The socks ate me

Carrie K pointed out (not directly, of course, but I know what she meant ;) that there aren't a whole lot of photos being splashed around here these days. It's quite true, and I'm very sorry about that, especially since there absolutely zero photos in today's post to make it up to you with. But I've been doing a lot of designing (or finalizing designs) lately, and it's all stuff that I want to be published commercially, so I have to maintain a hush-hush factor. It's pretty exciting for me whenever I have patterns I hope to share with a wider audience, but yeah, it makes for more boring visuals for you guys. I hope you'll bear with me anyway.

Mind you, I suppose that if you're still reading this blog after all my long stretches of absence, you're probably going to bear with me even without pictures. Thank you for continuing to 'tune in'. I keep telling myself that I must get better at blogging frequently, but I also want to be so thorough when I describe what I'm doing with my projects (both for my own recordkeeping and any edification that readers may get out of such details...oh, and plus, I don't know when to shut up). With everything else I have to do in my life, the non-essentials often fall by the wayside and the result is that you get weeks without a peep from me.

(I am hanging my head right now.)

I will just have to try to be more brief, that's all. Maybe not be completely detailed most of the time, and every now and then do a really big post that contains all the gories? I dunno. But I shall try.

At any rate, as you would expect with an over-three-week span of bloglessness, there's been a LOT going on with me, knitting-wise.

Firstly, if you're on Ravelry, you'll probably have heard of "Ravelympics 2008". This was kind of like the winter Olympics thing that the Yarn Harlot did, but it was Ravelry-based, and there were teams and events and other different stuff. Aaaand...someone pledged to do my Around the Block pattern as their Ravelympics project! This of course was very exciting for me (although the blanket is so huge that I did question her sanity just a little bit). But even more exciting is what she wrote on Ravelry in the comments section of my pattern:

"This is a great pattern. The charts are comprehensive and detailed, the instructions are straighforward and the photographs describing the grafting are very easy to follow and a massive help.
The blanket itself it lovely and is so much more interesting to construct that a straightforward back-and-forth square.
Completely recommend this."

Isn't that fantastic? I got all giggly and squee-y when I read that, I don't mind admitting. Hands may even have been clapped girlishly. She didn't actually finish it in time, but is still working on the project and is still keen about it. Of course, what I'm really terrified of is that my yarn usage is way more efficient than other people's, and therefore she'll run out of yarn before she finishes the blanket and will curse me into oblivion and I will feel like scum. But I guess we'll fall off that bridge when we come to it.

She's "Lolli" on Ravelry, where she's posted pictures of the blanket in progress. You can also check out her blog.

And speaking of people doing my patterns, according to Ravelry, another poor sap intrepid soul has started my Reversible Celtic Patterns Blanket pattern. She is the third person to do so (not including me). However, I should point out that the other two people ended up not merely frogging their projects, but actually deleting them COMPLETELY off of Ravelry (as opposed to merely marking them "frogged"). I must assume they did this in an attempt to wipe out all evidence that they'd ever even heard of the pattern and thus block the pain and suffering from their memory. :) I do honestly feel a little sorry for people who try to take that one on. I really only published it for the purposes of education and inspiration of other knitters, not because I actually expected anyone else would be masochistic enough to do it! :) But y'know, it takes all kinds. I guess there are actually some people out there who are as crazy as I am!

Stranded vest for moi

On Monday evening, I finished it.

And I. LOVE. It.

I am thrilled. Seriously, seriously pleased with how it looks. Mind you, it is a bit wide, it comes right out to the tips of my shoulders, which I think is too much. When I write up the final version of the pattern I will make the armholes deeper. But I still love it, and wore it yesterday, and felt like a million bucks. DH took some photos, and now all I have to do is print them off on some photo paper, do up a swatch, write up the proposal, and shoot it off to a pattern magazine. Whee!

There is just one downer here. The Sockina Colori yarn which I'm using as one of the two colours - the yarn which is key to achieving the awesome visual effect that makes the whole piece - is now discontinued. Words cannot express my frustration. I mean, seriously! This is the second time I've started designing something with a Schoeller & Stahl yarn and had the rug pulled out from under me partway through the process because the yarn got discontinued. I'm pretty POed, I don't mind saying, and I hereby swear that I shall never use another Schoeller & Stahl yarn in any of my design prototypes again. I just can't trust them. I'm going to submit the design anyway, though, because it's too good not to, and anyway, maybe there's an adequate substitute yarn out there...somewhere. Anyone know of a 3-ply sock yarn where one ply is black, another white, and the third variegating in rainbow colours? Anyone? Bueller?

Really Christmas socks for Dad

Also done!

Well, sort of. The first sock is too short in the foot. I'm going to have to lengthen it before I can give the socks to my dad. Curses.

Foot-pampering socks for moi

I've really been on fire, because this is also done! I'm really pleased with how they look, fit and feel, so hooray!

The completion of these socks means something else really good. It means that I now have socks from my pattern done up in large baby, child, woman and man sizes, which means that I can take a family photo of the socks on four different sizes of foot (the specific feet to be photographed of course belonging to me, my husband and my two girls). This will bring me one step closer to being able to send off the final version of the pattern. DH is working tonight, but maybe we can get everyone's socks on them on Thursday when we all get home.

Anouk for baby Mendez

This is coming along very nicely, considering that I only work on it in front of the computer. This is because I started the project when I had a laptop right next to me on the couch, so I was able to knit it without needing to print out a copy. At first, only working from the online instructions was just a well-the-laptop's-right-here-why-not thing, but now it's turned into a bit of a refusal-to-give-in, save-the-trees kind of deal.

But this hasn't hampered my progress so far - both sides and pockets are finished. I decided to duplicate stitch the flower motifs onto the pockets after the fact rather than go through the hassle of knitting intarsia with cotton as I go. (Ick.)

It's turning out really adorably, and is such a cute and fast knit. My only complaint so far has been that the shoulder instructions are completely mixed up and thus rather incomprehensible. Left, right, back and front labels seem to have been assigned randomly, so it took me a good deal of back-and-forthing between the instructions and the garment to figure out which instructions should probably be applied to which shoulder sections.

Itsy-bitsy baby socks

So after I finished the whole socks-for-the-family marathon, I decided to see what other sizes would turn out to look like, so I cast on for the wee baby size using the leftover Trekking XXL from my daughter's leggings. Result: very wee and very cute. I'm only about two-thirds done the first sock, but it's really sweet. And FAST, holy cow! (This shouldn't surprise me, given the size of the feet the socks are being made for, but it does.)

Stretchy socks for Mom

And the sock jag continues. I decided I wanted to use my own pattern for these socks instead of the toe-up thing I had going before, so I ripped it out. However, I've started the cast-on about twice and it's not tight enough, so I'm going to have to do it again with smaller needles and then switch to bigger ones once I have the stitches all set up. (Insert grumbling here.)

Double-faced bib

And finally...this project. Amazingly, it's not socks. :) I got back into it because I really want to finish it up, and also because nothing else in my list of current projects appeals right now. It's coming along very nicely, and I'm just one row away from starting to divide for the neckhole.

What other projects?

Stranded vest for moi

So I have a sock pattern to finish testing and writing up; another person I know who's having a baby; a very large sweater and some socks to make for Christmas gifts; and a ridiculously neglected Schedule...and what have I been doing? Working on my stranded vest.

Seriously. I am completely obsessed with it.

It's gone in rather a different direction from my original (admittedly vague) vision, and the new concept plays perfectly off of the colours I'm using. I know this probably makes me sound like the most conceited person ever, but I'm absolutely in love with the idea and the look I've finally managed to achieve (I say finally because there has been much ripping back and starting over), and am so proud of myself for eliciting it from my brain. I love this vest. Love, love, love.

Which is kind of surprising, considering all the frogging it's endured (and will yet endure, since I decided this evening that the last two inches need to become toast because where I started the neckline shaping is just wrong, wrong, wrong). A number of the problems have been because I didn't like the way the design was working out and needed a do-over, but unfortunately, more than one of the froggings have been because I plain old screwed up.

(A knitting truth: There is no pattern too simple, nor a knitter too experienced, to eliminate the possibility of making a truly dumbass mistake.)

On the upside, prior to one of the froggings, I tried it on, and holy flurking schmidt, it fits PERFECTLY. I'm not sure how I managed to swing that, but it's true.

At this point, I think I really know what I'm doing (at least basically) and for a while there I was pushing forward like crazy on it because watching the motif take shape in knitting form was so exciting and thrilling I could hardly stand it. Now, however, I've finished one repeat of the pattern (it looks deliciously swizz), so I've calmed down about the project a little.

Alas, there are no pictures, because I'm now pretty sure I'll be submitting the concept to a magazine when this prototype is done. I hope it does get accepted somewhere fairly quickly (or as quickly as acceptances tend to happen, anyway) because I can't wait to show it to people! Of course, I'm talking about it here in such a built-up way that when you do finally see what the pattern looks like, you might be disappointed. But hopefully not.

Foot-pampering socks for moi

I had set this aside for a little bit out of frustration. When I got to the point where I could try it on, it seemed a little snug and tough to get on. This was quite frustrating, because I really didn't want to go back to the drawing board for the women's size, I wanted to finish the damn sock so I could take pictures, write up the pattern and send it the heck off! But of course if a pattern doesn't fit the people it's intended for, well, that's a pattern that pretty much sucks, so I absolutely had to fix the problem. The first step was to find out what constituted a "standard woman's foot". Finally around the middle of this week, I did some research to figure out girths, instep heights and whatnot, and determined that the sock I had was a pretty good match to what it was supposed to be. I also tried it on a second time, this time making sure that the vast volume of ends was more out of the way (thus interfering less with the fit) than when I'd first tried it on, and it went on a lot more easily. So I've concluded that it's just fine and I can keep going.

Unfortunately, Carrie K, there will not be any pictures immediately, nor of any of my other recent or in-progress sock projects because of pre-magazine-publication restrictions. But they're forthcoming, I promise!

Anouk for baby Mendez

One of my co-workers is expecting #2! (November.) And on Thursday, I found out that the ultrasound says it's a girl. Their first baby is a boy, so they already have a lot of boy things, and therefore have had to go shopping for some new stuff. So I wanted to make them something girly. Usually I go with gender-neutral stuff, especially for first babies, because many people have more than one kid, and that second kid might well be a different gender from the first kid, and if that's the case, and I've made something gender-specific for the first kid, that gift won't see the light of day the second time around. But in this case, the circumstances are different, so I feel quite free to go as girly as I want.

I first considered my leafy baby poncho pattern. It's quick, fun, sweet, and uses something that's really easy to get: sock yarn. Added plus: it's easy to find machine-washable sock yarn (machine-washable is key for baby knits). Second added plus: it's easy to find sock yarn in nifty colours. However, I don't think I have enough sock yarn in appropriate colours in the stash, and I'd prefer to use stash yarn (I'm running out of stash storage box space). So instead I went with something I've been itching to knit for years: Anouk. This is a frightfully sweet pinafore dress that can double as a tunic top as the baby gets taller, and it will work equally well worn by itself, or over a shirt. Plus, I have a variety of cotton yarns in my stash that are either the right weight, or which can be doubled to produce the right weight. Winnah.

This is what it looked like this morning:



Now, however, it's much bigger - I'd guess I'm about an inch away from starting the neck shaping. It looks adorable.

And speaking of babies, heartfelt congratulations to Megan on the arrival of her new son, Elwood. Yay! He's so cute. Admittedly, I haven't seen him in person yet, just the shots on Stephanie's blog, but those pictures make him look highly nibblable. Gosh, I love babies.

A socks-rich post

So I'm getting very close to finishing the write-up of my sock pattern. It's taking a while because I'm testing it out on several different sizes. My family is made up of four people of differing foot sizes, which means I've got a good range of guinea pigs available right in the comfort of my own home. So I need to make a toddler size, child size, woman size and man size. Then I'll do individual photo shoots and finally try to get a usable shot of all four of us sticking out our bestockinged feet. I trust DH and myself and, to a limited extent, DD1, to be able to pull this off, but DD2 is the wild element that may make such a pose impossible. We shall see.

Baby socks for DD2

These were done using the second-smallest size instructions. I finished them about a week and a half ago - thus using up all the leftover sock yarn - and they are really, really cute. Unfortunately, they are also bordering on being a bit too small for my younger daughter, girthwise. But they do still fit, and we had a big photo session with her and her feet sitting in the high chair. Very cute stuff.

Wild socks for DD1

These were the bane of my existence for a while, I kept having to rip them out and redoing them. I was using the third-smallest size instructions. My first time out, the girth around the instep was waaay too small (and to add insult to injury, I'd made the feet far too long), so I re-jigged the size instructions to make things wider around the instep. The second time out I think I made the feet too short, so I had to rip them back and redo. Only after I'd done that did I discover that things were still too small around the instep.

Finally I came to the realisation that the size I was making was not adequate for my kid. This, plus the fact that the socks I'd made in the second-smallest size for my toddler were a wee bit too snug led me to changing the sizing structure of my pattern somewhat - instead of baby/toddler/young child/older child/woman/man, I went to newborn/older baby/toddler-slash-small-child/child/woman/man. Armed with the new sizing structure, I cast on again for these socks, this time using the fourth-smallest size (also known as the third-largest size).

At last...success. Except that I screwed up my math and initially made the foot too short.

Sigh.

FINALLY, on Monday I finished them and brought them home for DD1 to try on...and they fit. [insert angelic chorus here] Not only did they fit, but they have just exactly the right amount of looseness to them which tells me that they will fit her for a good while, and if I adjusted them later on to be longer in the foot, she'd probably be able to wear them for years to come. Hoo-freakin'-ray!

Oil-slick rainbow socks for moi

So with the toddler and child size socks in my pattern out of the way, I had to start making some socks in my size. Unfortunately, I don't really have any sock yarn I could use that isn't earmarked for something else, so my only options were to cannibalize an existing sock project, or buy more sock yarn. Since I have extremely limited financial resources and wanted to start rightthatverymoment, I went with the cannibalization option. I'd gotten as far as starting the leg of the first toe-up sock with the Sockina Colori that DH gave me last Christmas, but that obviously didn't matter, because I frogged that sucker back so fast I barely had time to blink!

But partway through the heel, I suddenly decided that what I really wanted to do with this nifty heathered rainbow-y yarn was pair it with some black and make a stranded vest for myself.

(I know, that kind of came out of nowhere, didn't it? Who knows what paths my brain will take. Even I haven't learned how to predict this.)

So this project is now officially cancelled.

Foot-pampering socks for moi

Naturally, I still needed to make woman-size socks with my new sock pattern. So I turned to the other sock project for myself that was in progress - a top-down pair using the Step yarn that I got for Mother's Day last year. I'd done most of the leg on the first sock, but again, that quickly vanished in my enthusiasm to re-start with my own pattern.

First sock is now coming along very nicely, but I tried it last night, and again I'm having a problem with the tightness around the instep. So I think I'm going to have to rejig the instructions there just a tad and have a do-over. But first I'm going to check online to see if there are any "standard woman foot size" measurements out there that can tell me whether the problem is my sock sizing, or whether my foot is just bigger than average. Either is possible.

But as usual, I am looooving this yarn. It's squooshy and smooth and you can totally feel the effects of the lotion without it being even the slightest bit oily. Love. It.

Stranded vest for moi

I need vests to wear to work. Unfortunately, I have only two...and one of them is really a tank top masquerading as a vest. I have all kinds of grand plans for knitting myself vests, but for a variety of reasons, none of the plans have morphed into actual projects yet.

Lately, however, I've been thinking how neat it would be to use sock yarn for a vest. First off, the superwashness translates into machine washability, which is excellent for something I'd be wearing on a regular basis. Secondly, sock yarn is extremely affordable. For example, I had 100g of solid black Sock it to Me that I'd ordered from elann.com a few months ago that cost all of about $4.80 (plus shipping). (Yes, you read that right, $4.80 for 100g of sock yarn.)

Then I figured, if I used two different colours of sock yarn, especially if the second colour was self-striping, I could do stranded knitting and make it look very fair isle-esque.

My original plan was to snag some Noro sock yarn at my LYS' recent sale, but unfortunately, by the time I got there, it was almost all gone and I didn't care much for any of the colourways that were left. (Poo.) Or, rather, I thought the colourways were certainly very nice generally speaking, but recognized that they'd look pretty crappy on me specifically.

When I started working again with my Sockina Colori, though, I started thinking that I could use that as my second colour. It's not self-striping, but it is heathered with three different colours: black, white, and variegating rainbow hues. Paired with the solid black sock yarn, I thought it would look pretty stunning.

So I grabbed a 3mm circular needle, guessed at gauge, and cast on.

The good news? It looked terrific. I lurved it.

The bad news? My gauge guess sucked. I thought that I'd get 7 sts per inch with the bottom ribbing. In reality, I got 9. Rather a big difference! Oh, also, I underestimated how big my waist is. I keep forgetting that I've had two kids and that the 22" of my high school days is long gone. On the upside, it's still small at 25.5", so it's not like I'm busting out of my clothes or anything. (If there's anyone reading this who is now annoyed at my tinyness, be assured that I am not a stick: my hips are 36".) Plus I hadn't really considered that I'd want a bit of ease on this thing. So, I had to rip it all back (sob) and re-cast on with about 24 more stitches. So far I'm approaching three inches on try #2, I think, and I'm still nervous that it's not big enough. We shall see. It's very fun, though, I still lurve it.

I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with the pattern once I finish it. I'm sort of torn between just writing it up and posting it for free; or doing lots of work to figure out instructions for multiple sizes and either selling it, or submitting it to Interweave or something. Of course, the lazy bum part of me who doesn't want to do all the resizing calculations is yelling, "Just post the damn thing as is!"...but I dunno. We'll see.

Double-faced bib

Even with all the sock knitting going on, this has seen a fair bit of action and is growing noticeably. Also, I've decided who's going to get it. But it's a secret, so I'm not going to say. :)

Snood for DD1

I finally blocked the snood this week. (Which took a bit of doing to get started, since my husband had been doing some sewing and the pins were down in his workshop instead of up in the workroom where they belong. It is mostly wonderful to have a crafty spouse...but sometimes a pain, too. I'm sure he feels the same way about me, especially when I teef his electronic caliper!)



As you can see, it cleaned up real purty. But I was still nervous about whether it would be big enough. The morning after the blocking, it was dry, so I unpinned it and took it to work along with the yarn. On the bus ride home, I twisted up a drawstring, threaded it through the lacy edging, and - tadah! - a snood. DD1 tried it on as soon as she got home and, to my great relief, it fit (although she will probably grow out of it a few years down the road). She wore it with great joy until dinner, when she wanted to take it off so she wouldn't get it dirty. I pointed out that she was unlikely to spill food up onto her head (I got a giggle out of that), but she was adamant so off it came. But I suspect she'll want to wear it again really soon, especially when we go to another SCA event. I should get DH to make her a little circlet to go with it!

And speaking of the SCA, thanks again for all the tips, Keja. I missed seeing you at TW that weekend! I did a walkabout to try and find various friends but didn't spot you. I hope you had a lovely time. I know I found it a very relaxing event, even with the kids!