2/2/2006
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.
2/1/2006
Yesterday I put in my request to have my web site moved to a different shared server at my web hosting company. They were Johnny on the Spot and moved me by about noon my time. However, this move means that the DNS address for my domain name has changed. Most ISPs cache the DNS info and only update occassionally in order to provide us with faster page loading etc. So, until all the ISPs have updated their cache you may not be able to see all the files and such.
If you go to the blog via the IP address you *should* (I think) be able to see the photos and such… So try going to http://64.91.241.26/knitting/ and let me know if you can then see the photos.
All the kinks *should* be worked out by mid-day tomorrow I believe.
EDIT (2:45pm Mountain): It seems that DNS thing is not the problem. Liz said the photos were loading beneath the text block. I have *no* idea why as the code I have added meets the standards. But, I had recently started adding a bit of code to my image tags to allow the text to wrap around the graphics in hopes that you would have less scrolling to do when you read an entry. I’ve taken that extra formatting off today’s post. Can someone who couldn’t see the photos before let me know if they can see them now? Also, what browser are you all using? I work mostly with FireFox. I try to check things occassionally in IE and Opera, but hadn’t checked since I started using the additional formatting.
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!
