Hi there!

     I had great plans for this year, I was going to design more, knit more and over all, do more.  Yeah...and then life got in the way, not much designing or knitting was done and it's already October.  Oh, well...
     One thing that I've been planning/wishing to do this years is, at least, started though.  I enrolled into the Master Hand knitter Program and am slowly and obsessively going through it.  I've already noticed a change in the way I express myself when it comes to knitting.  Since this is a correspondence course, I have to improve my vocabulary to be able to properly explain what I do and how I do it.  I'm also doing some things differently than how I use to do them (like cast-on and bind-off) and doing some things I've never done before.  Some of it I'll add to my repertoire, others I won't, but it's good to know them even if I don't use them.

     After I got the course printed, I dove in and got completely immersed in it for a few weeks.  When I couldn't see any more improvements and had no more resources at hand to do more research, I stopped and began playing with the idea of arch shaped socks knit from the toes up.  I got one sock done and am now working on the second one - doing some adjustments and will try another type of heel (the first was a simple short row one).
     If I have the stamina, I'd like to offer this socks as a tutorial/KAL kind of thing, where people will be able to customize the socks to whatever yarn/needles/gauge/size they want.

     Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll go try to write some of the report for the MHK.

So...

     since the increases for the toes on the socks I'm doing on straight needles worked so well, I began thinking that it might be possible to knit a circular shawl too.  Granted, it won't be elaborate as far as stitch patterns go, but it is entirely possible it can be done.

     I'll keep you posted if I decided to try. (Evil grin) Ah...the possibilities...

It works!

     I finished the second sock yesterday and I'm happy to say that not only my idea works, the sock fits!    I immediately started the second one, as there are a few things I want to change, like how the increases are done.  I'm also hoping that once I wash the socks that awful ladder will go away.

As you can see on the second photo, I made some mistake when doing the heels and there are bumps there...  I'll try to come up with something else for the short rows.  For now, I'm just happy the idea does work in real life :D

Idea

     and an old one at that.   Once this is done people will look at it and go meh...  The wow factor on this one will (with luck) come while knitting.
     I had another blog which I started somewhere in 2006, mainly as a notebook where I could keep links that I found interesting at hand.  Then I began knitting again, mostly because Joel complained that his place was drafty and his feet were cold.  I was all over the internet, finding patterns for socks, but there were a few problems.  At that point in time I had no access to dpn's, let alone circulars, so I had to find patterns for socks knit on straights, which was all I had.
     After knitting a bunch of socks following patterns I had found, I began to add my own personal touches and eventually came up with a recipe of my own.  I posted on that blog and began to get comments from people with the same problem I had (no access to proper needles for socks).  That was when the idea began to brew in my head - socks knit on straights that didn't need sewing.
     Don't get me wrong, I know how to graft and do it quite well, but I still don't like it.  I'm lazy and the idea of binding off and being done with an item is quite appealing to me.

     So, for 5 years, the idea rolled around in my head.  I know tube socks can be done in straights, no big deal.  But I wanted something with heels.  It took me this long to be confident enough in my own skill to come to the point where I think I can actually do it.

     There is no real reason for me to do socks that way, other than to prove to myself I can do them.  I now have access to decent needles, as most of the people who wrote me back then probably also do.  Why do them, then?  Because this idea has been in my head for so long - and it takes space.  Maybe because I'm feeling the urge to knit something other than a shawl.  Perhaps because my feet are always cold.  But mostly, because I can.
     It will take me longer to knit a pair of socks this way, but it might be the only way I get to knit myself a pair of socks, as I'll be solving a problem and that, on itself is reason enough to keep me going.

     It won't be a flashy FO, but it will give me pleasure, so I'll do it.

Slow knitting

     A few years ago I learned about the concept of slow food - an amazing idea.  When you take the time to cook and eat your food slower, you enjoy the whole process more and it's also healthier.
     Lately I've been seeing a lot of people bragging about how fast they knit, how many stitches the can do per minute;  and I wonder why this is relevant.

Eureka!

I thought I had my brains figured out, but even I was surprised by my latest idea.  How I got to it is beyond me...:P

I've been faithfully avoiding to work on Linda by knitting on Paola, but I got bored with it and there were a few ideas screaming to be put in yarn.

I tried, again, to cast on for this modular knitting I'm thinking of, but never got past joining in the round.  The reason?  That "net" stitch I talked about a few posts ago.

Two days ago, I sat down with needles and yarn on hand, began casting on for a 'knit in the round from the outside in' hexagon and stopped short of a bunch of stitches.  It was like my hands had a mind of their own and they began creating (yet) another triangular shawl.

I'm enjoying this new knitting very much and am probably halfway done, although I know I'll slow down since I haven't figured out a good edging for it.

Edgings - the things that keep me going when the knitting gets boring and the reason why I stopped knitting Paola...So, like I said in the beginning of this post, I got an idea a few moments ago that surprised me.  I thought I wasn't thinking about Paola, because I'm so into the new design right now - trying to come up with a good edging for it.
I was browsing Ravelry, looking at what my friends had marked as favorites, when out of the blue the idea for an edging for Paola popped up in my head.  If it works in real life it will make an awesome edging that goes perfectly together with the stole.

I guess my new design will be put on hold for a while...

P.S.:  Sibilum, Hobbes is a cat - we don't have enough room for a dog :(  He's a funny, clumbsy cat in many way, but an amazing hunter - most of the stuff he brings home is unharmed.  The first rabbit he brought home had two huge cuts, though.
And Dorothy, you're the best!  Thank you so much.

I'm back on the internet horse

So the cup is over and I'm back to show you what I was up to during the time I'm calling my Internet vacation.
First, I'll state the obvious and say it's amazing how much more time I had when I wasn't glued to a computer screen.
I had planned on spinning the whole time the cup was on, but there were some boring games and my fingers got sore, so I also did some knitting and sewing (something I haven't done in maybe a decade).
Here is the evidence:

Yet another pair of Harald socks (from the book Viking Patterns for knitting).  I hope these will be my last.  Don't get me wrong, it's a lovely design, but I'm tired of doing them.  I used two different handspuns of my own, since one strand only wouldn't work for Joel's feet.  One is a green superwash I've spun a long time ago and the other is a punta/mohair mix.  They are both n-ply.

With any luck, he won't felt these (after he felted his silk/merino socks he begins asking about fiber content before anything I do for him is finished).

I had a little accident during the knitting and am glad I have more than one pair of needles in this size. 
The broken needle you see below is entirely my fault.  Tight cable knitting shouldn't be done with acrylic needles.  They (the needles) are great and I'll continue to buy them.  Of course, I'll be more careful about what kind of knitting I decide to do with them.


Around the same time I spun the yarn I got from Gnomespun (the one I wrote about on my last post).  At first I thought about doing a two ply, but my division of the roving wasn't very accurate and in the end, I decided to chain ply it:
A few days before doing this one I found some brown roving I had for more than a year and decided to spin it too.  It's also navajo ply.  Both yarns are somewhere between heavy laceweight and light fingering:


By the time I finished the second yarn my fingers were too sore to keep on spinning so I turned back to knitting.  There are (as always) a few ideas brewing up in my head and for the Nth time, I started again a stole design - maybe this time I'll get it done:
When I got to the end of the central element I made a mistake I had done before and got upset with it, so I put it aside and went in a hunt for some other project.  Sometimes, when I'm doing mistakes over and over again, I stop and begin to organize things around me - it helps me to focus again.  This time, I decided to organize my stash and found two attempts that got me going again.
The first one was a star alignment kind of thing.  I had just bought the Module Magic book and one day was watching a quilting show and saw an amazing quilt that I thought I could translate into knitting.  I was knitting the Curve of Pursuit at the time and began putting techniques together to see what I could come up with.  I knit a few modules, put it aside for some reason (like another shinier thing) and never thought about it again - until I found it while "organizing" my yarns.  I picked it up, frogged what I had, started over again and have a fair sized swatch right now:
I'm knitting (in my head) a different triangle - if it does work in real life, I'll release the pattern.
The second treasure I found tossed in one of my bins was a swatch of a stitch I'm pretty sure is in one of the Barbara Walker books.  It's a pretty cool looking net and when I first saw it I wanted to knit it, just because.  I knit a good size swatch, realized I'd made a mistake and put it away.
When I found it, I knew I wanted to use that stitch again, but for the life of me, couldn't find the pattern for it anywhere, so I carefully tinked my swatch and managed to figure the stitch out (me thinks).  Now, the question was what to do with it.  I had an initial idea for a stole (that might eventually be created), but didn't want to commit to something like that at the time, so I settled for a purse:

Let's see...what else?  Oh yeah!  Sewing.  I learnt to sew when I was ten or eleven - just after I learnt to crochet.  I eventually graduated to a sewing machine and during my adolescence I sew a lot of my own clothes.  I hadn't sewn in probably 10 years and when I convinced Joel to throw away his old (very heavy and very ugly) pillow, I was afraid I wouldn't be able to make him a new one.
I had forgot how fast (and pleasant) sewing can be.  I managed to do the pillow in one afternoon.  It's quite simple and no, I didn't do the quilting:

The other day I got another custom order for the yarn I used for Dianna.  As I was dyeing the roving for it, I decided to dye another one in a different color to see how one of my dyes would break down:

The first one is already being spun and will become an Arco Iris yarn.  As for the second one (merino), I'm not sure what to do with it...

I've also dyed and am (was) spinning some silk in different shades of green.  I need to find a better technique for dyeing silk, though.  The way I'm doing it now leaves some undyed spaces which dilute the color on the finished yarn.  When I started spinning this roving I was going with "let's see how thin I can make it" approach. After a few hours and cramps on my fingers, it hit me: what will I do with this sewing thread...so I began spinning a thicker singles.

Finally, 4 days ago I decided to try my hands at Skew.  The construction for these socks is simply amazing.  I did the first sock in two days, just because I wanted to see it done.  Since I was using different needles and yarn from the ones recommended in the pattern, I wasn't sure it was going to fit, but it turned out OK.  I'm almost done with the second sock and might re-do the first one - because I went down one needle size for the second. 

Give them a try, trust the pattern and just knit.  They are a very fast and pleasant knit.

Dyeing and spinning

Now that the weather is warm enough that I can put yarn and rovings outside with no risk of them freezing, I'm back to my wheel and crock pot.

I had to dye and spin one skein to replace another one that got lost in the mail :(. The first roving I dyed didn't come out quite the way I wanted, so I dyed a second.
Since I'm a very thrifty frugal cheap person, I decided to spin both rovings using different plying techniques. Turns out, I liked both yarns.

The first one is a two ply, lace weight yarn. The second is a n-ply, heavier lace weight (me thinks):
Right now they are both reserved for the person who bought the missing skein.
As soon as she picks one of them, I'll make the other one available to the general public.


Although the spinning is coming along just fine, I'm having an awful time with my knitting.
I'm working on a new design, knit a sample, didn't like how it came out and decided to chart it first.
For this new design to work as a pattern so people (other than me) can actually knit it, I'll have to do some serious mods to the stitches I choose. Problem is, I'm tired of starting this over and over again...sigh.
There is another design idea that has been haunting my nights and I know there is no way I can knit this one without charting it out first. Oddly enough, the knitting itself will be less complicated than the one I'm working on now.
I also have an almost finished (as in knit by me and another person) triangular shawl design that only needs an edging and the (dreaded) writing. I might release this one before the other two I talked about above.

On other news, we bought a new toy and had to take some money out of our down payment account to get it. Also, today I had to turn a comission down. I really don't like doing that, but the job was awfully labor intensive and would take time away from my test knit and the designs I'm working on. Oh, well...

Agressive Ideas

I've been having an awful time falling asleep for the last two nights. I get to bed and keep on flipping around, with images of shawls and stitch patterns floating around my head.

This morning it dawned on me. Those images are ghosts of ideas knocking on my skull, demanding to get out.
They might turn out to be wrong, not work out or be ugly, but they need to be knit...or I'll go crazy(ier).

There are a few things I need to do/finish before I can sit down and work on them. I have a few UFOs that have been sitting in their bags for so long, I'm beginning to wonder if they'll run away. I also need to knit another Luiza. You see, Fleegle is selling kits for this shawl - you can find them here.
Both times I knit it, it was done with sock yarn and her kit has a 20/2 yarn. With the kit you have the option to make a very big shawl (she is generous like that) using a single strand of yarn or you can use two strands and get more of a gradation of color (knit with one color,then with the two colors and end with two strands of the second color).

As luck has it, I happen to have a similar yarn in one of my many yarn bins and will knit Luiza again so I can post the specs for that weight.

Got to go weight some yarn to put in my shop.