Blocking is Magic

So many people are afraid or intimidated by blocking when it is one of the techniques in knitting that is so easy to do. I think that is because that we use a specialized term instead of actually saying what it is we are doing. Blocking is simply washing your knitting and then laying it out to dry.

I think the reason why people (especially beginners) are afraid of blocking is that it is an extra step and people talk about how hard it is to block out shawls and other lacy things. I think that it is always a good thing to wash your knitting before you wear it (the exception for me is socks, they go straight on the feet) so it isn't really an extra step. It gets rid of all that extra dirt and evens out the stitches so that everything looks nice and neat.

The second point about blocking out lace is unfounded as long as you know what you are doing. Blocking lace is really extremely easy and simple to do. To prove that point, I'm going to walk you through it step by step.

First, you want to fill up your sink with warm water. Since my mom and I got a bottle of Soak wool wash, I like to squirt a little of that into the sink after the water has finished running and swish it around. That way it doesn't create lots of suds and because Soak is a brand of non-rinse wool wash I don't have to soak the shawl twice. 

I then lay my project on top of the water like it shows in the picture above. Yes, just sit it on top of the water and don't press it down. When the shawl sinks to the bottom that means it is completely wet and the water has penetrated all of the fiber.

 Leave it there for about 15 minutes or so and then it will look something like the picture above. It is completely wet. At this stage the fabric is really, really stretchy so be careful lifting it out of the water. You don't want to accidentally drag your nice clean project all over the floor.

 I do squeeze as much water as I can out of the project over the sink. Then I take a couple of towels and wrap my project up in it. Then I stand on the towel bundle. I figure if I can apply so much force with my hands, imagine what gravity can do with all of my weight.

After this last squeeze the project is still damp, but it isn't dripping everywhere. That is when the "difficult part" of blocking lace comes in.

 My mom has a set of blocking wires, but I still have to go through and thread the wires through the garter stitch bumps of the boarder. That took around 45 minutes to do so on each side. The shawl was still damp enough to let me go ahead and pin out the points at each end to keep the ends nice and scalloped. I pinned out the points quite drastically, but you could also use more pins and shape the scallops into nice gentle curves.

This is where the magic happens. You basically pin it out to the shape you want it to be and then you let it dry. I did it on the kitchen table because it has a nice fan overhead that I switched on. It was dry when I went to check on it an hour later, but it might not have even taken that long to dry.

When it was dry I went ahead and unpinned everything. The result is a shawl that was as long and wide as I wanted it to be. The stitches look even, the eyelets are nicely spaced out and "opened up" so you can see the lace pattern easier. The scallops are nice and pointy. And it is nice, clean, and oh so soft!

I have to wait until tomorrow before I can send it out so my fiance can help me with some more pictures. Hopefully, my friend Rebecca loves it as much as I loved making it for her. Now that the weather is turning cooler it will be perfect for tossing around her shoulders or neck to chase away the chill of the evening.

Project Monogamy

In case you haven't noticed, I have turned into a monogamous knitter over here. One little project at a time and stick with it until it is done. This does seem to be having a rather pleasant side effect though. I am finishing my projects quicker than I had been.

Yarn: KnitPicks Stroll Handpainted in Juice Box

As an example, my Wishing for Spring Felici socks about four months while the Juice Box Travel socks took me about two months. Granted, I did start a shawl in between the two sock projects that I haven't finished yet, but it is still a rather drastic amount of time to have cut down on.

Luckily, these were travel socks so there isn't a standard pattern that I had to follow for them. It is just a plain vanilla sock with a one inch cuff. They are really comfy and-while not as soft as my Felici socks-feel like they will be very durable.

Somehow, the yarn cooperated quite nicely and didn't do any strange pooling on the socks as I had hoped for. True, there is a little pooling on the cuffs and on the narrowing of the gusset, but other than that the colors settled down into little stripes that mimicked the skein rather nicely. At first that annoyed me to bits, but it does make for a good looking pair of socks.

Now it is time to finish the wedding shawl that I've been making for my friend. Hopefully, I'll be able to get it finished and get the pattern put up within the next month since I've been making good time on my projects.

The Blank Page Syndrome

This happens to me each time that I sit down to write up a blog post recently. I end up staring at a blank page on the computer screen trying to figure out how to write down what I have been doing. The trick is that I have actually been pretty busy living life and so much has happened that I simply don't know how to share it coherently with others.

For instance, last weekend my aunt and uncle visited my family and we went to go see the boulder fields. It is exactly what you would expect and nothing like you have seen. It is a lake of giant boulders. I actually went out a little ways on the giant rocks and I am so proud of myself. When I was younger, you couldn't have paid me enough to go out as far as I did (and that even took a while still). It is a great test of dexterity and balance.

I finished and have been wearing my Wishing for Spring green socks! I love them to death. They are my only pair of hand knit socks at the moment because I have officially retired my Hermione's Everyday Socks and my Blueberry Waffle socks. It has been so long since I've actually had a pair of KP Felici socks that I forgot how wonderful they are on your feet. And ever since I have been washing them with Soak, they have been even softer. Luckily, they seem to be holding up well at the gauge I knit them in and the garter stitch ribbing is so easy to do that it might become my go-to no-thought sock pattern for a while.

My beloved Kromski Sonata has also been dragged out and put to work. I have successfully finished spinning 8 oz of light brown alpaca lace weight. It is drying in the bathroom and will hopefully be completely dry by tomorrow so I can re-skein it and get an accurate yardage on it. I am hoping to make an aeolian shawl out of it, but the yardage will determine what I make. Besides, I have to finish my juice box socks and my friend's wedding shawl first.

So, I guess the next time I am sitting down staring at a blank page, I just need to start writing. After this little block, my planned posts should go smoothly and we can really get some good times going on in my little corner of the internet.

Knitting, Life, and Learning to Write Again

It has been six months since I have even thought about this blog. In that time I have gotten work in two part-time jobs and have all but given up my hobbies and life to my jobs. I had been living and breathing work day in and day out. When I wasn't working, I was worrying about work or about how to find a different type of work. All the things that I was supposed to be figuring out in college and never really did since I was too busy worried about passing my classes and getting good enough grades.

I had lost joy.

But then, I picked up the pure alpaca sweater that I had been working on for my mom and tried to remember how I felt when the yarn passed through my fingers. The endless blue and white stripes reminded me of sea spray. The finished fabric was soft and drapey and almost fluid when held. Figuring out how to knit the collar on was a challenge and by the time I had finished I felt proud of the work I had done.

Best of all, my mom loves her sweater.

I am still working two jobs, but I am working on getting my life back from the endless day to day grind. I have finished a pair of socks for my fiance and I'm working on a shawl for my best friend's wedding as well as a pair of socks for myself.

I like to write and I like to share. I had just forgotten about that and you should never forget what makes you happy because then what is the point of it all?

I'm sorry if this feels really negative to some of you, but I feel like I need to get this off of my chest. The transition from being a full time student to a working young adult has been really difficult. It finally feels like I can start knitting again and I have discovered a really important thing.

I really need to knit more socks. 

Traveling Through my WIP Pile!

I am slowly getting things out of my WIP pile. In the past two weeks the pile has shrunk from four projects to only two projects and that is only because I almost immediately cast on another scarf after casting off my Noro Striped Scarf.

I decided to take a leaf out of the Yarn Harlot's book and wet block my scarf. It is a shorter scarf that (as my fiance has pointed out) is going to be perfect for spring and fall when I don't want to be wearing my longer scarf just yet. It is also the perfect length to use to tie around my head and wear it as a headband/earmuffs.

I am trying to decide if I want the stripes to be all the way up my next scarf or if I just want the two color striping bits at the ends of the scarf and keep the rest in the main color that I started with. But other than that, I am on a 1x1 ribbed scarf kick for some reason. It is easy and fun and always looks good no matter what you do with it, so I think that is part of the reason why I can't stop knitting 1x1 ribbed scarves at the moment.

I am also back at making my scrappy crumb blocks again. My mom's old sewing machine is acting up again, so I am back to hand sewing the blocks. The top two on the right were completely done by hand while most of the others were done either by machine or half by hand and half by machine.

Ironing the blocks really makes a difference with how they lay. The last block I made was ironed before it was trimmed down to size to make the cutting easier (and it was).

 I also did a very loose Jelly Roll Race Block (the one on the upper right corner) where I took scraps of fabric that were about the same width and sewed them all end to end. Then I folded the ends in half and sewed along one side and cut the fold then repeated that until it was a square block. It sounds complicated, but it really wasn't. I understand why people would like to buy a precut jelly rolls of a fabric line to make a quilt with. It really doesn't take that much time and I imagine that if you were doing that on a sewing machine that it would fly by.

My cotton is growing quite nicely. They finally sprouted and the seedlings are growing nice and tall. I'm not sure a couple of them will make it, but my dad (who gardens a lot) thinks that they might all survive to be strong cotton plants. Hopefully in another week or two they will have their true leaves instead of the seedling leaves. When that happens then I will transfer them to other bigger pots to grow up the rest of the way.

This makes me hopeful that I can actually grow things and that my dream of having a small garden one day will come to life. I mostly would want a small herb garden with maybe a couple of veggies, but I haven't had anything grow like this before. I will report back with their progress in about a week.

The Sock Saga

I am finally feeling better after having a couple of days off from work. I am actually starting to feel like a human again instead of feeling like a human robot trained to please people I don't know. And I have been knitting. What is bad about that?

I finished the socks for my dad and I am really happy with them. I noticed when I was blocking them that one sock is looser than the other. Ah the pleasures of guage and proof that how stressed you are really does affect how you knit. Either way, those socks are done and I can now move on to a different project. And the best part is that I know my dad will love them too. He is already hinting for a second pair.

The projects I had to choose from was another pair of socks, a scarf, and a pair of fingerless mittens. So, I chose the socks, but I knew that something was bothering me about them. It wasn't the fact that they were the Snape's Stockings pattern by Erica Lueder. It is a fun pattern and it is nice and textured. And it wasn't the pastel blue-white-purple-pink yarn (which turned out to be self-striping). I just did not like those two things together. So I ripped out the half-sock I already knit and I feel a lot better about it.

My next project that I will finish will be my scarf that I started when I first got my job. It is a good time to knit it since it is summer because I will finish it and it will be a wearable item when fall comes around.

Springtime

It has been a long time since I have done anything with this blog and that makes me sad. The biggest factor in that is my job. It isn't a very hard job to do. I deal with a lot of people on a regular basis while having to keep on a friendly and positive demeanor, but it is very physically exhausting.

On top of that my job has also been getting me ill because I have not been getting proper breaks for a majority of the time I have been working there. That means that I don't really eat as much as I probably should and while not eating with a lot of moving around means I am losing weight (at a healthy 1-2 pounds a week), it also means that my acid reflux acted up badly enough for my doctor to put me on house rest for fear of appendicitis.

But it is springtime and the long winter up here in northeast PA is finally over. That means that I can finally try to grow the last of my cotton seeds. I probably planted them a month late, but I am planning to keep them as potted plants in hopes of getting at least one cotton boll from one cotton plant. Right now I am just trying to get them to sprout. The seeds are at least three years old at this point (maybe even four) and I am not sure if the last of them will even grow. Then again, I only planted them on Sunday, so they won't pop up with little sprouts overnight. I have to have some patience.

I have barely been knitting over the last several weeks. I only started knitting again two days before the end of my house rest from work. But in that short period of time I have been a monogamous knitter.

I have been working on a pair of gray socks for my dad. He picked out the yarn because he liked that there were two strands of grey and one strand of brown for a little contrast. They really just look grey unless you are looking at the fabric close up. I guess it does provide a little contrast, but not much. But a pair of vanilla socks have been really helpful recently. I don't have to think about it to knit them anymore which makes them a perfect pair of auto-pilot knitting.

Since I haven't knitted in a while, I have this urge to finish all of the projects I have on the needles. My list isn't to bad this time though. I only have four things on the needles and most of them are for me, but they all require some amount of concentration. I am hoping that if I just sit down and knit on one thing at a time then I will actually finish some things until I have nothing old left on the needles. Anything that pops up will be new for a while until I build up my stash of projects on the needles again.

The warm weather means that I have this new desire to go outside with my wheel to spin. I never thought I would want to take it outside to spin, but I guess that makes sense. And my little Sonata is a travel wheel, so I can fold it up to move it and take it with me.

While I haven't spun with it outside yet, I did have a meeting with my fiancee's South Asian history professor to show her how a wheel worked and how to spin. I took a bit of everything with me. Raw fleece, processed fleece, an alpaca batt, some raw cotton (since she has been teaching about India and Gandhi), spun cotton, a drop spindle, my tahkli, and my wheel. She had a blast watching everything and asking me questions about it.

It also got me back on a college campus and made me realize how much I actually miss going to school. What I thought was hard work isn't actually that bad. Sure, the reading is pretty intense and sometimes the classes can be a little bit boring, but learning new things every day is pretty cool. And I really do miss not having to wear a structured uniform to go to classes verses the uniform I have to wear on my job every time I work. It's the little things that really do count that we take for granted when we actually have the freedom to do them.

I did have a small break of insanity and decided to knit a tiny chicken from a free pattern on Mochimochi land. I used KnitPicks Palette that I had in my stash to make it. Except for the beak which is made out of a strand of orange from a variegated sock yarn I have (and which I suspect is really a striping sock yarn).

It is so tiny and adorable! The plus side is that it took me maybe a half-hour or so. It really is tiny. The ball it is sitting on is the very top of my french press that I use to brew tea in.

I do have two more posts to write in my Lolita Hobbies series of posts that I was writing. My goal is to have those posted by the end of May. I am really not sure how often I will be blogging right now because of how my life is going, but I do hope to share at least some knitting stuff every few weeks. So I might not be posting as often, but my posts might be longer. Either way, I hope to do some more blogging soon!

Reflections of a Year in Knitting

I have had a busy few days. I just got back from spending most of a week with my fiance and his father's side of the family. Before that it was Christmas with my family and before that was a Christmas party with my fiance's mother's side of the family. Include travel days into that situation and that makes for a busy few weeks.

I wish I had time to blog more about Christmas now, but most of my chatter will have to wait until next month because at the beginning of the year I made a list of knitting resolutions and I thought it would be fun to actually look back at that list to see how many things I have actually achieved.

1. Complete 12 pairs of socks in the year (8 pairs knit)
2. Knit a pair of knee high socks (Not Complete)
3. Knit a pair of socks with unusual construction (Not Complete)
4. Knit a pair of colorwork socks (Not Complete)
5. Design and knit a pair of socks (Not Complete)
6. Spin sock yarn and knit a pair of socks from the handspun sock yarn (Complete!)
7.Knit 3-5 pairs of socks for my fiance (Not Complete, 1 pair knit)
8. Knit my first sweater (Not Complete) 
9. Knit my first shawl (Not Complete)
10. Learn to knit and purl with my left hand (Not Complete)
11.Learn how to knit back-backwards (for entrelac)(Not Complete)
12. Design, spin, and knit a wedding ring shawl (Not Complete)

When you look at my year in comparison to my knitting resolutions, things did not go as planned. But if you look at my knitting overall, I did a lot of fine gauge projects in a short period of time while graduating from college. I also got my driver's license and I am in the middle of looking for a job in a very tough economy. That is a lot to achieve in just one year.

I am very happy with my knitting year and hope that my next year will bring new challenges and new goals.

Knitting makes everything better...

The cough that I had for the past week turned into a cough with a cold. There wasn't very much I felt like doing since I would get worse during the afternoons. So, what else was I to do then to turn to my trusty companion: knitting.

I did manage to finish my Mom's Cosimo Scarf in time for her Christmas party. It is so pretty and glittery. The finished scarf almost makes me want to knit my own version of it in a glittery solid color. Let's say KnitPicks Stroll Glimmer in Foxglove or Jay. Almost. My mom has been wearing it ever since it came off the needles. I was barely able to get it off of her to dangle it over the Christmas tree for a glamor shot.

Right before my cold smacked me over the head (or in this case is it in the throat?), my parents and I went out shopping at AC Moore. My mom and I practically fell over a ruffled scarf that was made out of Bernat Twist and Twirl. Now, I know what you are thinking. This yarn is this year's fun fur yarn. Why would I possibly even think about knitting with this? It would probably be horrible and fun fur is atrocious to actually knit with. What would make this yarn be any different?

This yarn must be made out of fairy dust and unicorn farts as far as I can tell. No, it isn't cashmere or quiviut, but it is so fun to knit with! You take a relatively flat piece of yarn and unfold it to reveal a lacy ribbon. Then you jab it onto your needle, knit with it as normal, and it just ruffles up into a boatload of ruffles.

It makes me happy and it matches my new coat.

And really, what more to knitting do you really need if it makes you happy to do it? Even the most technical and advanced knitters have some sort of simple knitting that they like to do just to keep their hands busy and not because it is the most complicated thing in the world.

Lots and Lots of Christmas Knitting

I have actually been knitting up a storm over here during the past week. Most of the knitting has been done on one project: a sparkly scarf for my mom. My mom has arthritis in her hands and it has been acting up recently because she has been knitting steadily on her Christmas stocking for this year. This has been preventing her from knitting the sparkly yarn she bought at our somewhat-local yarn store. She asked me if I would knit the scarf for her and if I could get it done in time for her work's holiday party. Of course I said I would!

I have a few more repeats to go until it is done. I can't really get a good picture of it yet because it is a bit of lace and whenever you try to get a picture of unblocked lace it just looks terrible.

I have also been working on a few hats for the survivors of Hurricane Sandy. As I was making them I discovered the pleasure of working with big needles and bulky yarn. It is like instant gratification! They were so quick to make. The only downside is that I couldn't knit on them for a long period of time because big needle knitting is really hard on my hands.

If you look closely at the picture, you will see that the hats show no sign of pooling even though I used a variegated yarn. I discovered a trick to preventing it. The yarn I used was a worsted-weight yarn, so I ended up triple stranding it. The colors landed wherever they wanted to, but it looks exactly like it does in the skein. I don't mind pooling, but I thought that this was a pretty awesome way to prevent it. Might not be the most practical way to prevent it, but I love the way it looks and people look good in bulky hats.

It has finally reached the end of the year and I have a feeling that this December is going to be slightly crazy around my house. It will be my first real Christmas season at home for four years and my brother will be coming back home from college to get his very own job. Hopefully the job searching will pay off and I will be able to start my own career soon.

The only tree up around our house so far is my little miniature tree that my mom got for me when I was in college. I decided to do things a little bit different and set my blind bag ponies up in the tree. I am pretty sure that my cat approves even though I had to discourage her from stealing one of the ponies.

Tuesday is for Finishing!

No-Purl Monkeys for Laura

Since I enjoy knitting objects at such a fine gauge, it takes a while for me to finish anything. Naturally, I get excited when I do finish something. I get even more excited when the something I finish was a request from a good friend who is debating about learning to knit socks herself. And she is mainly a crocheter.

She sent me the yarn and I knit it up into a pair of No-Purl Monkeys for her. I stuck a short-row heel on them because I wasn't quite sure how high her arches are and the short-row heels look more like commercial socks than heel flaps.

I was worried about not having enough yarn because she has bigger feet than I do and I made the leg longer than normal, but I finished with plenty of yarn to spare. The leftovers are going with my other leftover sock scraps to use for a pair of scrappy socks in the future.

Autumn Mother/Daughter Hot Pad Collection

The other thing I finished was a pair of quilted hot pads/potholders that I did with my mom. It was our first time quilting and my first real time sewing. I ended up hand-sewing this project because the book had excellent instructions for hand-sewing and I wanted to learn how to do it by hand.

I enjoyed hand-sewing, but I could see how having a sewing machine could help make things go faster. If I made a good portion of my clothes, then I would want to invest in a sewing machine. I am seriously considering that possibility, so mom will teach me how to use her sewing machine so I can see how I like it. It is fully electronic and it is set up so that she could actually do every step of quilting on it if she wanted to.

The Hot Pads I Made

Our next project will be a full dinner set for Christmas. This will include five placemats with matching cloth napkins, two table runners (one for the table and one for the side bar), and about four more hot pads.

I am very excited about this because we will learn even more basic quilting techniques and get a brand new set for the dining room.

I didn't think I would like sewing this much, but I do. It is more fiddly to set up than knitting where you just grab a pair of needles and some yarn, but the actual sewing part is much quicker than knitting. I am already planning a small kitchen set to do now so that when I move out I will have the home-touches that makes it feel like my own place. This includes a pair of oven mitts and some mug rugs. Best of all, I can make my own bedspread and pillow cases. Not everything has to be knitted.

Out of the Knitting Funk!

Taken with Instagram

I have finally picked up my knitting needles again after avoiding them like the plague for the last month. Part of that was because of the release of Pokemon Black 2 which I am having lots of fun playing during the evenings. Part of that is because I have been on the internet more than I realized. Socks do not get knit when you are browsing on the internet.

I am on the second sock of the No Purl Monkeys I am knitting for my college roommate Laura. The leg took me a total of two days to do. The short-row heel also took me two days to do. I kept putting it down in the middle searching for a better way to pick up the wraps from the wrap-and-turns. Sadly, I didn't figure out a good way and just winged it to make it look nicer. This is only my second time doing a short-row heel and I think I am going to spend some time and learn some different techniques to doing this heel. My wrap-and-turns just look bad once I try to pick them back up and I always struggle with holes. There will probably be a post about my exploration into sock heels once I finish the two socks on my needles.

On the bright side, I finally sucked it up and fixed my heels on my Mostly Handspun Socks! My first time with an afterthought heel didn't go as well as I thought it would and I made the heel a little too long.

The fix was a little complicated. I ended up having to cut off the end of my heels because I couldn't find the tail that I had skillfully woven into my sock. Then I had to rip out a little bit more of the heel before I just finished the heel like you would the top of a hat. Yes, there is a little bump on the end of my heel, but it doesn't bother me that much.

The socks are wearing extremely well too! It feels good knowing I took fiber and turned it into yarn and then knit a pair of socks from that yarn. It is an awesome feeling.

My Stash Blanket

After I posted my last blog post, I realized that I never made a post about finishing my big stash blanket. I mentioned getting close to finishing it, but I didn't talk about it on my blog. I just talked about it everywhere else.

I first started my stash blanket on August 1, 2008. I had just graduated from high school and I was waiting to hear back from colleges. None of the schools had gotten back to me, but I was forever hopeful that I would hear from them any day. I just found the Mason-Dixon Knitting book and fell in love with the log cabin blanket. I decided to start knitting it so I would have a new blanket to use in college. A few weeks later, I got an acceptance letter from Sweet Briar College. My parents were proud even though they didn't like the idea of me going to an out-of-state school. I packed up everything I thought I needed and some extra yarn to put in my blanket.

I just finished the big brown strip when my dad pulled into the college campus. I knit on the purple stripe during the orientation week. During my first semester of college, I knit on the blanket almost exclusively. I made a few friends and went on a shopping trip with a girl named Jessica when I ran out of the pastel yarn. She wanted to learn how to knit and I needed some more yarn. She loved my blanket and I taught her how to make one of her own. Her roommate Alison thought the blanket was neat and told us about how her grandmother had taught her to knit. To this day, she knits back backwards when she is knitting flat. I never figured out how to do that. I expanded our little social group to Laura and she told me that she didn't knit, but she crocheted. She loved watching me knit so much and missed it so much that I gave her the rest of my purple ball of yarn and she crocheted one long chain out of it.

It was during my second semester of college when Jessica had to say goodbye to her life at Sweet Briar. Alison became my roommate because the roommate I was assigned never showed up and I wanted somebody else in my room. I had just got done knitting on the second pink and purple variegated section and I had my needles and blanket on my bed. Laura sat down and accidentally broke one of my needles. I had to wait to start knitting it again.

The blanket was stashed away in the corner after I wove in all the ends I could and I forgot about it until my second year of school. My boyfriend bought me a new pair of needles for Christmas and reminded me about my blanket. It was during the spring semester of my second year that the blanket got too big for me to carry around. I had gotten used to putting it in my large pink tote bag and taking it to my work study in the Academic Technology Department. As long as the student workers dropped everything we were doing to help a patron, our boss didn't care if we did homework, read, or distracted ourselves with other things. I got known for knitting.

My blanket grew into my Junior year and I was beginning to wonder if I would ever get it done. I went through a period of time where I was too busy to knit because I was reading so much for my classes. Halfway through the fall semester, I taught myself to read and knit at the same time. My rows were getting too long and it was taking me a half an hour to finish one garter ridge. So instead of dividing my time between homework and knitting, I could do it at the same time. Then my cable broke and I didn't have a spare. Alison broke her leg when she fell off of a horse. She eventually had to say goodbye to her Sweet Briar life and I suddenly found myself alone in my room once again. I threw myself into my schoolwork and other knitting projects.

I replaced my cables before I went back for my senior year. I was taking less classes and the classes I was taking felt easier. I felt like I was slacking off when I was knitting. I was determined to finish my blanket before graduating, but instead of knitting on my blanket (and using my new Kindle to read my books on-which made knitting and reading easier) I was knitting on a scarf for my boyfriend and I was knitting on socks. I also moved into a room with Laura, and a girl named Schwee. We ended up having movie nights with another girl named Emily who lived down the hall. That was when I really brought out my blanket again and started knitting on it.

During my final semester, it felt like all the seniors were swamped. Because of my Academic Technology job, I got to help Schwee set up all of her equipment for her senior project presentation and I got to support her. Emily and I discovered a common interest in gaming and our tastes in manga. Laura and I had fights every so often, but we always overcame them and grew even closer together. My boyfriend even proposed and let the engagement stay secret from everyone at my school so I could play the ring game. And I successfully crafted my senior portfolio for my English degree. Through all of this, I managed to get to the last two stripes before graduation.

I finished my blanket on August 28, 2012. A little more than four years after I started it. I finished it while watching Star Trek: the Next Generation in the afternoons after spending my days job searching. Whenever I look at it, I think of all the good times I had at school and I feel grateful that I have memories knitted into that blanket of my time there. I also love cuddling up with my blanket and I even take it over to my fiance's house when I spend the night because it is warmer than his blankets and it can cover both of us.

The only trouble is that I started this blanket to use up most of the yarn in my stash and I have more yarn that what I started with. That just means that I have to knit another blanket, right?

Panda Silk Socks

Taken with Instagram

"Everybody tells me that they would love to knit, but they don't have time.  I look at people's lives and I can see opportunity and time for knitting all over the place.  The time spent riding the bus each day?  That's a pair of socks over a month.  Waiting in line?  Mittens.  Watching TV?  Buckets of wasted time that could be an exquisite lace shawl."  ~Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, At Knit's End:  Meditations for Women Who Knit Too Much 

 I finally finished knitting my socks. They feel like dress socks instead of hand knitted socks. That is actually pretty cool because I can wear them with some of my fancier shoes and be a little bit more comfortable in them. I really like how they pooled.


For this pair of socks I decreased the toes down to eight stitches on each side of the sock before finishing them off. I think this gives my toes more wiggle room and they feel more comfortable. My heel still keeps sliding down my foot when I wear them for some reason and the toe of my right sock has developed ladders already when I have just worn them for one day. This is getting really frusterating that it keeps happening. I believe that a pair of well-fitting socks should not be developing ladders on the side of the toe.

I have a theory about the ladders down the sides of my toes, but I will have to knit one more pair of socks to test out that theory. I always mess up one decrease round and I have to decrease on one side for two rounds in a row. This might be affecting the ladder problem and explain why I have it on one side of my sock.

Yarn Review: Crystal Palace Yarns Panda Silk Print

Panda silk is a merino/bamboo/combed silk blend. It is a very light fingering weight yarn bordering on the laceweight side of the thickness scale. 

While you are knitting with it, the yarn is a little slippery because of the high bamboo content, but if you are not bothered by a little slickness, it doesn't interfere with the normal knitting process. The yarn has a really nice sheen to it and when it is knitted up is very lightweight. The fabric is also soft even before washing it.

The only bad thing about this yarn is that it is a little splitty to knit with. If you drop a stitch it is a little difficult to pick back up if you start to panic because the yarn will run down the fabric pretty easily, but it doesn't automatically drop down if you accidentally drop a stitch.

Overall, I would knit with this yarn again. If I could find enough of the yarn in the same colorway, I would pick up enough for a sweater if I had the money. The only thing I would make sure to do is alternate skeins I was making a big project out of it because the yarn will pool. For socks, I don't really care about pooling because it provides visual interest.

Score: $$$$

Update: After a day of hard wear in the rain, this yarn will felt a little bit. The felting doesn't really seem to be that bad, but it will felt. I would probably want to hand wash and dry these socks.

Baby Shower Stuff

 A few months ago, my fiancee's mother approached me to ask if I would consider a baby blanket commission for her daughter. I was hesitant at first because the daughter and I don't have the best relationship. She has a common name and it involved her thinking that I was talking about her with her in the room when I was really talking about my friend. But I agreed under certain conditions: that she would buy the yarn and that I would at least receive the TARDIS mug that I first saw on Round the Twist with Carin.

After I got the yarn, I started to get excited. I wanted to do something special because I am an overachiever and I had been wanting to make baby stuff because it is tiny and cute. The only reason why I wasn't was because I didn't want people to think that I was the one that was pregnant. So, knitting for this baby really unlocked my creativity.

I saw a couple of blankets that were knit in strips and I wanted to try that on a miniature scale before doing it on a larger scale. I also wanted to do several different textures because it is supposed to be good for a baby's developing brain. (at least the articles I have read for my education classes tell me so)

I did a panel of seed stitch, a panel of basket weave stitch, and then a panel of vertical garter stitch. When I got to the border I was going to do a simple i-cord border, but I decided to make a complete horizontal garter stitch border. The top and bottom came out a little bit crooked, but I think it still looks good. The only reason why it is crooked is because I attached the panel together using a single crochet stitch instead of sewing them all together by hand. I thought it would be easier, but I didn't get things lined up correctly. Short rows basically saved me because it allowed me to get the edges mostly straight. Learn how to short row and don't be afraid of it. It is a very useful technique to have up your sleeve.

I did have to double strand the yarn that my fiancee's mother got because she went for the color instead of for the weight of yarn like I suggested. But I think it made the center panel blend in even better together with the blanket because there is a strand of white and a strand of white/pink variegated yarn. I hope the sister likes it. By the time this posts I will be in the baby shower, so I will probably know if she likes it or not.

If I had to do it again, I think I would have sewn the panels together by hand. Or I might have knit the first panel and then pick up all of the stitches around the side and then knit the next panels so they would be guaranteed to be the right length.

I had some yarn left and I knew I didn't have enough time to add a small i-cord border around the blanket, so I decided to make some booties. These were made with the Eco Baby Booties pattern and they are so fast and fun. I was able to knit them in about an hour. The most complicated part was sewing the booties together and putting the little ribbons on them.

The only bad thing about knitting all of this baby stuff is that I kinda want to make another baby blanket. My mom's coworker is pregnant again and my mom usually knits something for her, but I almost want to knit the moderne baby blanket for her. Almost. We will see what happens.

Later: My future sister-in-law did like the blanket and booties. She said that she didn't know if the baby would wear the booties, but they were awfully cute.

Getting Back in the Swing of Things

I'm back from my family vacation to Ohio. It was nice to see my family again. We ended up camping right beside one of our aunts and uncles. Our camper looked so big compared to their smaller camper, but ours was made to sleep nine people. It was pretty nice to be without any internet except for the connection on my phone for emergencies.

I figured out that I can knit in the car again. It used to give me really bad motion sickness to do anything in the car. Ever since I got my gallbladder out, my bad motion sickness has gone away. I still have a little bit of it but not that much.

I finished the Hermione for Him socks. My fiancee loves them. He had to wait until I got back to get them even though I finished them right before we all loaded into the car. He even called me when it was time to wash them to make sure that he washed them correctly. It was adorable! I have a feeling he might have handwashed them if I told him they needed to be. He is a keeper.

Dad found a local quilt shop for mom and me to go to called Sew Happy. Mom and I have been thinking about learning how to quilt. The ladies there were so friendly and gave us advice about how to start. While we were there mom found a pile of fiber balls. I got four balls (what I thought was enough for a pair of socks) and proceeded to spin it all up in Ohio. My relatives were very impressed to see me spinning on the drop spindle that I had brought with me.

I finished plying the skein at home and soaked it in hot water for a few hours while I cleaned the house. It was the gentlest I had ever set the twist because I didn't whack it. Unfortunately, I didn't end up with enough yardage for a pair of socks. The shop might have mis-labled the amount of fiber in each of the balls of fiber. This means that I have a few choices: see if I can match the fiber with another fiber from another store and spin more of it, make something different out of it, or match it up with another yarn in my stash.

It doesn't really match any of the other yarn in my stash. I do have two other handspun skeins of yarn that I managed to get down to sock weight that I could possibly blend it with, but I don't think the colors would go together that well. I haven't gone through the rest of my commercial sock yarn to see if I have any coordinating colors yet. I think I am leaning towards making something else with it right now. One day I will get handspun socks.

The last thing that I have been up to is knitting on a commissioned baby blanket for my fiancee's sister. His mom contacted me a while ago and asked if I would make a blanket. I agreed as long as she sent me the yarn and understood that I was about to enter a busy time at schools with graduation and finals.

I am knitting the blanket in three strips. The garter stitch strip and the seed stitch strip will be on the outside while the checkerboard white strip will be in the middle. It will also have an i-cord border to match the center.

The only problem that the yarn she sent me was thinner than I expected. So I am using the yarn with two strands held together. She sent me two balls of pink, one ball of white, and one ball of a white/pink variegated. I wound the two pink balls together, but I had to wind the white and variegated yarn together. It is creating a nice effect and will tie the whole blanket together. Luckily, the yarn has a lot of yardage so I will have more than enough to finish the blanket.

As a surprise, I think I will take any leftovers from the blanket and make a pair of matching baby booties or make a matching toy. I will have to see how much yarn I will have when it is finished. I just hope the sister likes it and uses it for her baby when she is born.