Stephanie's Socks

I finally finished Steph's socks!  Just in time for the event that they were intended to celebrate.    

We work together, and I enjoy sending odd things through inter-office envelopes.  So I inter-officed her present to her.  The next thing I see is Steph, coming down the hall towards me, 'modeling' the socks!

I'm pretty happy with how they worked out.  My own split rib pattern in Knit Pick's Essential Peacock Multi.  I was a little annoyed that the yarn striped, Knit Picks sells a striping yarn, so you'd think that the 'multi' wouldn't stripe... anyway, they came out really well.  

More Spinning, and the Kureyon

I started working on the brown wool again. You can see I spun a lot more this time. I have to figure out what to do with the portion already on my drop spindle. This is so much faster, it's great!

Yesterday I also ripped out my Kureyon wrap and cast on for gloves. I wasn't sure that I had enough yarn to make a wrap the size and shape I wanted. And I had read that it wouldn't soften up as much as I was hoping. So I ordered another yarn from the same company that contains a hefty percentage of cashmere. I will make the wrap with that and I will make fingerless gloves from the Kureyon. I am calling them my iPhone gloves (you need your finger tips for iPhone manipulation).

The Kureyon wrap, before destruction.

The new Kureyon gloves, in progresss.


Sandy just said that these are very "Fame!"

And the Winner Is...

Not this one!

This is the drunken cable border with a pie crust cable center panel.  It still looks bunchy and sloppy to me.  I am not a fan.  

Next I tried a ribbed cable, something I'd seen in the Vogue Stitchionary but had never tried.  A commercial sweater that I have, with an oversized cable, utilizes this technique.  It also employs other cheater methods to give the appearance of a cable where there isn't one though, so I wasn't sold on the idea.  

I used the idea of the drunken cable, but instead of crossing 9 over 9, I crossed 9 ribbed over 9 ribbed.  It looks much much nicer.  The cables lay relatively flat and seem pretty defined.  

So the winner is this one.  

I tried different numbers of rows between the cables.  I think this distance works the best.  

And I think I will have to use three columns across instead of two.  

I'm currently working out how I want to make the increases/decreases for the sleeves.  I think I'm going to knit this from the top down.  I'm going to knit one more swatch to see how wide three repeats of the cable will be and to make sure I like how it looks worked upside down.  

I'm so close!

Another Debate, Another Swatch.

At the beginning of the debate I cast on for another brown sweater swatch.  And I really think this cable might be the winner.    

Anyway, I made one stitch every time McCain said "my friends", and look how far I got!

Ha ha.  

The cable doesn't show very well in this photo, I'll take better pictures once I've knit a few more repeats.  It's a ribbed version of the drunken cable idea.  Everyone cross your fingers.  

The last week (or so)

This is what I've been working on for the past week.

Actually the past year. It was supposed to be Josh's birthday present last year, and it didn't get done in time, or anywhere near time. One thing after another would go just a tiny bit wrong and it made me want to forget the bike existed for a long while. Then Josh kindly offered to help with his own present, and it's done! Well, mostly, bikes are in that class of object where something can always be done, improved, tweaked, upgraded, swapped out, etc. But it's complete enough to be considered done. We still have to adjust the bottom bracket's set screws (hopefully a five minute job) and next weekend I'll most likely be teaching Josh how to true the wheels (teach a man to fish and maybe he'll fix your bike while he's at it, actually I really like truing so we might have to fight over it). But we can both look at it and be proud and happy now. Yay!

Next post, back to the knitting.

I'm working on a brown ribbed cable front sweater. Right now I'm trying to design the cable, with mixed success and much grumpyness. I'll have photos of the swatches soon.

I'm also bouncing another cabled sweater around in my head, out of that red/purple Happy Feet sock yarn that I purchased a sweater's worth of. I haven't been swatching anymore of that though.

I bought new needles to knit Josh's gloves on. The yarn I bought and the sock needles I have were not playing nice. Their slick metal-ness would slide right out of the stitches at inopportune moments (not that any moment would really be a great time to drop stitches). I marched over to Loopy yarns Thursday after work and bought some nice pointy little bamboo needles. They should be much stickier, relatively speaking, and not give me the same trouble. I really want to take them out and play, but the brown cables are sucking up all my attention.

Deliberate Drops

Saturday Morning with Chris Blysma.

She walked us through several ways to drop stitches (intentionally).  My favorite swatch is the aran sampler.  In my own knitting so far I seem to favor the controlled yarn over variety.  I think the big runs of dropped stitches scare me a bit.  

A big run of dropped stitches in plain stockinette.





Another big run of dropped stitches in my aran sampler.

The controlled yarn over variety of dropped stitches in ribbing.

Dropped edge stitch fringe. And quite possibly the ugliest baby hat I've seen in a long time. Too bad. Some people in class liked it a lot. Different strokes for different folks I guess.

First Sweater

My own design.  I wanted the collar to fold over instead of just standing up.  I'll have to try again on another sweater.  I do like how this one turned out.  

(I finished this in April)