Spring in My Step

Finished the socks with my hand-dyed self-striping yarn!
I luvs them to death. I just can't get over the stripes, it's like a magic trick. I decided that for this pair, I really did care if they matched. Only had to give up a couple yards of yarn, and the stripes are perfectly aligned.

One thing that was rather aggravating, though, was the heels. I didn't want to interrupt the striping sequence, so I originally planned to do Elizabeth Zimmermann's Afterthought Heel. Started at the toe of the first socks, knit my way merrily up the foot until the place I'd usually start the short-row heel, but instead knitted in a bit of waste yarn that I could take out later and have live stitches for the heel.

Halfway up the leg, however, I decided that I really didn't like the look of an afterthought heel and that I would just do a short row heel, accepting the fact that it would take a bit of grafting. So after I finished the leg(sewn bindoff, a la EZ once again), I picked out the waste yarn and put the live stitches back on the needles. Working from the other end of the ball of yarn, I started short-rowing on the lower half of those live stitches, then Kitchenered the other side of the heel to the upper half of the original live stitches. (Sorry if this doesn't make a lick of sense to some of you, I once again prove myself a moron by forgetting to take pictures of this process.)

So now that I knew I didn't want an afterthought heel, and was even more firmly resolved to have a matching pair of socks, I took a different route on the second sock. Heel and foot as usual, but when I got to the heel, I just knit it as usual, but from the other end of the ball of yarn. Once the heel was done, I just cut the yarn and picked up where I left off with the foot.

(I swear they really are the same size) I can't really tell the difference. The only way I found to distinguish was to turn them inside out and very closely examine the stitches. I think the one on the right is the first one, with all the grafting, but I'm certainly not willing to bet.

Aside from knitting for just a moment, I must introduce my newest obsession:

Yes, it's yogurt. Thick & Creamy Key Lime Pie yogurt! Empty, unfortunately. However, my saint mother went to the grocery store today and we have a lot more in the fridge. I am very likely to have another tonight and will definitely have another in the morning.

Well the first hints of spring are finally in the air down in South Carolina, and lemme tell ya, it couldn't come soon enough for me. (In general) I like cold weather more than hot weather, but I am so sick of winter right now. After Christmas, and down here where we don't have snow or anything, winter is just not fun anymore.

I am responding to the spring "make things" vibe by buying stuff, namely yarn. Yesterday I ordered 2 skeins of undyed sock yarn and 3 skeins of undyed laceweight from KnitPicks, and a pattern to go with the laceweight(the Forest Path Stole, since you asked) from The Alpaca Yarn Company. It's an Interweave pattern, but the issue is sold out and I'm not going to pay $16 for The Best of Interweave Knits when the shawl is one of only 2 or 3 pattern in it that I like.

Also, right after I finish typing this, I'm going to order some undyed merino top from Hello Yarn. After I dye it up, it'll help satisfy my urge to spin something other than my plain brown romney.

I'll have a lot of mail to look forward to for the next few weeks, including the package from Shelly(the Heathen Housewife, see sidebar since I can't get the links right on this blog). You may have heard of Shelly and her sock yarn blanket. If not, go see it right now, it's amazing. She just finished last week(or maybe the week before) and still has leftovers. She said on her blog that she'd love to give them away to anyone else knitting a sock yarn blankie, and I am one of the 6 or so people who responded. I sent her my address a few days ago and I can't wait to see what she sends me!

Just Call Me 'Jenny'

First off, update on the Blankie of Wonder and Magic:
Yes, it is progressing quite nicely. I want this blankie to be at least big enough to cover a twin bed, and it's already wide enough for that. This is the first time I've measured the width of all the squares together and it's just a hair over 4 ft. I think I'll just add four or five more squares to this row, then start joining them with the next row(they're not attatched in this pic, just laid out in a line).

I got 2 skeins of KnitPicks Bare Essentials for a good bargain from a nice lady on Ravelry, and I dyed one of them with red food coloring last week.

It's a good thing I was aiming for pink, because that's all the red dye we had. I'm knitting it up into socks for Thing 1's birthday. They're top down, since I did a picot hem at the top and didn't want to have to sew it down.
It's very neat, and deceptively simple. I learned the technique from watching Knitty Gritty, and you can find it on their website (diynetwork.com/knittygritty).

The other skein is sitting on my worktable, waiting until I can get some blue food coloring. I'm going to do this one in blue and green stripes, with narrow undyed stripes between them.

So here comes Jenny(extra IQ points to whoever guesses the refference first): The week before last, I decided to try my hand at plying. I haven't done this before because I am dependent on my spindle, and only my spindle. Nothing else. No Lazy Kate, no nothing. So, I had to improvise...

Yes, I know, that's the most ghetto Lazy Kate I've ever seen, too. A cardboard box, 2 knitting needles, a drinking straw and the cardboard spool that a ball of crochet cotton come wound on. But it worked... barely.

Now, I know all you spinners are going to hate me for this, "beginner's luck," you'll say.
This is all I had left on one cough bobbin when I was done. Beginner's luck, that's it.
I am quite proud of my little skein, for all it's faults. It's much more even than any single I've spun yet.
I also tried 3-plying, by the Navajo method. I didn't need the Ghetto Lazy Kate for that, but I did have to wind the single onto my umbrella swift to hold it while winding the plied yarn back onto the spindle.
Not as even, but far more even than the single was.