Portable Knitting: Socks, Cars & Other Places

Every once in a while there is a question that keeps popping up. Where do you knit? And, more importantly, what do you knit if you knit somewhere outside your home?

Unlike most people, I learned to knit on the go. My friend Rebecca and I taught ourselves how to knit in the car while our Girl Scout Troop went to Savannah, Georgia. Yes, it was bumpy and we lost a whole bunch of stitches during the process, but it was fun and it kept us quiet during the long trip.

Naturally, one of the places I spend the most time knitting is in my car on my lunch break at work. It is a time where I get to relax and get out some of my frustration of working part time in a fast food restaurant. Most days, I don't really get a real break, so this stolen knitting time is a wonderful treat. It helps me decompress even if I am knitting in a smaller space and have to put my seat back from the steering wheel to get some room to put my needles.

I also only knit socks when I am out and about. I have tried knitting on several other projects when I am traveling, but I keep coming back to socks. They are small enough that they don't get in the way of other things that I might be doing. The needles are short enough that I'm not disturbing anybody or getting my needles caught on other things. Finally, the socks never get long enough to be really heavy on the needles or unweildy. This was the major reason why I stopped knitting scarves on the go. They would just get too long and heavy to carry around comfortably.

The only other places I knit a whole lot that isn't my own home would be my fiance's house, waiting at doctor's offices, and in our local library while waiting for my family to make their book choices. My book choices are mostly taken care of because that is my other job, so I tend to spend a lot of time there.

So, dear readers, what about you? Do you like knitting anywhere or are you a mostly knit at home kind of person?

Unexpected Hiatus and a Sweater

Lots of things have happened since I last blogged. Most things were good things and some things were not so good but are looking more optimistic by the day. Mostly, I have been dead tired with no inspiration or determination to blog.

Then something strangely curious happened: I started knitting. Not just talking about knitting but actually doing it on a fairly regular basis. It was soothing, comfortable, complex when necessary, and somehow I now have a body of a sweater.

Unfortunately, this baby soft sweater isn't for me. It is for my mom who picked up the cuddly alpaca yarn two years ago on an anniversary trip to Maine. Her hands have been acting up on her so she hasn't been able to knit in a long time and the actual knitting of the sweater has passed down to me. The pattern is from Interweave Knits Fall 2011 and is called the Flander's Bay Pullover. It is by Kate Gangon Osborn who is one of the authors of Vintage Modern Knits. So far, the pattern is just lovely and I am so glad to be knitting it!

There is a little bit of modification so far. I made the body longer because that is how mom wants it to fit on her, but it is fitting! We tried it on again last night after I did the three needle bind off on the top of the armholes. The stranded anchors are a little tight in some places, but I am hoping that the alpaca will relax when it is blocked and will stretch out just a little bit in those spots. I want to knit the sleeves first before I block the body so I can block the sleeve caps out at the same time and have an easier time sewing them in.

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!

The Mawata Journey

I have had this project on the needles for a while now. It had been put aside to get Christmas knitting done. What exactly is this project? A pair of silk fingerless mittens knit out of a mawata (also known as a silk hankie)

I have been wanting to make a pair of these ever since I ran across this post from the Yarn Harlot. The technique seemed simple enough to do. You just pre-draft each layer of the silk hankie and then you can knit with the resulting strand. But school got in the way and I had forgotten all about them until fairly recently when KnitPicks started offering hand-dyed silk hankies and when Carin from Round the Twist started knitting a pair of her own. (Which was in 2011 but I was behind on the episodes so I watched them in 2012)

Clearly the world wanted me to knit myself a pair and I could even make them fingerless which would be much less knitting than an entire mitten. That meant that I could possibly have a pair of silk fingerless mittens in just a few short weeks. Much quicker than a pair of socks. What could go wrong?

The silk itself isn't that hard to work with. It is really cool how sheer exactly one layer of the silk hankie is and it feels like you are knitting with air.

Drafting them to the right weight is proving to be the difficult part. The first bundle I drafted way, way too thin and the second bundle I drafted too thick. I am getting about a consistent size now and I know it isn't going to be perfect. The trouble is that I am using size one needles with 16 stitches on each needle. The silk has no stretch at all which means it isn't clinging to my wrist so it looks like it is too big. The part I have knitted looks nice, but it feels baggy and I can't frog this project and re-start it because the silk clings to itself.

I am afraid my mitten won't fit and I really won't be able to tell until I get the thumb gusset done. I am also not sold on the colors anymore. They are pretty and I love how the colors are turning out, but I wish that I had chosen the color that looks like a sunset instead of this one. I'm just not sure about the project anymore. I do know that my mom has been eyeballing the mittens so maybe I should just get them done and if I don't like them ask if she can help me get another color and make another pair for myself. I guess I'll just have to keep knitting and see how they turn out.

Date Night for One

There is nothing better than knitting while curled up with a nice mug of tea, a lightweight blanket, and a movie. Especially when the movie is a feel-good movie like Julie & Julia.

I know a couple of people who hate this movie because they didn't like the way it ended. I think the ending is cute and it never fails to make me hopeful. It shows that no matter how bad your life gets, there will always be something there to make it better.

The sock that I took to my fiance's father's house finally aired out and it doesn't smell like smoke anymore, which means that I can finally knit on it again. It is the Snape's Stockings pattern by Erica Lueder. The same person who made Hermione's Everyday Socks. I was having a bit of trouble with the pattern at first because I was thinking in terms of the shapes it has instead of using the stitch count. It is much easier to memorize when you think of it as two different six stitch repeats put together to make the one twelve stitch repeat than it is to think about it in five and seven stitch repeats.

I am using one of the yarns that my brother got me for Christmas. I fell in love with how the colors looked in the ball that I didn't think about what type of yarn it was. Kroy Jacquards. Of course it is going to stripe! That is the entire purpose of the yarn.

As you can see, the pattern and the stripes aren't exactly playing well together. The texture is muddling the colors and the colors are getting in the way of the texture. If it was a multi-color instead of a striping, then it would probably look better.

But I am enjoying the pattern too much to rip it out and I am already at the heel-flap since I am only knitting two repeats on the leg. Any longer and I would have to start adding some calf shaping because of my legs.

Breaking News: End of the World Failed AGAIN!

I wanted to get this all written down and blogged on the official re-start of the Mayan Calender just to add to the "End of the World" ether. Sadly, I was too busy to blog about it, so I am going to talk about what I did that night instead instead.

I went out on Friday with my friends and fiance to the game shop. Incredibly shocking, I know, but where else would you expect a bunch of geeks to be spending their time on a lovely and slightly snowy Friday night? There was a Magic the Gathering tournament going on that my fiance decided to enter. He even wore his Ravenclaw Scarf I made him for good luck.

To be honest, the only reason why I wasn't playing is because I don't have my own deck made yet. I have to wait for the end of next month for the cards I want to play with come out. Then I can make my own deck as well and play with them. But, I do have a sock knitting deadline, so I decided to come out and knit on my sock during the tournament.

It was my first one and each match consisted of three games making the rule the best two out of three wins. During the middle of the tournament most of the people who weren't playing anymore left and I got to sit next to my fiance and watch him play while I knit on my sock.

I think the most exciting match of the day that I watched was when he went up against that was full of rats. It basically generated a new rat every turn while his generated a new centaur every turn. That match was a race to see who could bring out the most monsters before the other person decided to attack.

I think I got two inches knit on the sock during that match alone because I knit faster when I am excited. Thank goodness knitting is stretchy because I think I also knit a tiny bit tighter than I normally do during that match as well.

The night ended a little after midnight when my fiance made the top ten instead of being able to make it to the top eight. I was trying to stay awake during that time and I was glad that I hit the toe during the final match so that I had something to focus on to keep me awake.

I got most of a sock knitted that night. I got the other cuff cast on and finished the next morning before my fiance's family Christmas party, but I am still running behind on my sock progress.

I have a little less than one and a half more days to knit one more sock. Here's hoping I can do it in between laundry and last minute gift wrapping.

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.

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.

Tatting Saved My Knitting

I know how to do a few different crafts. The main craft that I like to do is knitting, but another craft that I like to do is shuttle tatting. I haven't done any tatting recently because I didn't like how my shuttle was working. It has a bobbin inside the shuttle that you can pop in and out to fill it up with thread easily, but the bobbin kept slipping the more I used it.

I was working on taking out my holding thread on my handspun socks so I can put in my afterthought heel and I was getting frustrated because my knitting needle was not small enough to un-knit the strand easily. I tried the small crochet hook that I have for fixing knitting mistakes and that wasn't small enough either. So I thought about my tatting and remembered that the shuttle had a tiny crochet hook that you can use to un-tat your mistakes. It worked beautifully to help me un-knit the holding thread.

I recently house-sit for my parents when they went camping. They have been going to a nice little campground with a town nearby that has an awesome yarn shop called the Gentle Arts. Last time they got me a comfy blue t-shirt with the name of the shop on it.

I was teasing them when they were leaving to remember that my favorite color was red. My mom also knits so I was hoping that they would bring me back a skein of sock yarn because I knew they would be going back to the store. Instead, they remembered that I wanted a niddy noddy that was more travel sized and brought one home to me. It is beautiful! It is made out of medium walnut and the top and bottom bars rotate so that it can lay flat in the bag. This makes it perfectly travel sized! It wraps up skeins that is 1 1/2 yards in size which is smaller than the bigger niddy noddy that my dad made me which wraps up to 1 3/4 yards. If I had it my way, I would have my Dad make me another one that had the features of this tiny one, but was big enough to hold 2 yards. That way I wouldn't get them mixed up. I can't wait until I get to use it.

Why yes, I have been knitting socks.

I haven't been wanting to blog about my sock projects for a while because I thought that they were way too similar to each other to be interesting. After all, a sock is just a sock and there are only so many ways to knit one, right? That type of thinking is misguided. A sock is so much more than just a sock. It is a place to master techniques, a place to have fun, and a place to relax. I am working on a total of three socks right now: one for my mom, one for my old roommate Laura, and one for myself. Each of these socks are different and they each have their own challenges.

The socks that I have been knitting on for my mom are one of my oldest WIPs. We went to a different yarn store about a year ago and I told her that if she got a skein of sock yarn, then I would make her a pair of socks of her choosing. That year for Christmas she had gotten me Cookie A's Knit*Sock*Love pattern book and fell in love with the Wedge socks. I cast-on and discovered that the way the pattern went had a lot of short-rows to get the effect. I've done short-rows before and these were in garter stitch! That meant that I didn't even have to worry about picking up the wrap-and-turns because they would just blend in with the fabric. For some reason, I always mess up on these rows. I just passed the garter stitch short-row heel on the first sock.

Last year before we graduated, I told Laura that if she ever wanted to get me fiber or yarn to make her a pair of socks out of, then I would make her a pair. I got a text a couple of months after we graduated to ask if that offer was still open and I told her yes. She sent me the sock yarn she wanted her socks out of and a bonus skein of sock yarn and a 4 oz braid of fiber for me to play with. I decided to get working on her socks right away. That way when I got frustrated with mom's socks, I could just pick up hers and happily knit on them for a while. The pattern choice was up to me and I had a strong itch to make Cookie A's Monkey socks again. I especially wanted to do the No-Purl variation. I also decided to sub in a short-row heel for the socks to make them look more like store bought socks and hopefully fit similar since I don't know how high her arch is. (Seriously, take a look at your regular socks next time. They use short-rows to shape the heel) I also put in a stockinette stitch foot because it was something I had never done before and I believe she would be the type of person to appreciate a plain foot.

The last socks are very special to me. When my family and I went camping right after I graduated, we found a store that I got some fiber to spin up into yarn. After some debate, I decided to go ahead and make socks out of that yarn even though I don't think I have enough of the yarn. To solve this problem I found a single skein of sock yarn in my stash and used it for a contrasting cuff, heel, and toe. I also wanted to do an afterthought heel on these socks just because I could. It turns out that the contrasting yarn is almost a perfect match for the yarn that I spun. The sock I finished feels a little tight on my foot, but I think that is because I used a different sock needles than I am used to. I will love these socks anyway because I took them from fiber to yarn to finished object. I just need to knit the second sock so my other foot won't me cold!

Small Update on a Big Blanket

It feels like every time I get stuck on my knitting, it is because I have something going on in my life that has gotten me down. Last week, I knit a ton and I thought that I was going to have an awesome blog post about two of the socks I had been working on because they would have both been past the heel and actually looking like socks.

Instead, I offer you my big stash blanket which is now five years old. I am doing an attached I-cord border in the same white I have been saving since I started the blanket before I went into college. I am on the second side of the blanket and I have successfully passed a corner. I have figured out that I need to pick up each stitch on the blanket one at a time when I get to them or else my bind off is just too tight and my hands start hurting. This is my knitting while watching television project right now because it is just so big. I can't wait to actually get it done. 

Socks and Cookies

Taken with Instagram

"I like making a piece of string into something I can wear."  ~Author Unknown

Today has been a fairly stressful day. I haven't been feeling that well today and I think that made my job searching go down the tubes. Instead I took the day to knit some. I have been working on these socks and I made it past the heel and they are currently zooming down the foot. I should be ready to start the toe within a day or two if I keep working on them at this pace.

Since it is August, the Sock Knitter's Anonymous (SKA) group on Ravelry has entered their yearly sock-finishing competition. The rules are simple: to finish as many pairs of uncompleted socks that you can that have been cast-on before July. Both of the socks I am working on right now qualify. These socks were cast-on June 2 and the Wedge socks for my mom were cast-on in June 27, 2011. I'm not sure if I want to participate in this one though. It just might add up to one more thing I would feel obligated to do and right now, I don't think I need that. I'll just wait for the end of the month and see what the schedule is for their monthly sock challenges and plan appropriately.

Taken with Instagram

Since I have been fairly bummed out recently because of my lack of finding a job, I decided that I needed to do something that I would have to focus on. So, I made cookies. Warm and gooey chocolate chip cookies.

Baking calms me down when it is something I have made several times before. There is also something with sharing something you have made with friends and family that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. The cookies will also be a surprise for my parents because they don't know I'm making them.

The only thing that I find funny with making these cookies is I can never get the shape to come out fully circular. They are always a little wonky. At least people will know that they were made by hand because they were wonky and not store-bought. 

Second Sock Blues

“As usual, the sock yarns have no idea what is going on.” ― Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, All Wound Up: The Yarn Harlot Writes for a Spin

I love knitting socks. I love the fact that I can get a perfect pair of socks that fit my feet like a fine leather glove. I love the fact that I can take one sock with me wherever I am going and be perfectly content no matter what happens. I even love that one sock can look so different from the other sock because of slight differences in the way the yarn was dyed.

I simply cannot stand actually knitting the second sock sometimes. When it is a complicated pattern, I can usually push through the second sock with no problem at all. The pattern either becomes soothing or interesting to knit again. The trouble comes when I want nothing more than a pair of vanilla socks with a rolled hem at the top. The second sock just becomes so boring, but I want the end product so badly that I keep knitting anyway.

The yarn is the big savior in this second sock. It is spiraling instead of stacking on top of itself. Even better, the cuff spirals one way while the leg of the sock is spiraling a different way. This makes the whole thing more visually interesting even though the knitting is so simple. I think I am reacting this way because my life has become easy enough that I want something challenging to distract me. But I started something simple and I have to finish. If I let myself become distracted now, I will never want to finish this pair of socks.

This might be a good time to get caught up on my television shows.

Sock Toes

I have been knitting socks for a while now and I have four pairs that I have been wearing consistently for at least a few months now. They have survived multiple washings in a college washing machine as well as taking a spin in our washer at home. They are all holding up beautifully except for the toe. There have been no holes, but they have all developed ladders on the right side of the toe.

The first thing I thought was that I might have been knitting the the feet a little bit too short for my foot. This is possible but I don't think that it would cause the socks to develop ladders like that. If anything, the pressure would cause the yarn to eventually snap or wear faster and develop a hole instead of a ladder. Then I thought of my decreases. I remembered back to some of the first socks I ever made and thought that I did a k2tog on the right side of the foot and a SSK on the left side of the foot. All of these socks have that decrease pattern on them.

I decided to double check one of my favorite sock books Sock Inspiration by Cookie A to see if I had remembered the decreasing right. According to Cookie, the sock toes should have the ssk on the right side of the foot and a k2tog on the left side of the foot.

I found this out while I was knitting my Vacation Car Socks. So I decided to run an experiment. Not only would I follow Cookie A's sock decrease instructions for the pair of socks, I would also decrease the toe down to 8 stitches on each side before kitchenering the toe together. I am hoping that this will improve the fit of my socks since the fit of my socks has been bothering me.

After I finished my first sock, I tried it on and I had so much more room at the end of my sock! I felt like my toes had more space to breathe and they did feel a little more comfortable than my older socks. I would consider the decreasing the toe down more a good thing to do from now on. I will have to wait until I finish the pair of socks to wear them around and see if the toes of this pair will develop the same ladders that my older socks did.

The heels are the next area that I will have to improve for fit.

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.

Hermione for Him

The house is empty of animals because we are getting ready to take a last family vacation to Ohio. My brother is graduating high school today and he is very excited about that. We are all proud.

I feel like I haven't been doing much knitting-related because I have been working on the same projects that I started before my exams. Then I realized that I haven't blogged in a while and it is probably more exciting then I think it is.

My main knitting project is the socks I have been working on for my fiancee. It will be his very first pair of fine-gauge socks. I dug through my stash of sock yarns and decided that the most masculine color I had that wasn't grey was Kroy Socks FX in Clover Colors. Then I gave him a choice of three patterns and he picked out the Hermione Everyday Socks pattern. It is quickly becoming one of my favorite patterns because it is so easy to memorize and the texture makes the socks look really cool.

The first sock was lost for a while and we just found it yesterday. I have been unpacking from college and trying to get rid of some of the older stuff I have in my room that I don't have much use for now. In the middle of everything I managed to lose the first sock. I tried to remember how I had packed everything in the last moments of my dorm room. I didn't pack the first sock with the rest of my knitting because I had it hanging on one of my sock blockers to use as decoration. Most of the boxes were already unpacked and I had added more boxes filled with my old books to the pile of boxes remaining.

After two days of  looking for it, I was becoming a little frantic. I knew I was getting really close to being done with the second sock and I normally used the first sock for comparison. I didn't want to bring my sock blocker on the trip with us because it is a little difficult to pack and I am slightly paranoid about accidentally breaking it. The first sock would be easy to pack and easy to compare to the second sock. My fiancee and I were talking on the phone and I was worrying over all of this when he finally convinced me to look under the bed. I was sure it wasn't there, but I indulged him because he wouldn't stop pestering me about it. Sure enough, it was sitting under the bed in a box of cotton balls.

Next time I lose something, I just might look under the bed first. You never know what you will find.