Fiber Fool

Yarn: Trekking XXL, Color 101
Needles: 2 - 16″ 2.5mm Addi Turbos
Direction: Cuff Down
Designer: Me
Pattern Source: DK Gentleman Socks - FREE
A-Longs: Trek-A-Long With Me
Recipient: Originally intended for DH, but rib is stiffer and didn’t fit DH, so ME! :-) I didn’t do it on purpose, I swear!

NOTES: I *love* these socks! I love the look of them. I love how pretty much everyone who sees them loves them. The traveling stitches do slow me down and tightened the rib up some. The anal part of me *really* wanted to make the diagonals go the other direction on the other sock, but it would have been even more fiddly to travel stitches the other direction. I suppose I could do one cuff down and one toe-up to get the diagonals to go the same direction with the same needle movements, but they probably wouldn’t match as well that way either. Who knows!

Remember, if you knit any of my patterns (free or otherwise), please share them with me so I can share them with others. It is so fun to see patterns done in different yarns and see adjustments you all make to have them work with your gauge etc. If you have a blog, just send me an e-mail (fiberfool at gmail) with a link. If you do not have a blog feel free to send me pics and I’ll post them here with your credit.

Speaking of seeing FOs from my patterns, while I was gone last week Mim finished a pair of Spearfish socks in charcoal GEMS Opal yarn and they are gorgeous! Go check them out!

Despite my voracious reading lately, there has been some knitting going on. I was about an inch from the heel flap when I got the news of grandma. That Sunday we watched a few movies that we had rented so I got through the heel flap. When I got on the shuttle and headed for the airport I had the heel to turn. The bus ride was rather rough so I put it away when I got to picking up the gusset stitches and let that wait until I got to the gate. I ended up not really knitting on either of my flights because I had to leave well before dawn to get to the airport on time in both cases so I was just plain too tired. I did more or less have the gusset completed by the time I got home by sneaking in a few rounds before bed each night. Then on Monday at SnB I *really* made progress and am now ready to start to the toe!

I’ve been asked before in the comments what pattern this is. I’m calling them the Gentleman Socks (even though they are sized for me) and they will be a free pattern up here on the site shortly. I’ve been testing the pattern with this second sock. There are a couple of tweaks to be made, then the formatting and the insertion of FO photos and it’ll be ready to go!

While I was gone a lovely package from Julie of Knitting History arrived. Julie hit the estate sale of all of our dreams recently and she picked up these books even though she already had them because they were such a good deal. She was kind enough to share her good fortune and pass them on to me! They are Scandinavian Knitting Designs by Pauline Chartterton and Knitting in the Nordic Tradition by Vibeke Lind. I can’t wait to sit down and really soak up the information in these. They were smoky from their previous owner so they are airing out in the garage for a bit.

Upon my return I was also met with another e-mail offering me some titles off of my wishlist so I’ve got even more books headed my way. Because I believe in paying it forward and the timing was right, I decided to have a secret contest as a way to reward those of you who comment semi-regularly. I was quickly approaching the 1000th legitimate comment since I moved the blog so I decided I’d do a little gift for that person. I don’t have a huge stash to draw from (and it needs organizing before I start giving things new homes) and the budget is a bit tight so I’m afraid I can only offer my knitting patterns right now, but Kelly you are the winner! I’ll be e-mailing you shortly so you can choose two of my patterns. There will likely be some other secret pay-it-forward opportunities to win in the coming weeks :-)

I think I’m more or less caught up on the blog world from last week. It was a bit of a hasty tour so I apologize for not leaving more comments than I did. But I’m starting fresh each day now again so commenting should be up. Speaking of catching up, I’m going to wipe my “comments to respond to” board clear and start over there as well. Please, please accept my thanks for all your kind words and support over the past weeks. It is really, really appreciated. But I need to lower stress levels a bit and clearing my plate of the long list of e-mails to respond to is one way to help do that so I hope you all understand!

Despite all the upheaval, there has been *some* progress around here. I finished the first half of the second pair of Trekking socks and am on my way on sock number two. I’m getting much faster at knitting those traveling stitches now! Phew!

AmyP has also been busy and she finished her Dimple Socks. Go check it out! Speaking of that, I’ve started a group at Flickr where people can share pictures of my knitting patterns in progress or completed. So, if you are on Flickr or have been thinking about joining Flickr, please go join the group and share the photos of your DK knitting projects! That includes all the free patterns, BTW!

There has also been some trekking going along with all that knitting, though nothing too exciting. Last weekend DH dusted off the bikes and pumped up the tires and I’ve been on a few bike rides.

It was funny because we rode to the senior center as a trial on Sunday night to see how long it would take me to ride to/from my water aerobics class. It was an easy ride there and I was all ready to hop on my bike next week, but then we turned around and I realized that the vast majority of the ride home was up hill. I don’t think I’m ready to do that. I mean I made it just fine. I didn’t die or anything, but I’m not sure I’m up to the ride there, a hard water aerobics session for an hour and an immediate turn around to ride uphill home. But, I’ll get there. Right now I’m kind of excited with what is within a doable bike ride for me. Around the senior center is a great bagel shop, an Asian market, an Indian market, a smoothie shop, a coffee shop (with Wi-Fi I believe), one of the weekend farmer’s markets, the discount movie theater, a couple of Asian restaurants, an amazing pizza shop etc. That is kind of exciting! Of course, it’s been awful hot to bike anywhere when any of those places would be open right now. In fact, yesterday morning we had only gotten the house down to 76 degrees! :-( Blech!

When we got home on Sunday I thought I’d never feel my ass again, but when I woke up on Monday I wished it was still Sunday night, LOL! I gave my butt the day off, but on Tuesday at noon I did a short ride to the grocery store and got a free deli sandwich I had coming to me. It hurt so bad when I first got on the bike, but I did okay and now my butt isn’t hurting too much. I just have to keep getting back on it so my butt stays broken in, LOL!

I hope you all have a great weekend!

Tolerable Temps? - Less than 75 degrees, check!
Shade? - West Side of House in morning, check!
Puppy Dog? - Across the yard in her own shade, check!
Cold Drink? - Iced raspberry lemonade, check!
Knitting? - First sock of the 2nd Trekking sock of the summer in progress, check!

It was a great way to start the day, and is part of the reason I’m posting so late today (that and I slept in). The only problem was that there is a house being built across the open space from us so it was somewhat spoiled by pounding hammers and cussing men. But it was wonderful to get to spend some quality time (sorta) with Emma and start the day off peacefully.

As you can tell from the photos above, the heel has been turned and the gusset completed, plus perhaps another 2 inches or so. There was a very interesting development over the weekend however, upon the completion of the gusset I asked DH to try it on. Keep in mind, he tried the sock on when I had 3-4 inches done. Well, he couldn’t get his heel in there. In fact, it is a bit tighter than I usually prefer, but I can get them on. Because there are traveling stitches in this pattern it isn’t quite as stretchy and I blithely cast-on the same number of stitches I used on the Balance socks because (and I can’t believe I’m fessing up to this) DH and I have almost the same size feet. He needs an additional 1/2 inch in foot length before I start the toe than I do.

Since the sock does fit me and this stitch pattern can be a bit fiddly or at least slow, I didn’t want to frog, so I am getting a pair of socks in the yarn that I really wanted, but I was trying to be the bigger person and had started these socks for DH. So now I’ll need to try get my hands on another ball of this color so I can make a pair of socks from this colorway for him. I have to say, this color and pattern combination has been a big hit with men! But, DH’s will need to be a drastically different sort of pattern on the leg so it is easy to tell whose is whose.

Despite the lack of posts on the topic of knitting, there has been some knitting going on around here. Early last week I learned that some college friends of mine had their first baby, a girl, recently. While we haven’t been keeping in touch real well they were very good friends of mine so I decided to knit a baby blanket. I had been contemplating a way to mix up a log cabin blanket from Mason-Dixon Knitting for a while. I was thinking about ways to incorporate fibonacci sequences or that when I read about Cara’s random number version. So, I chose 6 colors of Lion Brand MicoSpun in bright colors and had Random.org generate 50 numbers between 1-21 with repeats. So far I’m about 2/3 of the way through the 11th random number and I’m liking it. It has a distict oblong format which I may end up needing to fiddle with as I near the final dimensions (I’m hoping for 36 X 36 inches roughly) but I’ll hold out until then because it is indeed random so you never know!

Microspun is not my ideal yarn. It is very splitty so you have to keep tabs on it much more frequently than a better yarn, however, it seems the only economical, washable yarn that feels nice and soft and isn’t an overdone baby pastel. I’m not a pastel person in most instances and I can only assume that mothers get sick of all the pastel colors so I opted for this color combination. To make these bright colors pop even more I chose my order for the colors to progress in complementary color pairs - red, green, yellow, purple (the darker blue in that color is really a grape color), orange, and turquoise. I think it has turned out well. It does mean that all warm colors are knit horizontally (in the above picture) and all cool colors are knit vertically. It’ll be interesting to see what effect that has on the final product. It is hard to tell now with not quite two repeats of every color.

I did tire of turning the blanket when it was small because it was so few stitches and then you turned and now because each turn requires adjustment of how the blanket lies in your lap so I taught myself to purl backwards so I can do the garter stitch without having to turn my work around. It only took a few rows of that and I was very nearly as fast as my regular purling so only slightly slower than knitting the row from the wrong side. I’m not doing it on every wrong side row as sometimes I just want to crank out the rows, but it is nice to be able to mix it up a bit. And as a bonus I’ve found I am less likely to split yarn when purling backwards!

My first pair of man-sized trekking socks are growing too, although rather slowly. With the baby blanket project and my recent obsession with sewing and cooking lately this sock probably hasn’t been getting the attention it deserves. The last two weeks I think it has only been pulled out at SnB. But, I’m about half way through DH’s feel flap (eye of partidge, I’ve been on a kick for my more recent socks). I’m really liking the socks and think this colorway does a great job of bridging men’s need for understated colors and the knitter’s need for interesting knitting.

My post is quite late today because at about 1:30 am or so when we had some thunder rolling through (I don’t think we got any measureable precip, unfortunately) Emma decided it was time to be up and playing. She didn’t act scared, but she was prancing all over the house and sticking her nose in DH’s face so I got up about 2 am and took her downstairs with me so DH could get some sleep. I finally got around to watching the first three episodes of Psych I had on the NOT-TiVo as well as this week’s The Closer. But, it meant I got about 2 hours of sleep and then didn’t get back to bed until 6am when DH got up. I’m exhausted! *yawn*