Sock Progress

Although I stand by my previous post about the confusing-ness of the pattern, the socks are turning out great!



See that nice little fork of decreases? Yeah, I know it's not centered now, but it will be for the heel flap.

Now to get back to the knitting!

P.S. To answer Jess's question, yes that is the yarn you sent me for Spring Fling! The socks turned out beautifully and it really was a joy to knit with. :D

Listening to: In My Time of Need ~ Opeth

Socks and Shakespeare!

Thanks to all of you helping out in the comments of the last post. Actually I had already figured out what to do (basically just ignore the words "seam stitch" and use the marker!) but I felt like I needed a little rant about the ridiculosity (hey, I just made up a word!) of calling an in pattern stitch a seam stitch and making really confusing directions all while placing a marker. I mean, really! Just give directions referencing the marker and it's all good.

But on to the Shakespeare! Tonight a few knitting buddies and I went to Shakespeare on the Common and saw A Midsummer Night's Dream. It was really good, and is one of my favorite Shakespeare plays. There was plenty of sock knitting time beforehand and a bit while it was still light out and the evil Railway Socks made some good progress. Soon I'll be done with the shaping and can forget this 'seam stitch' nonsense. ;)

Too bad Fibercult just did an episode about knitting everywhere, this would have made good podcast fodder!

Amanda's Jaywalking now!

Well, I finished and mailed off my Secret Solstice socks finally. The original pattern gave me fits (and never would have worked) so I ripped it out early the morning of the gift exchange and started a pair of Jaywalkers per Amanda's request.



Pattern: Jaywalker
Yarn: Cherry Tree Hill Supersock
Started: 7/4/07
Finished: 7/21/07

I really enjoyed working with the Cherry Tree Hill yarn, which stood up well to the frogging it encountered in the first incarnation. The colors on the sock look even more lovely than in the skein or ball, and it has a surprising amount of stretch (great for this pattern!)

Now, after finishing these socks I started another pattern from Knitting Vintage Socks (Gentleman's Sock in Railway Stitch) and had huge amounts of confusion about it. Now, I don't think I'm being conceited in thinking that I'm a pretty smart cookie, so the fact that I had to read this pattern multiple times to understand what in the world Nancy Bush is talking about is a little odd.

Here's a quick recap:

The pattern has you cast on some stitches, knit some rib (so far so good), decrease one stitch, then start the pattern. Here's where the problem comes in. The stitch repeat is a multiple of five, after decreasing one stitch the sock is also a multiple of 5 stitches. Strangely enough there is a seam stitch, you are told "this is the 'seam' st and will be knitted every rnd unless otherwise specified" no other instructions are given. Now, after racking my brains I have decided that even though this is the "seam" st it should be counted in the pattern repeat before the decreases, because it just doesn't make any sense otherwise. But why would you call it a "seam" stitch when it is in pattern? And why would you have a multiple of 5 stitches and still have a "seam" stitch - especially when you actually just went to the trouble to decrease an extra stitch after the ribbing?

And yes, I've already checked the corrections, nothing there.

I was just going to devise my own way to do it when I read further in the pattern and discovered that decrease rows give very specific instructions for this stitch. Can I just have a chart, please? And then after the shaping is complete the seam stitch disappears. Now, I really want to know what the point is of having a disappearing "seam" stitch when the first stitch of the stitch pattern is always knit. And the pattern tells you to place a marker. Now, if I have a marker and this stitch eventually disappears, why in the world do I need a seam stitch?

The big problem here is after the disaster with Amanda's socks, I'm a little afraid to continue with this pattern. These socks are also not for me and also on a deadline. Well, wish me luck!

Grow Up and Blow Away ~ Metric, Bodies ~ Smashing Pumpkins

So much to blog!

Today I was wondering how my life got so busy all of a sudden, and then I realized it's summer. The weather is nice (well that's debatable...) and suddenly I have all kinds of other things to do besides sit around and knit.

Like hiking on the Harbor Islands, concerts, movies, trips to IKEA, berry picking... But I'm getting ahead of myself.

First off thank you SO MUCH to my amazing SP9! I got my first package over the weekend and she sent me some supercool stuff:



Austermann Step yarn (I really like that stuff!), a pretty sock pattern, star cookie cutters which make me want to make cookies rightnow, and chai. And we all know how much I love chai.

Also the Nagini pattern is up so I can show you my test knit pair.



Knit in Koigu. I didn't take the best picture cuz I was in a hurry to send them off, but there are plenty more in the pattern. The pair I knit turned out a bit short since the Koigu yardage is smaller than most sock yarns, but since it's toe up I was able to use every bit of yarn. It should be fine for a yarn with more yardage.

In a totally non-knitting-related tangent, I saw Tool on Thursday which was awesome. I don't even know now how many times I've seen them but I think this was #5. I did knit on the way there. Then on Friday I went to see the new Harry Potter movie and knit while I waited. Some of my knitting buddies and I are planning on going to one of the big release parties happening around Boston this Friday.

And I also went berry picking this weekend - still not knitting-related, although I did knit there too.



That's blueberries and antihistamine pills since there were mosquitoes and greenheads (biting flies) everywhere and I'm a bit extra allergic to mosquitoes and started swelling up when we'd been there about 10 minutes. I even took pictures of my icky bites but I'll spare you those. I took a little sock knitting break there too:



Then we picked some black raspberries and I exercised my camera's macro.



And we met some sheep!



And last but not least, I've been tagged for the show your sock drawer meme.



That's what's in the drawer at the moment, though not close to all of my socks.

I don't usually tag either, but I told bryghtrose I'd tag her so I will. And why not Catherine and Alexis and Amanda too, if you wanna.

Spinning SP

I got an AMAZING package from my spinning SP today. I opened up the box to find this Mango Moon bag:



Which will be an awesome knitting bag as it has a zipper and not velcro. It also has that summer-y feel. Inside were lots of little goodies wrapped in tissue.



Included were Swedish cookies, a box of lemon candies, Norwegian chocolate (!), a little troll statue, two different kinds of roving, and some beautiful handspun that my pal spun for me! In fact my pal also traveled to some Scandinavian country just to pick up yummy treats for me! Next time you can just send me a plane ticket, pal. ;)

The dark roving is "Black Diamond" from SWS - I'm not quite sure what that means but it's very shiny. And the other roving, although unidentified, is beautiful as well!

I know you're waiting for a closeup of that handspun...



Gorgeous!

And for a little more about what I've been doing, here's a picture of me knitting at the Esplanade on the 4th:

Home Improvements

First off, there's a new episode of FiberCult up! I probably won't keep updating here for all the episodes, so if you're interested you can subscribe to that blog or to the RSS feed in iTunes (there are instructions on the FiberCult blog).

Now, down to business! Over the weekend Cathy and I headed to IKEA and I picked up a bit of furniture for my room.



A desk and chair for my computing and a yarn shelf. ;)



I felt really cool putting all my new furniture together with tools. Then last night a new opportunity to use tools came up:



I closed my bedroom door when I was leaving the house, and when I came back it wouldn't open! My doorknob was apparently past it's prime. Luckily I was able to get my room open with this lovely contraption and hopefully I'll have a new doorknob soon.

Hope all of you have a lovely 4th of July. I'm heading out now to sit outside with friends, knit some socks, and watch fireworks when the time comes.

Listening to: Move Together ~ AEC, Kill Caustic ~ A.F. I.

That Birthday Meme...

I was tagged by Cassandra, so here goes:

The deal is that you go to Wikipedia, look up your birth day, and then post 3 events, 2 births, and a holiday. (I don't tag, so if anyone sees this and wants to do it then feel free. If not feel free not to!)

April 11

Events:

2007 - The "forever" stamp goes on sale in the United States for 41 cents.
1970 - Apollo 13 is launched.
1849 - The safety pin is patented by Walter Hunt

and a bonus:

1775 - Last execution for witchcraft in Germany.

Births:

1982 - Ian Bell, English cricketer - I have no idea who that guy is, but we have the same birthday.
1930 - Anton LaVey, American founder of the Church of Satan (d. 1997) - Who knew?

Holiday:

I was born on Easter, which falls on my birthday every 11 years or so.

Wikipedia says: Juan Santamaría Day, anniversary of his death in the Battle of Rivas (State holiday in Costa Rica.