Socks, Baby.

So last weekend was Sock Summit which by all reports was crazy and overwhelming and wonderful. I wasn't there. Sort of disappointing but realistically it was just too far to go. Of course had the summit taken place at this time last year I would have been a few hours away by car. Alas.

I did think of Tina and the Blue Moon ladies though while working on my socks. Blue Moon Socks that Rock (lightweight) in Garden Daze:


This was the yarn for the July shipment of the Rockin' Sock Club. It is very, very far outside of my usual colour family but I liked it as soon as I opened up the package. So far I have been letting my sock club yarn mellow in stash a bit, in fact a few earlier shipments have not yet been cast on. Not so this, I cast on a couple of days after it showed up. Unfortunately the club pattern and I were not seeing eye to eye. It's a lovely pattern, but I thought it obscured the colours and I was getting some unfortunate pooling. Sometimes a really pretty handpaint just want to be a plain vanilla sock. So it is (with a little picot cuff thrown in for variation). I am zooming through these, not least because I can't wait to wear them no doubt alarming my friends and co-workers.

Another reason it is probably best I did not make it to Sock Summit: I would almost certainly have bought sock yarn and I don't really need more sock yarn. Being in the sock club fills the hand-painted niche very nicely so I've bought some solid colours lately but not much else.

Working in a yarn shop is not without its hazards and going home with more yarn than pay is one of them. Now that I've been there for a while though the effect has changed. I'm at the yarn store all the time. I'm surrounded by the lovely yarn all the time. The yarn fumes have lost some of their power perhaps but mostly I have gotten over that feeling that "If I don't buy it right mow I might never see this yarn again" feeling. The yarn is always there and even if a particular yarn or colour goes away more yarn will come to fill its place.

All very nice and philosophical sounding. We'll see how well this has held up in October, after Rhinebeck.

Socks aside it's been all gift knitting lately. Which of course does not make for good blogging, as some of the recipients read here from time to time. The gift of the moment should be safe; another apple hat for another anticipated baby.

Adam is flying west this weekend for work and hopes to have a chance to visit friends who have just announced they are expecting their first in February. One apple hat coming up. Cast on at Pub knitting on Wednesday and should be done this afternoon (I need to burrow into the stash to find a few yards of brown for the stem).

Blogger tells me that this is the 100th post since I started this blog a little over two years ago, which doesn't sound like a very good pace. Just have to keep going, I guess.

Done

The Winter Apple baby set is done, and not before time. I spoke to the soon-to-be Mom on Christmas Day and she's feeling ready to go too, though she's not a knitter herself, and seemed slightly unsure that the bairn was in fact waiting for it's knitting to be done.


The sweater is adapted from F. Pea's Super Natural Stripes, the hat is my usual fruit shaped infant hat. Because I was working on this during late December I was a little concerned that it was looking too Christmasy, but I think it has all come together nicely. The green really is more of an apple green that a Christmas green and the little details are (I hope) cute without being twee.

Click for bigger

The Scotch Mist hat is also done. It's actually been done for a while but it took me a bit too long to get around to the washing and blocking. My photographer is at work today though, so only the 'hat-on-bowl' shot for now.


I still love this yarn, the Topsy Farms 2 ply I talked about here. It softened up some after a good Euculan soak but it's pretty rustic. I like that but I know some won't. The colour is great though and there is so much going on in it. In fact I have picked up a ball of the natural colour and started a cowl, of which more later.

The first of the Tesserae socks is done and yesterday I turned the heel on the second one. The feet go faster than the leg so these should be complete soon. This is going to be the last pair of light-weight socks I knit for a while though. The reality of winter is really setting in and thicker socks are required around here.

So done, done and nearly done. To be frank I'm feeling about done too. Work, the holidays, the weather and a nasty virus brought home by Himself have conspired to wear me down and make me thoughtful. I've been neglecting my blog for a while now and while there have been reasons big and small more than anything else I think I lost the groove of blogging and lost sight of why I started.

I'm going to take some time to make some changes around here. Partly just to freshen and tidy but also to figure out what it's going to take to get me to the keyboard more often. My big (non-knitting) project for the New Year is to finally get my studio/office set up. The room has been full of unpacked boxes and mess and finding anything (even a set of DPNs) has become a pain. Also with no bookshelves all of my books and patterns are packed away, not out to inspire me and with no desk I have been blogging from the dining room table. I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to having my fiber space and I really do hope that it will give me a creativity kick-start for both writing and designing.

So I'll be quiet for a little while, though perhaps it won't be a noticeable difference from my spotty posts of late, and things may look a little messy around here but it'll get better. And I'll still be knitting, and will likely have stuff to show.


The cowl seems to be a big accessory this year - which from a knitters perspective is great, they're usually worked in the round, don't take much yarn and are over much sooner than a scarf. This is a cowl of necessity for me. Having been in a warmer climate for a few years I don't have a lot of hand knit scarves and none of those I do have has turned up here yet (I still don't have all of my stuff here). I have several of the enormous, woven euro-scarves that I always wore while living in France but every time I try to wear one here I feel rather self-conscious and affected. I am hoping this is going to be a good solution and finished before it gets ridiculous cold again (it has been both ridiculously cold and unseasonably warm in the past week).

Thank you all for visiting still, I hope that you'll bear with me. I wish everyone a joyous and knitty New Year.

Rockin

Despite the blog silence there has been a lot of knitting going on around here. Even though I'm not knitting for Xmas this year I'm still pushing to get things finished (mostly so I can start new things...you know).

I've been working away on this wee baby cardigan which is going quickly thanks to it's tiny size and clever top down raglan construction.


It's actually even further along that this now, but it was at this stage that daylight and my being at home actually came together for long enough to allow for photography. The bairn it is being knit for is due soon (and will, I suspect, be early) so this, and the little hat to go with it are a top priority.

The socks are coming along too. The pattern looks really complex but is really just a sort-of offset rib so as long as I can remember what row I'm on it's pretty simple and not as slow as i had feared. The first one is nearly to the toe and I'm hoping to make good progress on the second no with a few days off over the holidays.


In other sock news I've signed up for the Rockin Sock Club for 2009. I hummed and hawed about it for a while but Himself and I came to an agreement - he got a new PSP and I signed up for the Sock Club (and he gets at least one pair of the resultant socks). Marriage is all about compromise I'm told.

The paper whites also are making a sprint for the finish. After doing nothing at all for a couple of weeks they suddenly decided to go for height. Curious. There are a couple of little flower spikes on there though, so it looks like we should have a couple of blossoms in time for Christmas.

Happy Solstice Everyone!

Quatre

The little hat is finished and embellished and ready to be popped in the mail to start winging its way to the birthday girl.



The basic template is the Inca Snowflake from Itty Bitty Hats. The edging reveals my lack of dexterity where the crochet hook is concerned, but I'm really happy with the overall result. It is being modeled there by a one liter wide-mouth Nalgene bottle, which doesn't really help the shape. Here's the flat shot.


Still cute. However if hat knitting is going to continue at this pace, I'm going to have to think about getting one of those Styrofoam heads. Where does one even look for something like that?

I've been searching through hat patterns on Ravelry and plotting more gift knits. This may reach knitting jag proportions.

Joyeux anniversaire, Jeanne!

Blank Canvas

Once I recovered my senses enough to knit straight I zipped through the little hat in just a couple of evenings.


Doesn't look like much yet, but there is embellishment yet to come. That's the fun part.

The yarn is Patons Decor, which is 75% acrylic. Does anyone know if they've changed the 'formula' for this? I used Decor a few years ago for a couple of kid projects (washability, ya know) and didn't like it at all. Squeaky, sticky, kinda stiff - the usual complaints about the genre. This ball (and the three others I picked up recently) seem better. The label still lists 75% acrylic 25% wool and says it's machine washable. It's not something I'd use for a real garment, certainly, but the hand isn't all that bad.

The second high altitude sock is nearly complete. The pattern calls for a round toe, which I've never used before. It's easy to work and looks kind of cool so I'll be interested to hear if the fit is as good as my usual toe. I did modify it slightly: I don't like the little hole that inevitably results when drawing the tail through live stitches to close the top, so I reduced down to 16 sts as directed by the pattern, then closed as usual. Sort of a modified round toe, I guess, but I find that little flat bit pleasing.

I finally got a copy of the Interweave Knits Gifts Special today so now I can start my holiday knit list in earnest. I'm thinking more hats.

Brain Fog

I have the cold. It seems to be going around and I (foolishly) thought I had dodged it. No such luck. Whether to blame the recirculated airplane air or variety of contaious people I have contacted since my return to Canada seems irrelevant now.

I should have seen it coming. I was willing to attribute the tiredness to jet lag, then I started craving sugar. Then the stupid knitting mistakes. I cast on this hat late last week, a gift for someone with a fourth birthday coming up.

Those sticking out bits on the sides will be ear flaps. I strongly considered ignoring the pattern, picking up stitches and adding them at the end. But there is an edging to come, and to keep it smooth I followed instructions, knit the flaps first and held them on DPNs to be joined with the cast on row. And join them to the cast on row I did. Backwards.

Twice.

Clearly the virus had already begun it's invasion. The flaps are on the right way round now, but the brain fog remains and means that progress has been somewhat slow. Must get on with it though, the gift knitting season is truly upon us and I already feel like I'm behind. I'm trying to keep my knitting list manageable this year. Any bets?

Une Pomme Pour Lucien

Ah babies. So small and gratifying to knit for. I hope fruit hats are en vogue in France this Autumn.

Socks on Ice

It's been a cold, wet weekend, well suited to being inside, knitting. The second glacier sock is past the ribbing and going quickly. It's been a long time since I knit a mostly stockinette sock and it's zipping along.

The pattern is the Gentleman's Plain Winter Sock from Knitting Vintage Socks. I really like the pattern. The Dutch heel isn't one I've used very much and the single purl stitch making the faux seam at the back is charming.

I am slightly concerned about the fit. The sockee has fairly wide feet, so I did fewer gusset decreases and worked a 66 stitch foot. They'll be snug, but I hope they'll work.

Happily I'm loving the yarn so much that I won't mind if I have to frog them and start again. It's Trekking Pro Natura, which is a wool/bamboo blend. The colour is a blueish gray, shifting between the two depending on the light. I'm not sure yet if there is a true repeat in the colour shift. I'm guessing that it's yarn dyed, unlike Trekking XXL which is dyed before it is plied and doesn't really repeat. However they do it, I lurve it. The colour shift is subtle in spots and quite sharp in others. It makes the most of the plain stockinette sections.

The glacier sock is another of my projects that seems to have named itself. I cast on for the first sock in the car between Edmonton and Jasper National Park on holiday earlier this month. I worked some early rounds near the foot of the Colombia Ice Field and photographed it on a chunk of ice below the Angel Glacier. Yes, that photo was taken in July.

I started another small project this weekend. The first in what I suspect will become a series of baby projects in the next few months as a whole bunch of our friends are expecting or have recently had babies. The hat you see here is a mash-up of a couple of patterns from Itty-Bitty Hats. Actually the hat you see here is the second attempt - the first one having been frogged owing to the double whammy of a gauge "hiccup" and my apparent inability to read simple instructions correctly. The yarn is Classic Wool and the red defies accurate photography. The mindless round and round soothes the mind. All good.