Entre le chien et le loup

I once knew someone who called twilight “entre le chien et le loup”–between the dog and the wolf. It is a very French sort of thing to say; romantic and elegant-sounding, especially in French, but with only a vague sort of meaning. Vague is as vague does, and earlier this week, I began to feel ready for Autumn. I am, mentally, entre le chien et le loup, season-wise.

On the one hand, I am pulling this out of my garden:

(forgive me for all the green ones there–they were shaken loose in a windstorm earlier this week)

And on the other hand, all I can dream about is curling up with this:

Mountain Colors Bearfoot sock yarn. This is the very most specialest yarn in the whole wide world. Really.

Zimmermania… and Whiskey

Funny that Teeni should tell me to knit a blankie for Pudding… I started one the day I got her, but she has shown such a disdain for all bedding that I gave up. She far prefers to cuddle up on the carpet under the sofa. Anyway, I have finally managed to buck my months-long streak of socks-only knitting by starting a very simple sweater.

It will be a Zimmerman sweater, probably the yoke sweater from Knitting Without Tears, though I may in the end feel inspired to make it a raglan instead. Maybe I will do a little cable going up each sleeve. Maybe. For now, I’m maybe halfway to the armpits and it is just mindless, glorious, soothing knitting.

I saw this yarn a few weeks ago on Crafty Eliza’s blog and fell in love. I just can’t resist those blue-on-brown heathered tones. Yum. It is Reynolds Whiskey, color 059. This yarn is frequently cited as a substitute for Rowan Felted Tweed, and I think that gaugewise, that is about correct. It is recommended to knit it on size US5 needles. I swatched it on US5s and then, feeling suspicious, on US4s. After washing, drying, and steaming the swatches, the two swatches were hard to tell apart with regard to fabric quality. Before washing, they seemed to be too open and loose, but the yarn–yes, the yarn bloomed, mostly when it was being steamed. So everything will be hunky dory.

I am amazed by how fast knitting goes when it is straight stockinette and one never has to turn the work or re-arrange two sets of circular needles. I think that this whole sweater will involve approximately as much knitting effort as two pairs of socks, for me. Let’s hope it will be worth it!

Twelfth Night

Goodness. So much to catch up on here, dears. It is Twelfth Day, so it is high time to finish out all of the holiday blogging and buckle back down to business.

First of all, on Christmas Eve, as soon as I had finished the Monkey Socks I cast on for a new pair, using some of my brand-spanking-new Raven Clan yarn from Blue Moon Fiber Arts. This colorway is “Rook-y”, and it is glorious. Sometimes I hanker for numinous, ethereal pastels–sometimes I hanker for riotous brights–but now, in the cold and dark of midwinter, I hanker for magical blacks.

The stitch is just perfect–it is called Embossed Stitch, and it’s easy as punch.

Rows 1-2: P, K
Rows 3-4: K3, P
Rows 5-6: P, K
Rows 7-8: K, P, (K3, P) across

My Christmas cactus wasn’t quite blooming for Christmas, but it was full-blown for the New Year. This cactus was given to me in a dormitory holiday gift exchange during my second freshman year. At one point, I picked off two leaves to keep for myself and gave the plant to a friend. In the years and years since then, those two leaves have grown back into a new cactus. I will repot it, as soon as the blossoms die off.

Having some time ago acquired all three kinds of cup-and-saucer sets (coffee cups, tea cups, breakfast cups), I decided that I want to branch out into tea glasses. As far as I know there are three kinds of tea glasses. Russian tea glasses sit in metal holders; Turkish tea glasses are hourglass-shaped and come with saucers; and Moroccan tea glasses…

… are fabulous. Colored glass and a riot of complicated patterns? Yes please! My ADD aesthetic just can’t resist. The glasses were a Christmas present, and the silver teapot I bought with Christmas money from my grandmother. I need to give a Middle Eastern dinner party, with my hummus and falafel and kofte and tzatziki, and end it with these glasses full of mint tea, and broiled figs in honey and orange blossom sauce. Mmmmm.

My other favorite present this year was an apple peeler/corer/slicer. I first saw one of these on Yarnstorm Jane’s blog, and I mean, come on? Who wouldn’t want one of these? You put the apple on…

… crank it through to the end…

… and end up with an apple Slinky toy!

Jane observed that, since she had gotten one of these, her family had been eating more apples–which is certainly true of me, also. The machine is so fabulous and works so well, and for whatever reason, I find it so much more gratifying to eat the rings of apple and then nibble on the ribbon of peel, than to bite into a whole piece of fruit. Well. Anyway.

Last night, I had some friends over to watch a movie and to get Pudding used to having company (and let me tell you, nothing arrests the attention of a party like a cat emerging from under the sofa), and one friend is just back from The Boonies of Saskatchewan. My parents had their fishing cabin in The Boonies for years, but it was a well-and-gravel-pile kind of Boonies, which is hardly the Boonies at all. These Saskatchewan Boonies were the haul-water-and-chop-wood kind of Boonies, which is serious business. Anyway. After two weeks of chopping wood and, when he had spare time, baking, said friend is back and distributing such fabulous and exotic curiosities that I can’t hold them back from you. Falafel and tzatziki? Boring stuff.

Behold the Butter Tart. I knew they existed but had never had one before.

And behold the Plum Pudding. Yes, the boiled kind. Can you believe it? I haven’t ever had this before, either.

Now, on to what you all really care about: Pudding.

She’s doing fine. She is settling in. Every day brings something new, sometimes adorable and sometimes not. Pudding claws the furniture for the first time; Pudding has a hairball for the first time; Pudding eats packing tape and horks it up for the first time; Pudding goes to the vet for the first time. On the other hand, there has also been Pudding flops on her back to get her belly scratched; Pudding touches noses with me; Pudding sits outside my bedroom door waiting for me to come out; Pudding falls asleep on my lap. You know. Shucks. I’m really rather fond of her.

I think she’s a keeper.

Christmas eve, new socks

Merry Christmas, everybody! It isn’t seasonally relevant, but I finished a pair of socks today…

These are knit with the lace pattern from the Monkey Socks on Knitty. I did them toe-up, though, with my own Turkish cast-on and short row heels. I also did a picot hem, because that seems to be the thing to do. Size 0 needles. Yarn is Claudia Hand Painted Fingering, in Twilight. So glad to have these done!

Next up: embossed stitch socks in Rook-y. Yay!

Little Pink Socks!

I am good knitter! I finish socks!

Elfine’s Socks, knit in Socks That Rock “Rhodonite” on US1/2.25mm circular needles, toe-up, Turkish cast on, foot worked over 61 stitches, short-row heel done without redistributing stitches… is there anything I’m forgetting?

Oh yes: I love my little pink socks little pink socks.

Have started the next pair: toe-up Monkey socks, in Claudia Handpaints “Twilight”. Hooray!

Jammies & Na-X-Y-Mo

November! It’s November! And that means it really is the chilly season. October, even, is iffy around here–but November is always cold. What a relief to have the whole changing-of-season suspense out of the way. The Fall colors are beautiful right now, and temperatures have been hitting freezing at night. Time for new pajamas!

Yep. Target is my bestest pajama friend. Besides these wonderful starry lovelies, I got some pajama pants that are going to look smashing with my Silk Garden #84 sweater. I mean… red and pink and orange go together no matter what, right?

I’m not sure that you actually want to see my belly button, but you do want to see the fluffy pink ribbon at the waist.

The Little Pink Sock is progressing nicely. I knit all the way through Pride & Prejudice and am now trying to decide what to go for next: The Dickens Collection, which is long and pleasantly boring and probably not worth keeping one’s eyes on, but very little of which I have seen before, so I’m not sure that not keeping my eyes on it is a good idea. Or, Our Mutual Friend, also longish and which I have seen many times… possibly enough that I wouldn’t mind keeping my eyes on the lace chart while I listen to it. Hmmm. Dunno.

Okay. First, random answers to things:

1) The red “brain” flowers at my dinner party are colloquially called coxcomb, apparently.
2) One should carve up pumpkins and squash using the kiddie pumpkin carving tools, not big butcher knives and cleavers. Interesting.
3) My little pink sock is being knit out of Socks That Rock “Rhodonite.” It’s still discontinued, but now we have a name for it.
4) It is possible to play mahjong with two or three players, it just isn’t traditional to do so. With each player you subtract from the standard four, gameplay gets a little less interesting.
5) My blog has received over 200 hits in the last two hours, none of them from identified sources. Is it some kind of feeble denial-of-service attack?

Second, announcements about November: I have added three Alongs to my side bar.

The first is NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, which I am participating in for the first time this year. The concept is easy: write a novel of 50,000 words in the month of November. Yes, I am sure I can do it. No, you can’t read it.

The second is its under-achieving cousin, NaBloPoMo, National Blog Posting Month. To qualify for this, one has only to post to one’s blog every day in November. I have already disqualified myself here, though I have a personal blog elsewhere that will qualify. So there.

Third but not least is NaKniSweMo (or NaNoSweMo… or NaSweKniMo… no one is sure), National Sweater Knitting Month. My cousin’s wife had a baby boy yesterday, and I’m sure that he needs a Weasley sweater, and it’s possible that I will knit it in November… but don’t hold your breath. Just as (un)likely is that I will finish an Hourglass sweater I started last year at this time. We’ll see.

Happy November! I’m off to knit.

Little pink sock little pink sock!

Okay, I have to confess it. I know that Mutts is one of the most maligned comic strips on the market, but I think it’s charming.

On Friday night, my knitting mojo had a major crisis. I have been trying–really I have–to get started on the second of a pair of Sockotta socks for the Pay It Forward swap. Unfortunately, I keep doing the toe wrong. It’s disheartening to work a toe and then have to rip it out, because toes are… you know… one of the two times in a sock that you have to pay attention. It’s hard on a girl to knit a whole toe, and be looking forward happily to several inches of completely mindless instep, only to realize that she’s done it wrong again and has to rip and do a hard part again.

So I had been focusing on a stripey Noro scarf instead. I make at least one, usually two, stripey Noro scarves every Fall. I do 4×4 ribbing with two skeins of the same color, alternating every other row. I use a total of four skeins. The result is impressive and extremely giftable. It’s also frustrating knitting because, while the colors of Noro are impressive, the color changes are very… very… very slow. One is wanting the color to change a good half-hour before it actually does. Disheartening.

So on Friday night I ripped through my bags of yarn (and I don’t have the shelves yet, so my craft room is still a plastic-bagged chaos…. disheartening) looking for something that I felt must be there. Something bright and lovable and inspiring.

I found it. Oh, how I found it. And I am totally in love, and was totally on the sofa all evening knitting away with joy in my heart. Oh, little pink sock little pink sock… I love you.

Pattern: Elfine’s Socks by Anna Bell of My Fashionable Life
Yarn: Something discontinued by Blue Moon Fiber Arts. Sorry!

Socktoberfest

Hey everyone, why didn’t you alert me? We are already on the fourth day of Socktoberfest! Time’s a-wastin. Time to start knitting socks like you mean it.

This Socktober, however, I would feel negligent if I was to give in to my base instincts and start any new pairs of socks. You see… I have orphans around the house. Five of them.

Left: an unknown colorway of Sockotta. When made into a pair, will be the second for the Pay It Forward swap
Right: Sweet Georgia’s sock yarn in “Velvet Underground,” knit as Jaywalkers

Left: Lang JaWoll, knit in the Embossed Leaves pattern
Right: Koigu, knit in a lace pattern from Sensational Knitted Socks by Charlene Schurch. Um… yes, this is in fact the Rivendell sock. I had forgotten that I never finished the pair. I think it is a monument to optimism, my forgetting.

And my Albatross sock, Koigu knit in a fishtail lace pattern. How many years has this sock been on the needles? A couple, at least. How sad.

So, here is my Socktoberfest program: knit only mates to these orphans. If I stick to that, then I will be free to start a fresh pair on November 1. Sound like a plan?

Cuppa sock

So, who’s up for a steaming hot cup of socks?

The second of this pair had been hanging on my needles for what seems like weeks–at least two weeks I know. They needed about eight rows and the bind-off. And I just couldn’t get around to it… between evenings when I’m barely home at all, evenings when I’m busy at home, evenings when after sitting at a desk all day I can’t bear to sit on the sofa at all, and evenings spent knitting the fifth in my series of stripey Kureyon scarves. But last night, last night was the night. Time to let these babies go. Time to start fresh. Time to get ready for… Socktoberfest.

My standard toe-up recipe socks with Turkish cast on and short row heels. K2P2 ribbing. Knit on 2.25mm Inox circulars out of an unknown flavor of Regia sock yarn. What is exciting about this pair?

It is going to the first of my Pay It Forward Swap buddies, that’s what.

I was very disappointed with the slow uptake on this swap. I suppose it’s because people had to sign up to send out three things while knowing they would receive only one. To make the swap/meme grow, though, early adopters need to make this sacrifice. It took a full week to get three people to sign up, on my blog, and I believe that at least one of those people never got all of her own slots filled. So I feel like being generous and encouraging and sending out something decadent. There it is: it will be socks all ’round.

Teeni has tagged me for the Thankful meme, which I will post this weekend or earlier this week. I need to think about it… to categorize it… to sort and organize and classify and re-arrange it. Hey. That’s my job.

Rockin’ girl blogger

Die Trude has named me a Rockin’ Girl Blogger, though without the pink badge. That’s okay. One of the other bloggers she named is Yarnstorm Jane, which is the first time I’ve been put in a category with her (except that it turns out we know some of the same people IRL, strangely enough). Thank you, Trude!

It’s not my only knitting celebrity contact of the day. On Ravelry, Knotology Ivete friended me, I think because of my Koigu socks. You know the girl can’t resist a good glass of Koigu. Since both my kitchen and my sewing room are unusable, and I can only knit new socks so fast, let’s do a retrospective of My Very Best Koigu Socks.

Smashed Berries socks. One of my favorite tricks for making a pair of socks special is to do baby cables just around the cuffs.

Rivendell socks, so named because the colors and the pattern reminded me of the Rivendell sets in The Fellowship of the Ring: ethereal green and brown, graceful arches pouring one out of another. This pattern is one of my all-time favorites. It is in Charlene Schurch’s first collection of sock patterns. Mmm.

And last, what I think really are my favorite pair of socks knit to date, the Old China socks. I collect blue-and-white china, and I love sentimental Victorian writing, so you can imagine how delighted I was on the day when I discovered Charles Lamb’s essay Old China. I think he must have been a good man, you know? Anyway, this pattern is also Charlene Schurch’s, slightly modified to have seed stitch between the fat cables.

Mmmm. Koigu. All of this is making my fingers itchy.

Pink and orange and brown

Second shinkendo class tonight. Rawr. It’s fun, but it does eat up the evening.

Color evolution. We moved through pink and black to pink and brown, sidestepped to pink and duck-egg blue, then went back to pink and brown and added cream to the mix (and sometimes a little green).

At this point, the evolution split. Pink and cream and brown has evolved into red and cream and brown, but also–for you people who like that sort of thing–pink and orange and brown.

Wellll, okay. I can see where you’re coming from. These cuts from Anna Griffin’s Evelyn collection have more of a salmon color than orange, really. The salmony orange gives the whole collection a nice “zing” that it wouldn’t have otherwise. Because it doesn’t match anything else in my house, I am keeping it out of quilts, but I did buy these small pieces for crafts projects.

And then there is the sock yarn. On the left, a Regia yarn, on the right, a Sockotta. The Regia has added gold to the mix, in what I interpret as a flagrant throwback to the 1970s. I dunno. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to decide how I feel about this color combination as I knit the socks, and I think that I like it.

The Sockotta, though you can hardly see it in the picture, has purple in addition to the other colors. I have already knit one sock but cannot for the life of me find it anywhere. I think it must be in one of the enormous 20-gallon ziploc bags, but no amount of digging around in those has revealed it. Oh well. Adding purple makes the combination mellow. I like it, too.

Oofa. And now I’m going to collapse into bed… after taking some anti-inflammatories. Most of those sword angles are seriously not natural.

Brown and white and red (and yellow)

Eeeeeeeek! I have Peppermint Mocha socks!!!

They’re thick and squishy, droopy and down at the heel. I like them very much. Aren’t the colors scrumptious? I really can’t decide if they’re actually peppermint mocha, or if they’re cranberries and eggnog and gingerbread. What do you think? Anyway, they’re practically edible, and they were a treat to knit.

Claudia Handpaints Sport Shorts in “Peppermint Mocha,” two hanks. Heel-toe number 8, increase to 44 sts around. Size US3 needles. Colorway exclusive to The Loopy Ewe.

I’m all revved up about brown and red and white, now. I’ve been getting packages in the mail all week:

First the red half-yard cuts from Maison de Noel, to add to all of the other colorsways that I already had. I don’t really know what I was thinking, because I’m still going to make a queen-size quilt with the brown, cream, pink, and green, and there will be precious little left over. But it was a moment of weakness, and my collector’s spirit took over. It makes a nice picture, doesn’t it?

Fat quarter bundles of Roman Holiday, from The Fat Quarter Shop. I know precisely what I’m going to do with these: make a quilt of red and brown eight-pointed stars, widely set in a cream-on-cream ground. It will be stark and beautiful, but warm at the same time. Now… um… me setting in those squares and triangles? Pray for me, dear readers. It will be a challenge.

The bundle of Ellery fat quarters from Shabby Fabrics, in brown and red and yellow. What do I have up my sleeve for this? Oh, I’m so glad you asked, because when I ordered this I didn’t have any ideas, but as soon as I unwrapped it, it became clear. My study has yellow walls, right? And a red carpet, right? And will be filled with paintings of autumnal woodlands? Well hello, I obviously need to make some patchwork cushion covers out of this fabric! It’s perfect! Hooray, hooray, hooray.

Because the peanut gallery demands it, a picture of The Study In Progress. Behold the Deskosaurus. Behold the Billy bookshelves. Behold the blank expanse of yellow wall, where Moran’s Autumnal Woods will someday hang. Happy sigh.

Color evolution

I have been knitting a lot and reading knitblogs for almost three years, now (my official anniversary is sometime around Labor Day, when my mother gave me a sweater’s worth of Cascade 220 and a copy of Vogue Magazine. I still have not finished that sweater). In that time, I have seen slow shifts in taste with regard to color, and I think it’s fascinating to watch.

For example. Three years ago when I started this, the fashion world was in the grip of the Pink And Black thing. Suddenly all pinstripes in women’s clothing were pink. You know what I’m talking about, and you still have a pair of those trousers in your wardrobe. It was the rebirth of pink–its re-inauguration, after who knows how many years (because I don’t remember it ever before in my lifetime) of being on the no-no list for everyone over six years of age. I’m so glad that pink came back.

Then the black turned into brown. Pink and brown was hot. Two collections of Charleston fabric in brown and pink sold out practically before they hit shelves, and I’d bet that 50% of Moda lines produced from then till this day have brown and pink as two of the colorways. I like brown and pink. You know I do.

Duck-egg blue and brown was the side note. It is still the side note. Cite my “Lucy” socks, as well as my as-yet-unblogged Three Planned Sweaters From Rowan Yarn, which are all blue and brown. Charleston III was blue and brown (and it was shocking, and IV is back to pink and brown). I guess that the blue and brown is for people who never fully embraced the Pink Revolution? Well, yes, I guess.

At some point, green became an acceptable addition to the pink and brown pair, and it was tempered with cream to create good value contrast among the colorways in Moda lines. I like this. I see it as a sort of Autumn/Wintry variation on the cheerful pink and green of my bedroom quilt. I have plans for this Maison de Noel fabric–I’m going to make a “spider web” quilt out of it. It will be super-cool and it will be easy, you’ll see. Some day I’ll do it. Some day… when I finally unpack the box that has my rotary cutter in it. Sigh.

What I left out of my order for this collection was the Berry colorway, a nice deep jewel-tone red. Unsurprisingly, I left it out because I was behind the ball. Moda was on the ball. They saw the next color evolution coming. And the next evolution? Well yeah, you know. Pink and brown and cream… and red. I’ve waxed lyrical about it already, and shown you pictures of sock yarn. What I haven’t told you yet is that…

I got my hands on some of the Claudia Handpaints colorway “Peppermint Mocha,” which is exclusive to The Loopy Ewe. I’d previously bemoaned being unable to buy it. I had previously been close-minded. Turns out that there is… or at least was… plenty of it sport-weight. I soooooooo ordered.

I like the obvious textile-as-food association with Christmas: striped red and white peppermint candy, also brown mocha with a little tan foam on the top. Mmmmm. I really like the color combination, though. The red is brighter than I had imagined it being–the browns are not as deep–but it’s growing on me, especially as I knit it up into a pair of very thick and squishy bedsocks:

Aren’t they great? This red-brown-pink-cream thing is really wonderful. I like it so very much that I’ve ordered a few short pieces of the Maison de Noel Berry colorway, and also was one of the two lucky people who caught the Yuletide Blessings fat quarter clearance at ShabbyFabrics:

As with the yarn, the reds are brighter and the brown not as brown… in fact, it’s almost an olive here. I am thinking of making a lap quilt of tiny eight-pointed stars in these fabrics, separated by a cream-on-cream print. I am all about high-contrast motifs on neutral-on-neutral backgrounds, right now, and also all about matching socks to quilts, especially since these color vogues are developing so interestingly. In fact, there is a further evolution that I will blog about tomorrow…

Get ready for pink-brown-orange.

“Lucy” socks

Thanks for the catfish love, especially from Deutschenblogger Trude and from Teeni, who is the world’s most diplomatic vegan

I don’t have much today, folks. I did finally get my Billy bookshelves from IKEA, so tonight’s project will be putting them together and maybe, if I am very lucky, unpacking my books (hooraaaaaaaaay). I did, however, figure out that I can pull a Wendy and knit while on my lunch break. So I finished another pair of simple socks in Socks That Rock Lightweight “Lucy.”

Nothin’ to ‘em. I did the Turkish cast on with twelve wraps instead of fourteen, because this seemed thicker than my usual sock yarn–and it was. I only needed to increase to 56st around, instead of my usual 64. They didn’t go particularly faster than other socks, though. Something about knitting pure merino sock yarn is like walking in sand–slowgoing, if not unpleasurable. I used 2.25mm needles as usual.

This is a lovely colorway, with shades of brown and duck-egg blue. It is named after Wendy’s cat Lucy, of course. Lucy is a ragdoll. I am sort of thinking about getting a cat… and sort of thinking about getting a ragdoll from a reputable breeder. I have no problem with American shorthairs–especially of the tuxedo and ginger variety–but I have so little free time at home that dealing with a problem cat is not an option. A cat from a reputable breeder would be well-behaved and housetrained. And so, so pretty. At my old house, my usual walk took me past the residence of a Persian with sealpoint coloring and blue eyes and oh my, what a beautiful beautiful cat it was.

New sock already cast on, this time in a very seventies colorway of Opal. It’s groovy.

Sock dreams

One of the fun things about WordPress is that it comes equipped with all kinds of statistic counters; who came, from where, and what they did here. Watching the reactions to posts is like running my own sociology experiment. I have learned that Sundays are slow no matter what, that big pictures are better than small ones, that finished objects are better than raw materials or possessions, and that people like instructions for how to make the things being discussed. What trumps all of this, though, is to post something pretty on a shared blog. My blog’s two “best” days are yesterday, with the pictures of my quilt and afghan which I posted to the Crochet Along, and the day I finished the Tranquil Retreat afghan, posted to Granny Along. And those are my observations so far!

Second day on the job was nicer than the first. The supervisor who frightened me yesterday was calmer today, and I have a long(er) term project to keep me busy now. When trapped at a desk, busy is better. The job is a computer research one–it’s funny how I got the Ph.D. so I would have the flexibility of a professorship, but ended up with a full time job anyway.

But I got to come home to this lovely stash of stuff. Ohhhh, I am on a Sock Kick no doubt. Here is the accompanying yarn porn.

Shelridge Farms Soft Touch Ultra in “Sand” and “Cajun Spice.” Can I eat it? No, but I can smell it and kiss it. I am going to use it to knit at least one–and maybe two–pairs of Welsh Stockings, which will be knit to my own usual specifications, in order to look like Nancy Bush’s socks of the same name. Several years ago I had a machine-made pair of socks in this pattern, and they were my favorites. They made my toes look like rabbit ears. Or something. Anyway, they’ll be great I promise.

This is Artyarns Ultramerino4 #130. Um, hello? Pink and brown and white? Yes please! While Claudia Handpaints “Peppermint Latte” and “Strawberry Latte” remain sold out on The Loopy Ewe, I will console myself with this. And also with…

… this pile of Lang JaWoll. I think I am going to knit socks with tesselating stripes out of this, like the Turkish heart crook pattern, but with one side of the hearts turned around to make waves instead. Mmmmm. Almost as good as that Peppermint Latte yarn. Not quite, but close. Now those, I will definitely try to eat. I’m sorry. A girl can only display so much self-restraint.

All of this yumminess comes from Simply Sock Yarn, which has great customer service and very fast shipping.

I’m a little teapot (1)

The Cup’a Tea? group at Ravelry is currently trying to organize a tea cozy knit-along, and I am soooooooo in. Do you see this sad, naked teapot?

I have three other teapots that all have pretty blue-and-white designs painted on. Unfortunately, they’re all smallish four- or six-cup jobs, and sometimes… well, sometimes a girl holds a real tea party where the people really want tea and sympathy. That calls for a larger pot, and that’s why I have this naked one. It’s a ten- (or twelve?) cupper, the largest I could find.

Doesn’t it look happier already? That’s because I have made good beginning progress on the “I’m a Little Teapot” tea cozy, designed by June Dickinson for Two Swans Yarns.

You can still buy it on their website. When I ordered it, I was able to order as a kit with the two balls of Jamieson Spindrift, in any two colors I wanted. I settled on red and white because my kitchen things are blue and red and pink, and I thought that blue-and-white should be reserved for my dishes and that the pink wouldn’t have enough contrast. Little did I know that this color arrangement would mean the cozy also matched my guest bedroom. I’m so smart.

I am paying close attention to yarn dominance for this one, because it’s so important that the text be legible. Yarn dominance has been discussed by the ever-helpful Nona (I just love her. I lived by her articles on short rows for several months, until I got things figured out for myself). It has also been referred to by the ever-elegant Eunny Jang, before she stopped blogging and went for the big time. Gosh I miss her blog.

I am making good progress so far, and my tension is passable. My only major mistake so far is that I’ve knitting it on slippery KnitPicks needles. If I had some bamboos, I’d use those instead… things are awfully slippery right now, and a ham-fisted two-color-knitter doesn’t need slippery.

Boxes and sockses

Before I wax lyrical on today’s topic: I’d like to thank everyone who leaves kind comments on this blog. I enjoy what I do enough that I think I’d blog if no one was paying attention, but the attention is very, very nice. Thanks.

These pictures are a wonderful representation of my life right now. Boxes, boxes, boxes… and sockses. In the past three years I have become completely incapable of watching television without having something to keep my hands busy. Blame television writers for not doing their job properly–even when I’m watching something that I feel deserves my undivided visual attention, like a new episode of The Power of Art, I get twitchy and bored without yarn in my hands.

Tranquil Retreat is a lovely finished object, but I couldn’t watch the TV at all while I worked on it. Instead, I listened to forty-eight episodes of Mythbusters and Dirty Jobs while I worked on it, which is okay, because they were all reruns. Now that I’m done with it, suddenly stockinette socks have begun to drip off my needles. I can knit stockinette without looking, so it lets me watch TV. I can even re-shuffle my knitting needles for the next round, without looking. I am a hardened sock knitter. The yarn is Trekking XXL #100, by the way.

In the comments, Maizee wanted to know more about the Turkish cast on that I think is so great. Well, it’s really great if you are knitting on two circular needles or on Magic Loop. It’s a completely seamless cast-on for toe-up socks, it’s easy as punch, and there is a really great tutorial with photos on FluffyDebKnitter’s blog. Her tutorial is so good that I ain’t got nothin’ to add, except that unlike her, I don’t undo the starting slip knot, I just knit it like a regular stitch. Which makes the cast-on even easier.

The only drawback to the Turkish cast on that I can think of is that it is only appropriate for a small number of stitches. I cast on with fourteen wraps, which works just fine. Once upon a time though, I tried to knit a wash bag by using the Turkish cast-on to start with a hundred wraps, and it got very messy very fast. If you want to make a similar cast on for such a large number of stitches, I suggest that you investigate the figure-eight cast on that Wendy described for Knitty. This cast-on is exactly the same as the Turkish, except that the figure-eight around the needles makes it necessary to knit one of the two first rows–and I could never figure out which–through the back loops, so the stitches won’t be twisted. I would never use the figure-eight for something as short as a sock toe. I would never (again) use the Turkish for something as large as a wash bag.

And here is a small, tragic portrait of some of yesterday’s packing. Tata, Ted. I’ll see you on the other side. Don’t look at me like that.

Sunset in yarn

Everyone, I am sure, is aware that there are lots and lots of sock yarns available. There are pure wools and pure merinos, alpaca blends and cashmere blends, nylon-reinforced and modal-reinforced (or are they the same thing?), cotton and bamboo and soy, elastic and sparkly and DK. There are solid colors, kettle-dyed semisolids, self-striping and self-jacquarding, random dyed with short or long lengths of each color… in short, there is a sock yarn for everyone.

This one, though, is my favorite. Not this colorway necessarily–though it’s fun–but Trekking XXL’s yarns with plies that change color individually. I just love wool and nylon sock yarn. It’s so crunchy and happy and wholesome. I have knit with merino sock yarn, and while the final fabric is nice and smooth, it somehow… lacks something, for me. It’s a little too refined, a little too smooth.

I just love the independently dyed plies for obvious reasons–if I ever take up spinning, it will be so that I can make my own barber-pole sock yarn. Given that I’ve so far resisted that particular hobby, however, Trekking XXL is my yarn of choice for the present. There is absolutely no repeat of the color changes, so you don’t have to worry about matching or not matching your socks. And the results remind me of pointillist paintings…

The Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli near Assisi by Cross. Source: Carol Gerten’s Fine Art, cgfa.sunsite.dk/

Like this one, by Cross. I wish I could find some lovely Trekking in aqua and orange and yellow, like this. It would be like knitting a sunset. And speaking of sunsets, the overall effect of large sections of the yarn also reminds me of Turner, who will be the subject of next week’s The Power of Art

The Burning of the Houses of Parliament by Turner. Source: Carol Gerten’s Fine Art, cgfa.sunsite.dk/

As I knit along, in plain stockinette because darlings–I just don’t have It together enough to do anything more complicated right now–I sometimes find that I have just knitted up my own lovely impressionist painting. Here, for example, I see a sunset above water. Do you?

I am knitting my standard sock pattern here, after the experimentation with the Lemon Lavender & Lime Opal. I use a Turkish cast-on, which is so simple that I just don’t understand why everyone doesn’t use it… you just wrap the yarn around and around both needles and then start knitting. Anyway, I cast on 14 stitches on each of my two circular needles, increase at both ends of every needle on every row until I have 24 on each needle, then only every other row until there are 32 on every needle. When it’s time for the heel, I transfer six stitches from one to the other, and work the heel over 38 stitches so it’s nice and deep. I finish the cuff in whatever way I want. And that’s my sock recipe. So soothing. Even the short-row heels are starting to seem easy, after a couple of years of practice.

In current events: first of all, Leisure Arts Maggie left a comment that Rose Cottage Afghans is definitely available from the Leisure Arts website, so order with confidence. Second, I got my invitation to Ravelry. I guess it means I am one of the cool kids now?

Lemon lime & lavender

Does anyone remember that I knit? Do I?

Yeah, I do. I finished this pair last night, rather than wrestle with the teenytiny crochet hook and needle (and I think that framing the doily and putting it on the wall is the right thing to do with it, you know). This is Opal somethingorother that my mother bought in Germany. It is pas distingee I know, but these were experimental socks.

Both socks in this pair were knit toe-up. You see the heels? I hope you do, I almost fell over posing for this picture. You see the heels? One is knit with my usual short-row heel, the other is knit in a toe-up heel flap, specifically the one described in the Widdershins pattern from Knitty. It was an interesting exercise and has very nice-looking results, but I’m afraid I’m going to keep on with my short-row heels in future. There is far too much forethought and memorizing involved in the heel flap, for the project to be portable for me. I’ve got the short-row down, and that’s what I’m sticking with.

It uses less yarn, too, you can see. And since I work it over 38 stitches of a 64 stitch sock, it’s nice and deep to accomodate my arches. I use the Turkish cast-on, by the way, which is so very easy and so very beautiful, and 2.25mm/US1 Inox needles, two 24″ circulars. I personally cannot prevent laddering on dpns, and with two circulars, there are fewer transitions between needles. Is good.