Actual knitted things!

The Fabric of the Cosmos bag was in fact completed and felted in time for my departure. I was concerned that I may have over felted it, in fact, but I've decided that I'm really happy with the results. Those big, wide stripes are so little now! It's a good, useful size for carrying a book and MP3 device and sock in progress (the necessities of daily life, in other words). The straps have stretched out a tiny bit, but I can always re-knot them. I'm calling the bag a success and suspect that I'll get lots of use out of it.


The secret unblogable knitting on the other hand was not finished before departure. At some point when I was knitting exhausted at 3 a.m. I decided that I had to give up. It just wasn't going to happen. I did finish it while in Grenoble though. Here's a peek - a full post is coming on this soon. It's s scarf for the coming winter, accurately described by Adam as being both wavy (his department) and wooly (mine).


The Beryl socks were finished as well and seem to have been a big hit.


The Socks that Rock Midweight does work up thick and results in a cushy sock. Despite my yardage worries there was plenty left over so I probably could have gone an inch longer in the leg. My only minor issue was that there was a lot of change in the colour way from the beginning of the skein to the end. Some of this is to be expected with the hand paints, of course, but for whatever reason this was enough to make me batty. I ended up cutting out some largish sections and weaving a lot of ends on the second sock to get a better "pair".

In another example of my personal knitting lunacy I stayed up the night before I left and cast a sock onto bamboo DPNs for plane knitting. Typically I would rather drive tiny bamboo DPNs under my nails than actually knit a sock with them. Once again though I have been pleasantly surprised by the superior smoothness of the SR Kertzer brand. I was concerned that my usual aluminium needles would raise additional suspicions at the security scan. I have no idea if that would have happened or not, but the sock beginnings on bamboo got through without any comment.

So I knit on them on the plane, and I knit on them in Pearson International (layover) and on another plane and on the TGV and even on the regional Rhone-Alpes train between Lyon and Grenoble. The pattern in Oak Ribbed Socks from Knitting Vintage Socks, but they have been nick-named the High Altitude Socks, and they'll be my Socktober project this year. The yarn is Meilenweit Mega Boots Stretch softcolor. The colours shift in a pleasing and subtle way.


First one all done and second in the gusset shaping. Sorry about the iffy photo. Though it still felt a bit like late summer when I left here, I returned to autumn in full force and it is a dark and stormy afternoon.

This post makes me look much more productive than I've felt. That chevron scarf I was going to knit while I was away? Well.....that's another story for another post.