Shades of Grey

The attentive reader will have noticed that there has been a lot of grey knitting going on around here lately. This trend is unlikely to shift anytime soon. Grey is unquestionably my favorite colour (or perhaps tone) and I knit with it a lot.

So imagine my surprise when watching some decorating program on television this evening to hear a stylist say "The colours you choose say a lot about your personality, I mean how many interesting people do you know who really like grey?". I nearly dropped a stitch in the grey sock.

Grey isn't boring. It has many moods and shades. It is subtle, quiet perhaps, but not boring. It's the colour of old brushed pewter and weathered granite and the North Sea. How did it get such a bad name?

Just in case anyone is still doubting the potential loveliness of the grey, check out Veronik's design for the VK anniversary issue - free pattern here (pdf).

I'll continue to knit grey (and to spell it in the spell check defying Canadian way as well). If that makes me uninteresting, well, so be it. I'm sure a bit of colour will sneak in from time to time.


First mercury twist sock complete, second cast on. The shorter leg worked out just right at 74 rows. I'm looking forward to having these done and tucked into my suitcase when I head to the Alps this Autumn.

Skill Set

So I've been busy. Nothing new there - everyone's busy all the time and summer is flying by. Not much knitting progress to show this week, though the first mercury twist sock is past the heel and headed for the toe decreases.Still grey, still not much to look at. Alas. I've been swatching and planning and spending way too much time on Ravelry, all of which are knitting activities and therefor count as knitting time. So while there has been lots of knitting time, there hasn't been all that much knitting. The hazards of the modern times I suppose.

This evidence of limited progress combined with my moaning to Adam about how long it's been since I've had time to read a book just for pleasure got me to thinking a bit about time and how it's spent. Knitting, together with the previously mentioned knitting related activities take up large chunks of my free time and I'm fine with that. It seems ridiculous to complain about not having time to read, when the real issue is clearly one of priority.

Or perhaps multi-tasking? I admit that I have always been envious of people who can knit and read at the same time. I tried once or twice back in University days to combine these favorite activities but never got the hang of it. I think it's time for another attempt.

Choice of project is clearly important here. I'm fairly sure that the reading is going to require the greater part of my attention so the knitting must be something that can take place on auto-pilot. Stockinette in the round seems like a good place to start and something without shaping to keep track of. A bag! A felted bag, since felting will conceal many errors and variances in gauge I had some highly feltable SWS in the stash and a trip to the LYS to pick up another skein revealed that this yummy yarn now comes in solids as well.


Nothing says summer like soy wool and theoretical physics. Let the experiment begin.

Down time

I'd been feeling down a pint all week and by Saturday evening I had to face facts: I'm sick. Sore throat, stuffy head, exhausted, went 24 hours without knitting a stitch, sick. What a way to spend a summer weekend.

The will to knit has returned, though the mercury twist sock is about as much as I can manage. The pattern (Cable and Rib Socks from Favorite Socks) suggests working nine repeats of the cable pattern before beginning the heel flap, but I decided on seven. This pair is for me and I don't want them too high.

The Patons Kroy is a little thicker than most sock yarns and is working up firmly on 2.25mm needles. Experience suggests that they'll relax and soften quite a bit after the first wash. The slightly fuzzy nature of the yarn means that the cables aren't quite as defined as they might be but this seems right for cozy cold weather socks.



I've been using some of the knitting down time to scheme. I've got a trip coming up in September and have a few things I'd like to get done before I go. Then there's projects to be planned for the trip itself. I'm still behind on baby knitting and Christmas will be looming before I know it. Oh and then there's the seething den of temptation that is Ravelry. So many patterns, so many projects.

In summary: Bad time to be sick. Good time to be a knitter. Grey socks make for boring blog photos. Further updates as events warrant.

Une Pomme Pour Lucien

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

Status Check

Glacier socks - Done, ends woven, awaiting a Euculan soak.

Hat - Done, embellished, blocking.

Meaning that at this moment I have absolutely nothing on the needles. Weird. How long is this state of affairs going to last?


Excuse me, I need to set up the ball-winder.

What I Bought on my Summer Vacation

In which I am a model of self-control and restraint.

When I lived in Edmonton it was pretty under served in the yarn shop department. That was before the recent knitting boom, of course and I had heard that the situation had improved somewhat. Time constraints and the realisation that Adam's yarn shop tolerance, while good, should only be pressed so far, meant that I only hit two shops in town. The expedition was a success.

My favorite shop was River City Yarns. This shop was profiled in VK a while back and had a lot of buzz so I was looking forward to checking it out in person. It did not disappoint. They had Socks That Rock! One skein of the lightweight had made its way into my stash earlier in the summer, but I had never seen a selection of colours and weights in person. Wow. There were easily 5 or 6 skeins in colourways so lovely I was tempted to own them as art.

I managed to keep one foot in the real world and remind myself that I often don't like socks knit with wildly colourful variegated yarns, no matter how pretty they may be in the hank. The skein you see is Midweight in the Beryl colourway, which is one of their shaded solids. Adam picked it out for his next pair. What can I tell you - the boy has taste.

This shop also had a great notions selection (I do love notions). I had been looking for a Norwegian Knitters Thimble for ages and was pleased to find one. I'd never seen the Phildar DPNs before, but I'm always on the lookout for good ones, so I'll give them a try. Difficult to see in the photo (glare, sorry) is a little bag of coil-less safety pins. I remembered Elizabeth Zimmermann's admonition in Knitting Without Tears that one should always take a card of these when you see them. Who am I to argue?

The Rowan Felted Tweed came from Wool Revival, a shop which has existed in various versions for a long time. It is very much an old school yarn shop. Bags and baskets of yarn spilling all over and not too much rhyme or reason. Some nice yarns but mostly stuff I can get easily enough at home. I liked these colours of the felted tweed together though - I'm thinking maybe Nucks. I was very happy to find a copy of Knitting on the Road there.
The Travelling Knitter will be an accurate description of me for the next 16 months or so. And I can never resist a Nancy Bush pattern. Itty-bitty hats was also a vacation purchase. Lots of gift ideas in that one.

That's it. I was even able to zip my luggage on the way home. Yarn is the best sort of souvenir don't you think?

And for next time....does anyone know if there's a yarn store in Jasper?

What I Knit on my Summer Vacation

An old friend's wedding on 07/07/07 meant that I was Alberta bound this year. Having finished a big lace project on a deadline just before I left (a dedicated post on which is coming soon) I decided that smaller, less challenging projects were the order of the day for travel knitting.

The idea of knitting in binary appeals to my inner nerd. A binary hat for Adam seemed like a good vacation sized project: Something I hoped to get done and send home with him at the end of the trip. I picked up a couple of skeins of Cascade 220 and cast on the night before departure. Bamboo circs aren't my favorite needles by a long shot, but I had airport security in mind. Happily I had no problems and was able to listen to podcasts and knit all the way. I am very, very uneasy whenever I have to fly, but having my knitting seemed to make a difference.

After the wedding festivities (which afforded sadly little knitting time) Adam and I headed to the Rockies for a few days much needed down time. A few hours of solid highway knitting and the hat was looking like this.

Ah yes, more stockinette in the round. What can I tell you? It wasn't a challenging knitting sort of vacation.

The glacier socks also saw their beginnings on this trip. I will probably think twice before trying to cast 70 stitches of slippy yarn onto aluminium needles in a moving car again. However I just didn't feel right without a sock to work on. As mentioned previously this is a simple sock pattern, but not without interest. A successful join was ultimately achieved. I didn't work on these as much as I would have liked - the gauge was a little small for camp-fire knitting.

Looks like grey and blue and stockinette were the themes. And I did get to work on them in some pretty amazing scenery. The binary hat was completed, with whole hours to spare, and sent back to France with Adam. We had an amazing trip and I hope that a hat knit in all these places will be a better reminder than a postcard.



Next time: What I bought on my summer vacation. Hint: Yarn!

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.

Welcome

July 19 is an important day for me and seems a good day to make a trial launch of the blog. There are so many amazing knitting blogs and bloggers out there that I am more than a little hesitant to join the fray. My hope is to post a few times a week and to get more involved in the amazing community of knitters on the Internet.

Knitting is important to me. Hours of my days are spent pursuing this passion. It is my outlet and my comfort. I've been knitting for 16 years and I love that I am always (always!) learning.

Pictured above are flowers sent by my beloved to mark and ease this day. Nestled within you can just see the first rounds of the second Glacier sock. More on that next time.

The past year has been a dynamic one for me and there are more changes to come. Watch this space, it is very much a work in progress.

In Development

The Consolations of Knitting should go live in late July 07