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Vituperative on the Voracity of Socks, or Alliteration gone Awry, or Ode to the Reclaimed Stocking

For a disentaglement of this deluge of dialogue… click here.

When the vagueries of fate and time conspire and collude with the result that you have F-ed your last UFO, and you feel world-weary and ragged having wrung the last vestage (for now) of creativity from your exhausted bones, what alternative might one posess except to plunge in to the depths of hoarded conglomorations of wool, cotton, tencel, microfiber and rayon known as STASH.

Consumed by boredom with the idea of creating meaningless swatches for pattern that I am completely appathetic about, I instead turned to the radiant countenance of one of my favorite knits. Socks. Oh ye of footed and cuffed goodness, oh ye who are ALWAYS agreeable and ready to hand! I pledge my unswerving devotion to thee, oh Sock.

While I rummaged through skeins of sock yarn, I was overcome with such promise. I felt the potential of each skein and paused for an infinitesimal interval to envision the socks that would proceed from it. Confections of lace and loveliness, concoctions of cables and twists, clean simple stockinette with a delicate picot trimming. Each had it’s inspiration, but I felt that despite these chimeras of creativity, I would do this yarn great injustice in my present mental state. So in my despondency, I turned to the one, long forgotten and abandoned single sock. This poor fellow was the only stocking that I had never mated. He was alone in the great gigantic universe (and my capacious yarn box). Poor, pitiful socky!

Socky’s tale is one of woe. He was begun on a road trip to New Mexico for a floral design and crop judging competition in the adolescence of my sock knitting career. Upon returning home, I realized that I had dropped a stitch in the gusset decreases and watched in terror as the stitch finagled its way out and unravelled 2 inches up the side of the sock. Thereafter, socky was relegated to the depths of the stash bin. Until yesterday.

I unknitted the kitchenered toe and unraveled the entire length of the stocking, wound up the remainder of the ball and washed and hung the kinky mess of wool that once was Socky.

And now Socky has transformed, as a butterfly, into this:

The wee toe-typed beginnings of socks for my love.  When the picky discerning man professes his fondness for the sock yarn, you must knit him socks with it, posthaste.

M

Posted 31 August 2006 † Mim § Knitting ‡ Comments (14) °

O is for…..

(I’m skipping N, shuddup)

Scrub Oak with Acorns

Oak!

I grew up in Southern California, with the California Live Oak. As a kid I never knew what everyone was talking about when they said “oak tree”. I didn’t see any oak trees. I saw ACORN trees. Peach trees produce peaches, orange trees produce oranges, almond trees make almonds… so those trees that drop acorns? They MUST be acorn trees. I think I was 11 before I figured out that they were actually Oak trees.

Now I live in Utah, and my office is SURROUNDED by Gambel Oak which is a scrubby species of oak, but still very pretty (the pictures are Gambel Oak). The acorns are growing large at this time of year, and I may be collecting them later in the season to use for some natural dying.

Thanks for the comments on the new template, and I think I’ve tweaked it to my satisfaction (I needed to figure out a way to get all my ring codes to show in the sidebar… if you need to know this for a wordpress blog, drop me an e-mail).

Also, I DID manage to cast Hidcote off this morning and it’s blocking behind my desk and just about dry!

Here’s a sneak peak:

I may hold off on showing you the rest until I can get the pattern up, not sure yet, but hopefully that won’t take too long as I’m going to finish the final charts today.

M

Posted 29 August 2006 † Mim § ABCalong § Designing § Knitting ‡ Comments (19) °

Temporarily MIA

Work is crazy busy, I ran out of bandwidth this weekend but got my limit upped, my site was wonky this morning because I’m installing a secure certificate so that all the info you lovely people enter will be more secure and CERTIFIED more secure, but things are a still a bit unsettled and I’m having a hard time getting to them.  So please be patient with me.  Things will be much better in a bit.
I had a crisis of knitting this morning, and realized that I was retarded while thinking I was really cool and ended up fixing my stupidity at lunch.  But all is well now and things are moving ahead.  I’m about 8 rows from finishing the Hidcote Garden Shawl, but those rows are LONG buggers!  Hopefully after tonight I will be done though.  I may even be able to block it tonight, if not… maybe tomorrow.  At this point, I can’t promise anything.  The bind off alone might take me 2 days (if you can’t tell I’m a bit worn down by this project right now, but I’m still excited because it’s going to be BEAUTIFUL!)

All for now, I’ll keep you as updated as I can.

M

Posted 28 August 2006 † Mim § Knitting ‡ Comments (10) °

Brain.Turned.Gooey

It’s been an insanely busy morning, full of crazy work things and the 3 seemingly simple things on my ‘to do today’ list haven’t even been touched. So I think it’s time for blogging! Here’s my random Friday.

  1. The shuttle bus driver yesterday almost ran into the barrier in the middle of the road because he was busy texting someone on his cell phone. Yet another reason why I will hold out against the cell phones. I don’t want to risk becoming a stupid dork who could think that telling your buddy you’re up for getting wasted tonight is more important than the health and safety of the people riding your bus.
  2. Why do they make 5″ tall bookends! What use are they?! I do the supply ordering for my office. Therefore, I have a bazillion catalogs that I have to reference fairly regularly. I finally got sick of my catalogs all spilling out onto the rest of the shelf and got 9″ bookends. Most books I know of are at least close to or above 9″ tall. Why not use the bookend-making resources of the world and make ONE type of bookend that will work for most everything? If only I ruled the world…

In fact, going on a large tangent… Here is a short list of things I’d change if I ruled the world…. Feel free to add your own in the comments, or post your own list to your blog (then remember to let me know so I can read yours and see if our dictatorships could live in relative harmony or if I would have to wipe you from the face of the planet like so much snot). 🙂

If Miriam Ruled the World

  1. No one would be allowed to start a new roll of toilet paper until they had used up the previous roll.
  2. Speaking of toilet paper, you would get an electric shock if you tried to get up from the toilet without actually putting the new roll on the holder. It’s not like you have better things to do while you’re sitting there, c’mon!
  3. File folders would come already sorted into stagered positions instead of coming (as they do) with 33 first position tabs all together, 34 second position tabs together, and 33 third position tabs together. It would save this crazy obsessive person a whole lot of time.
  4. All yarn stores would be open until 7 pm, giving me time to get home from work, eat something, check my e-mail and THEN go out and still have enough time to browse.
  5. While we’re at it, how about all yarn is FREE!
  6. Shoes would not wear out. *pout* This item is brought on by the fact that my Chacos, my faithful footerly companion of 6 years are about to give up the ghost. The soles at the balls of my feet are cracked up to the footbed. I fear that at any time, one misstep could snap them right in two (or four, as there are two of them).
  7. There would be a button on your phone that you could push when a telemarketer just won’t shut up and a HUGE hand would pop out of the phone on their end and smack them up-side the head.
  8. There would be 26 hours in every day, and those 2 extra hours would be solely dedicated to crafty pursuits. I would spend mine knitting.
  9. Mailmen would stop leaving little notes that say you can pick up your package at the post office when they never really tried to deliver it. I know this is true because C was home ALL DAY for the last week, and yet, the mailman left the stupid note.

OK… brain is still goo… I think it’s time to go poke the squirrels outside my office. Maybe a rabies infected bite will do the trick.
M

Posted 25 August 2006 † Mim § Totally Random ‡ Comments (25) °

Hidcote's Third Pattern

Much to the pleasure of a certain blogger, I have picked up the Hidcote Garden Shawl again, and she is nearing completion. I finally decided on a way to continue (one that I am happy with at least. I came up with a MILLION ways to continue, including frogging the whole damn thing, but I digress) and it’s moving right along now. This one will be VERY chart heavy. VERY VERY. I think I’m up to like 8 or 9 pages of charts. It would be intimidating except that I’ve been inputting the charts electronically as I went. That means that when it’s done, I just have to take some pictures, Write down the simple beginning instructions, and then print the charts to pdfs and put it all together. Instead of spending days or weeks charting and charting and charting.
And late, as usual, but here it is…. the winner of the drawing for checking out my new shop website is:

Sheri of Scrappy Knitter! I’ve e-mailed you Sheri, so check your spam filter if you didn’t get it and send me your address. Sheri wins a 100 gram skein of Meilenweit Tweed sock yarn. It’s a nice sturdy wool/nylon blend in a navy blue with bright colorful flecks in it. Very cheerful 🙂
Well, onward and upward.

M

Late in coming (I flagged the message in my inbox and then got SWAMPED with e-mails and lost it until today), but still FABULOUS…. Marisa has finished her Mountain Peaks Shawl in a beautiful blue! She altered the edging to avert a yarn-shortage disaster and she did a GREAT job! Go see!

Wendy of Knit and the City finished her Icarus shawl! You can see Ben Franklin posing with it at her blog.
And Marianne from Sweden finished her Icarus in a black linen! It looks lovely!

Susan from Germany finished an Seraphim Shawl in a beautiful pale pink wool for her Aunt. Go check it out!

And Strikkepress, after having just finished Icarus, has finished her Mountain Peaks Shawl in a beautiful colorway called “Midnight Sun”

Posted 24 August 2006 † Mim § Designing § Knitting § Others FO's ‡ Comments (8) °

How to Bead Your Icarus

OK, sorry for the delay, but here it is.

How to add beads to your Icarus shawl.

Background: I had included beads in each of the edge points in my original design, to add weight and glitz to a simple shawl, but when Interweave Knits told me they wanted to publish it, they nixed the beads. They liked the idea, as I recall, but it just took too much space in the magazine to have a tutorial on how to add the beads. So they were cut, but now you have the option of adding them back in to your own version. This can be done with the published version, although it adds another row or two, so account for that in your yarn total. Also, although I didnt’ take pictures of it (and forgot to do it on my demo swatch), you would do the same thing over the edge yarn overs so that you have a bead there as well.

Materials:: Fishing line or other beading thread, and beads (41 of them if I recall correctly, since kamarria asked) that can accomodate a double thickness of your yarn or a double thickness of your fishing line, whichever is thicker. Of course it’s always easier to get a thinner fishing line than to get different yarn.
Intro: You will start with these instructions as the right side row AFTER you drop the extra 3 yo’s off of teh yo4’s. On this beaded row, do not work the increases around the center stitch or just inside the edge stitches. This will be a row without increases.
Step 1:

When you get to the stitch above the yo4, thread your fishing line through and fold the fishing line in half. This effectively makes a beading needle out of your fishing line.

Step 2:

Remove the stitch above the yo4 (that you’ve just threaded the fishing line through) from the needle.

Step 3:

Use the fishing line as a beading needle and thread your bead onto BOTH ends of the fishing line at once. Push the bead down on the line until it pops onto the stitch.

Step 4:

Replace the stitch that now has a bead on it onto the left hand needle (this is best done by poking the left hand needle through and THEN removing the fishing line. If you remove the line first, you risk loosing the bead AND the stitch and having the whole thing uravel all the way up your shawl. That is BAD, my friends).

Step 5:

Work that stitch (knit or purl…. doesn’t really matter, your preference). At this point the bead is wedged onto the stitch funny, and everything is sort of tight and awkward. This is normal. Once you work another row or two, it will be fine. Repeat this process above each of the yo4’s and above the center stitch across the whole shawl.
Step 6:

Work another row without increasing knitting the knit stitches and purling the purl stitches. If your beads are especially large, you MIGHT want to work a second row after that, but it really isn’t necessary.

Step 7:

Bind off as instructed in the pattern (or if you chose to do 2 more rows, you can bind off with knits instead of purls).

Step 8:

When blocking, place a pin in the row after the bead so that the yo4 opens up and the beads remains centered in each of the points. Also, please note that this picture is a dry blocking (and I forgot the beads on the edge points), so it looks like crap.

And in this pic, please disregard the Ekho and Miriam hair that is littering the floor. Miriam needs to vacuum.

Good luck!

M

p.s. thanks for all your lovely congrats in yesterday’s comments! You guys sure know how to make a grrl blush!

Posted 23 August 2006 † Mim § Designing § Knitting § Tutorials ‡ Comments (15) °

Lightweight Mountain Peaks Shawl WINS!

For those of you looking for the Icarus beading tutorial, I’m sorry it’s not today, but we had new student orientation, and the office sort of exploded, so I haven’t had time to write it up yet, although the pictures are uploaded and everything.  I’ll try to write it tonight and post it tomorrow.

But I promised my mom I would post this so that she could link to it in her weekly family newsletter, so here it is.

I submitted the green Lightweight Mountain Peaks Shawl into the county fair, as well as some of the Purple Raspberry & Peach Jam (aka Liquid Crack).  The jam won a blue ribbon, yay!  And when I went to pick up the stuff, I got the jam and was all excited, and then we looked for the shawl.  And looked for the shawl, and Looked For The Shawl.  I was starting to get a bit panicked.  Had some nasty-mean crafter stolen it out from under the judges?!  No.  Apparently they couldn’t see it buried underneath all the ribbons (!).

County Fair 1

Those are, in order of importance… a blue ribbon, a High Blue ribbon, Judge’s Choice, Sweepstakes, and Best of Show.  And that platter thingy in the middle?

County Fair 2

…Exhibitor of the Year.

I was floored.  I just stood there giggling histerically nervously.  I laughed the whole way home.  This baby is DEFINITELY going to the State Fair! 🙂

M

Posted 22 August 2006 † Mim § Knitting ‡ Comments (70) °

Piece of (Strawberry) Cake

Crushed Strawberry Socks

I have finished the Crushed Strawberry Socks! They were fun and fairly quick, and honestly, I like the fit other than being too short for me (I decided to make them for the long-range planning department, as I couldn’t fathom knitting something for myself when I see Christmas looming along with all the other stuff I need to do by then). The yarn colors are BEAUTIFUL and Teri really did a good job of painting the yarn so that it didn’t pool or flash.

Crushed Strawberry Socks - Detail

Pattern: A basic toe-up sock on 64 sts using the “Easy Toe” on page 41 or 42 of Sensational Knitted Socks, but starting with a smaller number of stitches to make a longer toe, and using Cookie‘s toe-up gusset heel from this pattern for the 64 st sock. I also did the cuff in a Garter Rib from SKS, with 8 rows of garter stitch around the cuff for balance. I used the sewn bind off for the top.
Yarn: KnitPicks Dye Your Own Sock yarn, 100% Merino wool. Dyed by Teri in the Crushed Strawberries Colorway.

Needles: 2.25 mm (US Size 1) Clover Bamboo dpns. I need to give these needles a rest. They’ve been in almost constant use for a couple of months and they need a break.

Gauge: 9 spi. I seem to get this consistantly with my US 1’s. It’s good to have consistancy.

Verdict: They’re good! The yarn was nice to work with, and the way I did the toes helped to make them fit better for my LONG toes. I didn’t like how short the heel flap ended up being, but I figured out that if you just increase MORE stitches for the gussett increases, it will take longer to join them to the heel flap and therefore make the heel flap longer. So I’ll be doing that in the future.

I also finished the felted bag that I started last weekend. My mom is going to donate it to be auctioned off for the multicultural center at the University in her city. I made it and felted it (it took SOOO LONG!) and it was still HUGE, so I chucked it in the dryer, and it was still huge! So I did some surgery. So, what follows is how to fix a god-awfully huge felted bag into something a bit more usable.

Felted Bag Surgery 1

First, figure out how big you ACTUALLY want it. Then measure (or as I did, count how many stitches out from some obvious bit like the handle) and start cutting.

Felted Bag Surgery 2

Cut down to the base. At this point, it looks like a bad sweater with a hole for your belly button. And I thought I had pictures, but I guess I don’t. Anyway, from here I cut those wings from the base, and cut the extra parts from the front off of each side, giving me pieces the size I had originall intended for the sides of the bag. Then I placed wrong sides together and sewed the side pieces into the rest of the bag. I ended up with this:

Felted Bag Surgery 3

It gave a bunch of stability to the fabric, and the bag really turned out quite well, considering. And now it’s useful instead of only being good for smuggling small adults into movie theatres.

*eta*  Yes, I know it’s not completely felted, but it won’t felt any more.  It stopped shrinking in size after about 5 washes.  The problem stems from not using a large enough needle size.  The yarn was still in the spinning oil, so it looked lighter weight than it really was, and the US 13’s were the largest needle I had in the house, so the bag was knit too tightly.  And, as all you felters know, the stitches need space to shrink into.

The lovely Imbrium has finished her LOVELY Mtn. Peaks shawl, I think her Mother will be happy to have it even though it’s late, don’t you?

Go take a look at Phyllis‘ finished Adamas in the Can’t Elope color way from Liza Souza.

Heather finished her Adamas too after some heroing needle malfunctions. Whew! It turned out nice though, so it’s ok, right?

And Caroline has finished a pair of Eleanora Socks in RED!

WHEW! That’s a lot of FO’s!

Betsey finished her Icarus ALSO in RED! And it looks lovely! She beaded hers also (I’ll have the tutorial up tomorrow or Wednesday, the pictures are already taken, I just have to write it).

And Catie finished her Icarus too, in Mohair! Brave girl! It looks great!

Posted 21 August 2006 † Mim § Designing § Knitting § My FO's § Others FO's § Tutorials ‡ Comments (17) °

The Kindness of Strangers Bloggers

Why is it that knitting bloggers are the best?! I see what kind of e-mail other bloggers get and I cringe and thank God that I get e-mails like I got from Rhonna and Donna (hahah! Rhonna and Donna… it rhymes *snicker*)

Rhonna at first e-mailed me to let me know that the upper navigation bar in my shop wasn’t working properly. We got e-mailing back and forth and she spent HOURS pouring over the code for my shop to see why it was doing strange things. I tried a bunch of different fixes that she suggested, and when none of them worked, she enlisted the help of Donna. Now Donna’s husband is a computer guy and apparently codes PHP and CSS for a living. So I’m sure it took him a matter of minutes to fix what I took a WEEK to try to figure out. But voila! The page is fixed, thanks to the lovely kindness of knit bloggers! Thank you so much Rhonna and Donna!

So, I’ve fixed MANY things about the website since the launch. I’ve fixed the free items so that they don’t have an add to cart button, but made the Download link a little clearer by adding a button in there. I’ve changed the FREE button so it’s not that scary green. I took out the ‘Action DVD’s’ link. I’ve reordered the categories to make it easier to find the free patterns. I have updated the contact info to have my new P.O. Box number. In the future, I plan to figure out how to change the Gift Certificates so that they are more closely aligned with the prices of the patterns. Frankly, I’m quite proud of what I’ve done with this site, because I’m learning php and css as I go. Hopefully I’ll have the Riverwide scarf up soon, or the Hidcote Shawl or something.

Contest Update… I’ll draw a name this weekend and post probably Monday to let you all know who won the yarn. Also, I’ve had quite a few people ask about adding beads to Icarus, so I’ll try to work up a photo tutorial for it this weekend and post that next week.

The Crushed Strawberry socks are ready for their heels (the gussets are done), so I’ll do that during lunch and hopefully be on to the cuffs by my evening commute. I love socks!

M

p.s.   Does anyone have a copy of Barbara Walker’s Knitting From the Top that they want to get rid of?  I’d like to buy a copy and I’d rather buy it from someone I know than from Amazon or something like that.

Posted 18 August 2006 † Mim § Knitting ‡ Comments (6) °

Apparently I am She-of-the-Messy-Desk…

… and She-Who-Takes-Crappy-Photos.

Crushed Strawberry Socks

Anyway, these are the socks I’m working on right now.  The yarn is stuff that Ms. Stitch-n-Snitch dyed and I purchased.  I think the color was called “Crushed Strawberries” but I’m too lazy to go trauling through her archives to find it 😉

But yes, I’m back to knitting for a purpose, and I’m counting this pair of socks as ‘research’ for a future design.  I’ve got a sock design in my head, but the best way to do it would be toe-up.  It would save picking up a ton of stitches and frankly, it would just be better.  But I have put it off since I HATE HATE HATE dislike short-row heels (they’re simple enough to work once you know what you’re doing, but I just don’t like the fit).  So this sock is serving as a test run for the toe-up gusset heel demonstrated here by the incomparable Cookie.  So if I like the toe-up gusset heel, the much hashed-out sock pattern can go forward.  If not…. it will probably be stalled again.  But once I get past the heel treatment these Strawberry Socks will be knit happily in some to-be-determined nifty ribbing until I get bored run out of yarn.  At the pace I’m going now though… I should probably already be starting the gusset increases.  I’ll have to check that at lunch.

M

Catie has finished her Icarus shawl!  And she added beads like I had in the original design.  It looks great!

Posted 17 August 2006 † Mim § Designing § Knitting § Others FO's ‡ Comments (11) °