Monday, June 25, 2007
Pattern: My own! I have christened thee Swarm Drunken Bees.
Yarn: Socks That Rock lightweight in Midsummer's Night
Needles: US1 dpns I finished them!
And then I sat for hours and hours more trying to think of a good name for them. Everything that I came up with was bee-themed, because I think the zigzag pattern looks drunk yet curiously deliberate, bzzzz like a bee in flight bzzzz, and the mini-cables on the side resemble honeycombs.
So I came up with
1. Bumblebee (too cutesy)
2. Honeybee (way too cutesy)
3. Worker Bee (too slavish)
4. Royal Jelly (too weird)
5. Beehive (maybe)
6. Swarm (hmm)
Yessss, swarm...I see a swarm of stitches swirling in and around each other. It's not the prettiest sounding word though, unfortunately. But a quick run through the thesaurus in my head came up with lovely words that conjured up such lovely pictures, such as locusts, plague, infestation...So back to Swarm it was.
Now I name you Drunken Bees! Back from a long day's work, intoxicated with nectar, buzzing and teetering and bouncing off each other just outside your honeycombed nest!
Close-up of heel: Slip stitch at the center, flanked by honeycombs which continue down from the leg, and purl gutter, and bordered by more slip stitches. Finished with a square heel.
At some point I will write up a pattern for these, probably after we
move (3 more weeks!). When I do it will most likely be a pseudo-pattern: more of a general
overview rather than stitch-by-stitch instructions. Really all you need
to know is the stitch pattern, and if you know how to knit a sock, you
can do the rest without explicit instruction, and use your favorite methods of constructing the heel, the toe, up or down...I just hate telling people what to do, especially when there's no right way or wrong way about it!
Bzzzzz!
Filed Under: Completed Projects | Socks | Drunken Bees
Sunday, June 24, 2007
I'm taking a short break from packing to energize myself with a heaping, nutritious bowl of Koigu noodles.
Why, yum! I bought this during knithappens' crazy blowout sale a couple months back. I ordered two, but unfortunately only one skein came in the package. I called and emailed and emailed and called about the error, but nothing ever came of it because no one ever answered. :-( Oh well. Only $4.50 lost so it's not a huge deal...that said though, I'll probably not shop there again anytime soon. It'll be Chevron Scarf to the rescue!
Filed Under: Yarn Stash
Friday, June 15, 2007
First Socks that Rock purchase as possible yarn to use for my Sockapalooza socks.
Socks That Rock | lightweight | Midsummer's Night shaded solids
I had no sock pattern in mind when I bought the yarn, so I picked out a something from my Japanese stitch dictionary. It's got some mini-cables, some 4-stitch cables, and a whole lot of ktog's and ssk's.
It is quite an interesting pattern. A little fussy, a little whimsical at the same time.
For the heel, I continued the mini-cables and the purl gutter down each side, and knitted a slip-stitch heel using the stitches from the main "wave" pattern. Then I finished it with a square heel.
This is a fine example of the technique commonly known as Making It Up As You Go Along.
I think I like it. Not sure yet.
Another thing I'm not 100% about is them STRs. I really love the base yarn, love the way it feels in the hand and the way it knits up, but I must say the dye job is completely underwhelming. The colors are muted, unremarkable, doesn't induce me to want to eat the yarn the way Koigus usually do. But it's the pooling, my GOD ALL THE POOLING, that I just can't ignore. Even for a shaded solid it does that icky, diagonal pooling, the unintentional blotchy striping which seems to be its trademark.
Seriously though. What is up with the diagonal pooling. You know of which I speak, I know you do. I noticed it on the first STR I ever knit with, so kindly given to me by Scout. Since then I've seen the diagonal pooling all over flickr. I see it now with the solids. It's so consistent that it drives me crazy, because, wouldn't it be easy to "fix" if you wanted to? Now I say this without having ever dyed a single skein of yarn in my life, and assuming that others want it "fixed" too, which they clearly don't because those things sell out like kittens at the kitten store. But like, could you paint/dye shorter lengths of yarn in the same color? Dye the each color interval more randomly? Something? Then there won't be so much pooling? Maybe...?
I do wonder a little how these socks have achieved rock-star status. Kind of like Obama. Hmm.
******
Has everyone forgotten Dottie, because I sure have! Eeks oops sorry don't hate me! She's been reposing all this time in the office cubicle. Now she's finally enjoying the great outdoors, reposing on a bed of soft frilly peonies. It's one last hoorah before the flowers start fading away.
Filed Under: Postcards from Dottie | Socks | Drunken Bees | Yarn Stash
Monday, June 11, 2007
I planted a couple of peony bushes in the front yard 4 years ago. My thumb is really more brown than it is green, so it's always a happy surprise when they come up and bloom each spring.
I've gathered a bunch of blossoms (so hard to muster the courage to cut flowers from their source, I don't know why) and put them all around the house. This weekend we had a lovely al fresco dinner - grilled steak, scallops, lots of wine, lots of candles - and the peonies served as the centerpiece.
I moved from the Extremely Orange Office upstairs to the hardly-used sunroom downstairs. It gets really cold here in the winter that we usually keep this room closed off from the rest of the house. During the summers it is furnished simply with just the red couch and a couple of chairs, and I'll occassionally knit here. But mostly, the room serves as the access point to the backyard deck, and that's it.
When we first moved here I had these grand plans of turning this room into a greenhouse, an English teahouse, with plants in every corner, covering the walls from top to bottom. There would be indoor butterflies and a finch in a cage, and we'd sit down for tea everyday at 4...
Only when we decided to sell this place did we spruce the sunroom up. No live butterflies or birds, but an empty birdcage and some simple but lush ferns placed at each corner of the room, a few knick-knacks and stray candles placed here and there. It made a huge difference. I want to be in here all the time now, especially with the old rhododendron and rose bushes blooming just outside.
I keep the windows open to let the perfume waft in.
Hee hee there are rose petals on his little cat head.
I didn't think I would but I am going to miss this house.
Filed Under: House | Life
Sunday, June 10, 2007
 Pattern: Vestee, hoodie version| Knitty Spring 07 | smallest size
Yarn: Koigu Kersti, 4 skeins (maybe?)
Needles: US5 (I think?)
Modifications: I knit garter rib for the cuffs only, and the rest of the body in stockinette. Dude. I completely forgot that I hadn't finished this. It's been awhile since I've done any seaming, and it wasn't much. Upper part of the body was knit in the round, and it's peanut-sized. But. I think I really hate seaming.
I'll be mailing it out ASAP to its intended recipient who luckily is still very much a baby. Charlie will be going too. The poor thing has been has been folded in a fetal position for months now. Oops. 
PS I loved working with the Kersti yarn. Soft like a bunny!
Filed Under: Completed Projects | Vestee
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Pattern: Twisted Flower Socks by Ms. Cookie A. As if I had to remind anyone.
Yarn: Cherry Tree Hill Supersock in Burgundy, one skein
Needles: US1
For: My Sockapalooza pal xoxoxo
Modifications: I have a favorite toe thanks to knitting Meida's Socks by Nancy Bush - decrease at each side of the foot every other row until you have a total of 32 stitches (or 8 sts on 4 needles), then decrease every row until there are a total of 8 stitches (or 2 sts on 4 needles), then cut the yarn, take a tapestry needle, thread the yarn through and tighten the hole. I find this makes for a very natural fit that curves nicely over the toes, much better than the straight edge produced when grafting.
So after posting about these last week I immediately ripped the first sock up past the heel so they would match what I did with the second sock, which was to follow the lovely heel pattern as written and extend the foot by another leaf pattern repeat.
We match now.
If you were to take a peek at this pattern, at the heel and foot chart, every single row of them meticulously laid out from bottom to top, all those twisted cables, traveling in a precise direction, where the tiniest of missteps would derail the whole effect, you'd probably want to rip your eyes out before having to start over again.
But it really didn't pain me to do this. I was so zen. It had to be done. I hardly demand perfection for myself; in fact I practically revel in my own knitting disheveledness. But for Sock Pal, for someone whom I will probably not meet in person? My socks will be my proxy. They will be my Goodwill Ambassadors. And like Angelina J0lie they will have to be perfect.
(Maybe I will name my socks Angelina J0lies. They are beautiful, they are complicated, and Br@dPitt would want a piece if he met them.)
And in any case, I just really enjoyed knitting these socks. No second sock syndrome in the slightest. They went by so quickly, despite all the slow-downs of cabling and having to refer to the chart. I'm not normally this patient, but I think having that entire chart for the foot written out that you could tick off, row by row as you finished, kept me focused and paced so that I wasn't constantly badgering myself with Are we there yet? How much longer? Can we go now?
I'm really glad I picked to do these socks. Sock Pal definitely made things easy for me by specifying semisolid to solid colored yarns. Picking the right yarn out of a whole universe of lovely yarns would overload my processes, but when you can disregard the variegateds (ie the hardest ones to resist), the patterns to choose from for strictly solids become obvious. Twisted Flower was obvious. And not only did I have a great time knitting, I was able to do it in confidence, without worrying whether or not my Sock Pal will like them.
Unless of course she thinks Angelina J0lie is ugly.
The only problem I have is to not mail these off right now. I hope I don't misplace them in the moving shuffle!
Filed Under: Completed Projects | Socks | Sockapalooza | Twisted Flower
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Ah, if only these were truly finished. I used an eye of the partridge heel instead of following the pattern for the first sock, then decided while knitting the second sock that I should have just used the pattern as written afterall (much prettier), and also while I was at it with all the inconsistent knitting, I went ahead and made the foot longer. If I were to keep these myself I would consider these done and call it a day, but I don't think my Sockapoolza pal would appreciate my mismatched/lazy aesthetics...
Duck and I are still here in Rhode Island until this evening. Kitty and her crew left yesterday. Man I just hate to be the last to leave.
Newport, RI
Filed Under: Socks | Sockapalooza | Twisted Flower | Travel
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