Must... Stripe... Evenly

Hello friends! Last week I talked all about the socks that were being knit over here. This week I'd like the share the neckwear. I finally finished my last Christmas knit, the Deep Sea Wanderer cowl for my brother.

Connor was kind enough to model it for me, but then he started making sounds about how nice it was and that maybe he'd like to have one at some point. I have a feeling this isn't my last dance with the pattern.

I also finished up weaving a University of Kentucky themed scarf. I used the fibonacci sequence as a starting point, but didn't stick to it 100%.

Meanwhile, I still love socks. I started my Christmas socks...

And promptly abandoned them in favor of finishing my Denature socks. I'm not sure how everyone else decided to get things done, but I check things off the list by what is bothering me the most. The Denature Socks have been on the needles since July and I'm ready to have them finished.

Connor and I watched Stranger Things and I was able to power through much of the leg of the second sock. Just last night I got to the heel and realized that my stripes were not going to match. Mismatched stripes are too much for my little knitter's heart to take, so I ripped back, got some spare grey that I had wound off the ball earlier, and made the grey stripe before the heel longer.

Although.... now that I'm typing this, I'm thinking that I might rip back again and make the green stripe before the final grey stripe a little longer so I can hide how thick the grey stripe is.

Something tells me the saga of this sock is not over. Is anyone else out there as obsessive about their knitting as me? Or you you more of a "No one will see that mistake" kind of knitter?

Sock Fever

I've seen people talking about a thing called "Socktober." I didn't know this existed. It sounds exciting, but honestly I don't need a specific month to motivate me to knit socks. I have a fever and the only thing that will cure it is knitting more socks!
Observe exhibit A. I have finished the socks for my mother-in-law. It's the Primavera Sock pattern knit up in Tosh Sock Shire color way.

Somebody is going to have toasty feet for Christmas

Then there are these beauties hot off the needles. I managed to finish my Halloween socks with time to spare. These are knit up with Stray Cat Socks' amazing Trick Or Treat color way.

I'm still working away on my Denature socks. This is also Stray Cat Socks, but in the Silver Star color way.

Of course getting all these socks off of the needles meant that I could treat myself to new yarn! Just kidding. I bought the yarn before I finished any socks. It may come as a surprise, but I treated myself to some more Stray Cat Socks. Left to right, the color ways are Blue Moon, Sherbet Fizz, and Hipster. Subtly hiding behind hipster is a mini skein of black to be my cuff/heel/toe for the Sherbet Fizz socks. I want them to be my CMYK socks.

Just one question. Now that my Halloween socks are done, is it too soon to work on Christmas socks?

If you guessed that this is Stray Cat Socks, then you would be right. It is the Joyeux Noel color way and a complimentary brown.

Christmas Knitting Starts Early

Classes are still going well. An unexpected perk at school is that I'm getting a lot of knitting done. There are many spare moments in the day when I've been able to pick up the needles and continue knitting. I've not quite finished anything yet, but I'm closing in on finishing the Primavera Socks for my mother-in-law. She kindly sent me an outline of her foot, so I was able to confirm how long the foot needed to be.

My Denature and Trick or Treat vanilla socks both have their heels put in. These are both first socks, but the hard part of getting the stripes to line up in the heel is done, so it should be smooth sailing from now on. Incidentally, both socks are Stray Cat Socks yarn. It was unplanned, but with such wonderful yarn, who could complain?

I've also been working on the loom again. I used Little Wool Company's 4-ply in Tamarillo for the warp and Malabrigo Sock in Chocolate Amargo for the weft of the scarf. It only took me a week and a half to finish. The scarf wove up really fast once Connor and I started a new show, Medici: Masters of Florence. The show is interesting, but most of the Italian main parts are played by English actors, which seems a little odd. I'm pretty sure everyone in Italy didn't have blue eyes at this time. We did enjoy seeing that the actor who played Rob Stark in Game of Thrones' has a father-in-law who just happens to be played the same actor who was Walden Frey in Game of Thrones. I wonder if the casting director did that on purpose.

Connor has also been hard at work on a scarf. We are both working on our Christmas gifts and every night we both try to hit our quota. It's going well so far.

Meanwhile, in the little bits of time we have together, I've also been showing Connor how to watercolor. Basically after I learn something in class, I show him how to do it. We started out with fruit, so Connor tried his hand at it. Maybe I'll have him try the classic bowl of fruit next.

After all, I just finished up my bowl of fruit.

There are some things I would do differently now that I understand more about watercolor, but overall I'm happy with it.

Accounting For Knitting Time

Whew, it's been a wild two weeks since I last wrote. I started school last week and it has taken some time to adjust to the change in the amount of time I have to myself. One of those classes is Accounting, which I've found has a steep learning curve, but I'm enjoying none the less. The other class I'm taking is beginning watercolor. I've tried to watercolor for years and I just never felt like I had a good command of what I was doing. I'm really enjoying myself already. Partially because the teacher is so kind and partially because I haven't mentioned that I have any painting experience, so I don't feel like I need to create masterpieces. It's been freeing.

I think the plums came out the best

Meanwhile, I've managed to finish my Cider House socks. I realize that I never mentioned them here on the blog, but they have been mentioned on my instagram. I adjusted the Primavera Sock pattern to accommodate my sport weight handspun.

It took me four tries to get contrast yarn I liked to match my handspun. This seems to be a trend when I need yarn to match my handspun. In the end I bought a skein of Knit Picks Wool of the Andes in sport weight in the Fedora color way.

And because I got something off of the needles, I rewarded myself with casting on something new. I bought this ball of Stray Cat Socks last year just after Halloween. I've been looking forward to the "I must have Halloween socks" bug to bite me and it has. With the way classes are I thought I ought to start now to guarantee that I finish in time for Halloween.

The Mother-In-Law Primavera Socks have also gone pretty well. I am mostly done with the foot of the first sock, but have had to put it aside until I can verify the foot length it needs to be. My original measurements seemed a little off and I'd like to get this one right. The Denature sock hasn't gone quite a smoothly. I was just about at the heel when I realized that the leg of the sock was quite a bit longer than I usually knit for myself and it wasn't going to fit up my calf. (Usually I knit a length that doesn't require a gusset for my calf.) So rip, rip, rip. I've had to do some extra work to make the pattern shorter and still have it line up correctly on the heel flap. Sigh.

Despite being able to fit in some knitting time, I'm still a little worried about how long that will last. Accounting is pretty tough and I'll be starting a second accounting class in the second week of October. I'd better knit as much as I can for now!

Logjam or Time

While Connor and I were hiking the other day we had a great conversation about the different projects were were interested in. I've got a million ideas, like usual, and felt frustrated about how I couldn't ever get to all of them. Connor lamented the lack of time he has for his projects. We then realized that there are really only two reasons a project isn't finished: Either you have a logjam or there is a time problem.

The Logjam: Mum uses this word when there is something in the way of completing a project. For example, if the house isn't clean, the logjam might be something big like you don't know where to start, or something small like you ran out of bleach. I think that with creative projects, it is more often that you don't know how to move forward rather than you don't have the right tool. One of the biggest reasons (although not the only reason) that I spent years not putting my daily comic online was because I had no idea how to create the website I wanted for it. I feel that most of these issues can be resolved by breaking project down into smaller bites, doing research, or enlisting some help. In the case of the comic website, I realized that I was never going to be able to get the calendar to work the way I wanted it to. It was beyond me. I enlisted Connor and my father to figure it out, which they did quite successfully.

Time: Connor told me that the reason he has not worked on his project because he hasn't scheduled the time for it. We realized that most people figure there will be time for a project eventually. The good old, "I'll get to it one day." I know this to not be true. If I don't chip a little bit away at a project each day, it never gets done. I've started to multitask to get some particularly boring bits of the comic project done. In the morning when I'm eating breakfast, I've started to edit my comics rather than browse the internet. I usually get an extra page edited per day if I do that.

So what have I done in order to get some of my projects to the finish line? Well, today I finally got around to taking pictures of the Peeta Socks for my Dad.

Not everyone I showed was convinced that these looked like Dad socks, but my Dad was thrilled. Proper amounts of ooing and ahhing were done.

I've turned the heel of the Primavera sock. I just need to schedule some time to sit down and pick up the stitches for the gusset. The Denature socks are getting the odd round done when I'm in the car.

Connor's Dude Sweater is getting closer and closer to being done. I successfully stepped the sweater, but realized that the facing I was planning for it wasn't going to work because it wasn't compatible with the collar. The sweater sat for a few days as I tried to move past my logjam and work out how to proceed. I think I've got an idea of what to do now. Although it won't be as perfect as I had envisioned, I think it will still look quite nice when I am done.

So what prevents all of you from completing projects? Is it a logjam, time, or are there more reasons out there?

67 Yards Of Disappointment

Earlier in July I posted a blog about how I felt that talent could be acquired through persistence rather than randomly bestowed ability. José left a compelling comment pointing out that there are more actions that are needed when creating than just practice. In José's own words, "But how about an eye for detail, and for colour? And how about originality? I wonder if lots of practice alone is enough to come up with original ideas?" Those words tumbled around in my mind for the last two weeks. It's really hard to quantify practice vs. talent because even with practice, people are going to have different original ideas. I can only speak from my own experience, but I still think that practice is what leads to creativity.

I remember a day about 15 years ago when I decided I wanted to be better at drawing and I was going to do that by first observing everything around me. When I would go on walks, I would do my best to pay attention to the details surrounding me: the way a leaf created shadow on the ground, how different people's noses curved differently. Then I'd go and try to draw it all. I remember the great disappointment that my hand just wouldn't draw what my mind had thought up. I suspect most artists, even those advanced in their careers, have days when their brain and hand doesn't match up.

The other thing I observed is that the more work I created, the more ideas I had. There was just something about practicing that lead to more original ideas. Although the ideas sometimes came in cycles. When I was working on practicing a technique, the ideas slowed down, but when I started to master a technique, then the original ideas came. What kinds of experiences have you all had in regards to creativity and originality?

Meanwhile, in my own creative pursuits, I've had a bit of a failure. I decided I wasn't happy with the way the color of my current cuff/heel/toe looked against my Cider House socks, so I decided to spin a different colored 3-ply yarn. I was going for a DK and ended up with an Aran weight yarn. I knit up a cuff with this yarn and it was clear I wasn't going to be able to get away with the thicker yarn. It's pretty disappointing because I don't have anymore dark brown to try with.

67 yards of disappointment

Luckily that was the only spinning disaster I had. The second skein I was working on for Tour de Fleece came out beautifully. I spun up both braids of my Wonderland Dyeworks 80/20 Merino/Tussah Silk roving in the Coral Reef color way and came out with 360 yards of a 2 ply DK weight yarn.

I've also made great progress with Connor's Dude Sweater. After reading a bunch on steeks, I decided to go with a crochet reinforced steek rather than a sewn one. Connor asked to have a zipper rather than the buttons recommended in the pattern. I've decided that I'm going to use a combination of Tech Knitter's faced steek and Kate Davies's Steel Sandwich tutorials to complete the sweater. But first I'm waiting on a shipment from Knitpicks to arrive so I have the right tool to install the zipper.

So with all my other knits in limbo, I've cast on two different socks to make up the difference in my knitting time. On the left is the Denature Socks in my ball of Stray Cat Socks' Silver Star color way. I've carried this ball on many of my vacations, including Florida and Hawaii, but haven't cast on until now. I also have cast on another Primavera sock. I liked how the Cider House socks looked and thought that it would look good in the skein of Madelinetosh Sock in the Shire color way I got while visiting Black Mountain Yarns.

Here's to another week of creating!

A Very Kiwi Christmas

I might have missed my Christmas deadline with these socks... luckily Christmas comes around every year. I really enjoyed knitting this pair. The pattern, Geek Socks, by Wei Siew is completely potato chip knitting. I just had to have another round, another stripe, another another another. 

I did make an edit to the pattern: I knit heel flaps rather than an afterthought heel as recommended in the pattern. I have gotten reasonably good at getting my stripes to look nice in heel flaps, so I went for it. I only had to rip once because I decided I didn't want the red stripe surrounding the heel.

This pair is so cozy, too! I bought Stray Cat Sock's Essential Deluxe base, which is a 80/10/10 Merino/Cashmere/Nylon base. And I'm just in love with the Kiwi Christmas color way. It reminds me of the Grinch Who Stole Christmas.

I'm pleased to report that I was able to enable friends at knit night. When I had ordered all my yarn, I'd offered to tack on anyone else's order to help save on shipping from New Zealand. No one took me up on it. But after I started knitting these socks... well. I'm pretty sure Stray Cat won't be going out of business any time soon.

I'm not the only one to have finished up some knitting. Connor knit me a pair of Lambing Mitts out of Stansborough's Mithril (also a New Zealand yarn) in the Kokako color way. 

When he knit himself a pair, he left out the extra bit that can fold up over the hands. I insisted on having that part added.

Connor even joined me in watching Netflix while knitting. We watched Versailles while he knit the second mitt and it ended up too small! The plot was pretty stressful at times; he must have been knitting much tighter. Connor ripped it out and knit a third one and that one fit just fine.

So now I have warm hands and feet. It's been pretty cold, so I'm sure they are both going to get lots of use.

The Socks Are Marching One By One, Hurrah, Hurrah

I am getting so close to finishing my Concrete And Tulip socks, I can taste it. I'm about to put the cuff into the second sock. Once that is done, I'm going to rip out the cuff on the first sock and re-knit it with two more stripes included in the ribbing. I'm also thinking that I want to try a tubular cast off for these socks. I've never done one and I'm obsessive about how the stripes land, so it may take a few goes. Does anyone have a favorite tutorial for that style of cast off? I'm partial to step by steps with pictures.

As soon as the knee high socks are done, one of these three balls of Stray Cat Sock yarn will be knit. I'm thinking either knitting a pair of Geek Socks with Kiwi Christmas or perhaps a pair of Vanilla Lattes with Pahutukawa Tree. I might hold off on the Joyeux Noel ball for now.

Left to right: Kiwi Christmas, Pohutukawa Tree, Joyeux Noel

Meanwhile, the poor Hieroglyphic Socks have been in time out. I had to reknit the cuff three times before it matched the gauge on the first sock. Not sure what happened, but I ended up having to go up a needle size. 

And that is all that is on the needles! I have all sorts of yarn sitting out with patterns printed and ready to go, but for some reason, I find it difficult to cast on. Probably because everything I want to make needs a gauge swatch... ugh.

Thou Shalt Buy Yarn

Ahem. I can explain.

I fell down hard. I was swearing up and down that I didn't need any more yarn and that no more yarn was going to enter the stash... but then the holiday themed yarn started to show up. I've been looking for the perfect Halloween self striping yarn and when I visited Wei Siew, I saw her knitting it (see the bottom image), and I broke the 10th commandment. But it was too late, the yarn wasn't on sale anymore. So I waited a year... and forgot about it until it was too late again! (We moved to a different apartment. After moving everything I was convinced that I didn't need to own any more things ever again.) This year the yarn showed up again.

The color formerly known as All Hallows Eve, now known as Trick Or Treat

Unfortunately for my wallet, so did a bunch of its friends. Shipping from New Zealand isn't cheap, so it made sense just to purchase all the yarn I could ever want in one go. And that is just what I did.

Center: Kiwi Christmas. Top center then moving clockwise: Trick Or Treat, Lilah, Joyeux Noel, Pohutukawa Tree, Goth Socks, Dusk

I also bought a complementary color for the Joyeux Noel ball. I want to recreate my Vintage Christmas socks. I still love those socks, but the red moved into the white and they don't look quite like they used to. Since I know how to fix the color better in my socks now, I'm hoping this pair's colors remains crisp. (There is something about our water that makes dye come out of socks. Especially yarns that have been dyed in the Pacific Northwest. I've had different yarn by different dyers all lose their color or bleed badly.) Plus, I've found Stray Cat Socks color stays quite bright after many washings.

I asked Tracy to dye up a good chocolatey brown to go with Joyeux Noel. I also sent her a picture of my Vintage Christmas socks. I think she did a lovely job.

I'm excited to cast on one of my 8 new wooly friends. Which which ball should I knit first?

Perfect Toes On My Jaffa Socks

I just finished my Jaffa Socks! I bought the yarn while I was in New Zealand from Stray Cat Socks.

I used the Jaffa color way. But man, oh man, I could just keep knitting with all her yarn. It wears well, the color sticks, and it isn't splitty. There are so many colors I am tempted by. (Mostly the Halloween colors that are up at the moment. Le sigh.)

Also, after getting some excellent feedback from you all as well as my knit night friends, I went ahead and kept the orange stripe on the tip of the toe. I was able to get the second sock to match by knitting an extra half a round. It really was too perfect to rip out.

So what am I knitting now? Well, I've finally gotten back to working on Equatorial Nights for my Mum. She is leaving on a trip and I was hoping to finish it in time for her to take.

Of course I thought I had until next week, but actually she is leaving this week. Connor called this the "When you have one week to finish a two week project" face.

I'm making good progress, but it is going to be a close one.