FO Alert!

Pattern: DK Swamp Socks (to be available soon), 64 Sts
Yarn: 1 Skein Knit Picks Color Your Own, in DK Bayou colorway, 440 yds Fingering Weight 100% Merino
Needles: 2 16-inch Addi Turbos in US 1 (2.5 mm)
Gauge: 8.5 sts/inch in st st
Recipient: Myself, because I’m greedy!
Process Dates: January 30th - February 13th, 2006

Notes: This pair of socks was an entirely new experience for me. I knit them on 2 circulars from the toe up. That meant learning a new cast-on (or two, I tried the provisional cast-on with a short row toe and then opted for the Turkish cast-on), making short row heels, and learning a new bind off technique (sewn bind-off). That said, this was one of the fastest pair of sock-weight socks I’ve knit despite two major frogging sessions between the pair (one session per sock). The gauge is a bit looser than I tend to usually use so I was using a smaller number of sts than my previous sock-weight socks so I’m not quite ready to conceed that socks soar on two circulars. Though I did like 2-circs much, much better than magic loop and may end up being a convert. We’ll see how I feel using them for top down varieties…

I wore the socks all day yesterday and have had no problems of the sock twisting on my foot like I feared would happen with the short-row heels. I did do one more set of wraps on the second heel to narrow it a bit and that did help get rid of the “ears” my heel had with the first sock. But I’m still not sure I’m a fan of the short row heels. I really don’t like that the sides of the heel don’t match (I know, how very knit picky of me) and despite picking up extra stiches at the rejoin with the rest of the stiches I had holes to patch upon completion. The short row heel will be the major deterent for my knitting more socks tow-up. I won’t say I’ll never do it that way, but I’ll probably think pretty hard before choosing to do that again despite my success with the Turkish cast-on and the reverse wedge toe. I do have some yarn from DH that I’ll do toe up so he gets the maximum leg length possible as I know that he likes long legs on his socks and I’d rather not play a guessing game.

Wooo Hoooo!

You cannot believe how excited I am that we got snow last night. Yes, I just returned from MN which was white (though did not have as much snow as usual for February) and even snowed for my departure. However, while overall I love Colorado, I get soooooo tired of the brown. It seems like we’re green for about 2 or 3 months if we’re lucky and then it’s brown the rest of the year and it really drags me down. So, to see fresh white snow covering everything this morning with a clear blue sky was like being in heaven. Even though it makes it harder to be motivated to go to water aerobics.

Last night DH declared it too cold for me to go out (which really was quite silly seeing as how the temp when he got home was still warmer than it was most of my time out in MN, though to be fair I didn’t have a spasm in full tilt until I got home). So, I ripped back my sock to the toe and began the instep once again while catching up on all my television shows I missed while I was gone. I’m not caught up on the shows yet, but I am caught up on the sock. In fact, I think I’m about 1/2 inch farther than I was before for a total foot length so far of 4.5 inches out of 7.5 inches. I’m suspecting with the opening ceremonies tonight I’ll get the heel turned tonight. That is if I’m not too busy eating antipasto and rissoto at our little party (little is right too, as only two couples are able to make it). And, while we’re celebrating the opening ceremonies, I am not participating in the Knitting Olympics. No need to pressure myself with that.

I do have a question though… Look at the photo of the sock and the ball of yarn in the photo above. Can anyone tell me why my center pull balls explode and look like &$)*?? I have kind of tucked some of it back into the ball so it doesn’t look quite as bad as it has, but the first ball was really bad too. Is there something I can adjust in the way I wind them to reduce that? It seems messier than store bought skeins to me and it is driving me nuts. Plus, it makes it a bit less portable than if it stayed relatively tidy. What am I doing wrong????

I’ve Returned!

With one more sock to my name even! I completed the vast majority of the leg on this one on the way to MN. I did little knitting while there, but did finish the remaining bit of leg and used the sewn cast-off to ensure enough stretchiness at the calf (though I used the cheat method of moving all knit stitches to one needle and all purl stitches to another in the back and then you kitchner - it’s the same effect and since I couldn’t be on the Internet while doing it to reference directions it seemed the way to go). I cast on for sock number two, but had put the completed sock in my checked luggage so couldn’t compare. I *thought* I had known all the important bits of how far I figured I could progress. However, upon my return home I discovered that I did an extra set of increases to swamp sock #2. So, I’ll be going to the frog SWAMP once again. I’m debating if I’ll just frog the whole darn thing as my second Turkish cast-on was not as tidy as the first one, I think because I was just doing it from memory and it was only my second time. Or, if I’ll just pick up the stitches two rows down into the toe and rip and go. I’m leaning that direction. The toe isn’t bad and it’ll hold, it just appears like some of the stitches are twisted or something. And, well, let’s face it - it’s at the toe! Who is going to see it except other knitters who decide to inspect the socks?

I want to thank all of you who left such wonderfully supportive comments about my grandmother and taking the quick trip. I haven’t had a chance to get back to you all individually and I have to admit it seems a bit of a daunting task. But, I’m very glad I went. Grandma didn’t seem well at all when in the hospital. But, Monday afternoon they moved her to the nursing home. She was able to get in on the first floor (Transitions it is called and is the area for people there for rehab rather than for staying permanently) in a private room with a phone and TV. Also, her remaining younger sister was there on rehab from a back surgery and they got to eat their meals together. She goes home today, but I’m sure it made the adjustment a bit easier. We saw her Monday before her move and then on Tuesday about noon before I left to catch my plane and she seemed really well. Well, as really well as an 88 year old woman who has congestive heart failure, diabetes, and renal failure can be. The renal failure isn’t too far advanced and they’ve taken away some of her oral medications and she will get them through injection instead which I guess is easier on her kidneys so there is not even any talk of dialysis at this point. As with every time I’ve gone home since my wedding I did still leave with that heavy feeling that this was perhaps my last visit with her. But at least the last visit with her was just my mom, my sister and myself. It was a bit more of a quality visit than those at the hospital where there were at least two of my aunts and often an uncle and sometimes a few cousins as well.

Also while home I guess my mom had ordered a book for me for Christmas that didn’t arrive in time. Amazon says it ships in 1-3 weeks, but mom had placed the order in early November. Mom had more or less given up and had told me so without telling me what it was she was trying to get, but, it arrived shortly before this trip so they had me open it while I was there since they haven’t seen me open a present from them since Christmas 1999. This was what it was…

It’s Barbara Walker’s Fourth Treasury. Reviews don’t look real good for this one, but a couple flip throughs looked somewhat interesting. I haven’t really gotten to look at the three prior volumes but I suspect this one is a bit different than the others as there were sections on using short rows to achieve certain shapes and other technical things rather than just stitch patterns. There are stitch patterns, but it seemed many fewer than I would have expected from a book of this size. But I haven’t really had a chance for quality time with it. Mom said she picked the fourth one figuring it was less likely that I had already gotten that far in purchasing them for myself, LOL! Well, I hadn’t gotten anywhere in purchasing any of them for myself :-) So, she could do this again for my birthday! ;-)

Well, it is time to get busy doing a bit of cleaning in preparation for our Torino opening ceremony party… I’ll probably work on fixing swamp sock #2 later this afternoon as a reward for cleaning :-)

Socks Soar on 2-Circs?!?!?

I’m not ready to conceed that socks soar on 2-circs yet, but it sure appears so when you compare yesterday’s post to today’s. I’m serious that the knitting post from yesterday was where I was at yesterday morning. This is where I am at as of this morning. I know, that makes it look like the 2-circ method must be incredibly fast. But, I must confess that I had *hours* of knitting time yesterday. DH stayed home from work trying to catch up on sleep that has been robbed by allergies, so since he was kind of in my way and messing with my schedule I threw it out the window and knit at Textiles a Mano in the later afternoon. Then, several of us SnB gals got together for Happy Hour at a local bar/pub and then out to dinner. Between all of that and then waiting for DH to get home from his writing group (which wasn’t until midnight) I got the heel turned and few leg rows completed.

If you look close, you can see my heels have tiny ears. I suspect this will somewhat remedy in blocking, but I suspect I could work one more set of short rows to get a slightly narrower heel next time. I’m not suprised. I have one of those kind of feet that could almost use a wide up front by the ball of the foot and needs a narrow in the heel.

Overall I did an *okay* job on the wrapped short rows. The stitches worked with thier wraps on the purl side (right) just doesn’t look as tidy and there was one there where I fubbed the pick-up of the wraps. Any tips on cleaning up that side when I pick up the wraps on the purl side so they match the other side? I’m certainly not going to rip back. This is very much a learning sock so some imperfections are okay. I actually enjoy pulling out my Spring socks and looking at the bad Kitchner and comparing it to my more recent socks to remind me of how much I’ve learned.

Now, as promised yesterday, I have a winner to announce! The moving to a new server kind of wreaked havoc on my comments to that post, but I went based on the order that I got the e-mail notifications as in some cases those came through hours before the comments actually appeared on the post. The magic number was 700 comments. That may sound as an odd marking point, but 7 is one of my all time favorite numbers so I was excited to see that I was close to 700 comments and decided to throw the contest. I’ll also be sending out a prize for the 1000 comment so don’t fade away! If you all keep commenting you never know, it might not be too long before that mile marker is hit!

The winner? Well, it was the wonderful Margene! The secret prize will be winging its way to the red rock region tomorrow and I’ll let Margene unveil what she recieves.

Swamp Socks!

As promised yesterday, here is the knitting I accoplished at SnB on Monday night. It is a toe-up sock using Wendy‘s toe-up technique of a crochet chain provisional cast-on and a short-row toe. However, because I didn’t swatch first (I know, bad, bad girl) I had ended up with about 10 sts/in on the Sz 0 needles. Now, I know I was pulling awfully tight because I was a bit stressed/nervous so I think I could have loosened up to a gauge of 9 st/in but this size still wasn’t going to fit me. So, to the frog SWAMP I went and then started over yesterday.

Since I am using my hand dyed swamp yarn I was also noticing that the short row on the toe was going to give me slightly different shades on each side of the toe rather than a gradual lightening of the green as I progressed towards the instep so I decided to give another toe-up cast-on a try. I eliminated the figure-8 having heard many, many discussions about how fiddly it can be to get a good looking cast-on with it. With some help from Deb, I used a Turkish Cast-On which I have to say is just genius. I *love* it and am positive that if I do toe-up socks very often this will likely be my cast-on of choice. I’m not sure if I’ll do toe-up very often as I really like the fit of the heel flap, but we’ll see how the short row heel does. Anyone have other recommendations (besides afterthought) of heel techniques for toe-up socks? I’m open to any of them!

If you look close those who have been reading for a while will notice something different about this SIP photo (other than it being toe-up)… Yep, I’m giving the 2-circ method a try. Since I needed two circs for the cast-on I decided I might as well give the 2-circ method the old college try. I have to say it is a HUGE improvement over magic loop for me. It does have the advantage that I don’t have needle ends getting caught up in my sleeves or that. I do still feel like I’m spending a fair bit of time readjusting the sock, but I’m thinking it isn’t taking any longer than using the DPNs. And, despite what I’ve read about the 2-circ method, I’m finding the 16-inch length totally doable and suspect I’d hate it with the 24-inch circulars for similar reasons that I hated the magic loop.

Lastly, check out this great little button Amanda brought from TNNA? Isn’t that awesome??? I love it, though DH thinks it is wierd, LOL! Also, there is a winner to the comment contest and I’ll be making the official announcement tomorrow. But, please keep commenting, you never know when I’ll surprise someone else!