I went to the sock drawer this morning to find Blue/Green socks for the "dress your school colors" day at work (I dressed in the kids' high school colors, since orange and blue don't suit me and I own no Gator or Illini items). What did I see was a sock I made last year and wore a lot. I also saw my Sea Wool socks I finished a few weeks ago.
Whoa, look at that, sez I. They are the SAME colorway.
I must really like those colors to have bought them twice, a year apart. At least they are different in composition, and I knitted them differently. I guess I know what I like. And it's those subdued colors.
Not much knitting happened yesterday, but I still got to toe toes on the worsted weight socks. So you'll have a photo of one of them tomorrow. I don't know whether I will put them on me, where they will be too long, or on Lee, where they will be too short. No one in the house is a men's size 9.5.
The exciting weekend plan is to finish the lace sample and trudge along on the top of the pentagon. Round and round plain stockinette in a solid color is something I need distraction to work on; otherwise it's pretty boring. However, the bag will be SO cute...need to finish it!
In other news, I seem to have won another contest over at the Campanula for the Cure KAL, so I think I will stop entering them and let someone else win. I anxiously await prize announcements, though, since their sponsors are people I've never bought stuff from before.
I'm also really happy to have inspired at least one other knitter to work on Kaylee. She posted a work in progress photo on my Flickr pages, so go check it out!
Showing posts with label neptune. Show all posts
Showing posts with label neptune. Show all posts
Friday, August 31, 2007
Monday, August 13, 2007
Completed Neptune Socks
Here, with a lovely pink blanket background are the Neptune socks in all their completed glory. I finished them in the new pickup truck, AKA the Limo, on the way to scenic rural Yorktown, Texas.
I sure do like them. They are going to look really sharp with shoes and jeans, and perhaps even dress pants. Lately I've been hiding socks I knit under my dress pants because it is COLD at work. (Today I am wearing Coupling socks and my Juliet sweater, PLUS a hand-knit necklace by my LYS colleague Amy (photo to come). I all hand knitting, all the time.)
I didn't bind off quite as loosely on sock #2 and it looks better than sock #1 off the foot, but they look the same on. The heel came out more interesting on sock #1, though. I truly enjoyed knitting with this Sea Wool yarn using the interesting textured pattern, and know these will be favorites for years to come. They fit SO well, too.
Other Progress and Cheer
I did start my Campanula for the Cure socks in the car on the way home yesterday. I am well into the third pattern repeat. I did the toes differently than the pattern asked, since I still don't really like to do short row toes (I will do the heel suggested, having seen others have issues when trying a different heel on those socks). I did the nice Turkish cast on toe, starting with 14 stitches. It came out fine. The Pale Fire yarn looks great with the Campanula lace--it's slight color variations don't detract at all from the flowers.
Whew, the lace pattern is not for the faint of heart. No chart, just words, and different numbers of stitches on different rows. Even a teeny bit of pattern on the "resting" rows! And my favorite stitch, knit 3 together through back loop. At least the KnitPicks needles let me manage it successfully. The resulting flowers are really lovely, though, and Ramona did a great job mirroring their directions. I will post a photo tomorrow or the next day!
I also want to post a photo of the mystery pentagonal project. It moved along a bit this weekend, too. It's becoming quite festive, but needed more Noro Kureyon on Saturday.
Here's the sweet story of how I got more Noro: at the LYS on Saturday, a lady came in with a store-bought sweater she had hoped to get fixed. Pat was looking at it and thinking it coulld not be fixed, but a bunch of customers came in so I said I'd take a look. It turned out to be an intarsia ribbon-knit sweater and one of the knots between colors had come undone, causing one stitch to unravel. I told the lady I could fix it, and she said she'd leave it and come back. I said, no, it would just take about ten minutes. She was incredulous at that. So, I got a little crochet hook and fixed the dropped stitch, then tied it all back together. Even I was impressed--you couldn't tell I'd been working on it!
The lady wanted to pay me, because she adored the sweater and was thrilled to have it back, but really, I just did it to be nice. Heck, it was fun to fix it! When she insisted I suggested she buy me a ball of yarn. I pointed to the two skeins of Kureyon I was going to pick up, and she insisted on buying me both of them. So, the mystery project will not be too expensive after all, and I won't rue wasted money if it doesn't felt up the way I want it to.
So, good knitting karma all around! Stay tuned for more tomorrow!
I sure do like them. They are going to look really sharp with shoes and jeans, and perhaps even dress pants. Lately I've been hiding socks I knit under my dress pants because it is COLD at work. (Today I am wearing Coupling socks and my Juliet sweater, PLUS a hand-knit necklace by my LYS colleague Amy (photo to come). I all hand knitting, all the time.)
I didn't bind off quite as loosely on sock #2 and it looks better than sock #1 off the foot, but they look the same on. The heel came out more interesting on sock #1, though. I truly enjoyed knitting with this Sea Wool yarn using the interesting textured pattern, and know these will be favorites for years to come. They fit SO well, too.
Other Progress and Cheer
I did start my Campanula for the Cure socks in the car on the way home yesterday. I am well into the third pattern repeat. I did the toes differently than the pattern asked, since I still don't really like to do short row toes (I will do the heel suggested, having seen others have issues when trying a different heel on those socks). I did the nice Turkish cast on toe, starting with 14 stitches. It came out fine. The Pale Fire yarn looks great with the Campanula lace--it's slight color variations don't detract at all from the flowers.
Whew, the lace pattern is not for the faint of heart. No chart, just words, and different numbers of stitches on different rows. Even a teeny bit of pattern on the "resting" rows! And my favorite stitch, knit 3 together through back loop. At least the KnitPicks needles let me manage it successfully. The resulting flowers are really lovely, though, and Ramona did a great job mirroring their directions. I will post a photo tomorrow or the next day!
I also want to post a photo of the mystery pentagonal project. It moved along a bit this weekend, too. It's becoming quite festive, but needed more Noro Kureyon on Saturday.
Here's the sweet story of how I got more Noro: at the LYS on Saturday, a lady came in with a store-bought sweater she had hoped to get fixed. Pat was looking at it and thinking it coulld not be fixed, but a bunch of customers came in so I said I'd take a look. It turned out to be an intarsia ribbon-knit sweater and one of the knots between colors had come undone, causing one stitch to unravel. I told the lady I could fix it, and she said she'd leave it and come back. I said, no, it would just take about ten minutes. She was incredulous at that. So, I got a little crochet hook and fixed the dropped stitch, then tied it all back together. Even I was impressed--you couldn't tell I'd been working on it!
The lady wanted to pay me, because she adored the sweater and was thrilled to have it back, but really, I just did it to be nice. Heck, it was fun to fix it! When she insisted I suggested she buy me a ball of yarn. I pointed to the two skeins of Kureyon I was going to pick up, and she insisted on buying me both of them. So, the mystery project will not be too expensive after all, and I won't rue wasted money if it doesn't felt up the way I want it to.
So, good knitting karma all around! Stay tuned for more tomorrow!
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Blast from the Past: EntreLucy Bag
I have no current knitting excitement to report . I am just knitting away on the second sock of the pair I posted about yesterday. Its name is now Neptune, as the colorway was re-dubbed by a sock-knitting list member after a discussion of why colorways make no sense, with "Hercules" as an example. The colors are more Piscean/Neptunian!
So, with that little news I decided to post another past project. I believe this bag was knitted around the holidays in 2005. I was in a big craze for knitting entrelac after the Winter Olympics, when I made my first entrelac felted bag (I posted about it here .) I was enjoying that whole knitting backwards thing so much that I wanted to do more. And I had a bunch of leftover Silk Garden from my modular vest (posted about here ). So, I got out the trusty ole Lucy Bag pattern and looked at it. Sure enough, the base ended up with exactly the right number of stitches to do some number of 8-stitch motifs in entrelac. I knitted up a bottom and then entrelac-ed to my heart's content. Of course, I had to go buy another ball of yarn, ruining my virtuous idea of using only stash for the bag. But it's OK. I liked it a lot. I even liked my seed stitch handles. Nice texture and I like seed stitch a lot now that I am a continental knitter (hated all that switching back and forth when I knitted the other way).
Then I washed it. Why? Because someone at the LYS had wondered if Silk Garden would felt. I didn't think so, but decided to see what would happen. Wow! What happened was that the Silk Garden got very very soft. It didn't shrink much, maybe a bit. But WOW is that a soft bag.
I use it to carry projects, though right now I am using other bags more. I should have lined it, because needles poke through it. But I hate to sew anything other than a rectangle.
There's a woman who comes to the LYS who made a similar bag in shades of purple and felted it. But she used entrelac on the bottom, too, making smaller and smaller diamonds. That is one beautiful bag.
So, with that little news I decided to post another past project. I believe this bag was knitted around the holidays in 2005. I was in a big craze for knitting entrelac after the Winter Olympics, when I made my first entrelac felted bag (I posted about it here .) I was enjoying that whole knitting backwards thing so much that I wanted to do more. And I had a bunch of leftover Silk Garden from my modular vest (posted about here ). So, I got out the trusty ole Lucy Bag pattern and looked at it. Sure enough, the base ended up with exactly the right number of stitches to do some number of 8-stitch motifs in entrelac. I knitted up a bottom and then entrelac-ed to my heart's content. Of course, I had to go buy another ball of yarn, ruining my virtuous idea of using only stash for the bag. But it's OK. I liked it a lot. I even liked my seed stitch handles. Nice texture and I like seed stitch a lot now that I am a continental knitter (hated all that switching back and forth when I knitted the other way).
Then I washed it. Why? Because someone at the LYS had wondered if Silk Garden would felt. I didn't think so, but decided to see what would happen. Wow! What happened was that the Silk Garden got very very soft. It didn't shrink much, maybe a bit. But WOW is that a soft bag.
I use it to carry projects, though right now I am using other bags more. I should have lined it, because needles poke through it. But I hate to sew anything other than a rectangle.
There's a woman who comes to the LYS who made a similar bag in shades of purple and felted it. But she used entrelac on the bottom, too, making smaller and smaller diamonds. That is one beautiful bag.
Monday, August 6, 2007
Monday's New Thing: Textured SeaCell Sock
Happy Monday. Though I didn't post this weekend, I got good solid knitting in, and here's the result.
This sock is really attractive in person, perhaps the nicest looking sock I ever made when it is on a foot. It has some kind of elegance that is hard to describe. The colors are so subtle and change ever so slightly throughout the sock, making it less "harsh" than some multicolored socks.
It's a toe-up version with a "normal" toe and a very interesting heel that's found in Wendy Johnson's eyelet lace sock--uses short rows combined with increases to make a nice rounded heel turn.
I am sure glad I finally settled on a pattern. As a reminder, The one I chose came from a Wild Horse Farm pattern called Bees Knees that I bought online. It uses an interesting texture created by using an SKP then knitting into the passed stitch. That makes the colors mottle a bit more than they do in the plain stockinette part. You can see it pretty well if you click the enlarged image. The top is just a 1x1 rib with the stretchy bind off where you knit two together over and over. I used a larger needle to bind off, and perhaps went a bit overboard on it. But it sure goes on easily.
The Sea Wool is nice. Sometimes it gets a bit "squeaky" when you are knitting tightly. But it has a nice sheen, and is twisty, which I like. One little issue is there are some slubs and little undyed spots. I will say they add character, because the parts that ARE dyed are just lovely. Whoever does the Fleece Artist dyeing does a wonderful job.
PS: new info: socks are now named "Neptune" in honor of an email list member who said that's more like what the colors looked like, rather than Hercules
Thanks to All
Thanks to those of you who commented on the Forget Me Not socks. It's so nice when the designer sees her work knitted up by someone else and commenting, so thanks to Laura!
I am also grateful for the suggestion from nrdgrrl (I fixed the spelling) on how to do the original Sea Wool pattern more successfully. It's funny--the way I don't get ladders when using DPNs on socks is to not knit the border stitches too tightly--I should have thought of that for these socks! Especially since I am well known as NOT a tight knitter in the first place! I will give that pattern another try, because it is a nice looking option for hand painted yarns.
I really like how bloggers help each other with patterns--how Yvonne P and I knit the socks at the same time and kept each other updated. And how people share such helpful suggestions with each other. Thanks to all who read this, and please, leave a comment if you wish--I like hearing from you and visiting your blogs, too.
Friday, August 3, 2007
Forget Me Not Socks, the Pair
Here at last is a photo of the socks I finished on Tuesday. I forgot to upload the photo yesterday, but it IS a good one--the colors are really accurate.
These socks, Forget Me Not from a pattern I linked to on July 31, are really comfy and soft. Panda Cotton really feels "dry" to the touch and has a very matte sheen. They just look and feel like they will be cool summer socks! I'll test that over the weekend! They also look good with capri-length pants, which is not true of regular-length socks IMHO. And pastels were a nice break from my trend of more saturated colors. All in all, even though the edge is a bit loose, I liked these socks. I like the second sock better than the first, because I tightened up my knitting and the holes came out looking better. Also the pooling was more interesting with the slightly tighter gauge.
Next?
So, with all the socks I knitted from late June until the beginning of August, you'd think I'd be zooming off on my next one.
Nope. I have this beautiful Sea Wool sock yarn in the amazing colorway Hercules (pictured in the sock yarn post on the top). I cast on for the socks on the yarn label, like I mentioned in my last post, and got 3 repeats into the pattern on Wednesday. Well, ICK. My crappy knitting style, or the fates, or something, caused there to be a gap between the K2tog and the SSK. No matter how tightly I yanked those stitches, the gap was there. It didn't help, probably, that the gap was strategically placed to fall between needles (however, I was magic looping, and even gapped where there was no needle break). WAH. I'll try the pattern some other time, because I do like it.
Then I said OK, I will try the eyelet lace free Wendy pattern on the Loopy Ewe site. I made a really nice toe with a wonderful Turkish cast-on and marveled at the things the yarn was doing. Then I did 3 repeats of THAT pattern. Well, it looked like crap. You could not see the eyelets and the knit accent stitches were big and stretched out. The yarn and the pattern did not like each other. So I frogged that, but kept the pretty toe.
I said, OK I will make something up, as we were driving to Artz Rib House in Austin to eat barbecue and listen to the fabulous Chris Gage and Michael Austin (plug for friends). I tried a slip stitch pattern that resembled linen stitch. Well, yes, it looked good. But, duh, the slip stitch part was shorter than the bottom of the foot part. Nope, couldn't do that one unless it was only on the leg, and it would take up a lot of yarn. Frogged that.
Came home in a foul knitting mood. I knew what I wanted. It was something with a uniform texture that would mottle the colors even more than they already are, to make it look "tweedy." Then, lo and behold. I spied the package that had come in the mail from Loopy Ewe land. It contained a pattern for a very simple sock featuring a nifty texture pattern based on doing something interesting with a slip one, knit 1, PSSO (not an SSK). AHA! I tried THAT one, and yay!!! It looks really cool. Even Lee said so ("That part of the sock looks different. It's cool.").
So, on the fourth try, the Sea Wool socks are at last chugging along.
Bonus, Mail Call
Though I have made all these socks in the past 5 weeks or so (like, 5 pairs!) I now have more sock yarn. I am having a HARD time resisting the work of fiber artists. And today's mail contained two more sock yarns--one is that Smooshy Dream in Color yarn in "Pale Fire," which is pink with tinges of mauve/light purple in it. The other merino blend sock yarn in really subtle and lovely shades of violet and is called New Jersey in Superwash Me by JK . Oh I am bad. But, but, I did manage to buy nothing in the latest release of stuff at that addictive site!! And I even got to it before it was totally picked over!
OK, so...I also got two sock patterns, that simple one I mentioned earlier and a complex Cookie A model. AND those cute wooden sheep sock blockers everyone else seems to have. They will make sock photo time a little easier, and are just so CUTE. I think I' will keep recent socks on them, and put them on display.
These socks, Forget Me Not from a pattern I linked to on July 31, are really comfy and soft. Panda Cotton really feels "dry" to the touch and has a very matte sheen. They just look and feel like they will be cool summer socks! I'll test that over the weekend! They also look good with capri-length pants, which is not true of regular-length socks IMHO. And pastels were a nice break from my trend of more saturated colors. All in all, even though the edge is a bit loose, I liked these socks. I like the second sock better than the first, because I tightened up my knitting and the holes came out looking better. Also the pooling was more interesting with the slightly tighter gauge.
Next?
So, with all the socks I knitted from late June until the beginning of August, you'd think I'd be zooming off on my next one.
Nope. I have this beautiful Sea Wool sock yarn in the amazing colorway Hercules (pictured in the sock yarn post on the top). I cast on for the socks on the yarn label, like I mentioned in my last post, and got 3 repeats into the pattern on Wednesday. Well, ICK. My crappy knitting style, or the fates, or something, caused there to be a gap between the K2tog and the SSK. No matter how tightly I yanked those stitches, the gap was there. It didn't help, probably, that the gap was strategically placed to fall between needles (however, I was magic looping, and even gapped where there was no needle break). WAH. I'll try the pattern some other time, because I do like it.
Then I said OK, I will try the eyelet lace free Wendy pattern on the Loopy Ewe site. I made a really nice toe with a wonderful Turkish cast-on and marveled at the things the yarn was doing. Then I did 3 repeats of THAT pattern. Well, it looked like crap. You could not see the eyelets and the knit accent stitches were big and stretched out. The yarn and the pattern did not like each other. So I frogged that, but kept the pretty toe.
I said, OK I will make something up, as we were driving to Artz Rib House in Austin to eat barbecue and listen to the fabulous Chris Gage and Michael Austin (plug for friends). I tried a slip stitch pattern that resembled linen stitch. Well, yes, it looked good. But, duh, the slip stitch part was shorter than the bottom of the foot part. Nope, couldn't do that one unless it was only on the leg, and it would take up a lot of yarn. Frogged that.
Came home in a foul knitting mood. I knew what I wanted. It was something with a uniform texture that would mottle the colors even more than they already are, to make it look "tweedy." Then, lo and behold. I spied the package that had come in the mail from Loopy Ewe land. It contained a pattern for a very simple sock featuring a nifty texture pattern based on doing something interesting with a slip one, knit 1, PSSO (not an SSK). AHA! I tried THAT one, and yay!!! It looks really cool. Even Lee said so ("That part of the sock looks different. It's cool.").
So, on the fourth try, the Sea Wool socks are at last chugging along.
Bonus, Mail Call
Though I have made all these socks in the past 5 weeks or so (like, 5 pairs!) I now have more sock yarn. I am having a HARD time resisting the work of fiber artists. And today's mail contained two more sock yarns--one is that Smooshy Dream in Color yarn in "Pale Fire," which is pink with tinges of mauve/light purple in it. The other merino blend sock yarn in really subtle and lovely shades of violet and is called New Jersey in Superwash Me by JK . Oh I am bad. But, but, I did manage to buy nothing in the latest release of stuff at that addictive site!! And I even got to it before it was totally picked over!
OK, so...I also got two sock patterns, that simple one I mentioned earlier and a complex Cookie A model. AND those cute wooden sheep sock blockers everyone else seems to have. They will make sock photo time a little easier, and are just so CUTE. I think I' will keep recent socks on them, and put them on display.
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