Fiber Fool

I should have known better than to think I’d blog two days in a row right now :-/ To say it is crazy around here is an understatement. I’ve made fantastic forward progress, but am afraid I won’t quite make the deadline. At least not with all three things. Even with many a night working to the wee hours of the morning. But, I’m happy to report that with the aid of ibuprofen and the new exercise and diet regimen that I’m making it through with much fewer ill effects than in the past. Yay!

It did occur to me this past week that I never did officially share with you the project that I showed off little peeks at in February. It hit the newstands just as I was getting ready for my Minnesota trip. I had planned to auto post about it while I was away, but time slipped away and I never got the post pulled together.

The fiber I was working with was BFL from Lisa Souza Dyeworks in the colorway Earth Birth and natural BFL from Louet. Both were spun into sport weight yarns and then knit together to make up my latest sock pattern, Annukka. That pattern can be found in Interweave Press Knit & Spin, 2011 special edition magazine.

I was inspired by the bold designs of a Finnish graphic designer who resides in the UK, Sanna Annukka. You may have already seen her work before as she did the album art for one of Keane’s releases and she recently redid the packaging for a famous Finnish candy called Marianne. It is this artist that I named these socks after.

These are a somewhat challenging sock to knit. If you look closely at the cuff and heel flap of the inside out sock above you’ll notice that there is a combination of flat colorwork married with intarsia in those areas. It is a limited area so does not require a multitude of patience, but some will be needed when embarking on this project. But the results - totally worth the extra effort, right? I can’t get enough of that cable cuff. It has so much impact!

I took a queue from Masala and carried the colorwork through to the very end of the toe on these. I love the modified wedge toe and the graphic impact you can have with a vertical fair isle pattern like this.

My copy of the magazine arrived just days before I left for Minnesota. I brought it with me for plane reading (and to show it off to my grandmother). Imagine my surprise though when I saw that all the photographs except the modeled shot were my own!?!? My photography has been printed in the past, but never in this kind of quantity so this article was especially exciting.

I admitted defeat tonight without quite reaching my goal for the day. I’m probably only about a hour behind on it. But the body and the brain are demanding rest so I should sign off for now rather than babbling on here. I won’t make any predictions on when I’ll pop back in this time since I never seem to get it right, LOL!

Keep sending me your wonderful mojo for fast, efficient and error free knitting (as well as writing and drawing schematics)! It is working wonders so far! And so I can live vicariously through you, what did you do to enjoy your weekend?