Okay, okay, I'm a little behind...

... including on the pictures. I've got two finished pairs of Rockin' Sock Club socks (the green and the purple ones from this year) that I have yet to take pix of... Must rectify that.

Over the summer I got into a spinning habit, honestly. It's im_just_lori's fault, I swear. She dragged me up to MDSW. Between the purchasing of wool, spindles, and silk supplies, I swear I couldn't stop!



That first one is a one oz sample of soysilk that came out to about 210 yards of two-ply laceweight. The second one is a one oz sample of yak that was about 90 yards (and never ask your husband what to do with 90 yards of laceweight yak, because he then replies with "don't ask me now honey, I'm eating dinner."). But the crowning achievement was the one oz sample of tussah silk that became over 600 yards of two-ply cobweb! Yes, you heard me, two ply cobweb! MMMM!!! I had almost a mile's worth of spun single!



That literally took me more than a month to spin, on a teeny weeny Bosworth spindle (also acquired at MDSW). And for my brother's wedding this fall, a portion of that spun silk turned into this:



Lemme tell ya, doing cobweb silk is not for the faint of heart, in either spinning or knitting. I accidentally pulled out a needle at one point around row 46, and it took six HOURS to recover! Honestly, not going to EVER knit that kind of laceweight ever again without having point protectors on everything!

I also spun about 400 yards of laceweight blue faced leicster in the last two months (no pix right now), I'm almost done with a two-ply alpaca silk blend (pictured below while still in singles) that is a part of the quarterly spinner's challenge on Ravelry (calm, soft fibers, and monochromatic yet varigated. I think I've got everything except varigated, it looks like a tweed), and I'm about to get started on the November spinners challenge, which is "Marine Life" as a theme. Considering I picked up a pound and a half of merino over the summer in oceanic colors like turquoise and sea green, I think I'll do fine, as long as I can get done with the current spinning!

The alpaca/silk blend, by the way:



Yes, I've got a thing for cobweb and laceweights, although the two-ply version of that blend is much thicker... since I spun it very gently and I am making sure it's balanced, it's *extremely* soft, but it's bulking up much more than I thought when I made the single ply that you see there. I'm calling it "Just Before the Dawn", because of the sepia tones... You know how just before the sun starts to rise everything has that sepia tone look to it? Yeah, that. I was originally hoping that with the cobweb weight, I would get something that looked very spiderwebby, and that would look like the morning dewdrops on it, but since the plying made it bulk out more than I thought, I'm guessing not. But it feels wonderful! And there's still a metric ton of the fluff left!

Okay, that's it for now. At some point I'll get pix of those socks from the RSC... In the meantime, I'll go back to spinning... :)

Knitters against MS

See that link on the left side of my page for Claudia's Blog? Click on it.

For those of you who aren't knitters (what, you're reading this page and you're not a knitter?), well, donating to the MS society is a good thing anyway... But for those of you who are? THIS WOMAN'S RAFFLE PRIZES ROCK!!!

http://www.claudiasblog.net/kams/

GO DONATE TO THIS WOMAN!!! :)

She does a kick-ass job fundraising... And has cool prizes to boot!

If you don't know already, I have MS. This woman is near and dear to me for far more than just her knitting.

Thank you, Claudia!

The catchup post

Well, here we are, six months later. *sigh*

I really need to work on that. ;)

However, I've been a busy bee on the string front.

You get things like what I call "Shorty", my short-row hat, mitten, and scarf set (okay, the scarf isn't short row)... Which I am not posting pix on just because otherwise I can't submit the pattern for publication. Phooey, because it means I can't submit my Infinite Kilt Hose for publication now, but oh well. I might make it available for download here when I eventually write up the pattern itself. :)

Then there's having joined the Rockin' Sock Club this year... I don't have pictures of the Lucky socks (my husband can't find the memory card that the pix were taken on), but I do have pix of the Dragon socks!



That was taken with the crappy old camera that has gone to meet it's maker. I need to fix that.

Then of course, there is the entrelac shawl:



And because there was leftover yarn from that (Noro Aurora), the entrelac vest (seen here while still in progress):



And of course, lately there has been SPINNING!!! Yeah, a friend of mine got me to go to MDSW this year, and I picked up 2 drop spindles (golding and bosworth) and fiber!!! :) I picked up about a pound and a half of turquoise hand-dyed merino fluff (haven't started on that yet), and an oz of yak, an oz of soy silk, an oz of tussah silk, an oz of bombyx silk, and an oz of mulberry...



The bottom one is 90 yards of laceweight yak, the top is 220 yards of laceweight soysilk. But the pride and joy (so far) has been the tussah:



See how thin that is? That's TWO PLY. :) One ounce produced 653 yards of two-ply, and that's after having had almost a mile's worth of single! It would have been more, only I had a small issue with tangles during the plying:



Can you believe that little tiny spindle and ball produced 653 yards? WHEE!

I've worked on more, only I don't have pix available right now... I'm trying to consolidate where all the pictures went to, since not all of them are online. I've got a pair of socks that I'm working on right now including the pattern, but I don't want to post pix, since my favorite publication won't publish them if anyone else has seen them. Pooh, I want to actually show things off! :)

That's a wrap for right now... Time to go finish washing and drying that tussah, and get started on the latest Rockin' Sock Club socks! They've been waiting three weeks to be started because of the tussah! :)

Okay, so I don't post very often...

... namely because I keep forgetting to take pictures. I feel like if I don't have pictures, I shouldn't be posting. I figure I should probably forego the pix now, and just do my normal "I'm going to post a glut of pictures at the end of each month when I remember to upload them" thing. :)

But, I'm going to tell you about my lessons in gauge in the last week.

I've recently put together a pattern I call "Shorty", because it's all short-rows. It's a hat, a pair of mittens, and a scarf, all done in short row garter stitch (okay, the scarf is done in garter, no short rows involved. Hm. That could be interesting, making a short-row scarf too, but I digress). I decided to make a set for my mother for Christmas, in Magellanes #302. Beautiful colorway, nice thick n thin yarn.

The hat was a breeze. The first mitten was almost a breeze (after improvising and then frogging and then re-doing it *reversed* of what I'd originally done for the thumb), but the second caused me issues. Same needles. Same yarn. Same "pattern" (or lack thereof) caused me to have a mitten that was two inches bigger than the previous one.

This did not make me happy.

So I frogged mitten number 2. I re-did it, much tighter than I had the previous attempt.

And I now had a mitten that was two inches smaller than the original.

This still did not make me happy.

Several attempts and re-frogging a few times over later, I finally got a mitten that is only slightly different from the original, close enough that I'm not going to fret.

This is definitely a lesson in "gauge counts".

On a different note, I cast on my first Entrelac swatch this last weekend, garter style. It was big enough that it took up a whole ball of yarn, but I finished it in only a few hours. I can either join the edges together and have a funky looking hat with points, or I can leave it as it is (I joined the sides) and have a funky looking ear-wrap. :) It was an experiement, because I didn't want to go experimenting with my Noro Aurora yarn on something I'd never done before.

So after the swatch went well enough, I decided to give a go at the real thing. I cast on with Noro Aurora, smaller needles, smaller squares, stockinette.

OMG, I'm in love. I *have* to take pictures of this, it's GORGEOUS.

Okay, I'll sign off now. At least now I can say I've said *something* here. :)

THEY'RE FINALLY DONE!!!

So, the Infinite Kilthose that I was so ardently talking about in July are finally finished!!!

Why do I call them the Infinite Kilthose? There's a few reasons.

1. If you look up the back, it looks like little infinity cables all the way up.
2. These socks took me friggin' forever. I started them in May, before we went on the anniversary vacation. These are the same socks I had to restart three times over.
3. Well, they're kilthose. For those who know what kilthose are, I don't need to explain. For anyone not in any way shape or form connected to Scotland (even by proxy through the renfaires or whatever other folk/re-enacting you do), kilthose are the socks that men wear with their kilts, they go up to the knee and fold over.

Most kilthose is quite honestly, boring. They tend to be plain old socks that happen to go to the knee and beyond. While it works with the kilt, it bored the hell out of me. When I asked the hubby if he'd like me to knit him anything, this was the answer. Hey, at least I know he'll wear them (as opposed to the dreaded "Sweater Curse" with most significant others).

So, we have, the Infinite Kilthose:








I haven't yet written up the pattern for them... I took some of the detailing from Knitty's Clessidra pattern, but then I went in a whole different direction with them... Instead of being a top-down pattern like Clessidra, I made these a toe-up. Instead of being a heel-flap, I did a short-row heel. Instead of doing a decreasing toe with a graft, I did a short-row toe starting with a crocheted provisional cast-on, and then just picking up the stitches on the bottom of the foot. Instead of just plain ribbing, I ribbed the cuff, but then I did inside-out cables so when you fold the top down, it looks "right". I didn't do seed stitch, I added more cables than the pattern asked for, and split one of the cable patterns in two so it became individual cables on the back instead of joined cables. I did the increases up the back instead of the decreases down the sides...

Well, to be honest with you, the only thing I took from the sock was the original cabling pattern, and then I kind of played with the whole thing. Since she was inspired to create the cabling pattern from Vogue Stitchionary Vol. 2, I don't feel like I've really copied so much as been inspired by Clessidra. But I really should ask her first before I try to publish this.

These socks took me three months to complete (with brief excursions into other projects like another pair of Fiber Trends Felted Clogs just because the cabling on these socks was driving me up a wall and I needed something easy to finish.

*whew*. I'm DONE!!!!!!!

I know I really should have posted the inbetween stages, and at some point I will. However, I had put all of the pictures on the camera in stages, and then couldn't find the firewire cable to offload them. And of course, there was a whole stage in there where I couldn't find the camera. Like when I was turning the heel, dammit. *chuckle*

So, at one point, I will give *some* detail. I plan on putting together an actual pattern at some point, I need to create some charts for the back side of the leg. But in the meantime, THE SOCKS ARE DONE!!!

Time to go wash and block when I get home so he can wear them this weekend!!! It's celtic weekend at the renfaire!

My own socks

Yarn: Lion Brand Magic Stripes, brown/blue pattern
Pattern: My own basic generic sock pattern, loosely based on Knitty's Universal sock pattern.
Needles: Size 3 dpn

I did these as a toe-up pattern, cast on 32 stitches with a provisional cast-on, then did the toe as a short-row toe. When the toe was completed, I continued working in the round, K4,P4, for four rows, then switched to P4, K4 for four rows. I alternated between K4P4 and P4K4 every four rows until I reached the proper length for my husband's foot, then did a short-row heel (as per the knitty pattern), then resumed the K4P4/P4K4 alternation every four rows, for 60 rounds. Then I did a K2P2 rib for twenty rounds, bound off with a circular bind-off.

Not-So-Fair-Isle socks

It's been a while since I made these, but I never actually posted them... They were my first socks ever... Let me recommend to anyone else out there who is beginning on socks, don't start out on these. ;)

Yarn: Knit Picks Essentials in brown, and Knit Picks Essential Stripes in "Sunny Day" colorway (I think, I don't remember the exact colorway name, and it's no longer on the website).
Needles: Size 4 dpn.
Pattern: Knit Picks Not-So-Fair-Isle socks (also no longer on website, since they no longer have the essential stripes)

Okay, for never having done socks before, I don't think I did too badly... This is a fair isle type pattern, done with two different yarns (I had also never done fair isle before, go fig). It's a top-down pattern with a short-row heel and six even decreases for the toe. It took me a little while to get my tension right for the fair isle (some parts are tighter than others), but it wasn't too bad, they at least fit! :) Also, there's a hole on both socks where the short-row heel starts... I'm starting to figure out how to get rid of that problem, I'm about three pairs of socks later nowadays.

Because it's self-striping sock yarn for the carry yarn, it made for some really nice pattern and color changes without having to change the yarn! I still haven't figured out the jogless join, so the backs of these socks are a little funky right at the change in pattern, but all in all, I can't say they turned out too badly!









Not too bad... Although wearing them over the summer is something I'd rather not try, they're kind of thick, being two strands of superwash wool.

Because of the pattern, and the way the fair isle was being stretched in the bottom half of the sock, this sock actually gives kick-ass arch support! :)