Abbie – Page 8 – Rush Hour Knitting

Sunday, 15 November, 2009Monday, 16 November, 2009

Expeditions

My friend Melissa came up to the city on Friday and we went on a little adventure to the Cloisters.

We saw very impressive carvings:

and walked around the gardens, which are all ready for winter:

Then we went downtown to see the Lion Brand Studio, but we forgot to check their hours. They were closed. We did, however, have a good laugh at their window display:

It’s a little hard to see in the glare of the window, but yes, those are size 300 needles. I’m wondering what yarn goes with those.

Then I came home and did more Christmas knitting.

This is from Knitpicks Tidings of Joy Ornament kit. I’m slowly working my way through the booklet, and I absolutely recommend it if you’re looking for some quick present ideas. (Unless you’re in Scotland, of course.) I could probably figure most of these out on my own, but sometimes it’s nice to have someone else do the lifting and figure out the numbers for you. It’s a terrific little kit with some great ideas — strings of lights! sugarplums! popcorn & cranberry strings! and I’m really enjoying turning out finished objects this quickly. The only problem is that I want to keep them all.

Ok. Enough jabber, more knitting! Dare I ask how everyone else is progressing? Or have you not started yet? I know one person is done. I won’t say who it is for her own safety, but she should know I’m pretty darn impressed.

Wednesday, 11 November, 2009

Don’t hate me

We’ve reached that time… the Christmas Crunch has started. I think Kate’s post on the subject has been the funniest treatment so far, so I won’t even try to beat that.

I’ll just be smug that I’ve got at least some of it done already. Now. Back to work. Only 43 more knitting days til Christmas!

Thursday, 5 November, 2009

October Wrap-Up

October was a work in progress.

(That’s me, knitting on the Big Sock at Rhinebeck.)

I finished one, count ’em, one project:
Autumn Socks

But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t knitting my little heart out in between Rhinebeck’s moments of sheer awesome. On my needles currently are living:
-one half-completed pair of Jaywalkers
-one half-completed Ivy sweater
-one ready to de-hibernate February Lady sweater
-one half-completed set of armwarmers in Atacama, to match a cowl

And that’s not counting the Christmas presents I am trying to crank out (knit early, knit often?).

And then there’s that little designing thing. I’ve been hard at work on a new pattern — see, I have an event to go to right after Christmas so I wanted something nice to wear, and I think maybe other people might like a nice warm squishy thing for holiday events. So I’ve been working on that, and it’s currently with a test knitter and I should have it ready by Thanksgiving. You can be sure it will be warm and squishy, because I knit it in Malabrigo:

Now I suppose I should get cracking on that to-do list, huh?

Friday, 23 October, 2009

Local color

So I knit these great socks, and I was all set for Rhinebeck. Mitts, scarf, hat, socks, everything involves some nice flaming orange, all nice and matchy-match. Then the temperatures dropped, a lot, and I ended up wearing my nice thick Socks that Rock all weekend since they were warmer than my nice orange socks, even if I have yet to knit socks from STR with any orange in them. (Tan, yes, but that isn’t quite the same.)

AUTUMN SOCKS

Pattern: Plain stockinette sock, 62 stitches
Yarn: Done Roving 1-Ply Sock Yarn in Cherry Pitts.
Needles: US1/2.25 mm
Notes: Oh. This color. You can see why I just did stockinette here, right? Anything else would have taken away from this spectacular dyeing job. I am in love with this colorway. Look at it:

Glorious. It jumped off the rack a year ago at Rhinebeck and refused to let me put it back, and every time I looked at the skein and now the socks I grin, because it just evokes the smell and sound and crunch of a pile of leaves for me. These socks make me very happy.

I looked for Done Roving at Rhinebeck, because when I put these babies on they were nice and cushy and wonderful to wear, and I am always on the lookout for cushy socks. But I didn’t see them anywhere, and so there’s no new Done Roving in the stash this year. I still have a pretty decent chunk of yarn left from this skein, though… perhaps a cowl, to round out my obsession with autumnal oranges and browns…

Mmm. Perfect.

Tuesday, 20 October, 2009

Rhinebeck

The best weekend of the knitter’s year is now over. My stash acquisitions (there were many) have been photographed and entered into Ravelry, and I am working on shaking my post-Rav cold. But that’s not what you came for, I know. You came for PICTURES.

I aim to please.

I had one of the best weekends ever. Highlights include:

-walking in on Saturday morning at 8:45, going straight to the Fold’s booth (do not pass Go, do not collect $100), grabbing a mill end and a Rare Gem and paying and moving on by 9:30

-bumping into Rebecca and Glenna a half hour later as they were finishing up their turn on the Fold’s line

-being one of the first in line for the famous CHICKEN POT PIES.

-meeting some of the many girls and boys of LSG over the course of the weekend. (The name is ironic. Mostly. Lazy people would never have gotten that excited over Rav username bingo.)

-getting my picture taken with ~~Ysolda~~Bob:

-leaving Saturday to catch an early dinner and making an unexpected but wonderful detour through the Vanderbilt mansion grounds, to find the most inspiring views:

-scoring yarn from old favorites (STR, A Touch of Twist, Holiday Yarns) and new (Sliver Moon, Briar Rose). So much yarn. Did I mention I bought yarn?

-the Ravelry party, where I helped Melissa liquor up the room with a keg of her homemade vanilla mead. And where I won a prize. A very very nice prize:

That is a skein of qivuit yarn. It was the grand prize in the Ravelry party’s raffle, and they called my number, and now it’s mine. I’m going to make a Pretty Thing out of it.

If anybody asks you about Kanye-ing Mary-Heather to proclaim that Ysolda had the best Bob of all time, well. I blame everything on LSG and the mead. And I thank Ravelry very much for the wonderful party and the amazing gift. I missed which company donated it but I thank them too!

-Knitting on the Big Sock — that purple row is mine!

-Meeting Sandi Wiseheart in the Holiday Yarns booth and spending almost half an hour chatting and joking and letting her help separate me from my money in exchange for more yarn. Turns out Sandi’s a kindred spirit and I’m very happy to have met her and learned that fact.

-Spending the weekend with Melissa, one of my oldest and dearest friends. Lounging in our hotel room at the end of the day, drinking tea and discussing what to make with our yarn was the perfect way to end a day of Rhinebeck.

I’m already looking forward to next year, and happily pouring over my new stash deciding what to knit first. Oh, who am I kidding — I know perfectly well what’s getting knit first!

Tuesday, 6 October, 2009Tuesday, 6 October, 2009

September Wrap-Up

September is a watershed month for me, with Baby’s First Pattern Released For Sale. And on top of that there was one of the most complex sock patterns I’ve tackled yet, and half of a sweater that I haven’t gotten around to photographing.

OCTOBER LEAVES FINGERLESS MITTS

Pattern: October Leaves Fingerless Mitts
Yarn: Knit Picks Gloss Fingeringweight in Pumpkin
Needles: US1/2.25mm
Notes: Written up here and available for sale here on the blog and on Ravelry. As of writing this, there were 14 projects in Rav, and it’s in 200 queues and has been faved 483 times. Those numbers are both gratifying and making my head spin, and I’m so pleased at the reception my little mitts have gotten.

JADE SLIPPERS

Pattern: Glass Slippers
Yarn: Dream in Color Smooshy in Good Luck Jade
Needles: US1/2.25mm
Notes: Writeup here.

Also on the needles: An Ivy sweater that might or might not be done in time for Rhinebeck. At this point we’re closer to “not”, sadly — but it’s not like I don’t have plenty of other things to wear!

Tuesday, 6 October, 2009

Green Mountains

Vermont is lovely in October. You should all get yourself a sister in Vermont so you can visit her and see things like this:

This is the view from Grand Isle when you’re waiting for the ferry over Lake Champlain.

And this is the view of my sister’s new Basset puppy Eeyore, investigating my sock while we wait. He’s a sweetheart and a snuggler and likes to drool.

The reason for my visit was to have a road trip to the Vermont Sheep & Wool Festival. So naturally it rained. Buckets and buckets of rain. (I’m sensing a theme for 2009 fiber festivals, which concerns me for Rhinebeck…) Our visit was short, since rain doesn’t really encourage lingering to watch llamas and our driver was pretty tired after a long week, but I got a few nice pictures in between raindrops:

I picked up some sock yarn from Green Mountain Spinnery and the Periwinkle Sheep, and even found a vendor whose name I stupidly neglected to note who had a pile of Opal Harry Potter sock yarn — so a skein of the Ron colorway might have found its way into my stash at last.

I wish the weather had been a little better, although it sounds like all the vendors did very well in spite of the rain, and I’d definitely love to try again in the future, if my sister is willing. But even if not I’ll be going back to Vermont as often as I can manage, because it’s so beautiful and restful. Think of all the knitting you can do surrounded by mountains like that…

Tuesday, 29 September, 2009Monday, 5 October, 2009

Glass

All right. My mitt pattern has been going like gangbusters which makes me very happy. My Rhinebeck budget thanks you all sincerely, and would you all please put pictures up in Ravelry already so I can see what everyone’s come up with? Thank you.

In the meantime, I have finished a pair of socks that owe their existence to the crazy Battlestar Galactica Viper Pilot socks of doom. Viper Pilots were a crash course on twisted stitches and complicated cables, and I learned from them that I enjoy gnarly charts and watching the cables grow off the needles. So I printed out the pattern and dove in.

JADE SLIPPERS SOCKS

Pattern: Glass Slippers, by Caitlin Meyer, available in the Fall 2009 issue of Knotions
Yarn: Dream in Color Smooshy in Good Luck Jade
Needles: US1/2.25mm
Notes: Oh boy. Let me state this first: This is an amazingly beautiful pattern. The concept is clever and the finished socks are a delight to wear. I enjoyed the vast majority of the knitting of these socks. And these socks got to do quite a bit of traveling. In addition to attending the Steuben Parade, they met Paula Deen:

(She’s in the front, under the Book Revue sign, in lavender. Yes, it was very crowded. Yes, I took advantage of the fierce-looking DPNS to get myself some breathing space. Knitting ninja, that’s me.) Anyway! I have some pretty cultured footwear.

But. Somewhere along the line something happened to this patten and got things twisted around, and when you’re dealing with this many cables, extra twists are really not good news.

The biggest problem I encountered was the mislabeling of Charts A and B, which left me utterly bewildered for quite some time while knitting the first sock. It’s a pretty predictable cable, so once I figured out that I hadn’t done anything wrong, I just went on ahead and did what the cables told me they wanted to do, and they led me right into the foot chart like they were supposed to. The second time I kept an eye on the charts and if you use B where it said A and A where it said B it worked out just right. The foot chart, happily was just fine.

I also found the given instructions for the heel chart to be curiously short — so I just went ahead and did my usual heel flap of 36 rows, instead of the 20 called for. And on a more personal-quirk level, I found the charts in general difficult to read on my hard copy. Personally, I find it a lot easier on the eyes if things like cables and decreases that stretch over more then one cell don’t have the cell border dividing them in half; sadly, these charts didn’t do that, and I had a really difficult time getting comfortable with them.

The toes on these socks were specifically written to not need grafting, but I went ahead and grafted them anyway. I enjoy a good grafted toe, and I am that odd duck knitter who actually enjoys the act of grafting.

I’m not sure if the issues I had with this pattern are things that tech editing would have helped with, or things got turned around in preparing it for the web, or what the story is. I do know Knotions had already corrected a few errors before I printed out the pattern, but never marked them as errata. (I was a little surprised by that, to be honest.) But the personal lesson I’m taking away from these socks, aside from extra practice in some hard-core cabling, is that I need to give patterns a much closer-read over before I start. Encountering things like this in mid-cable is really not the best time.

And one more personal quirk, if I might? I really wish Knotions would combine everything for printing, instead of making the directions and charts two separate documents, especially when the header information prints out on each one.

So, having gotten all that out of the way, I think these socks are worth a knit if you’re into cables, because they look just spectacular, don’t they? You should just be prepared to double-check that you are working off the right chart, and read carefully, so you don’t end up like me, sitting on a friend’s couch at two in the morning, drinking wine like a fish in the hopes that maybe it will make you understand where you screwed up, while your friend laughs at you, and her dogs try to shed on your yarn. (It’s how dogs help.) Trust me, it’s not a pretty picture. I go through these things so you don’t have to.

Sunday, 20 September, 2009Sunday, 20 September, 2009

Heu heu heu!

Yesterday my mom and I took the train into the city to watch the Steuben Day Parade. (It’s named for Baron von Steuben, a German general who worked with Washington during the Revolutionary War, so they have adopted his name for the celebration of German heritage in the States.) We saw lots of stuff:

It was a perfect September day, sunny and cool, and the Traveling Sock was very happy to attend the Oktoberfest in Central Park afterwards.

There really isn’t much better than a good Oktoberfest, especially when it’s somewhere as lovely as Central Park. Tips for a good party: order your beer by the pitcher so you spend less time on line and more time drinking, and make sure you know all the words to “Ein Prosit.” (It’s very easy to learn.) Find a folk band to sit next to, and bonus points if they’re in lederhosen. Of course, if you’re in your own lederhosen or Tracht, well then you don’t need any advice from me!

It’s definitely fall now, and I couldn’t be more pleased about that.

Friday, 18 September, 2009

Crisis averted

Um. I owe an apology to those of you reading this on RSS readers, because I just spammed you over the last hour. Please ignore the repeat posts? Thanks. I know better than to think I will avoid mocking.

Long story short: I hit a wrong button by mistake. I deleted the archive. I was not thinking clearly and took a few minutes (a lot of minutes) to figure out that there was a button that would fix it. I hit the fix-it button.

All better now. I will stop messing with the technical things, I promise.