Fiber Fool

DH gifted me with the Wicked Vocal Selections book as well as the Grimmerie as an early Halloween present this weekend. It seems it has had some effects on me…

I hope you have a WICKED Halloween! Be safe!

Thanks to quite a bit of movie watching this weekend (Mystery, Alaska, The Big Sleep, Hudson Hawk, a couple episodes of FireFly and X-Files) as well as quite a lot of alone time yesterday with the House marathon on USA (6 hours to be exact, though I didn’t watch 6 episodes of House, my limit is two in a row so I sprinkled some other recorded shows in there) and I have a fair bit of progress to report since last you saw the knee highs.

I have to admit to moments of delusion when I thought I stood a chance of getting the knee highs done before midnight on Tuesday. Maybe I would have if Saturday hadn’t been almost free of knitting. I tried to knit during Hudson Hawk, but due to a projection system at the home where we watched it there just wasn’t enough ambient light and I screwed up within the first 30-45 minutes or so and decided it best to leave it until I got home and could fix it in full light.

I am still finding the two socks on two circs to be pretty pleasant. I wanted to do the heel flap on the bottom of the foot ala Simple Sox at Needletrax (PDF). So on Friday I traipsed around the area looking for two 24″ US1 Addi Turbos. I transferred the back of the sock to the longer needle when I started the gusset. When I got near to done with the gusset I transferred back to the 16″ circular for now. It fits into my purse/bag a bit easier that way. I know once I do too many increases for the calf I’ll want to switch to the longer needles though.

I’m really chugging along on these. I started them 8-9 days ago and I’m into the leg by a couple of inches - on two socks! Now, if I’m in a hurry I can whip out an entire sock at this gauge in one week. But I have more then half of two socks! I think I’ll be starting my calf shaping in a few more inches. I have the math all ready to go — measurements and stitch and row gauge noted etc. I just need to do a little more research into the method and rate of increase I want to do - just two sts on either side of the panel up the center back and do so more frequently, or do I want to increase 4 sts and do so less frequently? I’ll also wait to decide on the rate of increase until I have decided when I need to start them and thus know how many inches of height I’ll have to reach the maximum circumference of the leg.

While I’m quite positive these won’t get done by the end of Socktoberfest, I suspect they won’t take much more than another week or so. For one, Novemeber starts and with that NaNoWriMo. This means not only days home alone but at least one night a week and even when I’m not home alone I suspect I’ll have more than enough time to knit and read. This week it means last night and tomorrow night (kick-off party) and Wednesday night (regular write-in).

I was quite concerned that my costume conveyed that I was a dentist and not a medical doctor. Yet, my Dremel is not cordless and even if it were it would have been cumbersome to carry that around in my pocket all night (though it would have been kind of fun). So, I decided teeth jewelry would be very appropriate for my costume.

I poked around a bit, though it was really to late to order anything by the time I had this inspiration. It seemed that you were either dealing in animal teeth of some sort or museum pieces if it dealt with human teeth. I was okay with kiddie jewelry, but what I was seeing went a little too far - teeth with smiley faces and the like. So, it seemed the only solution was to make my own scary teeth jewelry.

So, I warmed up my polymer clay in neutral shades and made teeth of all sizes and rotten colors. I poked holes through them and baked them into beads. Some I strung onto waxed black linen for a necklace and some I strung onto some earring findings I bought. The craftsmanship isn’t terrific as I haven’t worked with beads and wire and in some time, but it was the perfect final touch to my costume.

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On the knitting front, check out Opal’s Socktober Gentleman’s Socks! And Tina’s Bearfoot Spearfish Socks! And just today is also a pair of finshed Dimple Socks (despite the wrong name in the pattern source) from Lisa!

Saturday night DH and I and several other friends gathered together at Scimoria (a house owned and rooms rented out to several of our friends) for a murder mystery party. Tam’s parents have played several and know which ones are good ones and which aren’t and they gifted Tam a copy of An Affair to Dismember a part of the “How to Host a Murder” series.

The premise of An Affair to Dismember is that Lizzie Bordeaux and Neville Aster-Night throw an engagement party on Halloween. They’ve invited an interesting cast of halloween-ish characters - a mummy, a frankenstien-like monster, a clairvoyant, a deadly dentist, a depressed witch, The Prince of Dimness, and a kosher canibal. Each character was given an invite with the bios of all the other characters on it so we knew a little bit going in.

Following a dinner peppered with some off the cuff in-character banter we were presented with books and the left side of each spread contained information we were not to freely offer up about ourselves and the right side contained information we were supposed to bring light to about the other characters. At first I thought the party was going to be a dud. The first two spreads of the book contained info on how to use the book and then the same bio we had all gotten in our invites. Even round one seemed a little forced and slow. But, as clues about each other surfaced we seemed to get a bit carried away and were arguing, fibbing, evading questions, and what not for some very exciting exchanges of clues that were vital to solving the mystery.

Now, a few people took the idea of not giving up the information on their left hand pages a bit too far. It said to not lie, though you could try to change the subject and one of the more competitive persons present lied on at least a few occassions. Nevertheless, we all had come quite close to solving the mystery, though they threw in some twists and turns and we couldn’t quite make the complete picture work because a few of the neccessary clues had remained unrevealed.

Overall it was a lot of fun. It didn’t require too much acting. The fact that it was Halloween themed made the costumes pretty easy. You do need a certain mix of people it seemed - a few who are out-spoken and a few who fade into the background a bit so that there isn’t a room of 8 people all trying to speak at once. You don’t want anyone too competitive or too much information will remain secret, making it impossible to figure out the mystery. We did run into a problem of not knowing everything about our own characters before it started and ad libbing stuff that was later contridicted as we learned more in following rounds.

I was Angela Deth, DDS. A dentist known to put her patients six feet under. I had fun with the costume. It was pretty easy. Just go kind of goth, but professional. Add a lab coat and a badge (to differentiate myself from medical doctors). Do some angel of death make-up and I was ready to go. I did a little more to make it obvious that I was a dentist rather than an MD, but I’ll share that tomorrow. I was quite pleased with myself because Scott told me that while everyone was to be a little scary I was really the only one that was very scary. He said I was very convincing as a scary dentist! Yeah! :-) LOL!

DH and I are thinking about throwing one for New Years Eve (perhaps one between now and then as well so we can try out the different styles). There is talk of trying a more free form one that would require a bit more work on the hosting side and more acting. With those there is less hand holding as to what needs revealed and when, but we’d get dossiers up front that reveal everything we need to know about our characters. That would prevent some of the contradictory ad libbing that occurred this time. Then again, we may go with something a little more laid back. Who knows! But we’ll certainly do a murder mystery party again!

If you are in the area and think you’d enjoy something like this let me know. We’re thinking it would be best to mix up the guest list a little from time to time with some fresh people.

Well, I decided to go with my gut when it came time for SnB on Monday evening and did the Balance sock. It will give the knee highs the air of cables without all that extra bulk which this big girl doesn’t need on her legs (even though they are not bad for big girl legs). It ended up that the Balance sock also won the vote. It is probable that I will at some point knit Spearfish knee highs as well as others. It makes sense to have a bit of a knee high wardrobe if the only clothes that really fit me properly are skirts.

I’m making some progress on them. If you hadn’t figured it out by now I’m doing the two socks on two circs method. I stuck with my 16 inch circs though which I know some people think you can’t even use to knit one sock on two circs. It is going well for me. I like that there is little readjustment needed of the needles when I switch between the circs. It works well for me. My biggest complaint about the magic loop was all that rearranging constantly.

I shall have to either do short row heels (of which Lolly posted some links to great tutorials of yesterday) or probably use DPNs to do the inverted heel flap and gusset as there certainly isn’t room on these circs for all the extra gusset stitches of two socks. But I’ll tackle that problem when I get to it. I wish I could get my hands on a copy of the book, but I don’t particularly care to own it, I just want to peruse it to see what their preferred heel method is etc. and our library doesn’t have a copy. I can get one through ILL, but that could take a week or more. Oh well!

I’m using the Lana Grossa Meilenweit Mega Boot Stretch yarn. If you take a closer look at the left foot you can see it will do a bit of the Trekking XXL-like ombre striping. I have no idea if I could have matched stripes on this or not, but I like the non-matchiness of the Trekking so this is fine that it isn’t matching up.

Now I obviously can’t comment on the washability and durability of this yarn, but I can comment on what it is like to knit with it. It has the word “stretch” in the title. I thought it would be a good choice for knee highs, however, it isn’t any stretchier than some of the preferred sock yarns that are just spun for stretchiness like Koigu, Lorna’s Laces, etc. The construction of the yarn is somewhat similar to Cascade Fixation in the form of a core ply of what I’m guessing is the “Elite” that the other plies are wrapped around. The wool blend plies that are on the outside are very lofty and lightly spun. This means it all comes apart quite readily while knitting which means it is easy to split the yarn. That isn’t my favorite trait. I can overlook splitty yarn for a sweater or something, but for socks which are my go everywhere and get knit while doing everything sort of project I’d really prefer to not have to pay much attention when I’m forming my stitches.

Now, it isn’t the worst. Certainly yarns like Lion Brand’s Microspun split much worse. The knit fabric itself is good on the turbo 1s that I’m using. The yarn isn’t so bad that I’ll rip out these socks and start over with something else, though I’ll probably think long and hard before I buy more, certainly for as large of a project as knee highs. It would have to be a very spectacular color scheme that I hadn’t seen elsewhere or that before I add any of it to the stash.