’t know that I’ll go down the whole 16 stitches, as that would be 6 inches around. Maybe I’ll measure some other socks first.

But I’m not quite up to ripping it all out yet.

Instead I’ll show you some things I got in the mail. First, I snapped up Rosalie from Scout. I plan to make a Shadow Shawl with it.
Just have to figure out what solid yarn I want to use with it.

Here’s a couple of shots I took of it:

And I saved the best for last….

I got my Dye-O-Rama yarn!

This lovely purple confection was created for me by Abigail. Make sure to go take a look at her Azalea colorway too. Mine, which she didn’t name, has shots of bright blue and reds in it. She says it will stripe too, so I think that after I finished the Un-Rockin’ socks, I’ll whip it up into some Jaywalkers.

Now I just gotta figure out what I’m gonna dye for my partner. Acid dyes arrived in the mail on Friday, but not the base yarn. But I think I’ll dye up some samples tomorrow to get a feel for it and play around with striping options.

Why are you waaay too large for me? *sigh* I hear the frog pond is lovely at this time of year.