KnitMe

OK, so...

Where were we? I can't remember.

I think I had started this when I last posted. It's now a pair of socks.

I had almost completed the entire foot of the first sock, and was ready to graft the toe, when I realized that something had been wrong with the pattern back where you start the heel flap. There was no way to follow the directions exactly and end up with the numbers of stitches that you were supposed to have on the foot, and I had 5 or 6 stitches too many and they were all on the instep. Frog, frog. This troubled me exceedingly, because this pattern has been knitted by a lot of people, and there were no errata or any hints that anything was wrong with the pattern. I made up a solution for myself by increasing the number of stitches that went into the heel flap, and went ahead. Meantime I mailed Anne via Ravelry and it turned out I was right, there were a couple of mistakes in the pattern that nobody else had run across. So, there is an updated version of the pattern, errata in my Ravelry project notes, and notes on the pattern page on Ravelry.

Her corrections are not exactly the same as what I did, but I am satisfied with my solution too, so I kept it as is.

These socks will probably fall down all the time, but they are beautiful and I loved working with the merino/bamboo yarn.

I rummaged among the sock stash and came up with my next project. I went back to the Cat Bordhi book and started the Ridgeline architecture. At the front of the Ridgeline chapter, she has a sock "for the independent knitter," and although I don't think of myself as such, it gave me an idea. I am running a panel of 'gullwing' lace up the front of the socks in the hope it will look a little like laces. We'll see.

The yarn is Casapa, an alpaca/cashmere blend from yarn4socks.com. It is a little thicker than standard sock yarn, but I am using size 1 needles anyway to get a more durable fabric than that blend might ordinarily produce.

This time, I am going to use some 'J' stitches to make the instep fit me better. After two other toe-up socks from this book I think I need just that little extra ease there.

Not long after that photo was taken, I turned the heel and found out it was too short. I think the value of 'E' is problematic for me, too, and I need to make 'E' a little larger than my calculations based on row gauge suggest. So, rip rip rip, and knit more toe before beginning the lace and increases. I seem to be having to do lots of repeat knitting on socks this summer.

I finished Baltic Blossom this past week.

This was really not a difficult knit at all, despite the nupps - if you make the stitches very loose, and use a crochet hook on the purl side, there's nothing to it.

I blocked it pretty severely, as the Tessyarns fingering weight merino seemed particularly elastic and springy. I'm sure the next time I pick it up to put it on, it will suddenly be a shoulder shawl, but for now it's pretty nice.

I had a little issue with this pattern too - what IS it with me? The written directions for the edging appear to be correct - if you look closely at the pattern photo you can see a couple of purl ridges - but the edging chart would never lead to the result you would get from the written instructions. The chart makes it look like all the wrong side rows are knitted, and I wanted to be very sure before I changed from a stockinette shawl body to a garter stitch edging, so when I got to the first WS row on the edging I read the written directions. They said, "K2, purl to last 2, K2." I thought - OK then, the chart is just misleading and the WS rows are meant to be purled. I then paid no further attention to the written instructions.

I peeked at them again when I had done about 9 of the 12 edging rows, and then I saw that for 2 or 3 of the WS rows only, you are supposed to knit on the wrong side. Oops. Well, I wasn't going to go back and do it over, and I like how it looks (especially in such a busy yarn), but beware of the edging chart as it does not match the written directions.

I finished spinning a third bobbin of the blue colonial fiber, but it isn't plyed yet. I do have a little dyeing to report. I had snagged two skeins of wool/cashmere undyed yarn from Elann recently, and I decided to dye them with the garnet Cushing acid dye I had lying around. I mixed up a dyepot and put in the yarn, and immediately saw that I had way too much dyestock for the little amount of yarn. So I ran and wetted down the two skeins of suri/merino I had recently finished spinning to see what would happen if I overdyed the sort of caramel brown that does nothing for me. They didn't get to soak as long as necessary, so they didn't take up the dye as evenly as I'd have liked, but I do like what happened to the color.

On the left, the yarn that had started out undyed and white, The color in the photo is pretty close to the real color the yarn came out, it's a very nice shade.

On the right are the two skeins of overdyed alpaca. As you can see they didn't take up the dye evenly. The skein on the right is a better representation of the sort of auburn shade that they turned out to be. Not bad. Still too brown for me, but not bad.

More socks

I'm sort of into Year 2 on the sock fixation. I have so much pretty sock yarn that I constantly have a sock in the works.

I finished these last week.

I used the 'Master Upstream' pattern from Cat Bordhi's book, and after I rejoined and knit an inch at the ankle I increased to 64 stitches to use feather and fan for the leg. They fit pretty well - a tiny tad snug going over the heel. I am thinking I need to use the 'J' stitches in the toe-up socks from that book.

I decided I was a bit weary of having to think about my socks, so I started a pair where someone else will tell me what to do. These are the 'Ceilidh Socks' from Anne at Wooly Wonka Fibers.

This pattern up the front is one we've probably all seen a thousand times if we've flipped through a Barbara Walker treasury. Anne uses it to mimic the lacings of a girl's pair of soft shoes for Irish/Scottish dancing. I think it looks neat.

The yarn is merino, bamboo, and nylon, and it is lovely to knit and has a slight crispness and shine.

I have been working for a couple of weeks on the 'Baltic Blossom' shawl from Evelyn Clark's website. This yarn is some Tess supermerino fingering weight yarn I bought at Stitches East two years ago - it's lovely springy merino and it probably will refuse to take a block - but I will try. The pattern is easy (if you've made one nupp you've made them all - use a crochet hook on your wrong side rows). The yarn is way more brightly colored than I expected it to be in the hank but I think it will look pretty when it's done and be very wearable.

You can see the yarn in the hank in this photo, draped across the top.

I'm nearly done with my Cotlin hand towels, I putz with these when I don't feel like doing anything else, and I got a lot done on the day I had jury duty last month.

I plyed a whole bunch this weekend, but the yarn is not ready for its photo op yet...