Thursday, August 29, 2013

Sock Show Thursday: Quick and Dirty

OAmy is having a slog of a time through some work stuff, so I'm tossing this up here to hopefully make her smile.

I'm almost done with your socks!!




I apparently have a new threshold with socks: when coworkers start recognizing them and saying "you're still working on those?" I need to get through the socks and move onto a new pair. At least for the at-work rotation.

Either that or just give up and start doing sock puppet impressions in meetings.










One of the two.


Thursday, August 15, 2013

Sock Show Thursday: Royal Toes

When I hit the second toe, approximately, for the PhilosoEight socks, they were abandoned to at-home-knitting and I grabbed a wound skein of KPPPM to tackle the next pair. I knit it up on size 0 (2mm) needles and those are so tiny and the progress made per round feels so infinitesimal.  

And then there was locating the needles, which was doing pre-tea and certainly not fully awake. I was sure I'd left a set on my dresser but couldn't locate those. So I had to go digging in my needle case, pull out the zeros ziplock and drop multiple sets of size 0 needles on the floor. It resembled a game of pick up sticks at 7 a.m. So far, it appears that I only missed one needle when picking up. 

Once I get through this yarn, I'll have 2 more pair worth of KPPPM and 5 skeins to make something larger--it's 875 yards of fingering. Should make a decent sized shawl or light small sweater. 

This is the yarn from Woods Hole/Martha's Vineyard this spring:



I'm amazed that the trip was already nearly three months ago.  The yarn is truly that vibrant, the purple is shockingly bright and blended with metal colors: silver, copper, and a gold, though not metallic. 



I'm just starting to play with my new cell phone camera, so bear with me while I figure this out. I'm more than halfway down the foot of the first sock, pretty much to the point where it feels like I'll never reach the toe. Considering I only started these socks last Friday and it's not quite been a full week, I'm relatively sure that I will indeed reach the toe in short order. That long birthday party I went to last weekend was the site of a lot of the progress. 

This sock is riding around in one of my newest Piddleloop Bags, picked up at YarnCon last spring. 


The PhilosoEight socks were completed but they're still gathering dust on my couch. I'll see if I can convince the Philosopher that he needs to model them for you this weekend. That ought to be entertaining.  



Tuesday, August 13, 2013

How Many is Too Many?

Last weekend at a birthday party, the Trombonist asked how many pairs of socks I'd knit and what black hole they all went down that I was always knitting more. A reasonable question, as while we were both attending said party I fidgeted through the better part of half a sock on size 0 (2 mm) needles while almost everyone else was emptying the various coolers of beverages.

I know generally where my socks go: the Philosopher, AudioGirl, the Incredibly-Patient-Mother, and me. Just now I went back through Ravelry and had a quick count of who has gotten socks.

The Philosopher's are easy; I've named all of his Philoso-number. A brilliant naming scheme, right?  But I knew immediately that I'd just cast off Pair 8 for him.  He and AudioGirl are now tied, though she doesn't get her Pair 8 until Christmas; I have to fix the toes.

The IPM is up to 9 pair and I've kept 20 pairs.  That's right, I have almost enough for three weeks worth of fresh hand knit socks every day without having to do laundry. Come next serious winter, I should be absolutely set.

Of course, a couple of pairs I need to do some modifications on and one sock has a dropped stitch that I need to fix but in general I have more 15 pair in regular rotation. I think that makes for a pretty excellent selection.  Oddly, most of them are blue. I've bought a lot of blue sock yarn.

Other recipients include OAmy (2), Sibling the Elder (1), Slippers for M (2), Philosomom (1), and the Counselor (1).  That doesn't include OAmy's most recent pair, I'm just starting the gusset decreases on Sock 1. More on that on a Thursday.

All told I've knit 52 pair of socks plus one in progress*.  That might explain why the leftovers from sock knitting are starting to overflow their own bin.  Of course, I've still got another 20 ish skeins that I'm planning to turn into socks and some more super bulky that is getting converted into slippers. The sweater yarn is calling to me again though.

(Only one pair on the needles? Don't worry, more pairs are loaded and waiting in their project bags.)

 

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

A Little Bit Disappointed

The Knitgirllls Summer Stashdown ended yesterday. I did not make the goal. When I realized over the weekend that it just wasn't going to happen, I was pretty disappointed. Here I'd had over two months! Surely I could get 4K of knitting done. Never mind that I had a major conference to get through; that work has becoming increasingly crazy. I could meet the goal that the school librarian who is off for the summer and is challenging herself to meet had set, right?

Or perhaps not.

What I got completed that I posted to the group are 3 pair of socks and the rug I knit for our kitchen. That was 1800-ish yards.

Not posted is the Blonde's baby blanket and the other two pair of socks. I'm into the foot of Sock 2 for the Philsoeight Socks, you'll see those later this week--and that means that if I sit down this evening and get the toes fixed on AudioGirl's Punk Rock Socks and spend a few commutes making progress this week, I'll have knitted 9 pair of socks before we hit mid August.

The baby blanket is about 90% done. I've seamed two strips so far and I have one more to go.  I really recommend the three needle bind off as a way to join the blanket. And the baby isn't even due for another month! Knowing I just need to finish one strip, join the three together, and do a border is both a huge joy and a huge barrier. Oh, I only have to do that much. See, I still have a month. And the Blonde won't *really* need a wool blanket in September for Baby Deux.

The stuff not posted, when completed, will be about 2400 yards. Which is just about 4K. So I ended up about 200-300 yards not knit--or the equivalent of one more pair of socks. And at some point, I have to be okay with the fact that I could not have squeezed out another pair of socks in the past couple of months.

Fortunately, it's not a race, not really. There are people who finished in the first month, there were others frantically knitting to the last hour. I participated and did get a ton of knitting in this summer, even around all of the other items on my to do list.

I'm pleased that I've got this gift nearly done and socks knit for people who will enjoy them. I'll still try to get through another three pair of socks this year but hopefully I won't be trying to wrap up Pair 12 at a New Years party.

I did spend some time with the ballwinder the other day. I realized that I was out of wound sock yarn, which is a pretty dangerous place for me to be in. I would up enough for 5 pairs, which should easily see me through the year end and then some. There's actually starting to be a little bit of wiggle room in the bins, some day I might be able to get things actually sorted and visible rather than squashed and hopeful.

And there are those sweaters I've been meaning to knit...




Friday, August 2, 2013

All the way from Ireland

The Philosopher's friend G recently went on holiday to Ireland. He's seen me knitting quite a lot; he was one of the first to see the Rock/Paper/Scissors bag and to geek out over the equations inside.

I was really touched when he presented me with some yarn from "the least touristy place I could find."  I'm not sure what touristy yarn looks like in Ireland, but this is lovely wool.

IMG_6661

100% pure new wool from Kerry Woollen Mills. It's Aran weight, 200g in the Green Fleck colorway.

I have no idea what I'll do with it yet. It's not super soft, but it will be dense and warm.  I'm sure Ravelry will have some options for me. For now, it's just keeping me company.

A Redo

 I started this pair of socks on New Years Eve just before 2020. I finished them in May 2020 , amidst a lot of optimism about what I'd a...