May Contain Traces of Knits

In which S rants about knitting, school, and life.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

I've noticed that since I haven't been able to knit for two weeks, because my wrist is still being a biatch, my attention span has reverted to that of a five-year-old on crystal meth. I can't sit still or concentrate on anything for more than five minutes at a time, and I've had to take up chewing gum all the time again, because otherwise I chew the insides of my mouth to bits. Argh.

I think I might start posting about my knitting books or something. I only have five, but at the rate I post I think they'll last a while. :D

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

No No Sheep for me.

I haven't been able to knit for a bit over a week now. I think I have tendonitis or something, because my right wrist hurts like all get-out. I have to take notes by hand at school, and all I can say is ouch. I use the mouse with my left hand, so at least that's not making it worse.

Because I haven't been able to knit, I've of course have several ideas of things I want to knit. Oh, and I bought a knitting book yesterday.

The book's Amy Singer's No Sheep for You, and I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but oh my god the eye candy. I'm rather in love.

My love, however, is diminished by the fact that there's some sort of a major screw-up in the book: pages 82 through 97 have been replaced with pages 66 through 81. This means that I don't have the patters for Manly Maze, Sweet Indulgence or The Bag or the full-page photo of the ganseys, but three of the patterns and the big Maze photo twice. I'm all sorts of pissed off. I checked the Interweave site and did a quick Google, but nothing turned up. I tried finding an e-mail address I could use to contact Interweave to see what the hell was up, but no such luck. I'll probably take the book back to the store and see if they'll have it. That was their only copy, so I'll just have to survive without it. Insert sad face here.

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Friday, April 06, 2007

FO: Motherfucking Snakes on a Motherfucking Sock

Excuse my French.

Snakes on a sock!

The pattern: Snakes on a Sock, by Miss Lime of Lime & Violet. (I do wish they had links to the pattern(s) in their sidebar.)
The yarn: Colinette Jitterbug in Jay
The needles: 2,5mm for the leg and foot, 2mm for the heel, bamboo. (And one aluminium 2,5mm, becaue I lost one of the bamboo set.)

Snakes on a sock, too.

I love colour. I love the fit. I've worn them for several days, even inside my shoes, which is a first for me.

The second sock is a bit larger than the first one, even though they're worked over the same number of stitches and rounds. Apparently my gauge gets looser toward the end of projects.

Also, the pattern is lovely. It's easy enough to knit even when you can't look at your hands, and the repeats repeat in a wonderful, logical, orderly manner, which pleases my geeky brain. During one of my weaker moments I hit an error in the pdf and left a comment. I swear the reply I got from Lexy the admin monkey broke all kinds of laws of physics, because I got it the second I clicked the submit button. Later, Miss Lime also emailed me, too. (It wasn't anything I couldn't have figured out myself. I was a bit sleep deprived.)

Snakes on a sock, three.

A better look at the stitch pattern. (Also I really rather like this photo.) Please excuse all the crap on our deck.

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My stash is bloating. Not that I mind.

Now, I go to Upper Secondary school. I guess. I've always been a bit fuzzy about such things. Anyway, around here the school year is divided into five periods with different subjects and courses and stuff. We have all the exams, up to seven, during seven consecutive days, but nothing else. That means so much free time it's only barely funny. (You're supposed to study for upcoming exams, but I simply can't spend that much time reading the books over and over again without going crazy, and I do pretty well anyway.) That, in turn, means that I have the time to go to yarn stores.

So, yes, most of this post is going to be complete yarn pr0n. Yay!

Regia sock yarn

Two balls of Regia sock yarn. Of course I managed to get two different weights, but I think I can mess around with needle sizes enough to make it work. I'm going to have to hunt for a ball of yellow and a ball of turquoise, so I can make the Tiptoe socks. The green I'm going to get from the leftovers of this ball:

OnLine Suoersocke

That's a one-hundred-gram ball of OnLine (OnLinie?) Supersocke in a really, really great green. I visited one of the three yarn stores I go to, with no intention of buying anything, but then I saw this, and, well, I can never resist a good green. It's going to become a pair of Pembrokeshire Pathways socks.

The store I got that from is the smallest of the three, but they have lots of good, cheap sock yarn. The second one has Colinette Jitterbug and Skye and some basic yarns in tons of colours. The third one, which is my favourite, is the largest, the farthest away, and the only one that stocks Rowan. (I'm a Rowan Ho, can you tell?)

This is from the second one.

Colinette Jitterbug - Mardi Gras

Colinette Jitterbug in Mardi Gras. Jitterbug is the only handpaint available around here, so it's a good thing I love the yarn itself as much as I do. (I just finished my Snakes on a Sock, FO post forthcoming.)

And this is from the third shop.

Rowan Felted Tweed

A ball of Rowan Felted Tweed. I bought this for swatchy purposes, mostly because I didn't have enough money to buy an entire cardigan's worth. Eventually, though, I'm going to knit Mrs. Darcy with it. I have no chance of getting gauge, but I'm not afraid of a tiny bit of math. I actually rather love math. :D

I think a part of why I love Rowan so much is their ballbands. So wonderful. (Also, Finnish craft mags occasionally translate Rowan patterns, and I've loved most of them so far.) I was going to see if I could persuade myself to buy a cheaper yarn that has the exact same fibre content as the Felted Tweed, but it was just so much uglier. Oh well.

I have actually done some knitting, too. I finished the socks I was working on, for example, and cast on the Felted Tweed, and worked on Tempting II. Photographic evidence:

Tempting II - in progress (2)

I'm most of the way through the body and still a bit worried about running out of yarn. I think it'll be enough, though.

Topi - into the frog pond

It's a Topi hat. I knit it in two days and did a few mods to be able to call it a swatch.

I knit the top as set, though with more increases, and then knit the straight part flat. I was halfway down the brim when I realised I had skipped a bit of the instructions. At that point, I safety-pinned the hat together and tried it on. The result? It looked like a shower cap. My flat gauge and circular gauge are so drastically different the hat flared out and was then pulled back in by the ribbing. That and the screwy brim were all it took to make me rip it. Of course, it took me an entire James Bond movie to un-tangle the ball and wind it into a center-pull ball by hand. How I managed to knot it that badly I'll never know. I'm just special that way, I guess.

Most random photo ever:

My tape measure

It's my tape measure. Yes, I only have one. Yes, I've had to for a few years. I'm fairly certain I'm going to lose it sometime in the near future, because I simply can't keep track of my things. Also, it's starting to fall apart.

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