Finished!

I finished Terea's monkey socks! I'm so glad that they're done, because it's always so satisfying to finish a project, but they were fun and quick to knit, and I miss the project already! This is me modeling them, just because.

I was going to make a pair of monkeys for myself, but then I saw another pair of socks by Cookie A, Hedera, and I knew I had to make those! She's such an amazing designer. I have this lovely sea green yarn by Brooklyn Handspun, and I think it's perfect for this project. I opened my Magic Loop book and tried it out, and I really get this method! I'm sure, though, that I'll find a way to eff up these socks using this method. To make things really interesting, I'm going to try them toe up.

Easy peasy!

I'm really concerned about how little trouble I am having with my revamped Monkey socks. I had started them in September, done a lot in a little time, and then got bored with all of the purling and stopped. Good thing.

It turned out that I had been knitting them backwards; I'd pushed the right side into my the space between my DPNs, and therefore was knitting the whole thing in reverse. Stupid, but it was still okay, at least until I went and did the heel inside out, too. Then I was all messed up. I frogged the whole thing, and started over again this Tuesday. Right now, I'm about to start decreasing, and I feel so much better about my skills as a knitter, and my ability to read and understand a pattern. Also, I got to practice my short row heels again and am really getting the hang of it now, which is awesome.

I can see why people keep making these socks again and again (the other day I met a woman who has made 5 pairs of Monkeys in a very short time). They're cute, fun, and really easy, and I think I will make myself a pair soon, after I get through all of the obligatory knitting that I need to finish up.

Odds and Ends

I finished blocking Satanski's scarf, so all I need to do now is take a few minutes and weave in the ends. It came out really really well, and although it's not terribly hard to impress a three-year-old, I'm happy that he likes it so much. I also started on what will be the matching mittens. This is my first pair of mittens, and I'm kind of cobbling together several patterns, so we'll see how those turn out. Here are pictures of the finished scarf (undone ends and all) and the beginning of the mittens.

Today, the knitting Meetup group that I belong to had a trial yarn swap. I didn't prepare well for it at all; I brought 300 yards of a brown striped sock wool, 300 yards of a sunny yellow sock wool, and 600 yards of blue alpaca. I probably shouldn't have been so obvious about bringing things that interested me not at all! Anyway, I ended up trading the alpaca for some gorgeous light blue bamboo (cannot believe I got that), and the brown wool for some really cool blue cotton. I was also given about 200 yards of a cool white wool with flecks of yellow and orange (it's cute; definitely for babies/kids). I couldn't find any takers for the yellow wool, and although I may regret it later, since I still have several balls here and I have no idea what I'm going to do with those, I gave it away for a yarn drop. I hope that somebody can put it to good use!

All finished!

I finished Satanski's scarf, and it came out great! I love this yarn (Malabrigo Worsted, in Oceanus), and Satanski loves his scarf. That picture to the left shows what the scarf looked like last night, when I was about 60% of the way finished. I'm going to get started on matching mittens tomorrow, with a hat to follow soon thereafter. I need to block the scarf, as right now all it wants to do is roll itself back into a ball, but that means that I might as well block all the other stuff I've been ignoring for a while. Block party tomorrow!

Sorry, I'm groaning over here, too.
















This is what the OpArt blanket is looking like these days. That kid is due nigh on two months from now and I still don't know when we'll be having his dad's baby shower at work, so I should definitely get the lead out and start doing a lot of work on this again. Even after I'm done knitting, I'm going to be weaving in ends forever, so I should just do it already.

Hopes, dashed

I had high hopes for the scarf that I was going to make Satanski. I sat down, thought of a pattern, and charted it. All was well, until I realized that my chart was not taking into account the two decreases I need to work on each row to even out the two yarn overs I was including. I think I tried to get too fancy, too fast, and the whole thing just annoyed me. So I decided to modify a baby blanket pattern from Debbie Stoller's Stitch and Bitch: The Knitter's Handbook and make it into a scarf instead. I've made the Big, Bad Baby Blanket a couple of times already (and I'm pretty sure I have a third one somewhere on a set of circulars), so by now the pattern is pretty much dead easy for me. I'm hoping that I will have enough yarn left over afterward to make the kid a pair of mittens, or even a hat. I can't remember what the name of the yarn is, because I bought and had it wound in Vermont, and cannot find the label at all. I just started it yesterday, but it's kid-sized and knitting up quickly, so I will upload photos once I get home from work.

My OpArt is coming along well. I'm up to 132 stitches in each section. I need to pay more attention though, because a couple of rounds ago I dropped a stitch about six rows down, and that was super annoying to fix in pattern.

Progress

OpArt is still pretty easy, but it's no longer as fast of a knit as it used to be! I'm up to 75 stitches in each section, or 300 stitches total.

Aw yeah!

Now my OpArt blanket is really coming along! The pattern really is dead simple. I did a figure-8 cast on and then went from there, so I didn't get the annoying ridge thing that happened when I tried a regular cast on and knit the first rows in the round
Then, as long as I didn't do anything stupid (like stop counting), I had no problem with the pattern. And honestly, I really only have to pay any sort of attention four times in a round, and even I can do that. I'm also finding my new stitch counter invaluable, and wonder if I was already thinking ahead to this project when I impulsively added it to my purchases last time I went to Purl Soho. I'm up to 39 stitches in each section (I find it easier to think of sectional counts, than total stitch count). This really is one cool-looking blanket! I'm actually looking forward to blocking it, because I want to see it at its best!

Doh

My first attempt at my Monkeys was a little off. This is my first go round knitting lace, and I'm learning by the round, but I definitely effed things up. The cuff, which is always the easiest part of any sock, was not messed up, so I frogged back to that point and then tried not the make the same mistakes again. Here's what I had before the frogging:
As you can see, one of the holes on the fourth needle was not so much decorative as it was massive.

Luckily, this time I'm doing better. For one, I don't have any craters in my sock. For another, I'm being consistent with my yarn overs (I was doing it wrong the first time, which is embarrassing, since I made an entire blanket that was full of yarn overs [unless those were wrong, too, but then at least they were all wrong in the same way]). Here's the new and improved version:

Looking at these pictures reminds me that I need to learn how to use the macro mode on my new camera...

While in Poughkeepsie for Christine and Justin's wedding (which was awesome, by the way), I went bowling. First we were going to go minigolfing, which is an obsession of Ben and Elissa's, but then I saw a bowling alley, and successfully changed our destination. I am no good at all, but I did manage to win two games. I was so excited to get there, but then I picked up a bowling ball and realized: if my wrist was too sore to knit, what in the world was I doing in a bowling alley?? I wasn't thinking at all. During the second game, my wrist really started to get sore, but I was using an 8 pound ball, which is pretty much the smallest I could use and still be using an adult ball. I worried that I would be in pain during the wedding and the next day, but AMAZINGLY enough, my wrist stopped hurting and I actually got quite a bit of knitting done on Monday and today. Plus, the curiosity got to me and I tried on the socks, so now I know that they do actually fit me. It's pretty exciting.

I've been having some pain in my left wrist, so I find it difficult to knit more than a couple of rows in any one sitting. I've been favoring it and waiting for the pain to go away, but it's been a while now since I felt this way, so I think I'm going to have to go to a doctor. Bummer!

I've finished the heel of my second pair of jaywalkers, and now I'm decreasing them and preparing for six mind-numbing inches of the foot. I keep forgetting to see if I can get my ankle into this pair. If not, I'll have to find SOMEBODY else to give them to. Too late, I found out that there are a couple of larger, official updates to the pattern, which can be found here. If this pair doesn't fit me, I guess I'll go up to the next larger size. I'm going to be in Poughkeepsie this weekend for Christine and Justin's wedding (yay!), so maybe I can try to get some more done on the socks while I'm traveling to and from.

Also, while looking for something else entirely, I came across a bag that I have been 95% finished with for the past two years. Everything is knitted and felted, and now I just have to sew the darned pieces together. Nevermind the fact that this bag is no longer to my exact taste, I should just be done with it, right? I think I don't want to finish it.

So I finally finished my first pair of Jaywalker socks. As you can see, they're pretty cute, even though one foot is about 1/8 of an inch longer than the other. Oh well. I need to find somebody with narrow, but long feet. Maybe I'll have to try them on the feet of all of my tall, skinny friends. It could be like Cinderella, with socks, and a lesbian subtext!
Seriously, though, I really love this yarn. It's Lorna's Laces and it is self-striping, which is the greatest thing ever! I think that the stress of the last month gave me the motivation to finish the first sock and start/finish the second one, so let's hear it for silver linings. I realized pretty early on (but not too early to do anything about it) that these socks wouldn't fit my feet, so now I am making a second pair in the larger size given, and I hope that they'll fit me! This pair is going to be magenta and white striped, which will look adorable on me!

Here are the beginnings of my new socks. I really like the way the first pair turned out, so I'll stop being so lazy and do more work on these.