Return of the Sock

So I finished my Elisa Shawl, which was a very good thing.

Then, I recieved my blocking wires from Inspinknity, and immediately started blocking everything I could get my hands on. First was the Elisa, since it was on a time schedule for Camp Loopy. Because I stink at taking pictures, this is my best shot of the end result:

I think it looks quite a lot better in real life, so I'm pretty darned happy with it. The colors are gorgeous, it is nice and warm, and it has already garnered multiple compliments from muggles who were then subjected to a long story about how "I knit!"

Anyway, next victim on the list was my Fountain Pen Shawl, which was languishing unused, due to the fact that unblocked lace looks awful. See, people say that all the time, but part of me didn't believe blocking was going to make a huge difference. I mean, there are lots of people out there who say they've been knitting for decades and never blocked a single thing, aren't there? After finishing blocking this, I think these people are either not knitting lace, or they're missing out on something magical. With blocking, my Kiri-Same went from this:

To this:

I have now been wearing it all weekend, and thanking the weather gods for the omnipresent thunderclouds on the horizon in my vicinity. I think people are going to start blaming me for the unseasonable cold soon, since I'm enjoying it so much.

I also blocked an older project, my Multnomah out of Noro Taiyo sock, which is also incredibly improved by both the washing and the stretch. It's a little bigger, much softer, and much more uniform now. Sadly, I haven't taken a picture of it finished. I'm not usually a fan of cotton anything, but this is well enough mixed with wool, silk, and nylon, that it didn't irritiate my tensioning finger.

To the point and title of the post, though, I'm back to working on my true-love-of-knitting, socks. I made my first pair in March of this year, and since then, I've made approximately ten more pair. I rashly decided upon finding Cookie A's newer book, Knit.Sock.Love., that I would have to make every single pattern within. In the order in which they appear in the book.  (cause that makes sense, right?) While this has proven painful, because I very much want to make my Monkey socks in my Cascade Heritage in the colorway Green Opal now, so far I have actually managed to do this. In the last three days, I've cast on a pair of Marilindas, and a pair of Stalagmites.

The first pair, the Marilinda's pictured right, is for me. They're turning out gorgeously. I finished the first complete sock in about a day and a half, so if anyone's worried about the pattern being complicated, stop that right now. It's one of the simplest patterns in the book so far, honestly. I've gotten about three inches into the second one, and suspect it will be done by the end of the week. I'm only doing one pattern repeat for the cuff, unlike the book's prescribed two, just because I like my cuffs either knee-high or short.

The second pair is for my husband, and they are being knit in String Theory Caper Sock, which is one of the most perfect things known to man. (I'm still not getting anything for these endorsements, I swear!) It's only 10% cashmere (80 Merino, 10 Nylon), but it is undoubtedly one of the softest, fluffiest yarns I've ever worked with. I'm going to have to work very hard to give them to my husband when they're finished. Mostly, it's just going to be hard to stop petting them.

The one where I knit more than anyone should...

So, despite my attempt to forget I had a blog, I keep finding things to talk about. Admittedly, I'm pretty much sitting here talking to myself, but that's nothing new for me. Nor is it necessarily unexpected, since I just started writing a blog a few weeks ago.

In all but finishing, my fountain pen shawl is finished. I did an extra body pattern repeat because I knew I had more than enough yarn for it, and I like the length it came out. Or rather, I think it's a little short, but I haven't yet blocked it, so I'm sure the length will be fine.

Not having blocked it, it looks pretty much like a pile of yarn vomit with some beads thrown on for good measure:

I suppose I could have slightly alleviated that in the picture by not throwing it in a heap and snapping away, but it honestly doesn't look much better spread out right now:



Ahh well, the important thing is that it's finished. Mostly. I ordered blocking wires from inspinknity, but alas, I waited until after the shawl was finished to order them. Of course, this is actually a good thing, because I only heard about the blocking wires in question from the Knit Girllls a few days earlier. If I had ordered earlier, I would have gotten the KP ones, and well... yeah, I just think I've ordered a higher quality product this way. KP has its time and place, but that time is generally not when I'm looking for something I'll use for the rest of my knitting life.

On the subject of the other projects I wonder why I started in the middle of a busy school term, the answer is easy. Lots of knitting projects with deadlines makes me less likely to harm myself or others, because I'm too busy trying to figure out how to finish schoolwork and get back to my knitting.

I started my Camp Loopy Elisa Shawl on the evening of the 15th, and... well, after working more than 200 rows in lace weight on size six needles for the fountain pen shawl, working with DK on size eights is flying by so quickly I'll be surprised if it's not finished before the weekend is over.

This is a few minutes ago

This is this afternoon

All I have left is about 20-25 rows of lace pattern, two edging rows, and a bind off. Unless this is the hardest lace pattern ever, I'll be back to my Pride KAL very quickly.

Oh, and while I'm currently broke *grumbles about stupid local speed enforcement cameras*, I owe myself some yarn when there is money to be had. Yarndiet is my friend.

This is me, biting off more than I can chew.

So, since I can't actually bite into anything more appetizing than an egg white right now, apparently I've decided that I'm going to jump into more projects than I could possibly hope to complete in a timely manner.

At two weeks into this diet, I've actually done... okay. Very well the first week, and while I was very good the second week, I lost a sum total of one pound. (this is why I invariably quit diets. All that work for practically no return.) So I opted to indulge myself in a little yarn, in order to do another Kal-ish sort of thing.

The thing in question is Camp Loopy, brought to us by The Loopy Ewe. Since I am a poor college student, I have neither the time nor the money to travel to cool knitting retreats, but this one is a strictly at home event. Sheri is coming up with three projects that must be completed within the alloted time frame - a month each - and if we do so using yarn purchased at The Loopy Ewe during the correct timeframe.... well, I suck at explaining this. Go check it out, knit some cool stuff, possibly win Wollmeise.

Long story short (too late!), I used my yarn!diet goodwill from the past two weeks to buy the yarn to make my first Camp Loopy project, which will be the Elisa Shawl in Madelinetosh DK, in the colorways Ink and Ginger.

Less impressive photos of the actual yarn will ensue upon its arrival, since I stink at photography and ganked these straight from the madelinetosh website, and cropped them just to give an idea of colors. I apologise if this offends the people there, and if they e-mail me telling me I'm a horrible yarn-picture-stealer and threated to sue, I'll surely take them down posthaste.

I refuse to confess that this color choice has anything to do with Harry Potter. Okay, okay... truth be told, I'm not by any means the biggest Potter Geek, but I like the series  first five books pretty well, and enjoy the world Rowling created, even if I don't think her writing is all that and a big bag of chips. Since I probably need something in my wardrobe that is not green, I went with the closest facsimilies of dark blue and bronze that I could find in yarn format. While I'm sure other people could do better, others would complain that I'm using the book colors instead of the movies' blue and silver, and still others would just complain for the sake of complaining, this is what I decided. It works for me. Plus, all Potter-y aside, I think they're gorgeous colors and work well together. Now we'll just see if I can knit them into a shawl in under a month while dealing with school and my fountain pen shawl at the same time.

Hah!

This is me, procrastinating

So this is what I've been doing the last few evenings instead of homework. It's not that I don't like school, and don't obsess over my grades... it's just that I'm really tired of it all right now. Sign Language Interpreter training is full of the drama, and has the craziest summer term I've ever even heard of. I shall stop whining now, and speak of the knitting.

I've finished three and a half repeats of the body chart, and it's going quite well. That is, if you don't count the total of about two full rows that I've had to tink back, a few stitches at a time.

This is actually the first time I've ever seriously knit lace (There's been lacy patterns on socks, but it's definitely not the same.) and I'm learning a lot. Namely, the fact that I do not know jack. I had to learn how to read a lace chart, with particular attention to the fact that if I don't know what the big red circled parts of the chart mean, maybe I should find out before jumping in with both feet.

I'm quite liking the pattern. It looks a little like the cat's dinner, but I understand that's normal for a lace shawl. I'm also seeing the potential for how it will look after being finished and blocked. I think it's going to work quite well. I'm sure the picture looks like a mess, but I think it's going pretty well.

The dreaded nupps aren't even causing me any trouble. Perhaps I'll come back and post more information on how I'm doing them, since they seem to be a major issue for some people.

Finally, this project has inspired me to go out and spend some money on something I thought I was finished buying: stitch markers. I've been using a variety of things on this project; the safety pin style markers, plain metal jump rings, jump rings with a bead glued over the join, and snagless stitch markers. I have determined that the last of these items is that thing I didn't realize I desperately needed more of. The safety pins are big and awkward in lace, the jump rings catch constantly on the yarn, and even the beaded rings are just a little awkward to move from one needle to the other. The snagless rings? None of these problems, or any others that I've had. So off I went tonight to make another purchase from Seeking Sanity on Etsy. The ones I already have from her are amazing, and owning more will make this project easier.

On one last related note: No, I'm not getting anything for free, have no association with anyone I've ever linked on this blog, and am not being paid by anyone, for anything. It'd be nice, but it's not gonna happen.