Saturday Sky

It's Saturday again, & time for another Saturday Sky picture.



We had a mostly boring day here, as far as the sky is concerned. It was overcast all day, without enough of a break to make the clouds interesting. So instead, I was lucky enough to find a dove perched on my neighbor's roof, to add a little something different to this week's Saturday Sky.



I've also managed to dive into my stash of hand-dyed yarns this week, inspired by my previous post. This is "African Grey" by St Louis own Rachel of Dyeabolical Yarns. Her Etsy site is here. I'm really enjoying watching how it knits up.





What I did not so much enjoy was finding a problem several rows back on this sock. There was a stitch where I had put my needle through the yarn instead of through the loop, so a partial loop had not been picked up by the following row. I ended up frogging back several rows after taking these pictures.





This yarn is "Spiceland" from Lime & Violet's Knitters Connection series.

Two New Flickr Groups

*** Public Service Announcement ***

I was curious about what the smaller independent dyers' yarn looked like knitted up, so I searched for groups on Flickr. I found a Flickr group for socks made from yarn purchased at the Loopy Ewe, who carries the larger indie dyers, but nothing for Etsy yarn or Lime & Violet yarn.

So I have stepped into the breach to fill the void. May I present:

Esty Yarn Showcase

and

Lime & Violet Yarn In Action

Anyone with Flickr pictures of knitting/crochet using Indie Dyed/Spun Etsy yarn, or Lime & Violet yarn, please feel free to add them to the appropriate group.

Saturday Sky & Sock Progress

This post is a bit late because we had guests over for a summertime party yesterday evening.



However, that ended up working out well for Saturday Sky pictures. The blue sky with clouds one is from first thing Saturday morning, before the mad dash of extra-cleaning-for-company began. The second picture is from about 7 o'clock last night, as the intermittent drizzle was letting up. Hopefully our guest don't think I'm too nuts for grabbing my camera & catching the rainbow.








I made some sock progress since Thursday. My Regia Bamboo socks are now ready for vacation knitting, with a few rows of stockinette done to ensure that I'm happy with the needle size for the sock yarn. I really like this yarn so far. It feels similar to Sockotta, only softer.



I went ahead & started a new pair with one of the "reserve" sets of yarn & needles that I had packed away for vacation. It turns out that the just-in-case-I-finish-the-other-ones socks are leapfrogging up the queue. These are Wildfoote, in the Rapsody colorway, ribbing on size 00's as I usually start my socks.

I cast on the Wildefoote socks on my lunch hour Friday, & got quite a bit done while sitting around & talking at our party. I really like how this colorway is knitting up.



The beads in the first two sock pictures are on my new DPN holders, which I bought from 3 Owls Knitting on Etsy. I expect the holders will come in very handy on vacation, to keep the DPNs from stabbing anything else while packed away.

Summer of Socks

Today is the first day of the Summer of Socks 2007. It turns out that all of the partially knit socks which I have ready for summer vacation knitting can't count towards Summer of Socks, according to the rules.

So today I started another pair, as evidenced here. I've been itching to try out the new Regia Bamboo sock yarn, & this is the perfect excuse.



The Summer of Socks will alter my order in which I knit the vacation socks, as I'll be concentrating on the ones cast on between today & the start of vacation before the ones that I prepared this spring. (For any late-comers to my insanity, the method to my madness is that I can knit plain stockinette while riding in a car, but not much else. So if ribbing for cuffs is complete, the working the legs or feet of several socks will make the hours in the car seem worthwhile.)

Here you can see my bag packed with two sets of Sockotta socks in progress, & a couple of unstarted sets in reserve. The unstarted sets of Wildfoote & Regia will now be my "start cuffs while standing in line or otherwise waiting around" knitting between now & the commencement of intense amounts of summer vacation driving.

A Disturbance in the Force

There seems to have been a bit of a kerfuffle in KnitBlogLand recently. Curiousity got the better of me, & I've poked around a bit on other "A-List" knit blogs ("A" in this case standing more for "An extreme amount of comments every day" & not necessarily anything more than that.) There's evidently been some negative comments going around about knit podcasters, in addition to knit bloggers.

It seems some people are jealous of the commercial successes or "popularity" of others. Others perhaps are protesting the "hive mind" aspect of the internet. (Let's overlook for a minute that participating in a virtual pile on of negativity online makes one just as much part of a "hive mind" mentality, just in a different fashion.) Whatever the reason, it seems silly to waste time that would be better spent knitting typing out negative rants instead.

It seems to me that we are constantly voting online, with our time & with our dollars. The Land of Knitting is very wide, & stretches out in all directions. There are more excellent patterns & wonderful yarn than any one person can hope to use in a lifetime, even given an unlimited budget & 24 hours a day to knit. Deciding which pattern & which yarn best suits us is something that we do every day, & we don't all come to the same decisions. There is nothing wrong with that.

Not every pattern is for everyone, nor is every yarn; so why would anyone expect that every knit blog, or every knitting podcast would be for everyone? Read or listen to the ones that appeal. Drop the ones that don't. Very simple. There's enough space in KnitBlogLand for everyone.

"Read The Problem"

Or in my case, read the ENTIRE pattern. My maternal grandfather's second career was as a college math/actuarial science professor, & "Read the problem" was a famous saying of his. So famous, in fact, that his students gave him a plaque engraved with that quote.



Last week I reached the raglan shaping at the top of the sleeves that I've been working on. There's a tricky bit of shaping at the very end of the sleeves, but I managed to do it. Then I looked at the small triangle of knitting, & the next part of the instructions, & wondered how in the world I was supposed to pick up as many stitches as they said. I held the sleeve up to my arm & wondered how in the world it was supposed to be long enough at the top.



I looked at the picture of the sweater, & it didn't look like the sleeves had any problem fitting on the model; but it also looked like they couldn't possibly have started the short row shaping directly upon finishing the raglan shaping for the underarm. Then I looked more closely at the instructions. I'd made it through all the tricky shaping without any problems understanding what was meant. However, it turns out I'd skipped one very simple, but perhaps too cryptic line.



It turns out that skipping an instruction to knit 63 rows makes quite a difference. I had to frog out all the short rows & start again at the end of the raglan shaping. I wish that they'd said something like "Continue in" or "Knit established" right before the "Patt 45(47,57,67)" on that line. It would have been a bit more clear that way.




One week & a bunch more knitting later, & I'm finally at the spot that I thought I reached last week -- almost ready to start the final section of the sleeves. I hope that at least I'll be a bit quicker knitting the short rows the second time around, after having some practice.

Still Knitting, Just Not In Public

I didn't make it to World Wide Knit In Public Day at a local park this year, & I didn't make it to our Guild Potluck Luncheon on that day either.

Technically I did manage to knit in public on Saturday, though, since I worked on a sock while waiting in line during errands. I suppose I've been feeling rather wiped out & in need of a rest myself after all of the excitement around here. My son is doing much better & the surgery appears to have gone well, as far as the x-rays show. (He did take pictures of the x-rays on my cell phone, but I'll spare the world from seeing them.)

There has been knitting other than socks going on this week, for the first time in a while. It's amazing how much faster the knitting goes on size 7 needles.



About a third of the sleeves were done when I picked that project back up last week, & now I'm working on the shoulder part of them. (There's another story in there, but I'm not sure it will make it to the blog. Time's been short lately.)

I completely missed taking any Saturday Sky pictures this past weekend. To make up for that, here is a Hosta bloom instead:

Son Socks Complete!

This is most definitely some sort of record for me. My son picked the yarn out on Thursday during the day, I cast on that evening, & today I finished up the toes, Kitchenering, weaving in of ends, & everything.



Yesterday I got them to the point of being ready to work the toes. Here is the progress as of Tuesday morning.

& again just before Kitchenering










Here's a couple action shots of socks on a 13 year old. He wanted to try them on before I stitched up the toes.

He also couldn't figure out how the stripes ended up wider on the heel. That shows how much 13 year olds pay attention to their mothers, because I actually pointed it out to him while it was in progress. (I should cut him some slack though. I turned the heels in the middle of the Pokemon Marathon weekend, when he was in rather a lot of pain & not exactly paying attention to much of anything.)




Joxer also decided to get in on the modelling of socks.






Not a bad thing to show for 5 days of 24/7 being The.Mommy.On.Call. (This weekend made me remember the newborn days, let me tell you.)

Stats:

5 days from cast on to Kitchenering.
J-Knits Yarn, Colorway AC 141
Size 1 needles over 80 stitches.
Used approx. half of two different skeins. (I'll likely be able to make myself a longer pair from the leftovers.) The length of the turquoise repeat was slightly different between the skeins, but not enough for me to be concerned about it.


Verdict -- I'd heard that J-Knits yarn could be splitty. I didn't really have any problems with splitting except for with the tail of my cast on, which happens to me with lots of different yarns. I did notice that it got splitty when tinking back to catch a missed decrease. This yarn doesn't seem to react well to frogging. I'll probably knit up the rest of the J-Knits that I already have in my stash before deciding for certain whether or not to buy any more.

Impulse Sock Knitting

There's nothing like an injury to bring out the Knitting Mama impulses. I hereby present the evidence:







The yarn is J-Knits Superwash Me sock yarn, color "AC 141" purchased at Knitorious & approved of by my son as being OK for guy socks. (He requested short socks, which makes things easier for getting them done ASAP.) If you look closely, you'll notice the change in needles from the first pictures to the more recent ones. That's because I only had bamboo needles free to cast on with right away. Since snapping a couple of wooden sock needles, I've discovered I do much better with metal ones. My friend Katie was a real angel & picked up new needles for me at Chris' Needle Craft on the day of my son's surgery. (& I have to give props to the folks there as well. When I called them up asking whether I could pay for sock needles over the phone & have someone else pick them up for me, they had no problem making it happen.)



The first couple days were rough, but my son is feeling a lot better today. The surgery appears to have been successful. In the process of being on-call-24/7, I ended up watching a LOT of the Pokemon Marathon on Cartoon Network this weekend. Thank goodness for knitting, is all I can say. The Pokemon Marathon was a good distraction for my son (& it was funny to see how his view of it has changed since he watched it as a little kid.) But for me, the knitting was a great distraction from the Pokemon Marathon.

I'm liking working with the J-Knits yarn so far. It's working up nicely, feels comfortable in my hands, & makes a nice fabric. It's not as soft & luxurious feeling as the Apple Laine, but will probably hold up much better on teenage feet. Although I already had some other colors of J-Knits in my stash, this is the first pair I've started. I'm liking it so much though, that I think I need to knit up my New Mexico colorway for Gryffindor socks in time for the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows book release.



Joxer got in on the Cats With Socks theme this time. I swear that the socks are only matching the cats by accident.