i knit this giant swatch

Someone I know finally knit the One Day One Skein Wonder hat and found a mistake. She helped fix up the numbers, but I have to see what I’m doing sometimes, so I knit myself another hat just to figure it out. I changed the cables and moved some of the decreases up and down, but not the part that requires knitting the numbers. The swatch took about most of a full-day conference. Obviously I couldn’t knit during the networking bits, because you only knitwork at a yarn conference, yarn crawl or s&b. And I did need my hands at lunch. I sewed it at all up and just decided it’s too short. So, I frogged most of it. I knit it again, but for some reason I grabbed the wrong circular needle. I’ve now decided this yarn looks better on a smaller circular needle and well, I don’t know what I’m doing to do now.

Happy New Year!

I got all the way down to the ankle of the second Bells and Whistles sock, but I don’t think I’ll finish it in time for the Socks In the Cities Knit Along as I’m throwing a party.  It will have to wait until 2008. Good thing that it will still qualify for Sock Knitter’s Anonymous (r).

r=ravelry link

second sock september, pair one

The first pair of socks that I’m trying to finish for Knit Your Second Sock September are the BFF socks by Cookie. Cookie and Kristi’s website, Knitter’s Anonymous went kablooie and while it will be up again soonish, there is no link available to the pattern currently.

I freaked myself out because I’d misplaced the final page of instructions. So I cleaned house a bit and put away all my newer knitting patterns and it surfaced.

The first task on these socks was to trip out the foot of the finished first sock. The leg of the second sock has been done for a while, but when I got to it, I noticed that the way the cables were placed over the foot didn’t match on both socks. I realized that I did it wrong on the first sock and ripped it all the way back. It’s a bit unfortunate, because that sock fit beautifully and I fear that I’ve already misplaced the notes that I made detailing the number of rows in the heel and the number of cables made before I did the toe.

I didn’t like the toe on this sock, so I will probably redo it. The only other change that I made was to do a five-row cable instead of a six-row cable. I read a good suggestion somewhere about throwing odd numbered cables into patterns knit in the round just because you can. It probably came out of Cables Untangled by Melissa Leapman.

I keep forgetting that I did this though, so I keep ripping out the cables. And then of course I lose count. It’s a simple sock. Really.

I am resisting the temptation to redo the heel on this sock. I’ll know if I did it wrong if I run out of yarn!

a free hat pattern – one skein, one day wonder hat

Hi. This is a free hat pattern and is free to you under a creative commons license (listed in the pattern). There are actually two versions of this hat in the pattern. It’s also free for yarn shop owners to give out, but you might want to read it over first, because it’s my first pattern. I hope some day to actually be able to sell patterns, so I’d love feedback. This is meant to be a quick hat, but it still has a few nice details for a little bit of a challenge. It features cables, picot edging and some interesting decreases, all of which result in what I think is a pretty cute hat.

Note: The stitch repeat is 12, not 6, because of the decreases.

I would have liked to issue a child sized hat, but the only feedback I’ve gotten on head-size is that my friend’s four year old has a 20″ head. Given that that is a size for an average adult woman, you could probably cast on 96 stitches instead of 108 and go from there for a kid’s hat. I haven’t tried it yet though.

Here you go. Have fun. Push the “save a copy” button in the upper left-hand corner of your screen to save a copy to your computer. Print away and feel free to distribute the pattern freely. But please, don’t mess with my picture!

2/15: Author’s Note: A friend of mine has recently knit this hat and we think some errata are necessary. So I’m knitting the hat again following my own directions and will probably write up a nicer pattern with color pics and with more sizes.

11/19/08; new pattern with errata is loaded.

I’d happily accept any monetary contributions you’d care to send my way if you like the pattern via Paypal. You can donate here if you think it was worth it.

celebrating the solstice with increases – m1 (make one)

My main order of business is to tell you about some the knitting techniques I’m using to work on the sleeves for my Huntingtion Castle pullover (Interweave Knits Fall 2004). But first, there are a couple of things I want to catch up on and then we in the Northern Hempisphere can go and celebrate the winter solstice. I’m a bit of a pagan if anything at all.

I promised a couple more pictures of my One Skein, One Day Wonder hat. So here is the best I could do in this rainy, grey weather we’re having. Sorry about the focus, but if I used a flash, the color would be off.

Also, I knit another Lizard Ridge square on Monday and have been debating about whether it goes into the Afghans for Afghans or not. I may still knit another blanket for myself at some point. But I haven’t blocked it, so I haven’t photographed it yet.

socks in snow

Must knit faster.

I woke up earlyish this morning to a winter wonderland. Then I went back to bed.

I really would like to finish the sock depicted in this photograph soon – I’m nearly down to the toe and I’m a bit worried I won’t have enough yarn left. I’m not even sure how this is possible. You can’t see the sock right now, sorry, it’s not done. You really shouldn’t stretch your uncompleted sock over the handle of a shovel without expecting some stitches to come undone. And the big stripe in the photograph? I had to leave the ball of yarn in my pocket.

It’s a BFF sock in Cherry Tree Hill (by Cookie). There are several possibilities as to why I am worried about the amount remaining yarn. One is that the cables eat yarn and I mean EAT. Another is that when I divided the yarn into balls I did so unevenly. A third is that 420 yards isn’t what it used to be. We’ll see.

anti-clockwise

Some days it feels like life is going backwards or even anti-clockwise. I found out our belongings won’t arrive for yet another week. I’ve also found out that going two weeks without access to my computer, my books, all my knitting, and the television is tougher than I would like to admit. This has a lot to do with me not having a job and being married to someone who works all the time, whilst having the appearance of having the summer off. Normally, when I’m unemployed, I apply for jobs while trying to distract myself from being a housewife as much as possible. I’m lucky; I have a low-maintenance husband who cooks, does dishes and laundry. He even likes to do it because then he can listen to his audio books. A lot of people ask me how I avoid insanity. Now I know. (I am habitually unemployed because this is a by-product of being married to a professor without a tenure track job.)

Today, I finished a Widdershin sock and pitched a fit trying to do so. It is not my husband’s fault that he had the car and that he got caught up in work so that I ended up incredibly bored in the house. I was annoyed with everything and everyone and I only had two things I could do; I could either read a book or work on socks. (No computer, no job hunt.) After three hours of sailing away on the Widdershins sock, I started having a lot of trouble with the pattern. I couldn’t decide how long to make the sock and every time I tried it on to see how long it was, it looked like it had gotten shorter. So I’d tell myself, one more cable and then I’d be done. After a while of doing this, I suddenly found I couldn’t do a cable row properly anymore! I had been doing quite well up until about two o’clock this afternoon. At which point there was a kaboom and the universe blew up. Or maybe it was just me.

My husband came home and cheered me up by going with me to do some errands that included returning something to a store and going to IKEA for some dishes. (Of course, I forgot to buy the dust pan that I meant to buy there). When we got home, I finished my sock, no problemo.

The lesson is never knit cables while mad. Pick something simpler to knit while calming down.

roughing it

The Widdershins socks are made with a very interesting heel. I’m not sure exactly what I was supposed to do with the wrapped stitches, but I tried to follow the directions and I appear to have a rather nice looking sock heel. I think the Widdershins pattern looks great with the Trekking XXL, don’t you? (Spartacus included for scale. No animals were harmed in the taking of this photograph.)

Knitting in the new apartment is done on the floor, in a folding table, or on the air mattress. Our furniture is still with the movers in Denver and hopefully it will be here Tuesday or Wednesday. We only had an air mattress to sit on for a few days, until some of my husband Josh’s colleagues graciously lent us a few chairs and a folding table. Practically, this has translated into two chairs for the cats and two chairs for us. I suppose we could have people over and put the cats on the bed, but we’re not really set up for entertaining at the moment.

We’ve bought a number of survival items that we were unable to pack in the car. This included a new toaster oven (which we needed anyway), some cheap silverware and dishes from Ikea, dishtowels and potholder. The cups were $0.50 each, the silverware was $1.99 for a four pack, the steak knivers were $1.99 for a six pack and two plates and two bowls totaled $6.00. The one thing I did pack in our gear was the wireless router. After all, the router is smaller than a toaster oven and not covered with rust and grease.
We’ve been cooking in our toaster oven and microwave. We’d use the stove, but we haven’t got any pans! So we’ve had a lot of packaged food (microwavable Mac N’ Cheese and some packaged Indian), sandwiches and a bunch of fruit. One thing we made in the toaster oven was sausages with green peppers and onions. What do we care if we can’t roast a chicken? It’s brutal outside and we’re not accustomed to humidiy

In the meantime, it’s pretty hard to keep entertained and that’s why I’m knitting socks like mad. I’ve got lots of sock yarn, a couple of books and occasionally I get to login to the web and hunt for a job. My main job search will begin in August after we get back from London and I’m determined to find a good job It’s either that or give up buying yarn.

trekking widdershins & toe-up sock strategems

I started on the Widdershins socks from Knitty last night using the new Trekking XXL I bought at digs in Northfield, MN. It took a few tries to get a smooth cast-on and to get the right needle size, but I learned how to do the toe-up cast on using Judy’s Magic Cast-on for Toe-Up socks.

As Judy points out in her article, the toe-up cast on is great because you can try on the sock as you go. It seems to be that the toe-up cast-on is especially amazing when you using cables and lace in your patterns. Assuming that you do what I do and use your sock as your gauge, swatch the toe-up sock is your best friend.

This method is faster because you don’t have to do with the ribbing before you get to the pattern on your sock and because once you get to the pattern, you presumably are only going to be using pattern stitches on the top of the foot. The number of stitches in your sock depends on more on your foot than the yarn. Doing the toe-up sock allows you to be completely indecesive about what your sock is going to look like until you get the number of stitches that are appropriate for your sock. And I guess I should mention that you don’t have to bother with the kitchener stitch. Consider it mentioned.

So I’ve decided to knit my next pair of socks as I go without a set pattern in mind. It’s not as if I have no idea what I’m going to do. I’m planning a lace or cable pattern with a repeat of 8 stitches. So I’ll start with a cast-on of 8 stitches, increase every round until I get to my pinky toe and then alternate increase and knit rounds until I get to the width of my foot. Then I’ll check the gauge and pick out a lace or cable pattern that suits and go forth from there.

But first I have to finish the Conwy socks.