Mending

Yesterday was the first day in I don't know how long where I wasn't in crisis mode. There wasn't any homework to be caught up on, no supplies needing to be bought, no promises that I needed to make good on; it felt rather weird.

I looked around, trying to figure out what would be the best use of my time when my eye caught my Dad's sweater. Both sleeves needed some mending and I had finally found some yarn that matched it. It was tough to fix because it was a double knit. Eventually I was victorious... but not before I texted my Dad telling him what a miserable experience it was going to be mending it.

Since I had all my mending stuff out, I looked around again and realized that I had a stack of socks that have been waiting for some attention for maybe more than a year. Some needed duplicate stitching, some needed a woven darn, some needed a combination.

I don't know what possessed me, but I mended the lot.

There is still studying to do and other things that will need my attention in the coming days, but I haven't felt this much peace in a while. Who knew that mending all the knits might mend me a bit too.

Daily Creative Practices

I was feeling a little down this week. I've been wanting to find time to do little paintings, but it seems like I keep running out of time once some of my more mandatory projects have been attended to. (School work, getting groceries, etc.) I thought about how I could "make time" when I realized that I have quite a few daily creative practices already. The more I thought about it, the more I realized I had reasons to celebrate.

The daily comic has been updating daily for a few months now, but behind the scenes, I'm still catching up on the backlog. This week, however, I finally finish editing Book 2. Hurray! I'm on to editing Book 3 and it feels like a big hurdle has been crossed because I am still drawing in Book 3. I'm looking forward to being entirely caught up, although to get there, I know I have to continue to make it a daily practice.

Related to editing the daily comic, I make it a practice to draw the daily comic daily. The goal is to never have a backlog. I finally found that I if I drew the comic while eating breakfast, I had more success. Now it just feels wrong not to draw it in the morning.

Another thing Connor and I have been keeping up on is writing with our non-dominant hand. We started in July as a way to prove that there is no such thing as talent. The idea was that talent is just a culmination of practice. Well, I'm not sure if either of us has seen much improvement in our non-dominate handwriting, but both of us have noticed that our left hands have felt much stronger. The experiment continues.

These three daily practices have required making a habit, but my last daily practice is one that I just can't help myself: knitting. Just about every day I've got knitting in my hands and a few more rounds find their way onto my current project. And let's face it, my current project is probably socks.

Does anyone else have a daily creative practice? Or is there something you'd like to make a daily creative practice?

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.

I Got 99 Problems and My Socks Are One

I've got two different socks on the needles at the moment, and frustratingly, I've gotten a little stuck on both. The Concrete and Tulip sock that I'm working from the toe-up is going to probably end up as a knee-high if I want to use up every bit of yarn, so now I need to decide how to go about doing the calf shaping. Meanwhile the Hieroglyphic Socks, which I am working from the cuff-down, has some heel decisions. I think most knitters in this situation would start a new project. I am tempted, but I also want to wear these socks.

To figure out my socks problems, I've reached into my library to see how others have dealt with the issue. No need to reinvent the wheel. For the Concrete and Tulip socks, I'm looking at the Welsh Country Stockings in Nancy Bush's Folk Socks as an example on how to do calf shaping. (You can see them in the upper left corner of the book.) Those socks are worked top-down, so it isn't a complete match. But now I have an idea on what kind of spacing I'll need for each set of increases.

The Hieroglyphic Socks have a heel problem because I made it one. I didn't care for the recommended heel, but I did like the way stickfia on ravelry worked her Hieroglyphic Socks. Originally I thought I would turn the heel like she did, but I really want all the stripes to match. I realized that I had tackled this problem before, so I broke out Lit Knits to see what I had done. I think I am going to use the dutch heel that was used in Behind The Garden Wall.

What kinds of sock problems have you all encountered? And do you have any favorite books you reference to remedy said problems?

Knit Myself Into A Corner

I started a new vanilla sock the other day because my Hieroglyphic Socks were too complicated for car knitting. I got this skein of Caterpillar Green Yarns in the Concrete and Tulips color way a while back and I have been hoarding it ever since.

So pretty

I want to use every bit of it, so I decided to do toe up socks. These aren't my first toe up socks, but since my last pair, I've been converted to using a heel flap. "No problem," I thought to myself. "It's just like knitting my usual top down pair in reverse. I'll just replace the decreases with increases." That was going well until I got to the heel turn. Going top down, decreases help shape the turn. Toe up.... I had no idea.

What Now?

So I searched through as many tutorials as I could manage until I found one that matched close enough. I'm using Mash-Up Magic Toe-Up Socks Recipe (MUMTU Socks) by Zhenya Lavy, but making a few edits so that it accommodates what I've already knitted. Fingers crossed that this works and I don't have to visit the frog pond.

Walk Like An Egyptian

In my last post I was deciding which pair of socks I would knit next. Woollenwilderness liked Roll The Bones while Kiwiyarns liked the Diamondback Socks.... so of course I started the Hieroglyphic Socks. I knew that I wouldn't get very far with these socks since Connor and I were out of town for the last week. I much prefer to absorb my surroundings in new places rather than knit.

The little that I did knit was while we were on the plane. I had cast on at home, but that was it. As I was stitching away on the plane I started to get the feeling that they were looking a little big. Usually with color work socks, I knit 72 stitches with size US 1 needles, which works great for me. If there is a plain cuff, I'll knit 64 stitches with size US 0 needles before increasing 8 stitches and switching needles. I've never knit corrugated ribbing before, so I didn't know what to expect. I figured I'd go with my default color work needle/stitch count combo. 

Sometimes socks look big with just three rounds knit, so I put a few more rounds in. Well, at six rounds in I decided to put the needles down. More rounds wasn't going to make it look smaller. When we got back home I did what any knitter who is too lazy to check their gauge would do: I compared the new sock to an old pair that fits. 

The picture doesn't lie. The Hieroglyphic Socks are an easy 9 stitches too wide. I guess I knit color work a little looser when there are purl stitches involved. I'm thinking I'll just cast on 64 stitches, but keep using the size US 1 needles. Hopefully there won't be too much ripping in my future.

Yarn... Yarn... Sock!

I've been pretty disciplined about not buying new yarn since May. Since my knitting is still going rather slowly, I was planning to continue being disciplined... but then a skein of skein of Tosh Sock in the Void color way showed up at my LYS and, well... I fell. I had been on the lookout of a skein in the Onyx color way since February, but hadn't been able to locate one. Void is close enough for what I want to do with it. The problem was that there was a lone skein in the Neon Peach color way next to Void that I've eyed for the last few months. It had been a hard week so I figured if one skein of yarn was going to make me feel good, two skeins would probably make me feel better. Plus I had saved up enough "fun money" to go ahead and splurge.

Loud sock yarn, just the way I like it

Meanwhile, I've been knitting away on vanilla socks for a few months now and I'm ready for a slightly more complicated sock. I'm currently debating whether to knit Hieroglyphic Socks, Roll The Bones, or Diamondback Socks. I've got the yarn selected. The Hieroglyphic Socks would be knit with Lisa Souza's Hardtwist Petite in St. Louis Blues and Coachella; Roll the Bones would be knit with Tosh Sock in Filtered Light and Baah! La Jolla in California Poppy; Diamondback Socks would be know with Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in Zombie BBQ. What would each of you choose to knit first?

Left to right: St. Louis Blues, Coachella, Filtered Light, California Poppy, and Zombie BBQ 

Of course you would think that I would want to cast on with the new yarn in the stash. Sometimes I do, but often I like the new yarn to marinate a bit in the stash before I'm ready to knit with it. Does anyone else like to gaze at their new acquisitions before casting on?

Sock Life

I've been catching up on reading a bunch of blogs and I was impressed with all the socks that have been finished and blogged about recently. Angela at Pans & Needles has two pair: one pair for herself and one secret pair for her beloved's Christmas gift this year. Monica at Sweet Purls has just finished a fun purple pair of socks. And Tahnee over at Woollen Wilderness has finished not just one, but two pairs of socks in just the last month: Pixel Socks and Spring Fern Socks. And those are just the finished ones. Andi at My Sister's Knitter has a cute pair on the needles while Wei Siew at Kiwiyarns is knitting a party for her feet. (She also just finished her Southern Skies... so you should all go "ooo and ahh" it.)

I have not been as successful in the knitting arena. I had hoped to have a finished something to show off by now, but it just hasn't worked out.

What I do have is one almost finished first sock and a second sock that is almost ready for its heel to be put in. Why an "almost finished first sock" you ask. Well, I am a perfectionist, especially in the self-striping sock arena. They joke about it at knit night. Not only do I need my socks to match perfectly... apparently I have a thing about having a tiny bit of a new stripe showing up on the toe. This almost happened on my Geographer socks, but there was more than one row of the hot pink on the toe, so I let it go. But just one tiny row of orange on a sea of purple? No thank-you!

I got halfway through grafting the first sock before deciding that I was going to knit the second sock to see if the orange showed up in the exact same spot. "What if the orange shows up in the exact same spot and matches perfectly?" you wonder. Good question. I don't care if it matches perfectly. It is still the same orange problem and I'm going to remove it one way or another.

In other knitting news, I've completely abandoned Mum's cowl for now (sorry Mum) in favor of working on a wedding gift and baby shower gift. But in between that, it's all about these socks.

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.

Prance Past The Poppies

These socks have been a long time coming. Back in 2014 I was knitting away at these socks. Life got in the way as it likes to do. But with the help of my friends, the socks have been tested and tweaked. I am pleased to finally show off the Prance Past The Poppies socks.

Knit from the top down, Prance Past The Poppies are inspired by the California Poppy display that can be seen in Antelope Valley, California around March and April. These poppy socks are meant to be a cousin to the Fern Canyon socks, another California inspired pair of socks.

So forget about tip toeing through the tulips. It is much more glorious to Prance Past The Poppies.

The Prance Past The Poppies socks are now available on ravelry, bear-ears.com, and craftsy.

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.

Whiskey And Rye

I'm pleased to present my latest offering, the Whiskey And Rye socks.

The socks are knit top down and feature a slipped stitch chevron pattern.

This pair is knit in Miss Babs' Yummy 2-ply in the Biker Chick color. My test knitters all happened to have wild skeins of Miss Babs hanging around and chose to knit with them. I'm am pleased to say that every pair looked good. I'm pretty sure that even the wildest colors can be tamed by this pattern.

If you're interested in the pattern, it can be found on ravelry, craftsy, and my own bear-ears website. I've also set up a hashtag on instagram: #whiskeyandryesocks

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.