Eye Candy: Country Road

Eye Candy: Pansy Scarf

Bright Holidays....

...or what you get when you knit up brilliant, almost phosphorescent, sock yarn.  On Saturday, I went over to a friend's house to continue learning about circular sock machines.  I took a variety of yarns with me, but settled on a skein of self striping from The Loopy Ewe's Spring Fling 2011 goodie bag.  The base is Lorna's Laces, and it was a test run for a self striping line.  The colors are bright - and not normally my cup of tea, but hey, it's summer and I felt like stepping out of the comfort zone.

After much ado, including re-skeining the whole skein after I had it jump off on the heel of the first sock, we managed to get a completed sock.  You start knitting at the top, work your way down and separate for a heel just like you would a regular top-down sock. 

When you finish the heel, you come back and add the rest of the top of foot stitches back into the rotation to complete the foot portion.  The toe is essentially another heel. 

Remove the waste yarn, pick up the live stitches and graft the two ends together to finish off the sock.  They used 76 grams of the 100 grams skein, so there is a little extra to go along with the second skein I have.  (More socks? scarf? knitted stripped garland?)  Either way, I have another new pair of socks to work with when the weather starts to get chilly.

PS - Doesn't the color remind you of holiday lights?

It was a good weekend...

I turned another year older (wiser :-) ?) on Friday and celebrated with family (thanks for the cake mom & dad!).  I was up in Chicagoland for a family wedding over the weekend and managed to sneak in a birthday trip to Stitches Midwest in Schaumburg for a few hours on Saturday afternoon. 

This year, Stitches seemed like a bit of a mixed bag.  Some new vendors, some regulars, and a lot of LYS.  When I was driving over, I was hoping to pick up a kit or two, maybe some new patterns, and a skein of two of sock yarn that caught my eye.  Why would I go all that way just to purchase Cascade 220 that I can pick up anywhere?  I found several patterns I was interested in, but vendors were sold out and only had their displays left (and this was only halfway through Saturday).  Walking through the marketplace, it felt like almost everyone (!!!) had a Color Affection shawl on display, and while that pattern is in my queue, by the time I saw twenty of them I was just tired of seeing it.

I found lots of inspiration and shopping competition over at The Plucky Knitter's booth, which was brimming with color, texture, and test knits.  Over at Esther's Place, we made felted flower brooches and I liked the kits.  I'll be interested to see what their fall class schedule looks like.  Halos of Hope was celebrating passing their donations goal and I won a shawl stick doorprize from Foofaraw.

I did buy a few birthday presents for myself while I was there. 


• Two skeins of Plucky Traveler in Barn Door (red) that will be a woven scarf.  It's 65% merino, 20% silk, and 15% yak, so I'll be interested to see if it holds up well on the weaving shuttle.
• One skein of Plucky Sweater - One Hit Wonder in a black shade that I think will be the base of Sylvana by Ann Kingstone from Twist Collective.  (Still need the top layer).
• Two skeins of Plucky Primo Fingering - One Hit Wonder shade that reminds me of the color of antique maps.  One hit wonders are one-offs, but it reminds me of a lighter version of the Chinos and Humphrey colorways.  A shawl perhaps?
• Two skeins of Plucky Primo Worsted - One Hit Wonder color that is lighter than Fly the Concord.  Scarf or shawl?  Reminds me of blue violet Crayola crayons.
• Five skeins of Plucky Primo Worsted - One Hist Wonder in a colorway that not quite as yellow as Build Me Up but not as creamy as Milk Maid.
• And a t-shirt to show off my Plucky love.

All from The Plucky Knitter. I might have visited that booth more than once during the day.

It's a wrap! Ravellenic Games 2012

Just as the Olympics finished up so did the Ravellenic Games (rav link) over on Ravelry.  I'm happy to report that I picked up eight medals during the games.

Looking forward to the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi!

Eye Candy: Queen Anne's Lace

And happy birhday to me!

Sky Scarf - July Recap

Sky Scarf is still progressing!  The Olympics and Ravellenic Games were a bit distracting, but I'm happy to report that I'm caught up on this project.  Lots of blue this month.  Like most of the country, we have not had a lot of rain so the grays went quite unused.  Extra skeins of white and cerulean blue arrived last week.

Weaving is addictive

Yesterday was a luxury - an entire day to myself without work, laundry, or errands to run.  I thought about jetting off to London for or cross country to see friends, but it was necessary to be at work at 8am on Monday.  Instead, I got up, made a pot of tea, and baked a batch of fresh scones.  I had the entire day to myself to do whatever I wanted!

And I did.

A box of yarn arrived the day before from The Loopy Ewe that included some additional back up skeins for the Sky scarf (more on that this week) and two skeins of Handmaiden's Casbah sock in the Pansy colorway.  They were destined to be a woven scarf for holiday gift giving that I wanted done early.  (I am determined to get more of my holiday gift giving done earlier this year!)  Since I had the entire day to myself, I figured I would wind the yarn and get it warped onto the loom.

I got it warped and then it was time for a lunch break.  After eating, I popped in Season 2 of Downton Abbey, and figured that since I had the time, I'd weave for a while I watched an episode or two.  Before I knew it I had to put disc 2 in and then I was about two-thirds of the way done. 

Weaving is quite rhymic so I changed to disc 3 and wrapped up the scarf.  It came off of the loom the same day it went on and it looks fabulous.  The green turned out to be a little more lime than I expected, but it pops and it helps to break up the blues and the purple.  Coming off the loom it measured 8" wide by 68" long without fringe (76" with) and I ended up using 136 grams of the sock yarn with translates to 418 yards total. 

Going to play catch up on the Sky Scarf (Ravellenic Games distracted me!) and then back to the Shaelyn shawl.  And because I can't resist close ups of woven scarves on the loom, I'll leave you with this:

PS - The whole day was lovely!

Tiny socks

Finished the baby socks to match the hat that I finished last week.  They only used 14 grams of yarn and fit in the palm of my hand.  They will be dropped in the mail this week and off to my cousin's family.  Another Ravellenic Games project completed!

First Circular Sock Machine Knit

I had been invited to a friend's house to try knitting on a circular sock machine and took her up on the offer.  It was something I was interested in and had no opportunity to try before, since most of the machines out there are antiques.  We began with some basic instruction and discussion of the machine parts and how it works.  For my first project, she recommended a tube scarf because it would give me the feel of the machine and how it cranks.

A gem of a skein of Wollmeise 100% (Pfauenauge colorway) had been tucked away in my for years because I had not found the right project for it.  We talked and I knew I was going to need to some series yardage if the scarf was to be long enough to comfortably wear, and everything fell into place.  I think it took about an hour or so to create and I finished the ends later that night.

First, I was amazed at the speed of the machine and how efficiently it worked.  If you were a woman at the end of the twentieth century and had one of these machines available to you, you could easily create socks, mittens, scarves, and more for your family and still have time available for other demands.

 

Second, the machines and process are quite technical.  There are a million variations (yarn weight, tension, number of stitches, ribbing, spacing between stitches, weights) that are thrown into the mix.  It reminded me of working with the loom - since there are a lot of decisions that are made as you set up the project and as you begin.  Unlike knitting however, you can't make too many modifications as you move through the project.  Once you're set, you're set.  The end on the right is a tad looser gauge than the one of the left, because we were adjusting and getting tension set.  I really enjoyed the project and I'm interested in learning a bit more.  We set a date to try for a pair of socks later this month!

PS - This is counting toward my personal sock club project for the month!

Eye Candy: Fresh Cherries

I <3 summer produce.