Tsomething Tsocky
I picked up a tsock kit last year at Rhinebeck, promising myself that I’d be allowed to buy a new one this year if I could work through it by that time.
Hey, did you know that Rhinebeck is a mere seven weeks away? Yeah, I was shocked too.
Fortunately this tsock tseems pretty tstraightforward, so far—I cast on for ’em on Thursday night and have already completed the first one. There were a few uncorrected errata issues, but Lisa is both awesome and fast at answering those types of questions so I had a fix within hours of running into the problem (and it probably would’ve been faster if it hadn’t come up in the middle of the night.) Other than that my biggest quibble is the fit, but I think a good blocking will solve that; mostly the leg portion is too wide, being written for a 9″ foot/ankle when mine are only 8″. I compensated for it on the foot by making it a little short, so that it stretches vertically and becomes narrower, but there’s not much to be done for it on the leg. Maybe if I’d thought about it I could’ve cast on fewer stitches and increased after the ribbing, but I didn’t. Oh well!
Now I’ve just got to knit the beaded (eek) lace overlay and then work up the second one, but I think I’ll pop this in a bath first and make sure I can actually make it fit. Actually, I wonder if I could frog the ribbing from the provisional cast on and re-do it that way…
*edit* Silly me, it’s Caturday!
This little guy is such a sweetheart—loves to cuddle up and have his ears rubbed.
Something new
Between finishing a bunch of things off at once, and having to frog the socks I started the other day (too small to fit over my heel, too large ’round the ankle), I’ve found myself with nothing to work on.
Which means it’s time for some startitis! I’m going to cast on for what is (hopefully) a quick knit momentarily, and I zoomed through most of the first ply of a tasty, happy merino/bamboo blend today.
I’m sure these two new things will multiply into ten new things by the end of the week, but for now I’m going to enjoy the new project rush and not worry about it.
Wheelspun
Every time I finish a skein of yarn I tell myself that I’m going to be more productive and spin more often and have more skeins to show for my efforts. And yet it never happens. I think at this point I just need to be satisfied with the fact that I can spin pretty, fairly even yarns… when I actually get around to it.
This one didn’t turn out precisely as I intended; I was hoping for the stripes to line up a little better and be more distinct. As it is, the striping should be rather Trekking-esque, tweedy and marled and shifting. It’s also fairly evident that this was my first yarn off of this wheel, but spinning it definitely helped me settle into the groove of spinning on an antique, figuring out the tricks and quirks of making it run smoothly. And, I totally crammed all four ounces of plied yarn onto that bobbin. So I win.
Three-ply merino sock yarn, 22wpi, 500yds in 4oz.
Oolong’s too busy chasing bugs around the house to notice that I have string.
Home Again
I spent a few days longer than originally intended in the city and finally came home yesterday afternoon. The trip was a lot of fun, although I’m glad to be back in Jersey where it is slightly cooler and definitely more air conditioned. But I got to see a lot of neat stuff—
And we played some outdoor scrabble.
(Couldn’t find an S to build off of, had to play ‘purely’ instead.)
I tried to get some (air conditioned!) pictures of the honeybee cardigan, but for whatever ridiculous reason wore a black tank top underneath it, so I’ll have to re-shoot later in the week.
Still, the cardigan is so comfortable I really don’t mind. I just wish it were cool enough to wear it all the time!
And some knitting was accomplished, despite the heat.
Vacation
I’m spending the weekend in Brooklyn and forgoing most of my responsibilities for a few days—hanging around with some friends and doing an alarming amount of walking around.
If I don’t die of the heat I’ll try to get good pictures of the finished test knit; I sewed the buttons on while on the train yesterday and it fits perfectly and is super comfortable. The Malabrigo Sock stretched alarmingly when damp but a few minutes in the dryer shrunk it right back up. (Actually it shrunk it a little too much; I’ll reblock it when I get home.)
And I may have started a new sock project too. Because I clearly don’t have enough of those. Really. Don’t look at me like that.
No Caturday this week as I forgot to take a picture before I left. It will return as scheduled next Saturday!
Productivity
I am not entirely sure what this word means, having encountered it so infrequently in my life, but now that it’s here I would like it to stick around.
Last night I took the wheel out for a night on the town er, a get together with my local fiber group. We must’ve looked pretty ridiculous to the muggles, with three barefooted spinners and their wheels in amongst the usual knitting, crocheting, and spindling crowd, but no one said anything to us. Maybe we were too scary looking!
This is Hillary(‘s feet) and her brand new, literally put it together just before coming to the coffeeshop, Kiwi. I didn’t initially teach her to spin but I’d like to think that her wheel-buying was partially my fault due to my help and enabling, so I haz a proud.
And I managed to get quite a bit of spinning accomplished myself, working through more than half of the third ply for my self-striping sock yarn.
Plus Laura came through with an (ultra-fast!) solution to the yoke problems and I’m back on track with the test knitting.
Maybe if I’m lucky I can finish it tonight!
Stalled
Poor Laura/cosmicpluto—I’m afraid every other day I’m emailing her nitpicking on some problem or other in her pattern. Unfortunately the current problem at the moment has me stalled on the knitting until she recalculates some things, so I won’t meet the deadline of finishing before my friend (who is also knitter, although I met her elsewhere) flies in on Wednesday. Still, given how awesome the sweater looks so far, I suspect it will be well worth the wait. Look at this neat underarm/sleeve shaping!
In the meantime, I did consider some button choices:
I think the silver ones are too shiny/flashy against the almost antiqued look of the fabric. The bronze ones are great and would be perfect, but I didn’t buy them since I don’t know how many I’ll need or what size.
Also, remember that sock I was working on, like, forever ago?
I fixed it! Now maybe I can finish this pair off and feel a little less guilty about all of my languishing UFOs.
The cats, shockingly, are unimpressed.
Furiously
I’m trying to get this test knit finished up before a friend of mine comes to visit next week—I may or may not make it.
I’m also trying not to be grumpy over the fact that I am apparently the only person in the world not at woodsock Sock Summit this week. Hopefully a road trip down to Woolbearers on Saturday will help me out—I need to be with my fellow fiber people!
Full Moon
It’s lucky I finished my super secret project yesterday, because I can’t seem to get anything accomplished, today, which is clearly the moon’s fault. Gravitational forces. Or something.
Unfortunately secret projects do not make for good blog fodder. But I can show you a swatch!
A teeny tiny, itty bitty swatch. Yep. That’s it. The rest will remain under wraps for at least another month.
I’ve been getting some spinning done, too—
Unfortunately since I only have the one bobbin, I have to wind it off every time. Which I didn’t think would be such a big deal, after all, I wind off of my spindles all the time, but for some reason winding off from the wheel really bothers me. Fortunately I can get new bobbins made, and in the meantime… maybe winding off is the one thing I can do right today.
Sorry
Kittengirl can’t come to the blog right now. She’s got a wheel to play wif and a design to work on. If you leave a message I will chew on it deliver it to her.
Jeshknits 