Start-o-rama, it's start-o-riffic

Uptown Boot Socks!



Pomatomous!

I've felt a bit like a jerk, noting in Ravelry the difficulty level of each of my projects, not a single one of which has broken the medium-easy mark. WELL.



It's not purling seven together through the back loop in chunky weight, but it takes just about all the concentration I've got. And there's little in life that's more fun than sitting in a coffee shop, zoning out for 45 minutes (or maybe that was 3 hours... hard to tell) with your iPod on and digging in to a 22-row repeat. Well, okay, little in my life.

Koigu Socks!



Koigu is nice. I'm hatching plans to try some more in solid colorways.

And to bring up the rear in this cast-on-a-thon, I now have a big stack of Cascade 220 Superwash in scarlet and gray. For a year 3-4 house scarf for Brother #1. Pictures of that tomorrow.

Three, three, three, three, three, three, three, three, three

Start-o-rama it is! I am holed up with yarn and a laptop, and almost done with Uptown Boot Sock #1. I would show you a picture, but I have no camera with me, or way to get existing pictures onto the computer, so, no pictures. Just words today. Maybe pictures later. Crappy incandescent-light pictures. Maybe.

I grabbed four additional sets of DPNs on way way out the door, and not a damn one of them is what I need for pomatomous, which is what my Dreidel has decided it wants to try to be. (I do, however, have three empty sets of 2.25mms. Want some 2.25mms? I am your lady.) However, I really want to cast on for Pomatomous, and my brain figured out that my Uptown Boot Socks are on 2.75mms, which is what pomatomous needs. I am not crazy enough to take a sock off the needle, unfinished and mateless, in order to cast on another sock. I *am* crazy enough to be carrying two extra (wooden) 2.75mms around with me, for use as cable needles. (I found that one under the desk in my bedroom. How it got there from the couch, I haven't quite pieced together yet. Perhaps it was one of the dogs.)

Soooo... I could use the wooden 2.75mms as stitch holders and co pomatomous with my 5 KnitPicks dpns. Or I could bust a serious move and get UBS #1 done, and cast on with a slightly cleaner conscience. That would require pouring it on, and, as you may have surmised, I'm typing right now rather than knitting. Hm. But, I'm well past the abnormally-long gussets, so that might be possible.

I also plan to use one of my many 2.25mms to cast on a plain sock.

In my defense, last night I finally finished the broken garter stitch socks in my Watermelon Tourmaline Silkie STR. Wove in the ends and everything. Un-did the co of the first sock, bound it off a little tigher and everything. Much time and cussing that took, but it's better - not as floppy - and I'm very happy with how the yarn performed. (Oh, and also? It was 90 freaking degrees today. It got down to 60 last weekend, and I took my Meilenweit Mega Boot Stretch socks from awhile ago out for a spin, and I love them.)

Also in my defense, the plain socks are a looong-term project.

For the prosecution, the second those were off the needles last night, some Koigu jumped on. And, to go off on a bit of a tangent here, did you know that Koigu is not magic? It is nicely spun, sproingy, with a bit of backbone to it, and richly and complexly colored, but is not immune to flashing. Why did I decide it was? Why isn't it? Grrr. So I'm pulling from both ends of the ball. We'll see if this time I'm able to figure out how to wrap the yarns around each other in such a way that there's not a seam. Which is possible, right?

Pulling from both ends renders the Koigu socks something less than the mindless stockinette it was meant to be, but oh well. No flashing for me, not this time.

friend activity, like the stock exchange

What I hope is the last order of Job Distress Yarn arrived today. (I changed jobs in the middle of last week, which might very well put BMFA out of business -- you guys should probably help pick up the slack.) And because I got home from class and the grocery store having gone from Relatively Cheerful to Ready to Bludgeon Strangers, it was very nice to sit for the last hour typing and kind of unconsciously clutching three very nice skeins of lightweight.



For all of my crazy ordering, I've never actually *used* lightweight, so, ah, I sure hope it's nice.



I've used the medium weight (in the Chevron Scarf that Will Not Die) and the silkie (pictured below) and like them very much.



I also recently ordered my first Koigu. When I was first starting to knit, I made the baby blanket from Stitch 'N Bitch, which suggested a Koigu handpainted yarn, if I remember correctly. I remember being floored at the idea of an $80 baby blanket that you couldn't even machine wash (though I realize now that it was probably superwash...) and ever since, Koigu has seemed to me to be a little too extravagant.

But, doing the rough math, it's little more than any of the other sockyarns I'm buying so voraciously, so I decided to poke around on Ravelry. And would you know, the people in the Koigu group like Koigu? And recommend it?

So, here is yet more yarn burning a hole in my stash. I'm resisting start-itis, although I've been seriously contemplating renaming it Start-a-rama and just going to town. Still might happen.

Uptown Boot Socks

In the process of knitting this sock, both a (second) wooden size 2 dpn (being used as a cable needle) and my metal yarn needle (being used as a backup cable needle) have managed to slip through some kind of knitting wormhole in the universe. Seriously, I do not understand where they could have gone. They were right there. I suppose they must be buried in the couch, yes, but after having searched the non-nether parts, and then enough into the nether parts to have found a poker chip from at least the early '90s (the couch used to be my parents'), it seems impossible that these things could have gotten further into the seams than something that has been there for FIFTEEN YEARS.

So, I grafted the toe of this sock:



with one of the gigantic blue plastic yarn needles from the learn-to-knit kit Mom & I got four years ago. And that was not a good idea, but in the name of knitting progress, it was either that or a safety pin substitute for a needle.

The top of this sock is a little loose, but I'm liking the silkie yarn very much, for both the texture and color. So much so that I'm considering buying more of the silkie in the same color way. Is that weird to do?

FO: Picot Storybook Socks

Yarn: Gypsyknits (on Etsy) BFL fingering weight in color Storybook
Pattern: basic stockinette (co 72 sts)
Needles: Size 0 Crystal Palace bamboo DPNs



This was my first attempt at shortrow heels, and while I will not go so far as to say that they were fast, they were no slower than heel flaps. And without entirely grasping the physics of it all, I remembered reading somewhere that doing the heel on more than half the stitches creates a deeper heel and thus a better fit, and I did, and it did.

The BFL is nice and soft, though with a different kind of softness than merino has. But after a day of wearing these socks, the heels are pilling badly, and the whole bottoms of the socks have a dirty kind of halo. Admittedly, socks would have to be made out of unicorn mane and pixie dust not to have some dog hair problems after being worn around my house, but compared to my other handknit socks, this is definitely more pronounced.

And then there was this:



Not being a spinner, I do not entirely understand what this is. But I kind of don't think it's good.

So the verdict on Gypsyknits BFL is: it's pretty! Make a scarf with it!

In which I knit through the pain

I subscribed to Interweave Knits at the beginning of August. If you're the only other person in the world who hasn't subscribed to Interweave Knits, know that the first issue will take 4-6 weeks to reach you. That's why I've been checking the mailbox hopefully for the last three weeks, and why I can keep checking it hopefully for another one. (Oh, that and the massive boxes of yarn I tend to order during moments of emotional distress at work. I'm not saying it's healthy, but it sure makes getting the mail fun.)

New finished socks tomorrow!

Uhhhhhhhhh.... hi.

Oh, wow. Okay, so I turned on the comments -- mostly because Ashley told me to, but also because I've been feeling like comments work kind of differently in the knitblog community than in the regularblog community. A lot differently, actually - that's one of the many things that is very very cool about Ravelry - everyone is so freaking nice. And helpful. And by everyone, I don't even mean "you know, the 95% of people who don't view the internet as a place to be mean to strangers because your family's stopped speaking to you" - I mean really everyone. The fact that two people just decided to dedicate their waking lives to creating a community like that forms the basis for this overwhelming niceness.

So, please. Say hi. Point me to your blog. And be nice, because honestly, and I acknowledge that this is ridiculous, but honestly I'm a little afraid of you.

FO: Montego Bay Scarf in Cornflower. Corn. Flower.

The finishing, fringeing, blocking, and dragging Other out to the nearest cornfield finally came together today, and I show you: Montego Bay Scarf.



Some other knitting stuff is happening, but it is not so very interesting. Although I will say, Lantern Moon DPNs are an absolute dream to cast on with. Light and grippy as all hell.

tink tink tink

I was all recovered from my utter inability to do fishnet lace in a halfway reliable way, and then I don't know what happened, but I've had to frog about 6" worth in the last two days. Just now I noticed that several rows down, I just skipped about 4 yos right in a row. No more yos. Perhaps it's the early-morning knitting. It's getting me out of bed and to work on time, but in terms of actual progress, I'm getting nowhere. Perhaps the stockinette socks would be a better choice.

Also, I'm going to have to block the living crap out of this thing. My stitches are completely wonky-looking.

The Watermelon Tourmaline burning a wooly kind of hole in my stash became broken garter socks:



I'm liking them. Not so sure about the Silkie yarn, though - it's a lot fuzzier and more loosely plied than I was expecting it to be. Maybe could use a bigger needle than size 1...

Oh good Lord I'm back down to 42 stitches on this thing. I'm going to bed.