Not Again

I had such high hopes for my twice-weekly blogging plan (which in itself should have been a warning sign ....) and it's fallen off the rails before it's even really begun. No time to moan about it though, better to just get back on track.

A number of things conspired to keep me away from the blog. One of our computers coughed quietly once or twice and then died unexpectedly the other day. This throws himself and I all out of whack: We're nerds (as you may have noticed by now) and being down to less than one computer/Internet portal per person is not a good plan. The whole things is made more vexing by the fact that the deceased machine was purchased less than a year ago. However it seems that the nice folks who made the overpriced brick are going to make good. We'll just see how that turns out.

In happier news actual knitting has been keeping me away from the blog somewhat too. As you may recall I dodged the holiday knitting bullet and now the knitting goddess is, predictably, exacting revenge. Since the holidays I've always had at least one "obligatory" knit on the needles. Now it could be worse, certainly, and I'd still rather knit for all of these occasions than just buy something, but my selfish inner knitter wants to hide away and work on things for memememe. And there is one thing for me, the as-yet-un-named pink vest. I was making good progress on it for a while but now it's semi-stalled right in the middle of the bust-darts.

those stitch markers look like rather odd nipple rings in this photo, sorry

I like working on it and I like how it's coming out, but other things have been pushing themselves to the top of the pile lately.

I finished the boot socks for Dad (who reminds me he never reads my blog anyway, so I can post pictures). Pretty standard stuff, but my Dad is not one for interesting foot coverings.


My husband, on the other hand (or should it be foot) has no such constraints. He needed more heavy socks and we had this worsted weight self-patterning stuff in at the shop. I had to buy a couple of balls just to see. You can just see a few of his board-game boxes in the back there, he calls these his Spiele Socken.


Vivid no? The repeat is super-long so I didn't bother trying to start them in the same place or anything. I actually sort of like that they don't match, it seems like they shouldn't, somehow.

With those done I'm zipping through a birthday gift with another to follow closely behind. Those are secret though, so no pics yet. None of this is tedious knitting or anything, I just want to work on my vest again! Whine whine.

Also crimping things a little is the fact that my energy has been kind of low lately. As I write Kingston is in the grips of it's umpteenth serious snow storm of the season, with about 20 cm (that's 7.8 inches for you imperial hold-outs) falling today. It's kind of pretty and fun the first few times it happens but when it's on a Wednesday at the end of January and you have to go to work...well the thrill is gone. It is cold and dark and nasty and everything that winters in Canada predictably are but I'm just tired of it.

However it is good knitting weather and I have lots of that to get through. And lots to look forward to including some experiments in different fibery-arts and planning a knitting retreat in the spring. Which can't come soon enough.

Back To It

Things are still looking a little messy here at consolations, but it's time to get back to it I think. As well as spiffing up the blog there has been knitting going on.

I finished off Adam's latest pair of socks last week. They actually worked up more quickly than I anticipated, what with the legs being knit on 2.0 mm needles. But ultimately they didn't take any longer than other textured patterns. I really like the pattern, and I'm looking forward to working more of Anne's patterns very soon.

Tears of Offler socks
raveled here

At the same time that I've been refreshing the blog , I've been weeding through my Ravelry queue with a firm hand. Both taste and circumstance change and I had to come to grips with the fact that there were items on there which, no matter how lovely, were never going to be knit by me. Some things stand the test of queue time and I have cast on for the vest which had been sitting in the number one spot for some time. No photos yet, as there isn't much to show, but I'm glad to be working on a garment again.

Also waiting for a photo session is the Thermis cowl. It is done and since this shot has even had its buttons sewn on. A very enjoyable knit as well as a timely finished object, since we are in the midst of a deep freeze here in Ontario at the moment. However it is possible that I am not as elegantly long-necked as some; when I wear this it comes up around the bottom of my ears. I like it though, and can see knitting more of these, even if only as gifts.


Speaking of gifts, the Winter Apple baby did indeed arrive shortly after the knitting was complete and is a little boy. I'm sure he'll be sweet in his little apple hat.

Most of the knitting this month seems destined to be foot coverings for the men in my life. I've just finished a pair of boot socks for my Dad (sorry, no photos till they're in the mail) and cast on a pair for my husband. These heavy-weight socks do go quickly, which is a nice change. Another, more secret, project needs to be done by the end of the month as well.

It was nice to have a bit of a break from regular blogging, but it will be good to get back to it as well. I am hoping to post at least twice a week, but I won't make any promises just yet. There have been so many changes in the last four months and I'm not all that resilient to changes. But things seem to be leveling out (knock wood) and calming down and the pace of things is becoming familiar. I just need to figure out what to slot back into the schedule and what might be better left out. I probably won't get this right on the first try, but I'm working on it.

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.

NaKniSweMo Success

I feel a little sheepish for posting about it nearly a week after the fact, but I did indeed finish my NaKniSweMo sweater within the month of November. I had minutes to spare!

Klatchinan Cobbleston Complete

I am so happy with the way it turned out. The pattern is great, the yarn lovely and the knitting was very simple, yet with enough changes to hold the attention, it fits and he likes it. I think that's the making of a successful project, deadline or not.

This has really helped spark my interest in knitting larger things again. That and the fact that the temperature hasn't risen above freezing all week. We are entering that season in Canada where woolly things are not a matter of fashion, but of necessity. There will be more sweaters from me this winter for certain and I'm feeling excited about it.

I have, of course, cast on for a pair of socks for carrying-around knitting. I'm using Anne Hanson's Tesserae pattern and some Sisu in a gorgeous dark teal colour. It's a brilliant stitch pattern (so many of Anne's patterns grow out of these) and easily memorized but to get a nice looking result I've had to go down to a size 0 needle so these are going to take a bit of time. I'm also starting a baby item which will be the first of several in coming months as this whole baby things seems to be going 'round.

Though I'm not at all regretting my decision not to knit gifts for the holidays this year it feels somehow slightly wrong not to be frantically trying to finish things up now. So far, I'm coping.

For those wondering why Klatchian: I refer you to the works of one T. Pratchett, particularlyJingo.

Fall Back

I never meant to be one of those people who starts out all their blog posts apologizing for how long its been since the last blog post. Yet I find myself in that position again.

This last weekend when the clocks fell back Adam and I had a real sense that we were falling back into our real lives. The past six weeks have been insane and slightly blurred and very happy but we are glad that the pace is starting to slow again.


All of the wedding knitting did get done in time. Just. I was knitting the toe on the second of Adam's marryin' socks at 2:00 AM the morning of the ceremony and my Mom was weaving in the ends on my shawl hours before hand (Thanks Mom!). I won't say much about the wedding (which probably deserves it's own post once the photos come in) except that it was lovely and what we had hoped for.

And a slower pace should mean a bit more time for knitting and blogging. During the whirlwind of the wedding weekend my friend Lynn and I made a "blog more" pact and I know Lynn is not going to let me slack on this one. In case that wasn't enough incentive I've decided to do NaKniSweMo this year. I know, I know one would think that I would be running from even the idea of more deadline knitting at this point. But I've had a sweater for Adam in my Ravelry queue for months* and the yarn conveniently arrived while we were away. Also who can say no to Shannon?


I filled in that late-October gap (and quite a bit of travelling-back-from-the-Rockies time) with some mitten knitting. This looked smart when we returned to Kingston in the midst of a nasty snowstorm, but today as I'm finishing them off it's 15 C and sunny outside. I feel confident they'll be needed soon enough.


These are Elizabeth Zimmermann's mitered mitts, one of the May projects in the Knitter's Almanac and the yarn is Noro Kureyon in 149, which is the same yarn as the Noro Hat I knit back in February. The pattern is typical of EZ, really more of a suggested way of proceeding than a line by line pattern. I made long cuffs and trimmed them with garter and used the thumb trick rather than an afterthought thumb. I worked these on 3.75 mm needles so they're pretty dense, but I like a firmly knit mitten - keeps the wind out. The Knitter's Almanac is the smallest of EZ's books but it is a real treasure trove of patterns. It was published in 1974 and the photography could use updating but the meat of the book remains totally relevant, as a quick browsing of Ravelry projects from it reveals.

We still haven't completely unpacked from the move, nor have we opened most of our wedding gifts. But there will be time for those sorts of things...right now we are reveling in the decompression. I need to wash my kitchen floor. I need to get my hair cut. I need to find a new job. But I also need to knit, and to blog, and I will.


*I never really bought into the whole 'boyfriend sweater curse' thing, but surely now I have NO excuses.

Updates and Finished Objects

Update 1: Furniture. Yes our furniture and things finally arrived a little over a week ago. The whole experience ended up being an exercise in frustration and ridiculousness and an object lesson in why people hate to move. As much as I would like to go into detail the memory of it all is still too fresh (and there is a good chance that litigation is still to come) so it will have to wait for another day. Also it is so nice to be eating off a table sitting in a chair that it feels like tempting fate to grouse too much.

Update 2: Wedding Shawl. Still a lace blob, so I'll spare you the photos but well on the way to completion. Only ten rows of chart and four rows of edging to go (plus the bind-off, which I am refusing to contemplate for the moment, you all understand). Feeling good about this one (which is a good thing since we leave for out wedding in a shocking eight days.

Update 3: Non-knitting wedding stuff. Meh. A few people have asked why I haven't shared more of my wedding planning on the blog. My standard response is that it's meant to be a knitting blog. I read a lot of knitting blogs and it doesn't appeal to me when someones knitting blog morphs into a wedding blog or a pregnancy blog or whatever.

If I'm honest though it's more complex than that. This whole wedding planning thing just isn't fun. Or at least it isn't for me. I've seen the TV programs and the magazines and all these people who devote months and months of their lives to their weddings and I sort of assumed that at some point in the planning the magic Martha switch in my head would trip and that I too would become obsessively concerned with napkin rings and recessional music. Maybe I even wanted it too a little bit (I have this lingering feeling that I'm missing out on something) but it never happened.

This Saturday we engaged in a little wedding-related craftiness that had nothing at all to do with yarn.

not yarn

I can't even tell you how cool this was. We had booked months ago with Sarah at The Devil's Workshop to make our wedding bands. Ourselves. Neither of us has any experience with this sort of thing but the workshop was great and the whole process ended up being very profound.


It's not knitting, but finished objects none the less. I still can't believe we made them ourselves, the sense of satisfaction is great and I think Adam got a little peek into the whole DIY ethos. Rings are almost universally symbolic and wedding bands even more so. Spending a day together in the midst of all the craziness crafting the rings that we'll exchange on that day was time well spent.


And since I never know when enough is enough I'm knitting a pair of marryin' socks for himself. My very first visit to Wool Tyme here in Kingston yielded an absolutely perfect skein of Malabrigo (mmmmm) Sock. He's worth it.


For my fellow Canadians: Please vote today. Vote your conscience, vote strategically, vote however you'd like, but please vote. It really does matter.

Lace Blob and FO

We're slowly getting settled into our new place - at least as settled as people without furniture can be. Yup, more than two weeks after arriving we are still sleeping on the floor and getting increasingly frustrated with the moving company that told us five to ten days. However they say they're going to be here on Friday. Fingers crossed.

Knitting activity is also getting back to normal. I didn't even touch the wedding shawl for over a week while we were in the worst of the moving and traveling, it takes way more concentration than I possessed at that time. I've gotten back to it in the past week and yesterday it looked like this.


Not too different, I know. It really is bigger though and today I have moved on to chart B which promises a little more variety. The going is somewhat slow and the rows have passed the 300 stitch point but it's fun to work on and diverting as well, which is what I need right now.

I did manage to finish a pair of winter socks for Adam. These were my mindless project for the times when exhaustion and travel and craziness took over my brain. Worsted weight socks are a quick-knit anyway and while it isn't winter here yet, you can feel it coming.

Cable Twist Socks (Hello Yarn)
Patons Classic Merino Natural Mix
Raveled here

The pattern here is actually a mock-cable formed with slipped stitches. A little fussy to work but easier than breaking out the cable needle. Also a little less "lumpy" than a true cable, which is probably a good thing in a sock of this weight.

I'm feeling like a pretty negligent blogger lately, I must admit. Only two posts for all of September. I want to do better in October but I also have to leave for my wedding in less than three weeks, so I probably shouldn't be making any promises. I do hope that in the coming weeks I'll have time to tell you all more about our new home and our new town and all of the exciting things that are going on. I should also be getting reacquainted with my stash and my books and all the things that got packed away when I moved to France - which should provide plenty of ideas and posts and additions to the queue.

Autumn always feels like a time of beginnings to me and this one even more so. There should be plenty to write once there is time for writing.

Apologies.....

...for the long silence.

This move has been longer and more complex and far more tiring than we anticipated.

As of this morning we have the internets at home so a real post should be coming soon. Thanks for being patient.

secret no more.....

Ravelympic Wrap-up

It was a close-run thing, but I made it.

Yarrow Ribbed Socks
from Knitting Vintage Socks
Berroco Alpaca Fine colours 1288 and 1285

So far 551 sock put participants have posted their finished items on Ravelry! And team Ankh-Morpork Knitters Guild came through with 40 finished objects, only slightly behind our arch-rivals over at team Hogwarts.

At the moment my primary feeling about these socks is relief that they're done. They still need a wash and patting out, but they look nice. I'm a little unsure about the toe, which Nancy Bush calls the French Toe. Instead of having two decrease points, with one at either side of the foot, it has three decrease points and sort of swirls up to the top. It was interesting to knit but I'm curious to see how it fits, both in shape and in length - the feet on these ended up being a bit shorter than most of Adam's socks. Alas it will be another three weeks or so before he can try them on.

Toe aside the pattern was clear and straight-forward if not especially interesting. It's a good boy-sock pattern though, and those aren't always easy to find. The yarn is nice and soft and fuzzy without being too fuzzy. It's also kind of splitty (not crazily so, but enough to make you pay attention) and very fine. I knit these on 2.25mm needles and probably could have gone tighter. The suggested needle size on the ball band is 3mm, which I am guessing is not a sock-based recommendation. Certainly at my tension a 3mm needle would have made for some very open results.

The socks are a mediumish Men's size and I have quite a bit of each colour left over. If I reversed the main and contrasting colours I think I could get another pair from the yarn easily, so it was a good value. It will be interesting to see how they wear and whether the Alpaca content makes them noticeably warmer than 100% wool.

No time to rest on my victory though, I'm hoping the yarn for my wedding shawl will arrive early this week and that will be a whole new saga, no doubt.

Good News Everyone.....

We're back! Not back in France, but back on Vancouver Island visiting my parents and back to a good high-speed connection and being in the same place for more than 12 hours at a time.

I think this July is turning out to be a bit of a lost month. I've had so much to do and so many demands on my time that the days seems to have passed incredibly quickly. It's mostly been a lot of fun, but I haven't had a lot of time for regularly scheduled activities like knitting.

I let my blogiversary go by un-noted this month. I didn't intend to, I remembered on the day and everything. It's just that I spent most of the day driving from Lilooet to Squamish and finding enough wireless to blog would have meant fighting it out with the beautiful people in Whistler. Meh.


The slurm socks did get finished, proving yet again that doing a round or two here or there really does add up to a finished sock. The pattern (Charade by Sandra Park) is wonderfully hypnotic and has no purling at all in the leg and foot. I think it could translate to a good boy sock as well. I don't think I need to say anything about the yarn (Socks That Rock lightweight) except that it remains my favorite sock yarn ever. This was my first time working with one of the nearly solid colourways and I can't wait to use another one. For the record, the colour is a little closer to true in the first photo (the second was taken at twilight in shade).


The Captain Carrot scarf has also grown some - though it turns out fingering weight scarves don't go quite as quickly as one might hope. It is pleasingly mindless though and as such is good tv/car knitting. I'm only about halfway through the first 100g skein of this yarn (I have three) and I'm thinking that unless himself wants a really long scarf one skein is going to do it. I may save the other two skeins and see what sort of gauge I can get holding it doubled - perhaps a matching hat someday?


Someday is a word we're using a lot lately. That and 'after October'. Our wedding is now less than 100 days away (ack!) and we've got quite a lot of excitement coming up even before then. I can't spill all quite yet, but it's going to be a crazy few months here at chez consolations, it's all to the good though.

Next time I should have some holiday snaps as well as some new stash to flash. It's good to be back.

Stripey

It's been awhile since I've had a finished object to show you, but I hope that this is the first of several coming up in the next week or three.

Stripey Socks

Lang Jawoll Aktion 132.0206
Raveled here

No pattern for these, just my usual sock recipe on 72 stitches and worked in 3x1 rib. As mentioned previously, I experimented with fit a bit on these, making the ball of the foot slightly looser by increasing needle size. I did the legs and heels on 2.25mm and went up to a 2.5mm after the gusset decreases. I had Adam try them on before washing and there is a noticeable difference in the fit. It will take a few wearings to get a true verdict, I'm sure, but I'm happy with the results. I plan to revisit this idea soon.

The French Vanilla cardi is also very nearly finished, needing only a neckband and a little weaving. I can't believe how long it has taken me to knit this thing. In truth it hasn't been the knitting time, but the waiting for things time and the fact that it keeps getting shunted out of the top knitting-time spot. I'm still keen on the pattern and the way it's coming out, so I'm really looking forward to finishing it up and giving it a good wash and block.

Even the Greenwood is crawling towards completion, nearly through the 5th pattern repeat which means about 75% of the knitting is done. Still can't show you much though.


This all makes it sound as though I've been very productive but in truth I've been feeling scrambled and at odds a lot lately. Knitting helps, but I'm feeling the need for a new project or two ( I haven't even picked up a cable needle for months). We'll be on the road for, well, July and I'm already plotting my travel knitting.

Deadline

I did get a reasonable amount of knitting done while I was in Austria, I was on a deadline after all. Here we see the second of the grey socks in a moment of repose in our Viennese rental flat (which was fab).


The sock also went to one of the finest emporia of food and drink ever, Centimeter II*.


The tape measure you can see was not brought, that's printed on the menu. Centimeter II sells many of their foods and some of their beverages by the cm, you see. It is of course also handy for the visiting knitter. Though to be fair, Jaggermeister can lead to measuring inaccuracies.

We saw the hippos at the Imperial Tiergarten. The living ones were too busy practicing their (remarkably graceful) swimming to be photographed, but this little guy was an excellent stand in.


So by working away at a row or two here and there (some very lovely heres and theres) and leaving the toe to finish the morning after we returned home I did finish the socks on time. I may not be ready for the 52 pair plunge, but it turns out I can turn out a pair in a hurry if I need to.

Gentleman's Half Hose in Ringwood Pattern
by Nancy Bush (of course)
from Knitting Vintage Socks
Phildar Preface

Finished Monday, washed Tuesday and packed into another suitcase for another journey on Wednesday. I may be able to get some modeled shots when they return. As usual with Nancy the pattern is excellent, though I wish I'd made them slightly longer in the foot. In fact I'm sure I'll knit this pattern again.

Which leaves two questions: Does this mean that the vanilla sweater is finally getting some time and did I buy any yarn in Austria? It is and I did. Next post.

*the slight stirring you may have just heard was my friend Nemo actually finding something on the blog interesting for the first time....ever? Or possibly my Dad and Ragnar having a laugh at the wee Jager bottles.

Still here...

But without much to show. The sweater that I keep threatening is still waiting to be cast on. It's not that I lack enthusiasm for the project, though I am still a little suspicious about that gauge, but I just couldn't sit down and get started. The yarn, though lovely, wasn't calling to me.

It eventually came to me: I felt guilty. Buying the yarn for the sweater, even though it was on sale and not all that spendy, was a splurge for me. The Canadian dollar has plunged like a stone against the Euro in the past little while and living in Europe is expensive. Plus I'm not working, so the balance is only going in one direction.

This realisation really surprised me. I'm not at all an extravagant person, but I've never really felt guilty for buying yarn before (even when perhaps I ought to have). I've always been able to argue that yarn (okay and books) are my only indulgence. I'm fortunate to have a wonderful partner who has not only never denied me yarn but often enabled me in its purchase. And none of this has changed, not really. I was able to afford the yarn that I bought, without much of a pinch. Would I feel differently if the finished object were to be for someone other than myself?

So I will, in the next few days, release my lingering doubts and cast on the sweater. We're leaving on a little holiday next week and the miles of stockinette should fit the bill nicely. I have a hat to finish up (surely this will be the last hat of the winter) and then I can begin a pair of travelling socks as well. I haven't had a sock on the needles since I finished the birthstones, I think I needed to catch my breath after that marathon of lace.

Speaking of which, here's a better fo shot of the amethyst lovelies before they hit the post. My feet aren't quite the same size as the recipient, but you get the idea.


Looking over my Ravelry queue today (no shortage of sock patterns there, let me tell you) made me think that I really need to make some sort of a knitting plan for the rest of the year. It promises to be an incredibly busy and not stress-free 9 months. I will need some knitting to see me through.

Done and done

The birthstone socks were, in fact, done on Easter. Okay it was Easter Monday, but I've decided that it still counts. They turned out beautifully. A fortuitous meeting of yarn and pattern. Here they are fresh off the needles, unblocked and not showing to full potential.

V's Birthstone Socks
pattern: Hedera by Cookie A.
Fleece Artist Basic Merino in Amethyst

Overall I really did enjoy working on them. I finally decided that the problem I had sticking with them came down to the lace element. I like knitting lace, and I like knitting socks, but I knit them in entirely different situations. The combination meant that I needed an additional, plainer sock project for my traditional sock moments.

Speaking of plainer socks, the Serious Hiking socks are also finished. It was a productive week. Not least because the weather here, in these first days of spring, has been absolutely wintry. This pair has already had a trial in the weekend snow.


I have some thoughts about these socks, but I'm going to save that for another post. I may write up the pattern properly and offer it free here at some point. Anyone interested? There don't seem to be a lot of heavier weight sock patterns out there at the moment.

The clouds did lift for a time today and all the snow had a highly picturesque effect on the mountains. Alas it seems that there is more weather to come and thoughts of spring knits remain far off. However the Spring Interweave has finally arrived and the weather will catch up eventually. And there is a sweaters worth of yarn on my coffee table, just waiting to be wound.

Noro Hero Hat

I wasn't sure I would, but I really like this hat!

Saartje's Noro Hat

pattern here
Noro Kureyon 149

It was easy to knit without being boring. Saartje says that she used a little over one skein of Kureyon but mine took closer to two (both of which had the Noro standard one knot to mess up the striping). I'm actually pleased with the way the striping worked out here, though it was utterly by chance.


And Himself likes it too! He's been wearing it everywhere. I suspect (hope?) it will be too warm here for wooly hats soon, but this one will be tucked away safely for next Autumn. There are some really lovely examples in Silk Garden popping up on Ravelry as well...maybe I'll make one for myself by then.

my hero

Waffling

I finished the waffle socks a week or so ago, but didn't manage to get decent photos of them until this weekend.


These were largely made up as I went along. As you can probably tell they're a little too tight across the instep. Adam's feet are widest right at the ball there, and I didn't compensate enough in the pattern. Also I'm not entirely happy with the gusset decreases. Happily they're still good, wearable socks - and I know what I'll do differently next time.

I can give a good report on the yarn though. It's the Elann Sock it to Me 4 ply, which is 75% superwash wool and 25% nylon with 210m to 50g. It's not very soft in the ball, but it wasn't unpleasant to work with and the twist is nice and tight. Washing the finished objects made a huge difference, they came out nicely soft and sproingy. I have 2 more pairs worth of this yarn and may buy more.

We saw the finished boot socks of betrothal already, but they look a lot better with feet in them.


I really liked this pattern, both the working and the end product, and would knit it again (though perhaps not on a deadline). The pattern called for 2.75mm needles and I went down to a 2.25mm. I nearly always need to go down, but I think in this case I would have been better off trying a 2.5mm. The firm, cabled fabric isn't all that elastic.

The Noro hat is done as well, but it may be the weekend before I can have it modeled in the manner it deserves. There has been some suggestion that winter is on the way back to our Alpine valley this week, so wooly hats might be just the thing.

Two hats

This hardly qualifies for a finished object post: Adam's hat is the one I knit on the plane on the way over. No pattern to speak of, just ribbing. The yarn is Berocco Peruvia and is very soft. Too soft I suspect to be durable enough for a sweater, but very nice for a hat.

awwwww.....

My hat is the one that was started in the leafy period back in January. I finished it before I left but didn't get around to blogging it and I didn't need to wear it until I got here. The pattern is Foliage from Knitty. I almost certainly could have gone down a needle size, but it's a great hat.

I'm afraid I still don't have a whole lot of knitting to show for my time here. I've been working on a pair of socks. Often I work on them while listening to podcasts on my laptop - which I do when I get to the point where I really need to hear English for a while.


This is another one that I'm largely making up as I go along. The yarn is Elann Sock it to Me 4ply, which I haven't used before. Shortly before I left Canada a bunch of this went up on the Elann site and I'm always on the hunt for good solid colour sock yarns. So far it's not the softest, but we'll see how it washes. It has a nice hard twist and great stitch definition. If you've got a pair of cabled socks in you queue this is a yarn worth considering. Can't beat the price either.

Happily I am finally feeling settled and have been considering some bigger projects, so things should get a little more interesting soon.