Pucker

When I started the Pucker socks back in the beginning of January, I had visions of finishing them by the end of January. That didn't happen.

I didn't realize when I started that I was going to have to do a 72 stitch sock rather than my usual 64 stitch sock. 22% more sock knitting was going to go into these socks. When I do color work, I often end up doing a 72 stitch sock. No big deal, I told myself. I'll be done in February.

It took a bit longer than usual to get the leg to the length I wanted. I figured I wasn't used to the pattern. When I finished the first heel of the first sock, I read the gusset instructions, which said something like: decrease the gusset every third stitch because mosaic knitting is tighter and you'll need to space out the decreases. Aha! That is why it was taking so long. I needed to knit a third more rounds in order to get the length I needed. All in all, I was going to have to do 55% more knitting than my usual sock knitting amount. I gave up on guessing when I was going to finish.

By the time May rolled around I had come to terms with the fact that I was going to be knitting these socks for the rest of my life. So after finishing some deadline knitting and decided that I was going to be completely monogamous with these socks. Why not? We were clearly going to have to get used to each other now that we were spending the rest of our lives together.

Lo and behold, after spending time on these socks and only these socks, they decided to finish themselves. Maybe they realized how long our lives were really going to be. One sock is slightly bigger than the other. (I'm putting that one on my bigger foot.) And now I can knit new things!

Being Still

It has been slow going here at the Bear Ears household. After getting better from one illness, another set in. And as I started to recover again, my poor computer developed a crack in its screen. (I was told it was flaw, not something I had done. I knew that. I baby the thing and the crack appeared while sitting quietly watching a video.) All of this occurred right before leaving for a trip we had been planning for a few months. Knowing that there was no way to go on the trip unless I got better, I dropped everything and became still. I'd forgotten how important it is to have times of silence and thoughtfulness. I had run myself down much lower than I had realized. Not just physically, but emotionally and creatively as well. Being sick was a blessing in disguise. 

While being more still, I also was able to finish up a design that has been in the works for the past two years. (Knitting counts as still, right?) It is off with the test knitters at the moment. It is everything I wanted it to be and it only took many months of hair pulling to get it right.

As with everything else that has slowed down, so has the sock knitting. Two months ago I was putting the toe into my Pucker sock (left) and working on the heel of the striped sock (right). I've hardly made it down the leg of either second sock.

I do have a little bit of happy yarn news though... well happy for me. While we were gone on our trip, a new skein of yarn appeared in my mailbox. I purchased it in March and waited to have it dyed. It is the Monopoly Money color way from Desert Vista Dyeworks. It is pretty and I love it. It seems like the kind of future socks that would be great to wear at a game night.

I'm a bit more motivated to get a sock done so that I can play with my new yarn. Mmmm.... new yarn.

We're All Mad In Here Redux

Could it be? I have a FO? After being stalled on all sorts of projects and finding motivation in none, I decided that every day I was going to knit one more stripe in these socks and eventually they would finish themselves. 

The heels match, like usual. I don't care if they laugh at knit night. I'm sure they are just jealous of my self-striping heel matching prowess. 

I've knit these socks before. We're All Mad In Here color way was the first Canon Hand Dyes I ever knit with. Unfortunately they faded. 

The sock on the left is the faded one. It almost looks like it is in shadows compared with the new one on the right.

Here is a close up of the damage. I've since been re-fixing all of my socks to help them resist fading. These were far from the only pair to fade, but because they had been neon, the contrast was much more stark. Luckily the old socks won't go to waste. Mum has found that she not only likes hand knit socks, she likes them even better when they've been worn in. Apparently they are more cozy. That works for me.

The sock on the left is in the Oscar base. The sock on the right is ion the Charles base.

Of course finishing my on-the-go pair of socks meant I could start a new pair. I didn't realized I had been so starved of a new project until I started knitting  this one. I blinked and I'm already at the heel.
The yarn is from Opal's now discontinued Little Prince series, the color is The Geographer, and there is a mildly embarrassing story as to why it needs to be knit now. I bought the skein back in November of 2013. After that I carted it around everywhere I went. I think it even came with me to New Zealand in 2014. Wei Siew saw it and was enchanted, so I found a skein at Stitches 2015 and sent to her. The embarrassing part is that she knit up her socks with her far newer skein before I got around to mine. So I'm knitting them now.

Progress has been steady on my other WIPs. I got more yarn for the shawl I'm designing. I had to unravel a few rows so I could blend the new skein in better. It took some time, but the shawl is now ready to be knit again. The Pucker sock is growing slowly but surely. I am ready to put in the toe on the first sock. (Finally!) I just need some quiet time to figure it out. The toe is a little different than my usual one because the mosaic pattern is 72 stitches around and I need it to be 64 stitches early on. I'm glad I have my Geographer socks to keep me sane while I work on the other two projects that need brain power.
There is one more thing in that photograph that I want to share and it also has a little story. I was reading Alicia's blog and saw a delightful bag. (See the second picture down.) I lusted, but decided I didn't want to buy a kit I wasn't interested in for the bag. The same day while reading Monica's blog that I saw a second bag and lusted over it. (See the third picture down.) After a bit more research I realized that those bags were both made by Jenna Rose. It was going to be a birthday present, but the bag accidentally got sent to our old address. We tried to get it back, but it was long gone. (I hope whoever stole it likes it a whole bunch.) So we ordered a second one. It became more of an anniversary present. It is my new favorite. It sits open really well and, well, I love that Jenna dyes and screen prints the fabric herself.

So that is what is going on in my knitting life. I'm still painting and learning all I can. It is exciting to have a new area in which to be creative.

The Impatient Knitter

It feels like an age since I was able to get something off of the needles. Although after looking at my ravelry page, each of my projects are only 2-3 weeks old.

Pucker: a bit harder than I expected. This is the first sock of the pair.

Logically, if I stick to one project, I will get it done faster. This isn't how "knitting brain" works. Knitting brain says, "You should cast on a new project. All your projects will come off the needles sooner if you do." Knitting brain is dumb and should be ignored.

The first plain vanilla sock in the pair. See those shadowy bars in the image? It's knitting prison. I will be knitting this forever.

Not helping all of this is that the project I've been most diligently knitting on, and was a quarter of the way through, had to be ripped out and redone because my numbers were not coming out right. In this case I added an extra increase in a mysterious location. The pattern is still correct. (Yay!) I still have to be precise when testing my own patterns, so ripping was the only way to go. (Boo!)

This shawl has been in the works for 2 years. If this iteration works out, I will high five myself.

A Friendly Cowl With Socks On The Side

Another week, another FO. After six months with low finished project numbers, even I'm surprised. This project started when my buddy Alina came by our place, saw a skein prominently displayed (I was going to make a hat out of it), and told me that it reminded her of camping, forests, and the stars swirling overhead. Clearly this skein needed to be knit up for her.

She expressed interest in a large cowl. I knew I didn't have enough of the skein. (It's a mystery skein, by the way. It was given to me by a good friend. I have no idea what it is or who it is by. It had no tag.) So I bought a skein of Malabrigo Rios in the Purple Mystery color way. There is no mystery about how purple the skein is: it's nearly electric. Seed stitch insured that the colorful skein would look like dappled light once knit rather than something an angry preschooler finger painted. I knit 2/3 of the cowl in the mystery skein and 1/3 in the purple. I think it came out beautifully and Alina was surprised to receive it.

I wore this the day I gifted it to make sure I didn't leave it at home. My Mum saw me in it and wanted to know why I was wearing Alina's cowl.

Promptly after finishing the cowl, I cast on my Pucker socks. I'm using a skein of Hedgehog Fiber's Twist Sock in the Budgie color way and a skein of Baah! La Jolla in the La Perla color way. After buying all those white skeins for my Sheep May Safely Graze socks, I feel the need to use them.

The Pucker socks require quite a bit of concentration, as it turns out, so I've also cast on a pair of vanilla socks out of Canon Hand Dyes' Charles base in the We're All Mad In Here color way. I have knit with this color way before, although in a different base. Those socks suffered the fate that many of my early socks did and the color faded terribly. But since I've started re-fixing my socks and have started using a different wool wash, I have high hopes that these will stay nice and bright.