Imagination

It's June 30th, the last day of the month.  No biggie, right?  No, no, no!  I beg to differ!  The end of each month is fraught with stress and knitting peril!  Super feats of knitting may sometimes be accomplished!  Deadlines loom!  Needles stick between sweaty fingers!

Must... finish... monthly.... KAL.... socks!!!

With almost twelve hours to spare, I'm happy to report that I didn't have to push it that far this month.  But it was close!  My Hedera socks were done at 11:20 AM today.

They turned out even prettier than the picture shows.  The Apricot yarn from Grant Creek Yarn has subtle variations in the color ranging from an almost-yellowy pale orange to a darker mid-range orange.  In the photo above, it looks like a solid, but it really is a semi-solid with some beautiful gradience of color.  This pattern is girlie and lacy and perfect for spring or a cool summer night.  And it's my first pair of orange socks, so they look great in my hand-knit sock stack in my closet.

Tomorrow is July 1st.  (Gee, Melissa, considering today is June 30th, we never would have guessed that.)  Aaaaand.... we all know what that means!  (If you don't, then you obviously haven't read many of my earlier blog posts.)

More sock cast-ons!!!  (insert happy sock knitting music here)

The next Cookie A. sock for the Knit Sock Love KAL is called BFF.  Cookie made up the pattern to knit a sock for her BFF, hence the name.  (Not every pattern name needs to have some deep meaning, people.)  I originally was going to knit them in a dark, almost-charcoal gray since the Solid Socks group's colors for July are black/gray/white. But gray?  In the middle of summer?  And black socks are always good but wouldn't show up the pattern as well as I'd like.  Plus this pattern does well with some minor color variations, unlike many of the more complex Cookie socks where a straight solid works best.  So I did some stash diving.

If you knit or crochet or even sew, did you ever have a time where a pattern and yarn (or fabric) just seemed to be made for each other?  It's like the clouds part and a ray of sun shines down in a big ahhhhh moment.  I have a yarn in my stash that just called out to me.

Melissa...  Melissa...  I'm your BFF yarn.  Just what you're looking for!  I'm right here!  Over here.  Here.  HERE!!!  Hello???  Are you even looking at me???  Take all the other darn yarn off me, you sock yarn hoarder!  I'm freakin' perfect for those socks!!! No... NO!!!  Don't even think about buying more yarn when you have me!  I'm right HEEERRREEEEE!!!!

It was subtle, but magical.

Knit Picks Imagination yarn in Looking Glass

So I wound it into cakes and am ready to go!

Once again, I'm ignoring my poor Stricken socks which have sat in knitting purgatory since mid-June.  We're traveling to PA for the Fourth of July so I don't want to take anything too complicated.  That means that the yarn & needles for the BFFs are coming with me, and Stricken is the little piggy that will be crying wee-wee-wee all the way home.

Happy Fourth of July!

Orange You Glad It's Almost July?

Four days left to finish my orange socks for the Solid Socks knit-a-long for June!  I'm making good progress at the expense of my teal Stricken socks which have been gathering dust for almost three weeks now.  Once I finish the orange Hederas, I'm hoping I'll pick Stricken back up with renewed vigor!

Although it will be the beginning of July which as well all know, means more cast-ons for new KALs!  But first I need to free up some needles I'm currently using. 

I'm past the heel and gusset decreases for my Hedera socks and have started working down the foot.  I'd love to get to the toe tomorrow and then finish them up by Tuesday.  Ha ha!  Yeah, as if.  But as long as they are finished by the 30th, I'm good to go.

My orange Hedera socks

Pretty, aren't they?  Very springy/summery.  Not that I wear socks once the weather goes over 70 degrees, but you never know.  I may start a new capris & socks fashion trend.  Oh wait, the little old ladies already have the corner on that one.  I saw one nice lady yesterday with pale blue capris, a white shirt with a pastel pattern, and black socks pulled up over her calves with black shoes.  The poor thing.

On a side note, the news is on right now and they are talking about some asteroid (named 2011MD) that is going to pass very close to Earth tomorrow at 1 PM - only 7,600 miles away.  That's the distance from Boston to Shanghai, China.  Luckily, it won't hit us.  Oh, that's nice.  I can keep knitting with wild abandon and not worry about the apocalypse. 

Almost as exciting as a near-miss asteroid hit are my socks.  

If you look closely at my Hederas, you will notice that there is a pattern repeated around the sock, making little columns of prettiness.  You may also notice that one side of each pattern repeat has a holey, lacy look while the other side does not. This... uh, design feature, is due to the types of yarn overs (YOs) and how much yarn is used in each.  Unfortunately it wasn't until I had knit over three inches of sock before I questioned the difference.  I found a very interesting article explaining the different YOs and how to make them the same holiness.  But since I refused to frog and start over, I will use the info the next time I knit these socks.  Which, based on the number of other sock patterns in my queue that I want to knit first, will be around 2115.  Give or take 10 years.

Still Truckin' Along

Wow, this has been a slow knitting month for me.  I've decided that instead of being freakishly OCD about things where I fix myself compulsively on one thing at a time, that I'm going to fight my natural tendencies and try to be more balanced in my day-to-day life.  So instead of knitting for 6 hours a day and accomplishing nothing else, I'm going to try to... oh, you know, do some housework, actually put some time into my Usborne Books business (Gotta keep earning National Awards and free trips!  Check out www.UsborneMA.com ), pay attention to my kids...  All that miscellaneous, non-knitting stuff.

As a result, I have not make that much progress on this month's socks.  I started the month working on a pattern called "Stricken" from Cookie A's "Knit Sock Love" book.  Saying it's not an easy pattern is an understatement.  Not that any of the stitches are particularly difficult, and Cookie does tend to write very clear directions, but there's cabling every row in parts of the sock, traveling stitches, at one point there were 8-10 stitch markers per sock...  Let's say they're just a wee bit complicated.

Here it is, over halfway through the month and I am not even close to halfway through these socks.  Not even 1/3 of the way.  But maybe a smidge more than 1/4 of the way.  Maybe 7/24 of the way through.  I'm proud of them so far, but they are not carrying-around-to-knit-at-gymnastics socks.  Heck, they aren't even watch-TV socks.  They might be kind-of-listen-to-the-TV-as-long-as-it's-nothing-you-have-to-think-about-or-look-at socks.  If I watched "The Voice," I could probably knit this socks while it was on.  But since my favorite show at the moment is "So You Think You Can Dance" and I actually want to see the amazing dancers perform, my Stricken socks have been languishing.  But here's a picture so far, so perhaps you can start building your amazement for my sock knitting prowess. 

Stricken Socks - 7/24 of the way through

Being behind schedule on those socks, I decided last night to cast on another pair of socks.  (Did you expect anything else???)

Now, when I started knitting the socks from "Knit Sock Love" with the Ravelry group who is going through the book one pair at a time, they had already knit the first two socks in the book.  So I jumped in with Thelonious - the hardest sock I had knit at the time (until Stricken).  The first two socks in the book are called Hedera and Monkey.  I actually have a pair of Monkeys OTN (on the needles) that have been my carrying-around socks.  But...  the KSL group is doing a "Cookie that got away" KAL where you can knit any Cookie A. pattern (socks or otherwise) that you've been wanting to do but hadn't yet.  Maybe a pair from her first sock book, or her sock club, or a shawl....  Since there's only one pattern I had missed from KSL and wasn't currently working on, I figured why not, I'll give it a go.  

And so I cast on Hedera.

Hedera socks

Since the Solid Socks KAL color this month is orange, I choose to use my gorgeous Grant Creek Yarn in Apricot so I can double-dip in both KALs (provided I finish them this month).  And guess what...  this pattern is a freakin' piece of cake!!!  Holy crap, what a nice change from Stricken.  So I figure when I don't need to concentrate on anything else AND I can completely focus AND I'm home, I'll work on Stricken.  Otherwise I'll go with my Hederas.

Will I get both pairs done this month?  Doubtful.  I really hope to finish the Hederas since they have to be done to count in the Solid Socks KAL.  I have until the end of July to finish Stricken, but there's also a new KSL sock starting July 1st, and I don't want to get behind.  So we'll see!

What was that I said earlier about balance???  

Ding! Artichokes Are Done!

La la la-la, my mystery socks are done!  I actually finished them on Wednesday when I was knitting with Michele and Leigh but didn't post them yesterday since I didn't want them to get lost in the sheep & wool shenanigans.

Artichoke Beaded Mystery Socks

I just realized I should take a picture of the beaded part on the cuff so the detail can be seen better.  Eh, we'll see if I get around to it.

So I'm definitely happy with how these socks turned out - especially since it was a mystery sock so I knit it without knowing what the finished product would look like.  These are my first mystery socks, first time knitting with beads, first time using Dream in Color Smooshy yarn, and first socks I've made with a shaped arch.  How's that for a learning experience?

I did have a couple of minor issues.  First, when I was decreasing for the gussets, I started out as the pattern stated - decreasing every other row.  Then the pattern says to continue in the same manner until certain criteria are met.  And somehow I forgot to only decrease every other row and decreased every row instead, which meant my gussets turned out 7-8 rows shorter.  I debated on ripping back but when I tried them on they seemed to fit okay so I left it.

Then when I was knitting the toe, I was decreasing every other round as the pattern stated, but then got worried that the sock was going to be too long, so then I switched to decreasing every round.  Now I wish I hadn't because the finished socks could stand to be 2-4 rows longer for a little extra wiggle room. What's up with me and decreasing too quickly???  Geez!

Anyway, I loved working with the Dream in Color Smooshy yarn.  It was really.... smooshy!!!  Soft and squishy and so pretty!  I'd definitely use it again.  In fact, I can even make another pair of these socks if I want.  The skein started out as 113g and I only used 53g which leaves 60g left over!  I could make a whole 'nother pair of socks as long as they have relatively short cuffs and aren't "yarn eaters."

Stay tuned for more blog posts on my newest cast-on - Stricken.  They are already causing me headaches, so I'll save them for their own entry. 

Toodle-loo!

MA Sheep & Woolcraft Fair

This past weekend was Memorial Day weekend and had we had no plans.  Luckily I'm constantly on the computer and reading the various Ravelry forums.  (It's not an addiction.  I can stop whenever I want.)  I saw on a Central MA forum that someone had posted about the MA Sheep & Woolcraft Fair taking place Saturday and Sunday of the holiday weekend.  Never having been to something like that, of course I really wanted to go.  So I did a mapquest to see how far away it was and discovered it was an hour and 45 minute drive.  Then I just kinda wanted to go.  Almost two hours each way to see some sheep and yarn with Chris and the kids?  Ehh... I wasn't sure about it.  Plus I tend to err on the side of lazy.  It's easier to just stay home and do nothing.  But I sent an email off to Chris with the link to see what his thoughts were.  The email back said, "Do you know it's almost two hours away?"  My response, "Yep."  His reply, "Okay, we can go."

So we went!  (BTW, is my husband awesome or what?  Hours in the car for a sheep and wool festival because his wife wanted to go?  How many guys would agree to that so easily???)

Guess what - we all had a great time!  It wasn't as big as I was expecting, but it turned out that it was plenty to keep us busy for the day.  We got there around 9:20 AM and didn't leave until 3:30 PM.  The first thing the kids did was check out some Angora rabbits.  They were in a pen on the grass so we were looking.  Then one of the girls asked the kids if they wanted to - *gasp* - hold the bunnies!  You can probably guess what the answer was....

Next we headed to the 4H building to see where the workshops were held.

There was a Kool-Aid dying kid's workshop scheduled for 10:00, but they were ready to go and let my kids be their guinea pigs on a first run even though it was only 9:45.  Because we had walked past the drop-in spinning tent on the way there, both kids picked roving instead of yarn to dye.  It was super easy!  I have some bare sock yarn from Knit Picks that I'll need to dye at some point, so now I know how to do it.  After dissolving the Kool-Aid in hot water in a ziplock baggie and adding their roving, they had to leave their baggies for an hour then go back to rinse it out in the restroom sinks.  Here's the finished result:

The kids with red & blue Kool-Aid dyed roving

As soon as they were done dying, there was an adult workshop on plying yarn starting.  Plying is when you take two or more strands of spun yarn and twist them together.  It's a workshop for spinners to further their skills.  I had never spun anything before, but figured what the heck.  Chris took the kids back to the bunnies and to check out the sheep while I stayed to learn how to ply.

Out of the six workshop participants, four had their own spinning wheels and the remaining two of us had nothing so the presenter let us use her spindles.  Now the other woman had taken a spindling workshop a week or two before.  Me - I bought a spindle in mid-May but had no idea what to do with it.  (I was starting to get a sense that maybe I didn't have the prerequisites needed for the workshop.)

Luckily, I kicked total butt and picked it up quickly and was soon spinning some roving into a strip of yarn that I then plied with itself.  After that, we got two already-spun fibers to ply together by spinning them together in the opposite direction of their initial spin.  Pretty cool!  So when I came home that night, I immediately had to pull out my fresh-off-etsy spindle and try it out.

Freshly spun blue yarn on my very own spindle

Next we were off to the drop-in spinning tent so I could learn to spin on a wheel.  It was my thing.  I wanted to learn.  Me me me.  So why did Francesca get to learn first???

Here's the scary part - she was good at it!  She wasn't treadling (using the pedal), but she was really good at drafting (drawing out the yarn) and letting it twist.  She kept the pace nicely and her yarn worked up pretty even.  The bar was set pretty high by my little spinning diva.

Me next!  Me next!  Oh, wait.  Never mind.  My other child was desperate for a turn.  It was Dominic's turn to learn to spin.

By this time, I was getting antsy.  I wanted to get my hands on a wheel already!  Luckily, the main helper lady (Jamie) finished up with another new spinner, so I jumped on her wheel.  She treadled, I spun, and she asked me if I had ever done it before because I was doing so well.  I was so proud and just a teeny bit giddy.

 I'm spinning!  I'm a spinner!  Well, I just let the wheel do the work...

Then she said, "Okay, you take over" and got up and walked away, leaving me to do it all!  One foot and two hands at the same time doing different things!  Panic!  So yes, I did end up breaking the yarn several times at first when the roving got too thin and pulled apart.  Turns out the wheel was set to pull the yarn in faster that I could handle so Jamie adjusted it and then I did much better.  I spun all of my strip of roving a dubbed myself an official spinner.

I finally dragged all of us off the wheels (the kids would have spun forever) just in time to see a sheep shearing demonstration.  The kids shared a chair - miraculously without fighting - and watched a guy on a little stage remove the wool from a surprisingly docile sheep.  I guess the sheep get used to it - they just lay there and let themselves been manipulated and flipped around. 

By this time, it was almost noon and we were getting hungry.  As we were checking out the food booths, I couldn't resist looking at the wares of a few vendors in that area.  And so I bought my first sock yarn of the day.  My precioussss....

Nightingale Fibers sock yarn in Cranberry

Oh, and I bought lamb chili for lunch.  Baaaa....  Shear 'em, milk 'em, and eat 'em!  It was pretty good.  Chris had a cheeseburger, plus we had packed food and snacks for the kids since with their allergies we never know if places can accommodate them.  There were picnic tables all over, so we had a nice lunch in the sun - it was a beautiful day!  Sunny and around 80-82 degrees but not humid, so it wasn't overly hot.

After lunch, I bought some roving to play with on my spindle at home.  Maybe I'll be able to make a hat out of it once it's spun. 

 

Orange roving to spin

I also came close to buying a spinning wheel.  They are so expensive, though.  Many of the smaller ones are in the $600-1000 price range.  But there was a woman spinning at a booth with her husband and he makes these adorable small spinning wheels!  They were $300-380 depending if you wanted a single or double treadle (use one foot or both feet).  They even let me try one out, so I got to show off my new-found spinning skills.  But I resisted the urge!  I fought it!  And I walked away without buying one.  (Probably because then not only would I have a new hobby, but I'd also have to knit the yarn that I spun, thereby continuing my current hobby.  And there's just not enough time in the day.)  

Amazingly, after I posted on my Facebook site about spinning, a friend of mine replied that her husband has a folding/travel spinning wheel and he said I could borrow it!  Wow!  So I definitely want to do that at some point - maybe after I get back from the Usborne Books Convention next week.  Or after the Fourth of July.  Or once the kids go back to school in the fall.  Yeah, I'll have to do that.

After more vendor browsing, I scored an excellent deal.  First, please note that many nice sock yarns are $20-26 for 100g of yarn, which is enough to make a single average pair of socks.  The Holiday Yarns booth had a bin of yarn where for $20 you could get as much as you could hold in one hand.  What?  A challenge?  Oh, you bet your sweet patooty I was up for one.  Check it out - 761g of sock yarn for twenty bucks (and two of the skeins are over 90g each)!

 

My $20 haul from Holiday Yarns

While we were there, Dominic also fell in love with some yarn in their "Night Fury" colorway.  For any of you who have seen the movie "How To Train Your Dragon," you'll know that the main dragon was a Night Fury dragon named Toothless.  This yarn also came with a free sock pattern called - you guessed it - "Toothless."  At some point I'll have to make Dominic some socks.

 Holiday Yarns sock yarn in Night Fury

More vendors, more sheep to look at, a baby ram to pet, yarn to squeeze, Italian ice to cool us off (Doritos for little Miss Orange Face), and then we were ready to head home.  It was a wonderful day that the whole family enjoyed (hallelujah!).

Maybe we'll have to hit the New England Fiber Festival at the Big E November 4-5.  I'd better start saving my yarn money now!