AnotherPurl :: a knitter's life

A little bit of everything

Or a pocketful of kryptonite.

I sort of wish more days could be like yesterday.  Just enough cleaning to qualify as having done something useful, a cheesy movie that I can't believe I watched, and custard cooked in pumpkin (Baked Whole Pumpkin from allrecipes).

I mailed my Everyday Bag back to Namaste.  Now, I bought the bag over a year ago, and the handles came undone probably 6 or more months ago, but between one thing and another I never thought to check their site for information.  I know I'm pretty hard on my bags, so while it was irritating for the bag to break so soon I figured it was completely my fault.  Then I compounded the problem by trying to fix things.  Umm, with superglue.  That was a bad idea and just wasn't strong enough for even a project like the Hoover Blanket (4 100-gram skeins of yarn).  Oops.  So, I was at their site to see what their new bags looked like, and I sent them email about how to repair the bag.  Lo and behold they said to send it back and they would send me a new one! 

So, Saturday I went to ye olde Post Office and mailed my sockapaloooza sock savior socks (or SSSS, whew!) and the Everyday Bag.  I brought my rings to be resized and a few other chores.

Oh, and I did something silly.  I went through my latest Patternworks catalog and circled yarns I might be interested in working with in case any friends or family ask my hubby what I want for Christmas (other than a nap).

Finished!

Yes, finished!

The Ripple and Weave socks (from Fall 2006 Vogue Knitting) are done, done, done.

I loved working on these socks, with the interesting twisted stitch pattern.  Funny, because for some reason I just think of the Potatamus (or hippopotamus?) socks were also something I considered a little too difficult.  Too fiddly.  Obviously not, because these socks are like cousins to those.

Now that I've finished this pair of socks and have started the Ribwarmer from the same issue (I bought the yarn in 2006) on the way home from Pittsburgh, I will probably need to go into the knitting zone.

My mother-in-law has asked that I knit her a baby blanket for a shower in about 3 weeks and we decided on the Hoover blanket.  I'm going to buy my yarn for that tonight (yeah using my free day early!), so I can immediately cast on.  I'm going to have to knit like the wind to get through this one.

Knitting on the road

I was going to bring something other than Ripple and Weave on the road to Pittsburgh (I know we flew, but it still felt like being on the road), but sanity regained the upper hand and I brought the sock in disgrace (and a backup project). 

Every morning and evening after I was done with my studying and the important work of the day, I worked on the sock.  I love the twisted stitches and how everything just comes together beautifully.  The colors are perfect for the season, and it is past time to send these socks onto their happy home.

I left the 3-needle bindoff for home.  With the first sock I lost a lot of stitches, because I still had them on the needles (and tried to turn the sock inside out with the needles still in).  This time I plan to put the stitches on waste yarn before turning the sock inside out. 

So, with the socks nearly done, I started my "on the road" project: the Ribwarmer from the Fall 2006 Vogue Knitting.  I had bought the yarn about a year ago, and hadn't done it.  So far, it is turning out to be a pretty quick knit with an easy to memorize cable pattern.  I'm up to the left side now (it is worked in one piece from right side, right shoulder, back, etc.).  I'm enjoying working on something that just leaves people scratching their heads, wondering what it is going to be.

Level 4A

Only bloggers would do  this --->

Last week was a whirlwind.  I went to Pittsburgh to see my brother-in-law get married.  Along the way there were good times, games, the World Series, and more food than any one being could possibly eat.

I could write for days about this, but there is too much.  I'll sum up.

Level 4A
Where we parked the car before the wedding reception on Saturday.  My MIL et al told me to remember where we were and I took the camera in my pocket, walked back and snapped a picture.  It worked too.  I remembered it (without the picture being necessary). 

The wedding and reception were beautiful.  The opening cocktail hour (which is always more than an hour) featured masks to mark what table you were at for the reception, food I didn't eat, coffee I definitely drank, and an accordionist who played a remarkably good selection of music.

The reception involved cakes (wedding and grooms) as well as a cookie table.  One of the neatest things about a cookie table, a western Pennsylvania tradition, was seeing all of the different kinds of cookies and the effort made by the members of the two families.  While it could probably be all done by one very enthusiastic individual, it was put together by a combination of members of the two families.  A great way to get to know the other people!

The grandmother of the bride in addition to making hundreds of delicious cookies also made these roses to decorate the cookie table.  They are made by rolling gumdrops out with extra granulated sugar (so they don't stick) and shaping them into roses with toothpicks.  There were boxes available to take cookies home with you, so we added a couple of gumdrop roses to our pile.

And of course the Grooms cake.  I didn't eat any of it (though I meant to snag a piece after it was cut), but had to take a picture.  I mean, really!  Steelers cake!

The wedding cake was an elegant buttercream and lemon affair, simple but delicious.

Flying  
These are the pictures of the plane and in the plane on the way there and back.  Probably not exciting to many, but definitely exciting to me (we flew JetBlue and were going nearly 666 mph with the jetstream behind us).

Of course, I did more than fly and wedding.  I have finished (well, fine almost finished - I need to 3needle bindoff and weave in ends) my Sock Savior socks, which I hope to mail out this weekend at the latest.  My MIL has requested that I knit her a baby blanket to be given to a cousin (this is now my default designation, because it is a very large family).  I'm going to be using the Hoover Blanket pattern and need to find an appropriate yarn this weekend.

Last picture?

One step back

Go Red Sox!

I was working on my sock savior sock (it's sock #2) during the big game when I noticed that I didn't have the pattern row I thought I did...

I had already finished the heel flap and turning the heel and just had an aw crud moment.  Within minutes I had ripped the entire sock out.  It was just too daunting to try and fix in the poorly lit room a sock full of twisted stitches, k2tbl (or however knitting 2 together through the back loop is written) and various yarn overs.  Of course, this puts me behind on my sock knitting.  I wanted to mail this out before leaving for a wedding tomorrow.  Instead, I'm going to knit my fingers off tonight and tomorrow morning and see how much of this sock I can do.  I don't want to bring it with me (mostly because I'm close enough to done that I will not have any knitting when I'm there if I can only bring one knitting project), but want to send it out.  Everyone deserves pretty socks!

I'm going to be in the Pittsburgh area, but will be neither car accessible or probably have the free time to go to a yarn shop.  But I can dream!

a single sock photo shoot

Ripple and Weave

I really want to be done with this pair of socks.  They are beautiful.  The colors are vibrant without feeling completely girly.  They are comfortable (I can attest to this as the local sock model), and I love them.

I want this pair done, so I can make a pair for me (put this into the list of 2008 knitting to do).  I want to do this in a solid or semi-solid.  Maybe more of the Claudia Hand Paints.  I loved using that yarn for Sockapaloooza, and it wouldn't hurt me to use some of it again.

Tiny pictures.  A long shot of the foot (feel free to click for a full size image) and a close up of the stitch pattern and the heel.  I like the garter edge on the heel.  It feels a little odd in the making, at least initially, but it makes it pretty easy to figure without counting how much of the heel flap you've completed.  I also didn't have any of those little pesky holes in the gusset.  It really felt like the garter edge helped keep all of that filled in.

I'm just shy of the heel flap and gusset on the second sock, and should be able to mail them next week.  I want to find a couple of trinkets, nifty things to send along with this pair of socks.  I'm sock saving, but I don't want to lollygag along.  She deserves to get them sooner rather than later!

Earning my education

I miss college.

I'm a non-degree student at UMass, which means in my case that I'm taking classes to keep my fingers in the methods and ways of learning while I try and pay off my old college enough to apply somewhere else.  A bit convoluted, but it works for me.

In my second class at UMass (a much bigger institute than where I started - Wellesley), I am reminded that the intro classes are almost always some of the most attractive, fun classes that a department will offer.  It is not solely because they are easier, though I'm sure that is part of it, but because they are designed to make the experience of learning this new thing (it was as true in my 111 biology class as it was in some of my art classes) as painless and as full of joy as possible.  My first CS class was full of creation and art, making a program that drove you through the computer to make something concrete. 

Now I am taking Data Structures.  It even manages to sound drier.  I've gone from the concrete to the theoretical, from making things that I can show off to anyone on the street to manipulating small pieces of information and hoping that my knowledge suffices to manipulate them in a way that doesn't change the data as much as it organizes and stores the data.  A much less glamorous operation.

All of this makes me love the socks so much more.  I don't have a picture right now, but imagine the ripple weave (last seen less than one full repeat into the cuff) sock with that awkward teenager look of a sock with a gusset.  See the nifty garter edges and a gusset that has absolutely (or abso-smurph-alutely) no holes in that irritating spot near the join for the instep.  Isn't it beautiful?

It is.  And it is keeping me sane while the whirlwind summer of weddings moves into a frantic fall of weddings and homework is done in nooks and crannies of my day.  The sock is likewise built in the brief interstices of my day, but it is beautiful and makes me happy.

ripples...

Repose...

The sock is sitting in the window, waiting for the end of the day when it can go home.  It sits, wondering about its meaning, its purpose.  Everyone has a purpose?

or maybe, it doesn't matter.

These socks are born to keep someone warm.  Saving toes from discomfort in the cold months ahead.

These socks will remind someone that even when everything is bad (as things get from time to time) there are people who care.  That even strangers can care.

These socks are just a little ripple in the pool.

At the end of a long day, these socks can help someone regain that inner peace that is sometimes frittered away against the cares, the work of a day.

These socks will be beautiful and, while admittedly not terribly soft now, comfortable and comforting.

These socks will remind people of spring and of autumn with the fresh growth and heady harvest.  Of grape arbors and the rich smell of grapes ripening in the sun.

These socks right now remind me that even though the days are getting shorter there is always enough sunshine if you can find but a little time to seek it.

Go outside and seek the sun before winter comes to call.

Holding out

The new Knitty came out last week (it might have been earlier, but I noticed it sometime mid-week).

I kept looking at Cherie Amour.  I looked at it on Thursday.  I looked at it on Friday.  I looked at my Ravelry WIPs... all 9 of them.  Dang!  I know I'm inclined to have a lot of things going, but it somehow is less friendly, more rude even, to see them all lined up like that.  So, I told myself that I couldn't start a 10th project.  I couldn't even order the yarn for this Cherie Amour (less than $35 for a sweater!) until I finished something, and even then only if I finished something before the shopping moratorium¹ goes into effect.

That lasted until Saturday.

Saturday, I saw the email from Alison and signed up to be a sock savior.  Socks are pretty, portable, and don't involve a lot of yarn.  Heck, they don't involve a lot of yarn, because I already have a lot of sock yarn.  So, I'm working with some yarn from Dorchester Farms (I think that's where it is from - I bought it at Circles when the spinner was visiting the shop a la trunk show) in a self striping colorway that I've been calling Grape Arbor. 

Sock saving is very cool.  I love making socks for people who really appreciate them.  And for once, even, I'm not doing a cable (or mock cable) pattern.  I'm about 2.5 inches in and they are already gorgeous.  Maybe if class doesn't run too long tonight (I have class and then lab), I'll get to take a dark indoor photo of them.  Wouldn't that be fun?

They fit!

They fit!  They're gorgeous, and I'm so horribly horribly lucky.  You can see all of the interesting colors, how even everything is, the waves, the valleys, the cute picot!

Umm, I'll stop gushing now.  I will go and work hard to buy pretty shoes that show off beautiful socks well.  And then I will wear these at work and make everyone say how beautiful my socks are!

I wore them for about an hour last night (I didn't want to put my sneakers on over the socks), but I kept walking around and pointing at my feet.  I was such a fool. 

I have my swimming race tomorrow, so I picked up a pair of goggles (to go with the swimsuit I bought last week).  It's my first real swimming anything in years, and I decided to go whole hog with a mile-long race.  I'll probably bring some knitting with me, for the before and afters (long train rides).  I have so much knitting to do.  I keep looking at Ravelry and my WIP list.  It makes me shudder to have quite so many things that are almost done.