It's here!!! My Knitter's Treat Exchange package

I arrived home yesterday after a really bad day (sinus infection, aching muscles, no time to even sit down for 5 hours straight) to a satisfyingly stuffed mailbox. My package had arrived from my upstream treater in the Knitter's Treat Exchange. I sent a package to Chrissie in Singapore, and in return I got a wonderful package from Amanda in Tasmania. She sent me a great package with incredible hand dyed yarn (from the etsy shop Monsoon Winds) that is extremely soft and achingly bright (but in a good way.) This yarn will make great socks. I'm now looking for the right pattern to show it off. Amanda also included a really pretty bag from Crabtree & Evelyn (my favorite!) with travel sized Rose Petals lotion, soap and shower gel, lots of great Australian chocolates, the latest issue of the great Australian knitting magazine, YARN, and a collectible Hello Kitty candy dispenser. I don't have a camera right now, so you'll have to be content with a scanned image of the yarn. Amanda also sent me a postcard with a great picture of the greenest gorge I've ever seen. She says it is right in the middle of her town. It also had a great stamp (I collect stamps, sort of.) The one thing she didn't send was her email or blog address so I could thank her in person. Thanks so much, Amanda. I am enjoying all of the goodies.

Personal Knitting Herstory, Part I

I'm wearing these summery socks today as I write this. These are my lost socks.

Two posts in one day! That's unusual for me, especially this month. I found this on fluffy knitter Deb's blog. Consider yourself tagged if you want to perpetuate this meme.

bold for stuff you've done, italics for stuff you plan to do eventually and normal for stuff you don't intend to do ever unless you move to Alaska.

Afghan
I-cord
Garter stitch
Knitting with metal wire
Shawl
Stockinette stitch
Socks: top-down
Socks: toe-up
Knitting with camel yarn
Mittens: Cuff-up
Mittens: Tip-down
Hat
Knitting with silk
Moebius band knitting
Participating in a KAL
Sweater
Drop stitch patterns
Knitting with recycled/secondhand yarn
Slip stitch patterns
Knitting with banana fiber yarn
Domino knitting (= modular knitting)
Twisted stitch patterns
Knitting with Bamboo yarn
Two end knitting
Charity knitting
Knitting with soy yarn
Cardigan
Toy/Doll clothing
Knitting with circular needles
Baby items
Knitting with your own handspun yarn
Slippers
Graffitti knitting (knitting items on, or to be left on the street)
Continental Knitting (just in a class so far)
Designing knitted garments
Cable stitch patterns (incl. Aran)
Lace patterns
Publishing a knitting book (maybe)
Scarf
Teaching a child to knit
American/English knitting (as opposed to continental)
Knitting to make money
Buttonholes
Knitting with Alpaca
Fair Isle Knitting
Norwegian knitting ( I do live in California, and not in the mountains)
Dyeing with plant colors
Knitting items for a wedding ( I made my own wedding dress, but it wasn't knitted)
Household items (dishcloths, washcloths, tea cosies...)
Knitting socks (or other small tubular items) on two circulars
Olympic knitting
Knitting with someone else's handspun yarn
Knitting with dpns
Holiday related knitting
Teaching a male to knit
Bobbles I HATE bobbles!
Knitting for a living
Knitting with cotton
Knitting smocking
Dyeing yarn
Steeks
Knitting art (I've crocheted art, though)
Knitting two socks (or other small tubular items) on two circulars simultaneously
Fulling/felting
Knitting with wool
Textured Knitting
Kitchener Bind Off
Purses/bags
Knitting with beads
Swatching
Long Tail CO
Entrelac
Knitting and Purling Backwards (great for entrelac)
Machine knitting
Knitting with self patterning/self striping/variegated yarn
Stuffed Toys
Baby items - rarely, I'd rather buy a gift and knit for adults, just like Deb
Knitting with Cashmere
Darning
Jewelry
Knitting with synthetic yarn
Writing a pattern
Gloves
Intarsia
Knitting with Linen
Knitting for preemies
Tubular CO (just in a class so far)
Freeform knitting
Short rows
Cuffs/fingerless mits/armwarmers
Pillows
Knitting a pattern from an online knitting magazine
Rug (I crocheted a room sized rug once, though)
Knitting on a loom
Thrummed knitting
Knitting a gift
Knitting for pets
Shrug/Bolero/Poncho
Knitting with dog/cat hair
Hair accessories
Knitting in public

June 9th is once again WORLD WIDE KNIT IN PUBLIC DAY!!!!

Fiber Weekend with Stash Enhancement:Take Two

I've made quite a lot of progress on the cream colored Regia cotton Grapevine sock. This pattern is from More sensational Socks by Charlene Schurch (Page 96). It's a 12 round pattern, but every odd round is plain knitting and the others are very similar to each other.

I also frogged the Opal Hundertwasser cotton sock and restarted it without the ribbing. I'm using a garter stitch cuff that waves because of the Vine Lace pattern's natural tendency to ripple. The sock is almost as long as it was before I frogged. I think it's looking good. I'll probably get more knitting done tonight watching the finale of the Gilmore Girls and Dancing with the Stars with DD. At this rate it looks like I'll have 3 pairs of socks finished for week 9 of the 52 pair plunge. I'm making all three pairs at once instead of one at a time.

Last Saturday I drove with a friend to an artist's open house in San Rafael (just north of San Francisco). I grew up in this area and it's always nice to come back. After the open house we had a great lunch at a little hole in the wall Puerto Rican restaurant (Sol Food) and went on a yarn expedition. We visited DharmaTrading Company for our annual fix. Dharma has expanded their yarn selection as knitting has become more popular again. I got some aqua SISU sock yarn with silver speckles there. We got directions at Dharma on how to get to a new store, Marin Fiber Arts, which is on City Plaza in San Rafael. I used to come here to get new school clothes and shoes at Macy's and Stride Rite, and now it's home to yarn stores and ice cream shops. Every yarn in the store was 25% off! They were also having live music in the plaza. What more could you ask for? Of course I couldn't resist the sale. I got another skein of Tofutsies in a color I had regretted not ordering, some Lorna's Laces to go with solid colors I already have, a skein of Opal Handpaint, some Claudia handpainted sock yarn, and 4 skeins of Nature's Palette Hand Jive naturally dyed yarn. It was a very nice store, and I'll visit again. We had planned a stop at Studio-Knit in Mill Valley but we were too tired (and broke). Turns out that's a good thing because I went to their website and it's now closed. I'd only been there once, but I had my mom in the car and couldn't stay long.

Stash Enhancement

My (stash enabling) knitter friend & neighbor emailed me that she added a new rule to her personal knit from your stash guidelines. If the yarn is new to you, you are allowed to buy it. (Don't know if that means you can buy one skein or a whole project's worth.) I liked that rule. For her, it meant she could buy Colinette's new Jitterbug sock yarn. For me, it meant that I could use my birthday money and order a whole squishy full of new to me sock yarns from Astrid in the Netherlands. (They arrived yesterday.)

I got some Opal Bamboo in grey stripes for DH's socks, some Trekking Pro Natura (wool/bamboo in solid colors), some pale blue Regia silk, some Opal wool/cotton in the Hundertwasser artist colorways (the Positive/Negative yellow color is just luscious), some Trekking in pink and charcoal (very 50's), also some of the tweed and an interesting speckled color, and a skein each of Fortissima Socka Colori, Opal Smoke and Gedifra, each in various different blue and grey self striping colorways. It's a good thing I like blue! Those three skeins were on sale, and blue and grey always works well for gift socks. Average price with shipping, $11.00 per pair of socks. Astrid also sent 5 free sock patterns and a bonus skein of white angora yarn, and I got some 6" long bamboo double points to try out. I think I might also get some Jitterbug yarn. After this, though, NO MORE SOCK YARN for me, unless I trade other sock yarn for it.

I swatched for a new pair of socks using the Opal Hundertwasser cotton/wool blend. After considering the Quill lace pattern from the Spring Knitty, plus a few other simple lace patterns, I think that the Vine lace stripe pattern from the Socks Socks Socks book is going to work out best for this yarn. It's a simple 4 round repeat, easily memorized, which isn't totally obscured by the pattern of the yarn.

Last year I got inspired to compile pattern conversions for some of the stitches in the 365 Stitches calendar and the Barbara Walker Treasuries to knit in the round, for socks and other circular items. I now have a big Word document complete with images and the stitch patterns all typed out, along with multiples and repeats. I've also added stitches and images from sock patterns as I find them. At this rate I won't need a new sock pattern ever again.

Sunday Seven Quatorze

Seven things that I'm grateful for this week:

1. Fluffy dwarf rabbits who feel so warm and cuddly. We'll forgive the shedding, it's just more fiber to knit with!
2. Gilmore Girls fans
   
3. Strawberries fresh from the garden
4. Sourdough bread
5. Completed hand knit socks
6. Suzi's Knits research on sock yarn gauges
7. Deb Barnhill's sock knitting time trials

I've been Remiss

It's been a busy few weeks, and the only posts I've made are the really easy ones, with almost nothing about knitting. I've been knitting all along, just not writing about it. I finished one of my Monkey socks and am halfway down the leg on sock two. The second sock should be finished this weekend, just in time to meet my 52 Pair Plunge goal of a finished pair every week. This is one of the easiest patterns I've ever knit and it looks so wonderful knitted up. Sorry for the terrible picture, more to come.

Unless I wanted to knit with sportweight yarn, I had to add an entire repeat to the pattern to enlarge it. Since the repeat was a huge 16 stitches, making a total of 80 stitches cast on, I tightened the gauge so the sock wouldn't be too large for even my fat ankles. I cast on 72 stitches with a 2.25 mm needle and knit my ribbing. On the first round of the pattern I increased 8 stitches evenly around. I knit 5 repeats of the pattern 9 times, lengthening the leg a little bit.

When I got to the heel I realized that since I had 5 repeats of the pattern, it would not divide evenly. It was at this point that I realized the error of my ways. I centered the heel over 2 repeats and knit my new favorite, the band heel. I tightened the gauge a little bit more (went down to a 2 mm needle) and knit the foot of the sock with 3 repeats of the pattern stitch on the instep (48 stitches) and 32 stitches on the sole in stockinette. At the toe I adjusted the markers so that the top and bottom had the same amount of stitches to do the decreases. I also ran out of yarn. Panic ensued. This is the same wonderful yarn Cookie A used in her sample sock, although I used a different color way. It's hand dyed, and I've had the yarn in my stash for several years. I should have known this might happen, given that I knit more repeats on the leg and added 16 stitches around, but I went blithely on knitting. A search of my stash revealed several possible substitutions to knit the toe with. Lorna's Laces semi solids are wonderful yarns in the same weight and subtle colors. I had periwinkle and denim blue, left over from other sock projects. I held both colors up to the SIP and the periwinkle looked more promising. 20 decrease rounds later and sock one was finished. I immediately cast on for sock two, not wanting to slow the momentum & miss meeting my goal. I'm about ready to turn the heel, so I will now return you to your regularly scheduled program and get back to knittng.
UPDATE: Sock two was finished Monday 5/7/07!

Thanks so much to Cookie for another wonderful sock pattern. The first time I knit one of her patterns it was the Pomatomus. I would recommend getting your feet wet with the Monkey socks before tackling the Pomatomus, but it is another pattern that is well worth the effort. Several more Cookie A patterns are on my short list of future sock projects.

Fantastic Friday Feast

Appetizer
Name something you would not want to own.

Another Fiat automobile

Soup
Describe your hair (texture, color, length, etc.).

My hair is ash blonde, shoulder length, wavy, frizzy and fine, although there is a lot of it.

Salad
Finish this sentence: I’ll never forget my mother.

Main Course
Which famous person would you like to be for one day? Why?

I would have liked to be Eleanor of Aquitaine when she went to the Holy Land. She was an heiress, married young to Louis, King of France so he could get her lands. He divorced her because she gave birth to two daughters, no sons. While married to Louis, she went with him to the Holy Land on a Crusade. There are rumours that she had an affair with Saladin, the Arab leader. After the divorce, Eleanor went home to Aquitaine, which reverted back to her, and she soon married the much younger Henry II of England (right before he became king). They had 5 sons and a few daughters too. He then fell in love with someone else and put Eleanor in prison for years after she (perhaps) poisoned her rival. Eleanor went on a second Crusade with her son, Richard the Lionheart, when she was entitled to stay home and rest on her laurels. Richard sent her back to Aquitaine with his new bride Berengaria to govern there in his absence. He had left England in the hands of his brother John, and we all know how well that turned out.

Dessert
Write one sentence about yourself that includes one thing that is true and another thing that is not.

I like reading good historical novels (not bodice rippers) and I love to run marathons.