Lone Knitter

Sweet Angel Amigurumi Ornament and Doll

2010-12-09T08:49:00.003-05:00

My husband and I put up our tree last week, and like the trees of many newly-married couples, ours was lacking ornaments. Especially lacking was an angel ornament. So I sat down to figure out an amigurumi pattern for an angel ornament that could also double as a doll.

Here she is with the other two ornaments I designed. Now Manly says he wants a whole village of amigurumi ornaments and keeps asking for a Santa one.

As always, this new pattern is available in my etsy shop. Enjoy!

Sweet Winter Bear

2010-12-06T20:25:00.003-05:00

Here's my latest amigurumi attempt. I was trying to make a Christmas bear, but that didn't go so well. Nonetheless, this little bear was born on a very cold Chicago winter day.

I think every amigurumi designer should have at least one bear in their pattern batch. I wanted something cute and sweet but with some personality. So much depends upon how the face comes out. I think I spend more time on the face than on crocheting the whole doll.

The removable scarf was an afterthought, but I think it makes the bear look extra cozy.

As always, the pattern is available in my etsy shop.

Baby Rudolph and Abominable Snowman Amigurumi

2010-11-22T22:04:00.002-05:00

Here's a new pattern that I worked on this week: Baby Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer Ornament and Toy. Needless to say, you can make it an ornament, a toy, or both. It's easy and works up quickly.

Here is little Baby Rudolph with Baby Abominable Snowman, who is also an ornament and toy.

You can purchase one of both together (discounted if bought together) in my etsy shop in time to get them crocheted and hung on your tree.

As a child, I absolutely loved watching the Rudolph special on television. That was way back in the day before we could own it on video or DVD. If I missed it one year, that was tragic.

I want to make more ornament patterns before Christmastime, but the semester is demanding that I grade and make amends with my dissertation revisions. We'll see.

New Amigurumi Pattern

2010-09-13T17:02:00.003-05:00

I finished another amigurumi pattern over the week. I'm calling this one The Incredibly Hungry and Sleepy Puppy. It's a play set complete with puppy bed, puppy chow, and a little ball for it to play with.

The pattern features a reversible face so the puppy can be either sleeping or awake. Isn't it so cute? I think it's SO CUTE!

You know you want to make one. So visit my etsy shop and purchase the pattern before I get all sad that no one is buying my patterns.

Update: this pattern won a spot in the CrochetMe 2012 Calendar and will not be available in my etsy shop. Keep an eye out for the calendar for the pattern.

In knitterly news, I just finished a baby blanket and am now making another. I need to make some booties, too. All this for a very special January delivery.

My first amigurumi pattern

2010-09-08T09:05:00.004-05:00

I spent a few nights last week coming up with a doll that was partially inspired by a Tokidoki character. It's a mishmash of that and my own whimsy. What I love about this pattern is the doll's reversible face. You can make it look scary or you can make her sweet.

She also has a cute little skirt and candy stripe legs.

The pattern is up in my etsy shop. Enjoy!

I'm currently working on a little puppy amigurumi. Almost done! I hope to post the pattern this weekend.

More amigurumi

2010-08-30T10:52:00.002-05:00

My amigurumi obsession continues. Below is a little frog amigurumi (using the same pattern as the bunny one in the previous post) that I made for my little sister's birthday. My mom saw it and now wants one, so I'll need to get working on a doll for her, too.

This little guy was made for my nephew who adores Elmo. After seeing how easy it is to design your own dolls after you learn a few basic amigurumi shapes, it was easy to come up with this design. He loved it! I put some jingle bells inside, but I think the stuffing muffled the sound too much. Next time I'll place them in the little arms.

I'm currently working on my own doll patterns and hope to have a few posted to my etsy shop soon!

Hello again and amigurumi addiction

2010-07-22T14:34:00.002-05:00

Hi, all. I'm back. At least for now. I've been working steadily on my dissertation, and I hit that mental wall that says I need a break. So I thought I would update this blog and take a dissertation break at the same time. Is anyone still there?

I've been so into amigurumi lately. All I want to do is browse patterns and make them. Here's my latest creation:

This was made using a pattern from K and J Dolls, an ever-so-talented amigurumi designer on etsy.

This was my second attempt at amigurumi, made using a pattern from Amigurumi World by Ana Paula Rimoli.

I need and want more little crocheted dolls.

finally some new socks and handspun

2009-03-17T12:23:00.002-05:00

When I moved this summer, I packed a pair of socks to work on. It took the movers 12 days to get our things to us. You know I'm depressed if I can't bring myself to work on socks. Knitting on an air mattress isn't very fun. Don't ever use the moving company I used. Of course I won't give their name here, but if you're thinking of moving, contact me, and I'll tell you who not to use. 12 days late.

These socks were made with my very own Woolly Boully yeah oh yeah sock in the la mer colorway. They were done on size 1 dpns over 64 stitches.

I also made my first 3-ply yarn with this roving.

The roving is from Freckle Face Fibers and is 100% merino in the Patriot colorway. Her rovings are so fluffy and devine.

My singles took forever to spin. 3-ply handspun sock yarn is really a labor of love.

This skein measures 394 yards. I'm a tad bit disappointed: I was hoping that I would get more yardage, but for my first 3-ply handspun sock yarn, I think I did an okay job. There are some strange spots here and there, but overall, I'm pleased with my spinning progress.

After doing 3-ply, I needed a quick spinning project, so I grabbed some roving that I dyed up a few months ago. It's 75% superwash merino and 25% nylon, perfect for socks, and in my Country Apple colorway.

This skein is a sport to worsted weight and comes in at 168 yards.

I'm thinking mittens?

skein-a-day project

2009-02-05T10:32:00.002-05:00

I miss dyeing yarn. I do. I really do. I just get overwhelmed by setting up and working on numerous skeins at a time and then all the clean up and rinsing and reskeining after a big dye-job.

My new Chicago kitchen also isn’t set up to production dye. You should have seen the work that Manly and I put into the kitchen for the Winter Sock Club skeins. It took the use of a broken bookshelf, some cardboard boxes, an old painting pole and lots of duct tape. I would do that all over again, but I have no idea where the duct tape is. We had to use A LOT of it. The whole contraption, however, made me feel completely insane, honestly.

I discovered that if I dye just one skein at a time, I’m happy, much happier, and I feel as if I have more room to play around in the dyepot. Plus, my kitchen stays sanely clean and organized, just how I like it. I love a clean kitchen. I have to make sure all the dishes are washed and put away before bed.

So, from here on out, I’m dyeing a skein a day. Some yarn will be kettle-dyed and some will be spaced dyed. I will have new and old colorways, but there will only be one skein a day. Well, okay, on days when I can do more, I will. On days when it’s impossible to dye, I won’t. Yesterday, it was impossible to dye, so I didn't. Today, I'll try to dye up two skeins between dissertation work and everything else.

I posted some skeins on my etsy site two days ago, and I'll have three more to post today. The seagrass that you're seeing in the photo above has sold.

Keep checking my etsy site if you’d like to get your hands on one of the skein-a-day creations.

In the meantime, I'm finishing up a pair of socks that I started in August (!) and spinning my first 3-ply sock yarn. Wish me luck.

A New Scarf for Manly

2009-01-28T12:30:00.002-05:00

Manly doesn't always leave the house with a scarf; I think it's crazy. He had a really nice one once, but we haven't seen that one around. We haven't seen that one for about two years now. (I know--it's awful of me to let him go that long without a nice scarf.)

The cold in Chicago is insane; it's not your normal cold. So I refuse to let him leave without a scarf. He's been wearing the first one I made him ever: it's so ugly (to me) that I feel so badly for him when he wears it. It's my knitterly self looking at my first tries of garter-stitch (which I didn't do correctly, mind you) and feeling all embarrassed. He must love me enough to wear it.

He wanted orange. So orange it is.

This scarf was knit on size 10 needles over 32 stitches using Lamb's Pride bulky in the orange you glad colorway. I found the pattern in the first Stitch 'n Bitch book (page 58), and it calls for two skeins in the book. Don't believe it. You'll need three. Normally, I could get a scarf from two skeins of the bulky, but this stitch is so compact. Use fewer stitches and size 17 needles if you want to have more drape and use less yarn. I would prefer my scarf that way, but Manly likes a very dense knit.

Oh, my!

2009-01-24T18:34:00.002-05:00

I've been gone a long time.

Well, I think that maybe some of you might have thought that I was done with knitting. Oh, no. I'm certainly not done with knitting. I don't know why I don't update my blog as often as I should. You see, I have all of these FOs and haven't shared any of them. I'll need several posts to show you the things I've made and spun lately.

In the photo above, you'll see the yarn that was sent out for the Woolly Boully One-Shot Sock Club in December. The colorway was Brooklyn Peppermint. I have a Brooklyn Candy and a Brooklyn Holly colorway, and, well, yes, I do miss Brooklyn.

I spoiled myself this past fall and joined Wooly Treasures' batt club. Here's my October batt:

And here it is all spun up:

I love spinning batts. They're so soft and fluffy and decadent. I love all the various fibers and colors and I do love the glitz.

Places I have been since you've read me last: Texas, New York City, New Jersey, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Chicago is all covered in glitz. When I woke up this morning, it was 2 degrees. I mean, the glitz here is in the form of icicles and snow and jack frost scrawlings on my windows. People don't know, but they should be envious of me and my handknit wool socks.

I want a fireplace. In the next place I live, I'll have that and a dishwasher. I want a dishwasher.

A wedding gift and a gift to me from me

2008-11-01T13:45:00.002-05:00

A few days before my wedding, an Express Mail package showed unexpectedly. Inside was a beautiful shawl from G. (G. if you want me to use your Ravelry name or something else, just say the word!) She ordered a custom colorway from me, which happened to be my wedding colors, and then she went and did the sweetest thing: she made me a shawl from it.

It's so stunning and beautiful, and I can't imagine how many days she spent knitting it. As any knitter knows, a knitted gift is priceless. Thank you, G. Getting this gift was such a treat, but it also made me remember how many great people I've met through my fiber love.

So, I broke down and ordered a Lendrum DT complete. (I ordered it from Paradise Fibers on a Monday and got it on a Friday. A few days later, they were all sold out. Stores can't keep this wheel in stock; I must have gotten lucky.)

This is my getting-to-know-my-new-wheel skein. It's just some roving that I dyed before my move. I'm sorry that I didn't take any pictures of the roving before spinning it up. There was some getting used to, but once I got used to the wheel, I couldn't believe I had been spinning on my Louet S17 when I could have been spinning on something heavenly. I thought I didn't know how to control the fibers and that I was a bad spinner, but I just needed a new wheel. I'm spinning more consistently, and my ability to draft and control the fiber is amazing now. Seriously: there is a world of a difference.

This skein is about 3.2 ozs and 240 yards, fingering weight. It's a 2-ply. I want to spin a 3-ply sock yarn next. With my leftover singles, I practiced at Navajo plying, which is easy-peasy once you get the rhythm down.

Oh, and there was a little update today at my etsy shop. All the colorways were named by Manly, who also helped with the dyeing. Thanks, Manly! Oh, and Manly was also my biggest new wheel enabler. You see? I did marry the perfect guy.

ugh...I want a new wheel

2008-10-13T13:10:00.003-05:00

I want a new wheel because I'm just fickle like that. I like my Louet S17; it's all right; I taught myself to spin on it; it makes yarn; it plys; there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. I just want a double treadle wheel now because I'm getting a bit sensitive to that dead spot on the wheel, which I never noticed before or cared about before. Something happened. I began to spin ever-so-finely. That's just how I spin now, and I want a wheel that can really accommodate that. Or maybe I just want a new wheel just for the wanting, but I can't justify that expense right now. I think that maybe I should have a wheel for at least two years before I get a new one; this means I have to wait until May. That's terrible.

I spun this up about two weeks ago. It's BFL dyed by Pigeonroof Studios. Krista makes beautiful roving.

This was my third time spinning up BFL, and I have to say: I'm either really bad at spinning up BFL or I just don't like it: I think I just don't like it. It's not as slick and smooth as merino, which I adore spinning. I also can't get the BFL to spin up as finely as I can spin merino.

Hence the pure ugliness of this yarn, or maybe it's my wheel: I want to blame my wheel so that I can get a new one.

I want to start doing Navajo 3-plying. I saw some beautiful handspun sock yarn at a Thing for String. Micki's handspun is so awe-inspiring. I want to make handspun that's as lovely as hers. I know this is my destiny and that somehow a new Lendrum DT is a part of that destiny.

I have some silk/merino sock yarn drying. It's going to Pam at Yarny Goodness, and that will be all for the wholesaling for the foreseeable future. I promised Pam this yarn a long, long time ago. Oh, and she's having a sale today, so you should stop on by.

I may need some spinning wheel money, so I might list some skeins here and there on etsy; you'll know how badly I want a new wheel by whether or not I start dyeing.

I want to thank all of you who took time to leave comments on my last entry: I miss knitting-blogging. It was nice to know that you were thinking about me.

there was a wedding

2008-10-04T13:37:00.003-05:00

There was a wedding; there was a move; there was much writing--and this is all why I haven't been blogging. Terribly sorry. The wedding was lovely, a picture book, happy-ending story. The move: not so much. I only wanted to blog a little something today, to say hi and all's well.

A train and bustle?; an etsy wedding

2008-06-06T08:18:00.009-05:00

Apparently, I'm so short, (I prefer to say petite) that the seamstress was able to add a train and bustle to my wedding gown, where there was no train or bustle to begin with! She asked me if my dress had a train, and I said no, so she said, Well, we'll make a little train and bustle here. It was so amazing. I had no idea that could be accomplished.

I was a bit alarmed at how my dress felt on me. When I first bought it and tried it on, I was considering exchanging it for a smaller size. I'm glad now that I didn't.

I felt a little sad when I left the seamstress. I guess it's because my mother worked for years as a seamstress, and my mother would lovingly go over each and every stitch when I modeled something she was making for me and make sure that each and every pin was in just right. My mother would make sure I was standing up straight, would want to make sure that everything felt and fit just right, her hands moving over my frame lovingly. It didn't feel right that my wedding dress was fitted by someone who did not love me.

An etsy wedding

Etsy has been so good to me, and I wanted to give back by making etsy a part of my wedding. I want to share with you some of the wedding things I found on etsy.

I wanted to be able to use items in my wedding that had been crafted with care; I also wanted to support craftsters who are trying to make a life for themselves making things they love.

I'm having a bird nest and eggs theme for my wedding, as if these pictures didn't give that away.

In the picture at the top of this post, you're seeing the hair pin that I'll be using. It was made by Designs by Portobello.

The next two items were made by Rain's End. If you're getting married within the next year, you might want to get her to make you a custom cake topper--you have to place your order six months in advance. Because my engagement was so short, I didn't have enough time. Her cake toppers are very, very popular and beautiful.

I was able, however, to get this ring pillow and flower girl purse.

For escort cards, I purchased about 120 gift tags from Blue Bird Lane. The seller was really great to work with. I'm going to try to hang these from a tree branch or something. I'm not quite sure just yet how that will be accomplished.

My bridal party gifts were made by Starry Designs. The seller lives in Singapore, but she shipped my items very promptly and they arrived in no time. Because I placed such a huge order, she offered me a 10% discount, which I really appreciated. I can't post pictures of the gifts just yet in case anyone in my bridal party reads this blog, but the gifts are just lovely.

I even got my veil on etsy from Ann Leslie Designs. The seller took care to send me fabric samples so that I could match the fabric to my dress.

So if you're getting married or having any sort of affair, consider using at least one etsy craftster in your party planning. There are printers who make invitations using letter presses, and even people who will hand write in calligraphy for you. If you're a craftster yourself but don't have the time to handmake everything yourself, consider letting other craftsters do the work for you.

an apology; some new colorways

2008-05-29T17:36:00.002-05:00

an apology

So I've been a little missing-in-action lately. Oh, no, it's been a lot of MIA. I hardly feel that it's worth boring you with the ends and outs of my excuses for neglecting this blog, this poor little blog that's brought me so much joy. So maybe I'll just quickly sum it all up for you: I'm getting married in less than a month.

Wedding planning certainly is challenging, but it's also fun. I'm trying to keep thinking of the fun, but sometimes it's difficult to, especially when everything is more expensive than you ever imagined and when your vendors have to cancel on you.

Fun: Manly and I picking out our wedding bands yesterday. Not fun: learning how much they cost. We keep telling ourselves that we'll pay for everything after the wedding. I'm sure that the fact that we're both nauseated all of the time has something to do with our getting married! Of course, we're happy and excited, and we know that it will all be worth it in the end; for now, however, we're a little spastic.

So, I guess I just want to say that I'm sorry for neglecting this blog and for not reading and commenting on all of your blogs. It's something that I'm really looking forward to doing again.

some new colorways

In the photo above, you can see the colorways that have been shipped off to the Loopy Ewe. Lots of these are new colorways for me. These skeins are my yeah oh yeah sock, a 100% superwash merino that's similar to my Meanie sock yarn base. Starting at 12 o'clock and moving clockwise, the colors are: prissie, sherbet, chocolate creme egg (think Cadbury Creme eggs), bluebird, cherry blossom, la mer, nymphwood, cherry bud, tea rose, pink lemonade, fishing with my father, and veggie.

If you want a skein of the bluebird or pink lemonade in my Meanie base, head on over to my etsy shop.

A pair of my own; a sock knitter's despair

2008-04-18T10:51:00.003-05:00

A pair of my own

I've made these Heelless Sleeping Socks several times now as gifts, but I've never knit a pair of my own. Last Christmas, Mom J gave me something very high on my sock-knitting wish list: Claudia's Handpainted in the Red Wagon colorway. I hoarded this yarn, but then I thought how I wanted a pair of sleeping socks and how this yarn would be perfect for the pattern. So I finally made a pair of my own. I only had to use one skein of the yarn. So I could use the other skein for another pair or for something else.

A sock knitter's despair

The reason why I love sleeping with my Jaywalkers: too snug, they don't come off at night.

It's true: once you start wearing hand-knit socks, it's hard to go back to all that elastic and seaming that's found in manufactured socks. So I travel with my hand-knit socks. So far, I've never lost a pair.

When I went to New Mexico earlier this month, I brought these beauties along. For some reason, the hotel staff thought I was only staying for one night. So when the housekeeper came to freshen my room, she changed my sheets. My socks had come off during the night and were embedded somewhere in those sheets.

I left my address and phone number with the hotel, but I don't think I'll ever be seeing those socks again. I'm very sad. Those socks were knit toe-up and were in my top three favorite socks for how they fit. The good news is that Coley, who dyed up that yarn for me, sent me a huge skein of it, and there's enough for another pair.

I don't know if I'll travel with my hand-knit socks again. I don't think I could stomach another loss.

Oh, geez!

2008-04-08T08:58:00.006-05:00

I can't believe I've been MIA from this blog for almost a month. When things were normal, I enjoyed posting about twice a week. Then things got a bit hectic, and I tried to squeeze in a post a week. But once a month? That's not good. That's not good at all.

And to think: I have all these FOs to show!

First, I want to share with you a custom order I did for Crafty Pancakes and Gaby. They wanted the blue of my something blue yarn, white, and a chocolate brown. I was happy to dye it up for them; I named the colorway bluebird. I like it so much that I plan to dye it up as a regular colorway. It's what you're seeing in the photo above.

Manly socks

These were made maybe back in January. They were made with Opal Hundertwassen using a 3x1 rib over 72 stitches with size 1 dpns. I used a Sherman heel and then decreased to 68 stitches.

Anklets for mom

These anklets were made for mother also some time in January. They were made with Trekking 126 with a 2x2 rib over 64 stitches on size 0 dpns. I mother loved my Trekking 126 socks, and I wanted to give these to her so she too could enjoy the prettiness that is Trekking 126. My mom, oh joy, prefers anklets.

I have so many new colorways planned. I'm not going to wholesale my yarns anymore. I am fulfilling two orders with stores that placed orders a long time ago. I'll let you all know when my yarn is available in these stores. For now, please continue to visit my etsy shop, where I post new yarns every so often. I find it's easier for me to keep up when I stock a little at a time. I hope you will continue to support my indie-dyeing efforts. I know that those of us who don't wholesale aren't as sexy as the dyers who do, but I like knowing who my customers are. I'm also getting very bad about delivering wholesale orders in a timely fashion. So, to stay on top of things and sane, it's going to be etsy only.

as sporadic as they've always been

2008-03-12T08:51:00.002-05:00

I think I'm learning how to take everything in stride. These are things that I'm focusing on right now: dyeing more yarn, dissertation revisions, a new dissertation chapter, wedding planning, money, health, happiness, a commissioned essay on a topic that isn't a particularly happy topic.

My impulses are, as ever, as sporadic as they've always been, but if you know me, then you know that I do keep these impulses in check. As a sock knitter, I never have too many pairs going. I try to finish a pair before starting the next, or I try to only have two going at once--one pair for this mood and the other pair for another.

What I want to knit now: another pair of Jaywalkers. I didn't enjoy knitting the first pair very much, but I've come to find that they are among my favorite socks, especially for sleeping. They don't come off in the middle of the night, they are always snug, and they keep in much warmth. So I want more and more Jaywalkers.

I have many finished objects to show. (I know, I've been gone so long.) But I feel that I should maybe show them over time.

The socks in the photograph were finished in January. They were given to my older sister. Both my sisters loved how soft they were. These were made over 60 stitches on size one dpns using my Kettle Dyed Softie Sock. (Two are left on my etsy site.)

I'll be moving soon as well. That's on the list of things. My long silence from this blog and my long break from dyeing gave rise to a job. A real job. I don't know if I'll continue to dye yarn when I start working. I seriously doubt I'll be able to do big orders, but I might continue to do a few skeins here and there. We'll see.

And the winner is

2008-02-05T15:41:00.000-05:00

the A.D.D. Knitter. Thank you all so much for putting in all of your wonderful guesses. My ring sized at a four, and the A.D.D. Knitter guessed the closest, at 4.75. She'll get a skein of something blue as soon as I can dye more up.

A little something extra on my yarn-holding hand; the last socks of 2007; a little guessing game

2008-01-18T10:46:00.000-05:00

A little something extra on my yarn-holding hand

Dear friends, I'm so terribly sorry that I've been so missing-in-action as of late. (I feel as if I've begun many a post with that apology!) As some of you may know, I had a very busy holiday. In addition to going to a major conference to do some interviews, I got a little something extra on my yarn-holding hand.

Uh huh. The Lone Knitter is engaged. Manly surprised me with a little something in my stocking. Growing up in Texas, we didn't have a fireplace, and we didn't have stockings. I told Manly my sob story of how I always wanted a stocking and would even leave my dirty socks with holes in them under the tree, thinking there would be gifts in them on Christmas morning. So, my first stocking gift was definitely worth the years of never having a stocking.

I know why the engagement ring goes on the ring finger--it's the one finger, if you knit Continental, that doesn't come into contact with, and thus can't snag, the yarn. You see, the ring goes there specifically to make things nice for knitters. Of course, I can't verify this, but it must be true because, as we all know, the world is always thinking about knitters.

The last socks of 2007

These heelless sleeping socks (pattern from Knitting Vintage Socks) are so wonderful to make. I would make them over and over again.

I like making them with my size 2 circulars using the magic loop method. I prefer bamboo dpns, but for this pattern, I prefer the magic loop. These were made with my Nymphwood colorway. I thought they turned out nicely, and I very much wanted to keep them for myself. They were a Kris Kringle gift for one of Manly's sisters.

A little guessing game

To help celebrate my engagement, I'm dyeing up a special colorway: something blue. It will be specially priced, and proceeds from the sell of the yarn will go towards my wedding gown. (Let's see. I think I need to sell about 50 of these!)

Do you want one for free? If so, all you have to do is guess the band size of my engagement ring and leave that guess in a comment to this post. All the correct guesses will be entered in a raffle for a skein of something blue.

You have until midnight EST on Friday, January 25 to get your guess in. I can't wait to see what your guess will be!

UPDATE: something blue is now listed in my etsy shop.

This FO is REALLY Old

2007-12-12T10:34:00.000-05:00

I thought that instead of sending along a trite thank you note to someone who has been very kind and giving to me, that I would also send along a knitted gift. I get really paranoid and embarrassed when I do give knitted gifts. I worry that the recipient will think that my gift looks like a beginning knitter made it. (I don't wish to say that beginning knitters make things that look bad--when I was beginning, I made things that looked bad; some beginning knitters do make marvelous things.)

So this "Airy Scarf" from Last Minute Knitted Gifts was sent to a very nice woman who has been so kind to me for no reason at all. I won't say who she is because she's a bit of a celebrity in my writing world. I'll just say that she's a famous poet; and if you ever see a famous poet wearing this scarf, then know it's not coincidence--I made it for her.

I used some Whispers yarn in the Smoke Blue colorway that I bought with the intention of making a stole of sorts a long time ago. No stole; no desire to make one. You see, during that winter, I learned to make socks and haven't had a desire to make much of anything else since then.

I finished knitting a sweater long ago, but I haven't had the desire to sew it up. None at all.

What I'm knitting now: socks for Manly, socks for two socks without mates, more Korknisse for the tree.

Wash Day!

2007-12-04T12:47:00.000-05:00

Well, you can certainly tell what the weather has been like judging from this pile of handknit socks. I think there are 12 pairs of socks here, only two of which are Manly's. I think I should knit another pair for him, perhaps as a Christmas gift. He really deserves a pair of socks. For those of you in my sock club, I'll have you know that Manly wrapped all the books up in newspaper. By the end, he was wrapping them up so neatly that he could be employed to wrap gifts professionally. He really helped me to get this last shipment out, and I don't think I could have done it without him.

I have a phone interview later today for a job. Yes, a job. I mean, a JOB JOB. I big job. A real job. The job that I've been going to school forever for. I'm the the academic job market this year. This has implications, but I won't scare anyone yet. I'll deliver news when it's time to deliver news.

The weather outside is very, very frightful, and it seems as if the whole city is wrapped in some strange bubble--everything is off; everything is late. But there was no line at the post office today. It's very strange.

Yesterday, I got a package, so says the on-line tracker, but there was no package to be found. I'm terribly distressed over this--the package was full of something for the sock club. Whoever stole it must be very confused or disappointed.

Update: the package appeared today. Like I said--there's a strange bubble over the city it seems.

My do-not-do list

2007-11-13T16:46:00.000-05:00

Every night before bed, I make a to-do list. It helps me to feel less anxious about all the things I have to do. I've tricked myself into thinking that if I take the task undone and materialize it (i.e. write it out), then the task is just as good as done. I don't have insomnia. I sleep well.

I think, however, that I need to start making a do-not-do list. I should list things that I should not do or stop doing.

If you haven't noticed, I've been absent in blog-land; my absence is caused by all of those things that I have to do.

So, starting today, I'm adding something to that do-not-do list: DO NOT reskein yarn.

I know that a lot of sock knitters like their yarn reskeined; it's looks prettier to some folks. But lately, I've been admiring sock yarn that isn't reskeined. I think it shows off the colors more. I know that's my opinion but...

I actually had a moment this weekend where I thought I should give up dyeing yarn. I was really overwhelmed by the mountain of yarn that needed to be reskeined. If I spend all day reskeining--morning until supper time--I will have only reskeined about 20 skeins. (I do it by hand because my electric skein winder is CRAZY! It can skein from cones, but reskeining makes the electric skein winder mad!) These are days that I could be spending cleaning, writing, reading, working on the dissertation, updating my etsy shop, dyeing more yarn, going to museums, going to movies, taking walks. There's so much life I'm missing out on, so please understand that my desire to stop reskeining is wrapped up in my desire to live.

I actually felt as if I could breathe again when I decided to no longer reskein yarn.

What you're seeing in the picture above is some of my kettle-dyed sock yarn. I have six skeins that will go up on etsy when I update. Isn't it pretty? Oh, and kettle-dyed sock yarn looks like a hairball mixed with vomit when it hasn't been reskeined. So maybe I should reskein it...oh no, oh no, I said I would not do that.

I'm late; I'm late; I'm late

2007-10-30T12:34:00.001-05:00

Dear friends,

I'm feeling a bit like the white rabbit today--constantly going somewhere, constantly busy. The one difference is that I'm constantly confused. Everything is a bit overwhelming right now, and I have a 7:00 a.m. flight to catch tomorrow. I wish it were a vacation destination, but no, it's a conference and work. I have so much to do before then. I was hoping to update this blog and my etsy shop before leaving, but it looks as those to-do items will have to wait until I get back.

Yrs,
LK

The Monkeys are Done; My First Sweater; Dissertation Update; Sock Club Update

2007-10-03T11:10:00.000-05:00

The Monkeys are done

I grafted the last toe on Thursday night at my knitting circle. These socks were delightful to make. If I had to make them over again, I would probably use size 0 needles for the leg and then switch to 1s for the gusset/foot. They're a tad looser than I would like in the leg portion of the sock, but nice nonetheless. I love them. They make me happy to look at. I used my Woollly Boully Softie Sock in the Country Apple colorway. Here are my pattern modifications: size 1 dpns, my slip1 k1 heel flap and regular gusset, decrease toe to sixteen stitches as I like to do. When it comes to socks, it's better to do as you like to do. At least that's what I think.

My first sweater

I remember a while ago I promised that I would do right by this sweater. And I really did try to stick by her. I bought yarn and made a swatch, and I was all set to go. Then, I realized (yes, even after making a swatch in garter stitch) that the sweater was in garter stitch. (I guess that's why everyone says to "read the pattern all the way through.") It's not easy to see in that photograph that the sweater is in garter stitch. Oh no, I thought. I like garter stitch, but I don't think I'd like to wear a sweater made in garter stitch. I don't think it would flatter me. I thought about rewriting the pattern, but, having never made a sweater before, I didn't feel confident enough in my abilities.

Then my friend Jody showed me her copy of this fall's Knitting Fashion magazine, which seems to be very difficult to find on-line. I think it's a European magazine, but I'm not sure. Anyhow, I loved the sweater at first glance. Loved the cowl neck; loved the stockinette stitch. But the pattern called for a heavy worsted and size 11 needles. I had already bought a bunch of worsted. I tried a swatch on size 10 needles, and it draped just fine and filled out a bit after washing and blocking. (Oh, yes, I went all the way with my swatching. I didn't think I would, being a sock knitter and all who never, ever swatches--just a quick look at the yarn and I'm off.)

I was very proud of myself. I was able to convert the pattern by thinking through it in my head and performing some very simple arithmetic. Then I found this, and it confirmed my changes. I was very pleased with myself. I had always been terrible at figures.

So I cast on Friday. As of this post, I have the back all done and am almost beginning my neck shaping on the front. Sweaters do go fast. I estimate that I knit about 18,000 - 20,000 stitches in a pair of socks. I'm sure that this sweater will contain about that many stitches as well. I always silently stare when someone, seeing that I tend to always be working on a new pair of socks, tells me, "Hmmm. I think I'll start to knit socks. They go faster." I just silently stare.

Dissertation Update

I had to print out my chapter today. I just couldn't see it anymore. I email myself a copy of it daily if I make changes. I don't trust anyone, anything anymore when it comes to saving. Oh no. I had a big crying fit this spring when two pages of my prospectus got eaten by my flash drive. I still can't look at a flash drive without cringing.

It's such a baby still. It's 43 pages and it's shapeless, without form, an utter babbling blob. I'm hoping that a print-out will help me to force it into some sort of shape. If I'm quiet in blog-land these days, well, I'm hoping that this photo will tell you why.

Sock Club Update

My sock club is almost full, and by almost full, I mean there's only one spot left. The club has 24 spots. One is mine, and is being reserved for a special someone, 21 have sold, and one is left.

Dyeing will begin this weekend. I have such a lovely colorway planned. I'm already swooning. Just swooning I tell ya.

We've Got Buttons!

2007-09-27T07:51:00.000-05:00

A while ago, Pam asked if I had a Woolly Boully button for her blog. I also got a special request from Julia for a Woolly Boully Sock Club button for her blog. Buttons? Hmmm....I hadn't even thought about buttons. So I thought about buttons; it made sense for me to have buttons. I know nothing, however, about making buttons. (Well, I did try to once, a long time ago, and that turned out very badly.)

I then remembered a very talented blogger and photographer and designer who had designed a beautiful button for her Fiberlicious group. I also remembered that the Knitting Philistine had taken a very lovely photo of my yarn. I then remembered that she is very open to doing swaps. She usually swaps her soap. I asked her if she would consider doing a button/yarn swap. She said yes, and I was absolutely thrilled.

The two buttons above are the Knitting Philistine's creations. The first one is a Woolly Boully Yarns button and the second one is the Sock Club button.

You may post them on your blog. I would very much appreciate if you did the following:

- please have the buttons link back to my blog;
- and please remember to save the buttons and then upload them to your blog;
- if you prefer, you may download the buttons from my flickr site, but the same rules apply--save to your drive and then upload.

Pam has also started a Woolly Boully Woolies group on Ravelry. I know that not all of you are on Ravelry yet, but if you are, you can click here to join.

I am so excited about the Sock Yarn Club. You know, I really didn't think anyone would sign up. I really thought I would go about my day, come home, check my email, and see that no one had signed up. As of this writing, we have 19 members in the club. Goodness! I feel really honored that anyone signed up at all, and it really means so much to me to think that so many of you have such faith in my abilities to bring you great yarn. Thank you all so much!

Woolly Boully Sock Club, Korknisse, and I've been Raveled

2007-09-24T11:28:00.000-05:00

Hey you all. I have some exciting news. Well, it may not be at all exciting to you, but it is absolutely exciting for me. I've started my own sock club. I'm planning lots and lots of fun things for the shipments, but I'm having an oh-so-difficult time pinning down three colorways for the club. There are so many on my mind. I guess I'll have to save some for later.

The club will have a book theme, like some other sock yarn clubs, but I thought I would centered my sock yarn club around my books. I know, I must be so self-centered! But really, I'm very often inspired by images in my writing when it comes to yarn dyeing. The two really do go hand and hand for me.

Details for the Woolly Boully Boully Books Sock Club are here.

***

When I first happened upon these, my heart flitter-fluttered. Korknisse is (are? -- is korknisse plural?) the cutest little folk ever. I want a whole village of Korknisse.

This one is an apple one, made from my Country Apple Softie Sock. This one is for a special someone whom I have never met, but who has been an awesome person to me. (She made me this!) She wrote a book with "apple" in the title, and I thought this would be an appropriate gift for her. She said that she had wanted to learn to knit to make those cute little animals (amigurumi?) that everyone has been making. So I thought that a cute little Korknisse might fit the bill perfectly.

I wanted to use fingering weight yarn and size one needles. I couldn't find any patterns on-line for these specifications, so I just improvised. The original pattern is here. The English translation of the pattern is here.

Here's my modified pattern for fingering weight yarn and size 1 dpns.

Sweater:
cast on 24 stitches (If you knit loosely, you can use 20 stitches.)
join in the round
k2p2 for five rounds
knit for five rounds
cast off

Hat:
cast on 24 stitches (Again, if you're a loose knitter, you should use 20 stitches and adjust your decreases according.)
join in the round
k2p2 for four rounds
k four rounds
k2 k2tog k2 repeat
k two rounds
k1 k2tog k2 repeat
k two rounds
k2tog k1 repeat
k two rounds
k2tog k1 repeat
k two rounds
k2tog repeat
Draw yarn through remaining stitches.
Weave in ends.
Put clothes on a wine cork and draw two little eyes. (I prefer my Korknisse without noses!)

***

Yesterday, I was Raveled. My Raverly username is WoollyBoully.

Sunflower Socks

2007-09-21T13:37:00.000-05:00

Well, after what seems like months, I finally have another pair of socks done. These socks took forever. I made short-row heels; I must have forgotten that I don't like knitting short-row heels. Unlike heel flaps, which I can make in my sleep, I still need to look at line-by-line instructions for short-rows. So, when I can't zone out when knitting, it tends to take me longer to get anything knit.

I love these note cards that come in little magnetized boxes. The boxes are perfect for keeping a pair of socks in or for gifting socks. I guess I'll need to write a lot of notes if I want more of these boxes. They're also great for storing knitting notions, paper clips, and any little thing that doesn't seem to have a home.

The weather is shifting.

I felt it weeks ago when my allergies flared. They flare fiercely in autumn. Along with the sneezes comes a vague sense of feeling under water, a deadened alertness, and fuzzy memory.

Oh, yes, and sudden food cravings.

Things I have craved: sour pickles, hotdogs with relish, granny smith apples with an ever-so-slight glaze of candy-apple coating (just to feel the crisp crunch along with the stickiness), braised red meats, heaps of raw vegetables.

None of these cravings make sense to me; none of those foods, excepting the braised red meats, are foods that I eat regularly or have ever craved at all.

My sunflowers socks were made using my Sunflowers, Texas, fields of colorway (these are 50% superwash merino and 50% tencel) over 60 stitches on size one dpns using a Sherman short-row heel.

I think my last post, bemoaning the slow slow wait for my Ravelry invite, must have made the Ravelry gods feel slightly sorry for me. In one week, my place in line has changed greatly:

You signed up on July 14, 2007
You are #16310 on the list.
915 people are ahead of you in line.
18118 people are behind you in line.
44% of the list has been invited so far

At this rate, I'll get my invite in about three days. About.

Monkey See, Monkey Do

2007-09-14T13:05:00.000-05:00

Well, it seems as if everyone is making Monkey Socks--at least everyone but me. You see, I've had problems with lace-knitting. Lace-knitting does not like me. I tried it once--yo, k2tog, yo, blah blah, and I want to punch someone, especially if I have to pass any slip stitched over anything on top of all of that attention paying and counting.

But no, the Monkey Socks are quite tame; they're relaxing, mesmerizing. I now see why knitters knit one, then two, then three pairs of these. I already want to knit more and more of them. I already want to give some to everyone I know and love.

I started these last night, and I didn't want to stop. I'm making these with my new colorway, Country Apple in my 100% superwash merino Softie Sock line.

I've been a bit busy, so I won't be showing those two remaining finished objects just yet. Perhaps this weekend or early next week I will. But I did want to show you all that I too do as monkeys do. I am officially in the club, and coming to think of it, I was getting bored of my stockinette socks. I really was. I was losing interest.

I do feel a bit left out, however. It seems that all the action is over on Ravelry, and I was so naive. I thought that I could sign up at any time. I waited and waited and waited, and that line moves so slowly. It's perhaps the slowest line in the world.

Here is where I am in the queue:

You signed up on July 14, 2007
You are #16310 on the list.
3937 people are ahead of you in line.
16305 people are behind you in line.
37% of the list has been invited so far

I really feel bad for those folks who are behind me in line. I've been waiting forever, and they will have to wait even longer. In one month, that list only moved by four percent. I'm very grumpy about this.

P.S. Thank you all for your comments and concerns over my mom's package. She has another one coming her way, this time by UPS.

I think I'm getting better

2007-09-09T08:18:00.000-05:00

I have three finished objects to show you. Three. There's a scarf, a pair of socks, and this hand-spun yarn. I thought that maybe I should show you all three finished objects in this one post, but then I thought better of it, seeing as how I've been so delinquent at posting here as of late. Because my urge to show the finished object is so great, I'll have better successes publishing new posts if I withhold them for later days: or so I've convinced myself.

When it rains it pours certainly rings true for me. It often happens to me just like this. I have no finished objects for what seems like a long, long time, and then out of nowhere I have three. I just wish that only good things would pour.

I've had one of those weeks where I have just thrown my hands up, so expected were the inconveniences, the down-right injustices. I won't bore you with everything that went wrong this week, but there is one thing that I'm very upset about.

My parents live in a rural community, on a rural road. The neighbors collect their mail at a central mail box. Everyone has a key, and packages are put in larger boxes. If you have a package, you will have been given a key to retrieve the package. Well, even with this system, thieves break in and steal packages. My parents have had several packages missing or stolen.

I had sent my mom a very special package. She had been wanting some of these miracle creams, very expensive miracle creams. I happened to find this stuff for a good price, ordered it for her, and tracked the package on-line. The package was DELIVERED, but there was no package. Urgh. I called the USPS headquarters and filed a claim. I don't think they can do anything but log it and keep an eye on the area.

My mom has been making such positive changes in her life. She's eating better, exercising, and buying herself new clothes instead of wearing whatever someone gives her. In a word, she's loving herself, and I thought, by god, she deserves some of this expensive cream and I'm going to get it for her.

What do you do when your mother calls you, very sad and crying? Well, you do what you can without upsetting her more. So, I'm going to tell her that I was protected by some buyer protection policy (which is not true--I did buy the stuff from eBay, but I don't think you're protected in case of thief--oh, and that day, PayPal wouldn't let me pay with my American Express card, which protects me against theft. (You see how easily the universe conspires against me?)) and order her another one. I'll have it shipped by UPS this time. I don't trust whoever stole our last package to not steal it again. (And I won't buy it from the same eBay seller who hasn't even bothered to return my simple email, asking if there was insurance on the package or not--bad, bad customer service.)

In my mom's very Buddhist way, she says, Well, let them have it. That's what she always says when something unjust happens. Let them have it.

I'm so sorry to bore you with this story, but if this does happen to you, don't take it lying down. Report it to the USPS. They should know if there are areas with lots of mail theft.

I now return to the knitting content of this post: the handspun was this. It's superwash merino in the Punk colorway (discontinued), hand-dyed by Pigeonroof Studios. It spun up beautifully. I loved working with merino. It's 124 yards.

I think I'm getting better at the spinning, although this yarn is still a bit over spun. It's more uniform that the previous yarns I spun, however.

I want to knit it up, but I'm not sure what to knit it into. Any suggestions?

From the Depths of the Chevron

2007-08-26T13:51:00.000-05:00

Forgive me for having neglected this blog for longer than I'm known to, but you see, I've been working away at a little project that will haunt me if I don't finish it by this time next year. It's my dissertation, and I've been plugging away at it, two pages a day, sometimes less, sometimes a bit more; it is coming along.

Not much sock knitting these days. I'm excited, however, to start a Monkey Sock. Angela at Fluid Pudding just made a Monkey Sock using my Red Robin: Bird, Nest, & Eggs yarn, and it is beautiful. Look here and here.

I have been working away on my Chevron Scarf. By now this scarf is so famous that I don't think I need to say what book this pattern is in, but my dissertation mind, forever documenting, tells me that I must! Do I resist? I don't know. I really don't know.

I'm making this scarf with some awesome sock yarn from the Great Adirondack Yarn Company that was gifted to me this past Christmas by one of Manly's sisters. I'm using Soxie in Maple Leaf and Spring Garden. The color combination is just stunning, and I won't ever, ever get bored of seeing how the colors develop and play off of one another in this scarf.

I wasn't always working on this scarf; in fact, I kind of loathed knitting it. Then I switched my 16" metal circulars for 9" bamboo straights. Oh, love. I'm in love with knitting again. I think I just need to realize that I'm a bamboo-needle kind of girl and stop trying to hang with the metal crowd. It's not working out.

I bought the needles on Friday, when two of my dear knitting friends (they comment here as JaneD and tigerlily) and I ventured into a yarn store after lunch. JaneD is going to start sock knitting. Oh, yes. Another one of those is on the brink of being born.

I do slip a few things into my etsy shop now and again. I also do special orders and reserves, so let me know if there's anything you're dying to get your hands on.

Speaking of my etsy shop: I'll be selling rovings there soon. I think. I hope. I dyed my first roving up last night, and while it didn't quite turn out quite how I envisioned, I think it's lovely, and it didn't felt! I'm so excited to spin it up.

Woolly Boully Softie up at the Loopy Ewe

2007-08-14T16:25:00.000-05:00

My Softie Sock yarn (100% superwash merino) is up at the Loopy Ewe, but you might want to act fast if you want some--many of the colorways have already disappeared. Do not despair--the Yarn Grove still has some of the popular colorways in stock.

I wanted to share a little story about a new colorway I have that's up at the Loopy Ewe right now. It's called "Sunshine Family." Does that ring a bell at all? If you're about my age, it might. The Sunshine Family were my favorite dolls. I managed to get this off of eBay a few years ago:

I'm sorry that the picture quality is so bad--I took it with my old camera when I was in Texas a few months ago. Texas is where my doll collection is. What else is in the collection? I might be a bit too embarrassed to say right now. I still have the Sunshine Family dolls that I played with as a child, but I wanted these--untouched, promising, evoking the anticipating.

There's more to this new colorway than that. I was obsessed with yellow as a child. Second in line were orange and green. I was girl who preferred Bert over Ernie. I loved our 70s kitchen. My mother had a crocheted doll that was done up in yellow, orange, and green. She made me a chevron blanket in those colors. These are the colors that, when seen in this combination, make me feel happy. I think that deserves some socks.

Woolly Boully Softie Sock at the Yarn Grove

2007-08-12T10:36:00.001-05:00

I've been a bit absent from blog-land lately. I've been trying to reroute my brain to think more academically; I mean, I've been doing a lot of dissertation preparing. I'm trying to spread myself into that realm for a while.

But I did want to stop in and say hi and that I miss everyone.

Prizes have been mailed. If you won some of my yarn, I still have to dye it up, but I'll send you an email to let you know when to expect it.

Jane at the Yarn Grove has some of my Softie Sock up in her store! Stop by if you have a minute.

I also made two new Poochies: Chocolate-Cherrie Poochie (above) and Pink-Lemonie Poochie (below). The new Poochies are available in my etsy shop. I have two new Poochies coming soon: Ph.D. Poochie (yes, the tuition bill is due soon!) and Prissy Poochie.

For now, the Poochies are an etsy exclusive. They are made in colorways that may or may not be repeated, and they are twisted into little lap-dog shaped skeins. They are sold at a price that is slightly lower than my regular yarns to help them all find homes.

I've also been trying to spin, but the humidity isn't very nice to my spinning wheel or my roving. I did manage to spin this into this:

I just starting spinning merino, and I don't know if I can go back to BFL, which now feels harsh and difficult to draft compared to merino. I don't think, however, I could have started spinning with merino--you do have to move faster and be more sensitive to the fibers. I know now why everyone says that spinning with merino is like spinning a cloud or butter or a dream.

Prizes, prizes

2007-07-28T14:41:00.001-05:00

Before I announce the prize winners, I just want to tell you all how generous and thoughtful you people are. I received A LOT of squares. I haven't counted them yet, but there are a lot. I also received some touching notes and cards that reminded me why I started this blanket drive in the first place: I wanted to help others work through their pain or memories or anxiety or feelings (good or bad) in a positive way, a way that would physically manifest into something that could comfort someone else. But most of all, I wanted, of course, to do this for Mom J and her sister Georgene. Thank you all so much. Mom J has been touched. I've been touched. Your generosity will touch the lives of others.

Here are the raffle winners:

Brittany Birch Knitting Needles, size 13 (donated by the Brittany Company; donation acquired by Mom J): Jody
Lane Borgosesia Merinos Extra Fine, 10 balls, pink (donated by Knit-a-Bit in Westfield, NJ; donation acquired by Mom J): Heather of the ADD Knitter
Too Cute!: Cotton Knits for Toddlers by Debby Ware (donated by Jody): LM Bartle
Yarn Caddy (donated by Knit-a-Bit; donation acquired by Mom J): Marylou B
Scheepjes sock yarn (donated by Leslie of the Silver Fork Saga): Jilian
Opal sock yarn (donated by the ADD Knitter): Senora Fuerte of Mommy! Look What I Made!
Knitting Journal (donated by Mom J): Michelle of All Things Crafted and her Aunt Sieka
Trekking XXL 126 (the grand prize?): Mims C

And because I was so taken by everyone's spirit of giving, I'm throwing in a couple of skeins of Woolly Boully yarn as a consolation prize.

The consolation winners are:

Jessica C.
Geri T.

Thank you everyone who participated. I promise to post pictures as soon as all the squares are sewed together. I love love all of you. Thank you.

These Little Poochies Went Very Quickly

2007-07-27T07:59:00.000-05:00

Guess what everyone? Manly drew the names of the contest winners yesterday! I'm looking around my stash for extra prizes, but I have a feeling that I'll just throw in some skeins of my Woolly Boully yarn. So, I'll have to draw those winners tomorrow. I'll also post the drawing results here tomorrow. Why tomorrow? Well, Manly's leaving on a trip tomorrow, so today is spend-the-day-with-Manly-day and no yarn dyeing or yarn winding or yarn anything today. He's still sleeping right now, so I'm sneaking this post in. By the by, this is my restriction--you know I love you if I'm putting the fiber away for you.

See the little skein of yarn above? It's name is Little Poochie. At first, I didn't want to name it, thinking that I would become too attached to it. (Animals have a way of staying around once they're named.) There were only six in the liter, and they went very quickly. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to find them homes. Because they were so popular, I'm working on a secret Poochie project.

p.s. Thank you all so much for your kind and sympathetic words about my migraine. I'm feeling much better now.

Edith Piaf Knit

2007-07-23T12:05:00.001-05:00

Edith Piaf knit. This is a photograph of her knitting in her hospital bed after having stomach surgery. If you haven't seen La Vie en Rose, go out and see it. But don't see it, say, in the early hours of a beautiful day. You will cry. (I cried when I saw the preview even.) You'll well up throughout the movie, and at the end, the very end, you won't be able to drag yourself from the dark of the theatre.

I won't spoil all the knitting episodes in the film. I will leave those delights for you to find.

I spent most of Thursday in bed. In her book, The White Album, Joan Didion has a fabulous essay called "In Bed." I was in bed for the reason Didion gave in her essay. I had what the doctors call a migraine. I refuse to believe they are migraines. Doctors will not listen to me when I try to them them that the headaches are related to my cycle. They just want to give me a prescription; I don't take my migraine medicine--it makes me feel as if an enormous pressure is being exerted on my brain and I immediately become nauseated. The medicine doesn't make the headache go away anyhow--it stays, beating dull, hibernating behind my eye.

I usually get headaches on my right side. They usually aren't too bad; I can go about my day, uncomfortable, but functional, usually squinting and distracted and feeling as if I'm underwater. This time, the headache started on my left side. I kept seeing what looked like fluttering bat's wings in the corner of left eye. Then the left side of my face went numb. So I made myself take my medicine and lie in the dark of my bedroom.

I wish I could have knit.

I cried because I was so upset that I couldn't get anything done. Didion, in her essay, says that no one will understand why you don't just take an aspirin, why you just don't shake it off. They have no idea. Believe me, I would always rather be knitting if I could.

Sunflowers, Texas, fields of

2007-07-16T08:20:00.000-05:00

I got sunflowers for my birthday; Manly bought them for me.

The sunflowers signaled the final push. For months, I had been planning a sunflower colorway.

Why sunflowers? I'm not sure. In Texas, fields and fields of them overtake the landscape. The Texas sunflowers are really a type of wildflower. Farmers would call them weeds. They've always struck me as beautiful, in perfect opposition to cotton fields and corn.

Here is a patch of Texas sunflowers, on a hill at my parents' house. It was so hot and humid when I snapped this shot--you can see how the humidity seeped into the camera.

I've never been drawn to sunflowers as a favorite flower, preferring instead the highly fragrant, the small buds of blooming things: lilac, lily of the valley, jasmine.

But there is something about what the sunflower invokes in me emotionally. It must be the yellow, the yellow pulling at my childself, the brown of my eyes, the green of promise and youth and pastures.

In Utah a few summers ago, while fishing, I happened upon a hillside covered with yellow flowers. I thought that perhaps they were Utah's version of wild sunflowers.

A few minutes after I snapped this photograph, it began to rain. The lake's waves rose and the rain pelted it fiercely. All the while, black clouds continued to swell and boom and invade the valley. I had a tremendous, dreadful sense of deja vu.

Whatever my pull or attraction, here is my new colorway, Sunflowers, Texas, fields of. The yarn base is a 50% superwash merino and 50% tencel. This skein contains 400 yards and each section of yellow has been handpainted with a speck of brown to mirror the brown center of the sunflower.

I hadn't knit with merino/tencel previously, but started a sock a few nights ago. I love it. It's soft and shimmery and a treat to feel and look it. The tencel works like nylon--it adds strength to the softness of the merino. What is tencel? It's a natural fiber, found in cellulose (think wood pulp) that has been extracted through a manmade process. The result is a strong yet silky fiber.

Three skeins will be available in my etsy shop. I'll only be listing one at a time, but let me know if you want more than one and I'll be happy to relist.

Blanket drive contest update: I'll be drawing the names of the winners next week. Stay tuned!

I had a birthday

2007-07-11T10:55:00.001-05:00

On Saturday, I had one hell of a treat. Manly's sister got us tickets to the Yankee's game, but not just any tickets. We had a Luxury Suite. Manly's whole family came out for the day. We had a private air-conditioned indoor room with a fridge full of cold beer and a buffet of hotdogsfriedfingerfood goodness. And, the best part--we had our own bathroom!

My, my. But, how sweet! Manly's sister got me a birthday cake!

It also happened to be Old-Timer's day at the stadium, so we were in for that extra treat. I got to see Yogi Berra, finally. I have a joke that goes like this: whatever the Yankee's trivia question may be, the answer is always Yogi Berra.

I've been obsessed with spinning lately. I spun this, into this:

This skein measures 185 yards and is BFL. I finally figured out how to draft within the "drafting triangle." If you don't spin, the drafting triangle is the area between your spinning hand and your fiber hand, or something like that. Before, I would draft all my fiber into little skinny pieces, but now, I can predraft and then draft as I spin, which is delightful, dreamy, meditative, calming. I love it. Half of this was spun with my old method, and the other half with my "ah-ha I figured it out" method.

I just want to spin all day now. I'm spinning this now. I'd like to try dyeing my own rovings, but for now, I think I need to see how different colors and color combinations and amounts of color spin up.

In other news, this arrived in my mail last week. You may order it here or here or here.

I've been knitting

2007-07-06T08:16:00.000-05:00

Thank you so much to all of you who commented on your favorite colorways and which colorways might make a good DK weight yarn. It was surprising for me to see which colorways were a hit. The popular ones seem to be Moonflowers, Wisteria, Kelp Seahorse, Fishing With My Father, and Red Robin: Bird, Nest, & Eggs. Thank you so much, everyone. I really appreciate your thoughts.

I used an on-line random number generator, and lucky number 13 was the integer that came up. TigerLily was the 13th person to comment, so the prize goes to her. Congrats, TigerLily!

I've been knitting.

I have three pairs of socks that I haven't shown you all yet. The socks above (pictures were taken with my old camera) were made for my mother, over 60 stitches on size one dpns, using my Autumn's Tremblings yarn. My mother told me that she prefers anklets. Well, why didn't you say so earlier? Anklets? Geez. I'll knit you a whole basket of anklets, mom.

And guess what other bit of knitter's fortune befell me while I was in Texas: my little sister told me that she too prefers anklets.

These anklets, for my little sister, were made with size one dpns over 60 stitches with Opal Tiger. Her school colors are orange and black; their mascot is the panther; I thought, close enough. She's in marching band; they made it to the state competition last year; I don't know why I'm thinking of these anklets as good-luck charms. Somehow, while knitting them, I thought, if she has these, they'll go to state again.

It's very easy for me to see now why "witches" in old stories were also spinners and/or knitters.

And, I did, indeed, make some socks for me. These lovelies were made with size one dpns over 60 stitches using Trekking XXL 126. My mother saw the yarn and LOVED it, so she's getting a pair of Trekking 126 anklets very soon.

Michelle of All Things Crafted sent us six lovely squares. Four were crocheted by her Aunt Sieka (let me know, Michelle, if I spelled her name wrong) and two were knit by Michelle. These squares are for Elwin, a survivor, and in memory of Roger Jimmo. Thank you so much, Michelle!

I'll do a special blanket-drive blog post within the next two weeks, and in that post I'll announce all the winners of the special prizes. Thank you all so much for making this happen.

In the meantime, I have a lot of yarn to dye.

The Real Meanie

2007-07-02T08:59:00.000-05:00

You might have noticed that in my earlier post, I said that my Meanie Sock was 75% superwash merino and 25% nylon; previously, however, my yarn was tagged as 80% superwash merino and 20% nylon. The mistake was caused by my taking this information from a sample I had of the yarn and not clarifying the yarn content with my distributor. I only discovered this discrepancy when I tried to reorder the yarn last week. I sincerely apologize for this oversight.

I've heard great reviews from many of you about my nylon/merino yarn base--many of you have touted it as the softest sock yarn ever, something I also strongly agree with. If you are, however, unhappy with this news, please contact me at emeraldatlas [at] yahoo [dot] com, and I will be happy to work something out with you.

My distributor is working on getting a 80% superwash merino and 20% nylon yarn either late summer or early fall. I plan on sampling this yarn, and I'll let you all know which nylon base I like better. For now, I can say that I love my original yarn base; I love dyeing it, knitting with it, and wearing it.

In other news, I dyed up two prototypes of Woolly Boully BIG Boully in the Wisteria colorway. (Many thanks to all of you who made color suggestions--I'll be announcing the winner after the contest's close.) Because they are prototypes, I'll be selling them at a discount in my etsy shop. They'll be listed sometime today.

My new camera came in last week, but I must be doing something terribly wrong. My yarn isn't photographing well. Am I doing something wrong? The camera is a Canon PowerShot. Any suggestions would be welcomed. It seems as if the colors of my yarn only show up truly in the underwater mode. This seems strange to me.

Oh, and the picture above of the leaf is to show you what happens when a normal houseplant, in this case an ivy, is planted into the ground and allowed to grow as it will in a greenhouse.

Again, I feel really badly about mistaking my yarn base as an 80/20 and not as a 75/25. My sincerest apologies and gratitude go out to all of you who have been so supportive of me. I have certainly learned a lot about running a dyeing business. Dyeing yarn has been so fulfilling for me, and I've never been so happy. It's really wonderful to be able to work on something that I love so much.

Lotus Seed Pod & New Contest & Squares

2007-06-26T09:28:00.000-05:00

This a seed pod of a lotus. The seeds are edible, and they taste clean, hardy, immaculate. These lotus blooms are from my parents' pond in Texas. They have a few ponds throughout their property. The lotus pond is my favorite. This photo was taken with my old camera. Guess who placed an order for new camera? Yep yep yep. I'm so excited. It will be here Thursday.

Here's a NEW CONTEST for you folks:

As you might know, I'm currently testing out various yarn bases to develop Woolly Boully BIG BOULLY, a dk weight sock yarn.

My questions for you are: a.) Which of my colorways would you like to see in a dk weight?; and b.) Which two of my colorways do you like the best?

Sheri has a nice gallery of my sold-out skeins here, or you can browse the sold items at my etsy shop.

The winner, which will be chosen by a random number generator, will win a skein of my yarn in the colorway and yarn base of their choice. If you want to enter, just leave me a comment to this post with your answers to my questions by midnight on Tuesday, July 3.

Squares and an Extension

I've heard from some of you that there are squares on their way to me. I'm extending the postmark deadline to June 30th, so get those squares in the mail. I'll be doing the prize drawings shortly after that.

Here are some squares that were waiting for me upon my return to Brooklyn.

Senora Fuerte of Mommy, Look What I Made, sent in four lovely squares. Thank you, Senora. The browns and blues are so lovely together.

Kabira sent in these three beautiful squares. They are in honor of her mother, a cancer survivor, and in memory of her father and dear friend Sura. Thank you so much, Kabira, for sharing these with us.

Jessica sent in the a box of ten (!) squares. Wow. Thank you so much, Jessica, for your overwhelming generosity. Your squares are delightful.

Kathy of 3 Grrrls Knit sent in these squares with a touching note.

Kathy's note said: "My squares are for everyone who has been touched by cancer. My mother died of cancer, my husband had melanoma. (We were lucky and caught it early.) There are also the people like you and me who don't have cancer but love someone who does/die. So, my two squares are for all the people who are affected." I was so touched by Kathy's note that I wanted to share it with everyone. Thank you, Kathy.

Oh, and what do you know? Mims, who sent in squares throughout the contest, writes a knitting blog for the Orgeonian. Wow.

Woolly Boully Shop Update

2007-06-23T10:57:00.000-05:00

This isn't the important post. The important post is below this one, so please read that one if you haven't already.

I did, however, want to let you all know that I'll be doing a shop update right after I post this.

I'll have a couple of skeins in my original yarn base (Woolly Boully Meanie Sock) in the following colorways:

Woolly Boully Neapolitan
Moonflowers
Lotus Blooms
Brooklyn Candy

I'll also have a couple of skeins in a new 100% superwash merino yarn base (Woolly Boully Softie Sock) in the following colorway:

Fishing With My Father

Also, there will be some changes to my yarn line. The different yarn bases that I will be using will have different names.

Woolly Boully Meanie Sock: my original super soft and fluffy yarn base: 75% superwash merino and 25% nylon. This is by far my favorite sock yarn. I'm calling this yarn base "Meanie" because of the nylon content; however, don't let the name or nylon content fool you--this stuff is super soft and just glides off the needles. You don't notice the nylon at all--it feels and works up like a pure merino.

Woolly Boully Softie Sock: a new 100% superwash merino base. I wanted to bring my colorways to those sock knitters who enjoy a shiny and twisted yarn. This yarn is so pretty to look at and is also super soft. I really enjoyed knitting with it. This one also glides off the needles and is springy.

And, coming soon will be Woolly Boully BIG BOULLY: a dk weight 100% superwash merino sock yarn for those of you who want some instant sock gratification.

Okay, that's enough of a plug for today.

Please please read the previous post if you haven't already; my father read it and said that it made his day. Oh, I knew this knitting blog was good for something.

A Late Father's Day Post

2007-06-22T12:59:00.000-05:00

I grew up fishing. There was a pond within walking distance of my childhood home; we caught sunfish there; my sister and I used bamboo poles. Instead of going to amusement parks, my family and I went camping, sometimes for weeks at a time. We fished at Texas lakes and quite often at the Texas coast, in a city called Corpus Christi, where an old airplane runway at the Navy base there served as a fishing pier.

In the photo above, I think I must be just about one, and my father is fishing at Brauning Lake. The tree you see is a type of willow; it doesn't weep.

My father said his new socks fit perfectly, that the heel was where the heel should be.

These socks (men's size 14) were made with my own Woolly Boully sock yarn in the Fishing With My Father colorway, which I dreamt up just for my father, over 72 stitches. I decreased to 68 after the gusset.

* * *

I received some squares while I was away, but I'll reserve those and contest news for another post. I wanted to keep this one for my father.

Fishing With My Father Socks

2007-06-06T15:12:00.001-05:00

Fishing With My Father Socks
Originally uploaded by Lone_Knitter

Here's a photo of my socks-in-progress. I'm posting this from flickr, which seems to be more slow-internet-friendly than blogger. I'm hoping it will work. I tried to post a photo from flickr into blogger by using an URL, but I think I was hot-linking. If anyone has tips, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Woolly Boully at the Yarn Grove

2007-06-06T12:42:00.000-05:00

Last week, Sheri put my yarn up at the Loopy Ewe, and it's all gone. All gone. I'll have to start dyeing more yarn the moment I get back to Brooklyn. There will be no rest for me! A-dyeing and a-cranking and a-winding I will go.

There are, however, some colorways available at The Yarn Grove. The gals there also posted a really nice bio of how I happened upon my yarn-dyeing life. Stop by if you have a moment, and if you really want one of those colorways, you should purchase now--one colorway is already gone.

Texas is Texas. It's hot and the nights are full of thunder and lightning summer storms. The chiggers and mosquitoes are out a-biting. The fireants are a-building. The dogs are a-stratching from the fleas.

I'm almost done with my Father's Day socks, and I wish I could post a picture for you; however, as ever, this internet connection is so slow. Maybe if I just wait a long, long time the photo will eventually load, but I don't know. Sometimes I don't know if the connection is doing anything at all.

Woolly Boully is now up at the Loopy Ewe!

2007-05-29T07:52:00.000-05:00

Sheri has my Woolly Boully yarn up at the Loopy Ewe. (There was a sneak-up last night.) Stop by if you have a minute. As of this blog post, five colorways have already sold out!

Now that the yarn is up on Sheri's site, I can show you my yarn in color.

An embarrassing realization: my camera is on its way out apparently. It's not taking good photos anymore. I didn't know that digital cameras had these abrupt endings until a friend of mine told me. She then pulled out her 7 megapixel camera and showed me the lovely photos she had taken. I went to price new cameras and was so embarrassed to know that 7 megapixels is the norm! I thought 3 was. I thought 7s were so expensive, but now they are priced like the old 3s. And, they now have rechargeable batteries! I guess I don't keep up with consumer goods very well.

Contest Update:

April's winner was Leslie of the Silver Fork Saga. Leslie will receive two skeins of Lorna's Laces Shepard Sport in the watercolor colorway as well as The Sock Journal: Knit the Year in Socks. Congrats, Leslie!

We've also received lots and lots of squares from the following (blogless) ladies: Marylou B. sent in 20 squares; L.M. B. sent 40 (!) squares; Rosemarie V. made 20 squares; Geri T. made an afghan and a baby blanket; Jackie F. made a baby blanket; and Aunt G's sister Pat made a baby blanket. Mom J has also made quite a few items for the drive as well.

We got more squares from Jody, two from Gingersnaps with Tea, and two from Aileen. Gingersnaps with Tea made her squares for Aunt Betty (a beautiful basket weave square in pima cotton) and Uncle Doug (a wool blend that's big and burly like her Uncle Doug). Thanks so much, ladies!

The contest is almost over. If you want to join in the blanket drive, please have your items postmarked by June 15. At the end of June, I'll be drawing May's and June's winners and also the winners of all the other items we have to give away. There are books, needles, and, yes, yarn, including a ball of Trekking 126. Some of you donated prizes, and we are very grateful to you.

Spinning

I finished spinning and plying my Spunky Eclectic roving. It was a crazy spinning experience. Some of my singles were so overspun and some underspun.

I have to say that it looks better after being plied. I've been carrying this skein around the house as if it were a little baby. I know it's ugly, but it's mine.

I finished my Caterpillar socks. They are made in my favorite good ole stockinette pattern. I must have had a difficult month: the tension on the second sock is unbelievable tight.

I've never had this happen to me and my socks before. One sock is tight and the other loose. Good thing I made them for myself.

Going to Texas

I'll be in Texas until mid-June. I'm going to make my father a special Father's Day present with a new colorway that I made just for my father. It's called Fishing With My Father. (In the photograph below, it's the skein in the foreground. The colorway in the background is Strawberry Moon of June, which already sold out at the Loopy Ewe.)

I wanted to make a sock yarn that wasn't overtly girlie, but I also wanted to make it special. When I was a little girl, my family and I always, always went fishing. I practically grew up on lakes and at the Texas coast. My father has size 14 feet.

p.s. While I'm in Texas, I won't be updating my blog much, and there will be very little in way of photos. The internet connection there is slow, slow. I promise to get a new camera soon, however!

My landlady hears my ballwinder

2007-05-20T12:31:00.001-05:00

My landlady hears my ballwinder. She says she can hear her ceiling vibrating. I don't understand it. I've oiled the thing; I turn ever-so-slowly. How can something so small make so much noise?

My fridge also died last week. Manly and I had to wait until someone came by to declare it dead before my landlady would order another. Being a tenant makes me feel so beaten down, as if my life isn't mine. I'm trying to look at the brighter side of everything these days, but it feels so difficult to sometimes.

Speaking of brighter sides, the photo above will reveal itself in color once Sheri at the Loopy Ewe gets the order. I got this idea from Susie of Perchance to Knit, who also dyes for the Loopy Ewe.

As a sock knitter and hoarder of sock yarn, I had to stare at this mountain for a while before boxing it. I also had to refrain from wanting to cuddle with each skein.

What is said about drinking and knitting can also be said about spinning. I spun the majority of this after a few glasses of wine:

Non-wine spinning:

(The roving is "Autumn Girls" from Spunky Eclectic, which was given to me by Coley.)

Mind you, I haven't been taught how to spin, so I'm sure that my spinning looks like a very drunk person spun it. I bought a book, read it, and looked at videos on-line. This is also how I taught myself to knit. A spinning friend of mine is coming over this week, and hopefully she can tell me what I'm doing wrong.

I want to thank you all for the warm comments that you left for me these past two weeks. It's really comforting to know that people are with you and thinking good thoughts for you. Thank you.

A Blue Square

2007-05-07T12:11:00.000-05:00

Some of you have asked if I'm alright. I haven't posted in a while for several reasons. This is the time of the semester when it's impossible to stay sane or calm. I've also been having a great time fulfilling my first big dyeing order, which will be finished and shipped out by the middle of next week.

I'm okay, but I haven't quite been myself lately either. I'm withdrawn and distracted these days and a bit sad. I realize that I've reached out to you all in the knitting community to knit squares for cancer patients, but at the same time, I haven't been fair to all of you who have been so generous and giving. I've been keeping a secret because there's a part of me that believes that everything will be okay as long as I be secretive about it.

I've started knitting a square for my father, who was diagnosed with cancer last summer. He's starting chemotherapy tomorrow. This square is for you, daddy. I love you. I am here for you, and I'm always, always thinking of you. It's blue, because I know that's your favorite color.

* * *

I got more squares from Jody and Joanna and Mims. Mims made her squares in honor of her cousin Katherine who is a survivor.

Thank you so much, girls. Your squares are so beautiful, and you all are really making this blanket drive happen.

* * *

I started the Chevron Scarf from Last Minute Knitted Gifts that everyone is making. I know now why everyone is making this scarf. It's fun and foolproof. I think that any unusual color combination looks great in this pattern.

This scarf will be for my mother. A very late Mother's Day gift.

* * *

Oh, I lugged something home from the post office today. Originally, I was supposed to get this to celebrate finishing my first big dyeing order, but I kind of had a hard time with that line of reasoning.

What you're seeing is the wheel of a Louet S17 spinning wheel that that ordered from Adrian of Hello Yarn. I decided to go with a Louet S17 because I think I really did want a wooden wheel, and I really like the look of Louet wheels. You can't beat Adrian's prices, either. The wheel came with half a pound of luscious roving. I can't wait to get this thing polished and put together.

p.s. I'm planning on doing April's prize drawing soon. I just need to collect the names of some lovely ladies who sent some squares to Mom J. Hopefully I get those soon.

Slow & Steady

2007-04-26T13:15:00.000-05:00

It's finally spring here in Brooklyn. I had some orange tulips I wanted to photograph for you, but alas, they curled up and died. It seems as if it just gets harder and harder to find hardy flowers at these Brooklyn "bodegas."

So, instead, I'll give you a sneak peak of what I've been up to. I got more dyeing supplies last week and can now do bigger batches. From left to right are Kelp Seahorse, Lotus Blooms, Wisteria, and Brooklyn Candy. I have more colorways to do before shipping this order off to the Loopy Ewe.

I finally found a simple way to twist my yarn into hanks. It took weeks of practice. I know it sounds silly and perhaps every knitter should just know how to twist a skein of yarn into a hank, but it took a lot of tries for me to be able to do it without blinking. And I'm very particular about my hanks; if a strand of yarn looks off, I can't stand it and will do it again. Now I can get my hanks to look pleasing to me on the first try.

Apparently the Loopy Ewe had so much traffic yesterday that the website kind of freaked out. Leave it to sock knitters and their yarn addiction to bring a site down.

After this order, I'll start a smaller order for The Yarn Grove. I want to maintain some business on etsy as I do like dealing with sock knitters and enjoy having the personal interaction with them, so hopefully I'll be able to do a shop update after these two wholesale orders.

Ever want something so badly?

I told myself to wait two weeks. If I still must have it in two weeks, then it's mine.

I'm working on these socks right now. The yarn is Opal Rainforest II in the Caterpillar colorway. I just love caterpillars and pupas and cocoons and butterflies and moths. I really do. So I couldn't resist this yarn.

I've also started a Woolly Boully Google group to send out notifications of yarn news and shop updates. You can sign up here.

Oh, and my prospectus will officially be turned in next week. That, my dear friends, was no small feat. I treated myself by buying a paper shredder. Strange, I know, but I really really wanted one.

p.s. Is it just me? Or are photographs uploaded to Blogger blurry? My photographs look great over at Flickr, but they look awful on my blog. Humpf.

Red Robin Socks Done; Lots of Yarn; More Squares and Blankets

2007-04-18T10:30:00.000-05:00

I finished my Red Robin socks about a week and a half ago. A friend of mine emailed to say, "Hey, you haven't updated your knitting blog in a while. It's not like you. Is something wrong?"

It seems like it must be the time of the semester. Everything seems to need to get done all at once. It doesn't help that the weather has been so eerie and for so long now--nothing but dark clouds and the confusion of trees and birds. My living room ceiling had a putrid leak, I had deadlines, and I had a family affair that scared me. (It's okay--I'm just not ready to talk about it yet.) It's no wonder that I feel the way I do, slightly scattered and anxious.

Here are the specs for my Red Robin socks:

Yarn: Woolly Boully Red Robin: Bird, Nest, & Eggs
Needles: size 1 Crystal Palace dpns
Pattern: plain ole stockinette over 60 stitches, 2x2 2" cuff, heel flap, and decreased toe

I love, love, love these socks. I don't want to toot my own horn, but working with this yarn was dreamy, delightful. I could not put these socks down. All I wanted to do was knit and knit and knit these. I'm sorry that they knitted up so quickly.

Say, see this pile of Wisteria yarn? Woolly Boully got its first wholesale order. I just about flipped out. It was the same feeling I got when I had my first poem accepted for a journal, the same feeling I got when I heard my first book was getting published, the same feeling I got whenever something absolutely wonderful and unexpected happened. I have a lot more yarn to dye before I can ship this order on over to the Loopy Ewe. Oh, yes, the Loopy Ewe! And there is another wholesale order that I'll start on after that, but I'll give more details about this in another post.

I'm keeping whatever yarns are listed in my etsy shop at $21. Any new yarns will increase in price to $23, and I probably won't be able to do a shop update for about two months. So if you see something you like, now would be a great time to buy!

Jody, who was March's prize winner, made these three (!) baby blankets.

She also made these seven, bright, happy squares.

And my friend Joanna, who has just learned how to knit, made these squares.

Joanna kept apologizing for her knitting, yet she is knitting beautifully for just beginning. Her first project was a ribbed scarf. Great day! It took me forever to learn how to knit correctly and then another forever to learn how to purl and then another forever to do both with some ease. You're knitting looks wonderful, Joanna!

Since it looks as if I'm going to be busy dyeing up a storm, writing the ole dissertation, and finishing that 250+ page book I started two summers ago, I think I should make June 15 the deadline for getting in squares, afghans, and blankets for the drive. If you still want to participate, go here for details. Thanks so much to everyone for their support!

March's Winner & April's Prize

2007-04-09T12:56:00.000-05:00

Manly accidentally grabbed two entries when I asked him to draw a winner of March's prize. Both entries happened to belong to Jody, so there was no contesting that Jody is now the owner of two skeins of Lamb's Pride worsted in the Creme colorway and Traditional Aran Knitting.

Congrats, Jody!

You might remember Jody's squares here and here.

If your name wasn't picked this time around, remember, your entries stay in the raffle bag, so do not despair--there are many prizes left. There are even some luxury knitting needles that were donated; I'll post details once I get the information from Mom J, who secured the donation.

April's prize will be two skeins of Lorna's Laces Shepard Sport in the Watercolor colorway and The Sock Journal: Knit the Year in Socks.

Thanks everyone for sending in your fabulous squares, blankets, and afghans.

New Colorway: Autumn's Tremblings

2007-04-03T14:33:00.000-05:00

Well, running an etsy shop isn't as easy as it seems to be. I need to get a bigger pot so that I'll be able to dye more yarn at a time. Maybe it would be a good idea to use two big pots. Now, I can only do three skeins at a time. If I could do eight at a time, I wouldn't have to spend each day dyeing or preparing to dye. (Very Shakespearean and morbid.)

This new colorway is called Autumn's Tremblings. The full name, taken from a line in one of my poems, is: as vibrant as autumn's tremblings. "Autumn's Tremblings" are, of course, the wind-blown and fallen leaves.

I'm dyeing more Woolly Boully Neapolitan today, and I'll do a batch of Red Robin next--perhaps in the next two days.

I'm almost done with my Red Robin socks, but that isn't at all as exciting as almost being done with my prospectus.

I was so close to being done with it last week, but then I had one of those computer mishaps, you know, the kind that our students always have and we never quite believe them? Well, I guess this was pay-back; two of my pages turned into 30 pages, all with about ten weird characters at the start of every page. It was scary and frustrating. After crying and throwing paper around, I realized that it was probably a good thing that this happened: I was able to realize that I was really stressed out and didn't know it; it also helped me to know that I should probably take another week with it.

Red Robin Socks; Dance Dance Revolution Socks; A Square and an Afghan; A Lovely Surprise

2007-03-30T10:36:00.000-05:00

Red Robin Socks

When I first started my Red Robin sock, I just couldn't put it down. Perhaps I was so delighted in working with something that I made, or maybe it was the Crystal Palace dpns. I just loved making this sock.

Dance Dance Revolution Socks

I made the cuff of the Red Robin sock, and then I forced myself to finish my "Dance Dance Revolution" socks for March's Socktopia.

Here are the specs for these socks:

Yarn: Yarn Pirate's "Culture Club"
Pattern: Modified version of the RPM Socks
Two inch cuff over 64 stitches on size 0 dpns.
RMP pattern for 3.5 inches on the leg over 63 inches
Switch to stockinette for 1.5 inches
Heel flap and gusset, decreasing to 64 stitches

The heels and toes are made of good ole Opal black sock yarn. The record is actually a classical recording that I found on the curb one garbage day.

A Square & an Afghan

I continue to be amazed by how generous knitters are. Larissa of Stitch Marker made this beautiful square using her leftover Socks that Rock yarn. I haven't ever seen this yarn in the flesh, so to speak, so it was a real treat to get some eye candy. It's such a beautiful square, Larissa, and I know it was hard for you to give up. Thank you so much. It's gorgeous!

Leslie of The Silver Fork Saga sent in an beautiful afghan. Wow! I'm amazed at her crochet skills and her ability to make something like this. Leslie made this afghan in memory of her grandfather, Aubrey Vernon. In addition to sending in the afghan, she also sent me a bag of chocolate (!) and a prize contribution, which is the sock yarn you're seeing in the picture. Thank you so much, Leslie. You are so thoughtful!

A Lovely Surprise

My doorbell rang this week. I got a package with this sweet, little card:

In case the photo is blurry, the note says, "Jenny, Congratulations on the successful launch of Woolly Boully. Enjoy the bag. I thought it would go nicely with your Neapolitan yarn! Love, Mom J."

The package contained the best tote ever! I got a Lexie Barnes Mezzo tote in Bubblegum. I've already loaded it up. Thanks so much, Mom J! I love how the tote's straps are non-slip. I mean, they really don't slip. With so much pockets and a magnetic closure, this tote makes for a great knitting bag and purse. I love it.

p.s. Thanks, ADD Knitter, for pointing out that I forgot to post the picture of the bag! Oops!

Another Red Robin

2007-03-24T11:23:00.000-05:00

Thank you all so much for your compliments on Red Robin. I have one more for sale, and I'll be listing that one on Woolly Boully tonight. I've been knitting up a sock with Red Robin, and I can't put it down. I'm off to hear some poetry in the city. I think Red Robin will have to come along with me.

Red Robin: Bird, Nest, & Eggs

2007-03-23T13:58:00.000-05:00

I think I'm going to really enjoy this rainy day. The workmen are finally, after all their brushing and draping and glass breaking, done with the ceiling in my bathroom. I only have to live with the paint vapors now.

I get to organize my office, locate my tax forms, knit a bit of my (modified) RPM socks, write a bit of the ole prospectus, and curl up with, again, Barthes' Camera Lucida.

There is rye bread (seeded). There is pastrami. There are cornichons and bread.

And, besides, I have new sock yarn to pet. Its name is "Red Robin: Bird, Nest, & Eggs."

I've never taken to red really, but after knitting up the sock yarn that Coley dyed for me, with its little unexpected bits of red, I've grown to really crave spots of red in my knitting.

When I told J. that I wanted to dye a robins egg and nest yarn, she suggested that I put a bit of red in it. Why, yes, a red robin.

I liked this yarn so much that I'm keeping one for myself. One is listed in my Woolly Boully shop.

* * *

Jilian made three squares for the blanket drive. These squares are in memory of Grandma Gerda. Thanks so much, Jilian.

J. made four more squares. I think she's made about 12. I have some catching up to do. Thanks, J!

I want to thank all of you who have encouraged me in my dyeing enterprise and send an extra special thank you to those of you who purchased some of my Woolly Boully yarn. I think I'm loving the dyeing as much as I am the knitting.

* * *

It's official: my little sister is all grown up now. She got her driving learner's permit yesterday. She was very excited to get it. I wasn't excited by getting mine at all; I feared it.

Woolly Boully now open

2007-03-17T09:56:00.000-05:00

Woolly Boully is stocked. Stop by if you have a moment.

Wisteria; March's Prize

2007-03-13T08:40:00.000-05:00

I named this colorway after one of my most favorite flowers, wisteria. I love how the wisteria plant always seems to spring back, even after the harshest of winters. My other favorite flowers are lily-of-the-valley, lilac, blue bonnets, hyacinths, mountain laurel, lotus blooms, and peonies.

March's Prize

This month's prize will be two skeins of Lamb's Pride worsted in Creme, accompanied by Traditional Aran Knitting.

Beneath the Cherry Trees & Luna Moth

2007-03-11T16:35:00.000-05:00

This colorway is "Beneath the Cherry Trees." Manly asked if I could please make a colorway called cherry blossom, and that's how I came upon this colorway.

This colorway is called "Luna Moth." I handpainted this one, so there are many different colors and color variations.

I'm dyeing two more skeins tonight in a different colorway. Dyeing is great--you get to work on other tasks as the dye sets, which is a good thing, considering the overwhelming amount of work I have to do this week.

I'm going to open up my etsy shop on Friday. I'll post here once it's up and running.

Thanks so much everyone for your encouragement and thoughts on Kelp Sea Horse.

Kelp Sea Horse

2007-03-07T11:49:00.000-05:00

Here is my first official colorway for Woolly Boully. The short name of this colorway is Kelp Sea Horse. The full name is I thought of how I might disguise myself as the kelp sea horse does, clinging. I think I'm going to wait until I have about ten skeins of different colorways before I stock the store.

p.s. For some reason my computer isn't loading the "visual verification" when I go to comment on blogs. So, please know I'm reading--I'm just not able to leave comments.

Lightning Strikes & Squares & Shop Update & February's Winner

2007-03-06T11:19:00.000-05:00

Lightning Strikes

Apparently airplanes get hit by lightning. Apparently the chances of this happening to any one airplane is once per year. Some airplanes get hit more than others and some not at all. Apparently this isn't dangerous, but it is very frightning. My plane got struck by lightning on my way down to Atlanta on Thursday, the day when twisters were roaring all through the south. I did not accomplish much knitting on that flight.

Squares

Before I left, a very nice somebody gave me eight squares. Some were knit and some were crocheted. They are so bright and cheery, and they make me want to pull out a crochet hook and get cranking on some crocheted squares myself.

These squares are in memory of Frances Berger.

Mims also sent more squares my way. She used a variety of stitches to make these beautiful squares.

These squares are in memory of Chris and in honor of her friend Brianne, who is a survivor.

The A.D.D. Knitter and her church group knit these lovely squares. Some of these were made by beginning knitters--what an awesome way to learn some basic knitting skills and produce something that will give someone comfort.

The A.D.D. Knitter also threw in some yarny goodness for me and Mom J--I mean, these are some lovely, lovely skeins of yarn and I don't know how the A.D.D. Knitter was able to part with these. They will be loved. They are already getting some heavy loving from me. Thanks so much, A.D.D. Knitter! You're too awesome and too thoughtful.

Shop Update

As much as I loved the thought of Lone Knitter Yarns for a shop name, I kind of happened upon another shop name that was too catchy to resist. For those of you who know me personally, you'll know that I have a last name that is quite unusual and also rhymes with woolly. So, my etsy shop will be called: Woolly Boully. I'm dyeing two skeins of sock yarn today. I have about ten total that I want to do before stocking them in the store.

February's Winner

Last night, I asked Manly to draw a name out of my raffle bag. He drew Natalie of Mommy, Look What I Made. Congrats, Natalie. You'll be receiving a copy of Big-Needle Knit Afghans.

If your name was not picked for February's raffle, remember that your entries stay in the raffle bag for the duration of the contest. Thanks so much, everyone! You guys are awesome. My pile of squares is getting taller, and that is a good thing, a very very good thing.

Box-of-Chocolate Socks; More Squares; In Other News

2007-02-27T14:01:00.000-05:00

Box-of-Chocolate Socks

Today looks dreadful and snow-threatened. It was sunny and warm just a few hours ago. I've been so busy these last few weeks that I've had little time to update my blog. Of course, I'm never too busy to knit, so I do have a finished object.

These are my second socks for February's Socktopia. The theme for this pair is "life is like a box of chocolates." I wanted to work with a pattern that might suggest little chocolate treats, so I chose a baby rib from Sensational Knitted Socks.

Box-of-Chocolate socks:
Yarn: Spunky Eclectic Napoleon
Pattern: 2x2 2" cuff over 64 stitches on size 1 dpns, leg and foot done in a baby (mock) rib
Timeline: cast on February 12 and finished on February 24
Recipient: these socks are for me

I'm not sure if the pooling was caused by the baby rib pattern or the yarn itself, but I really loved this yarn and don't really mind the pooling. Spunky Eclectic's yarn is superbly fluffy & springy.

More Squares

Natalie of Mommy, Look What I Made sent in two squares, one in memory of Virginia Nell Strong and one in memory of C. Bradley Mulholland, who passed away last week. Thank you so much, Natalie. Your squares are beautiful, and I'm happy that you found some comfort in making them. Your notes really touched me. Thank you.

In Other News

I finally got my hair cut after seven months. The last time I had it cut was this summer at my cousin's salon in Bangkok. I got a curly girl cut, and I loved loved loved it. I will never go straight again.

Manly and I get to go to Atlanta on Thursday for a conference. Perhaps one day there will be conference in some city that's actually romantic.

I live on a block of brownstones. This means that there is always some construction or renovation being done and that there are always strange vans and men cussing on their cell phones and spitting. I suppose this is part of the charm of brownstone living?

Happy Valentine's Day

2007-02-14T09:27:00.000-05:00

This Valentine's Day isn't at all romantic; it's windy and the sky is raining ice. Suddenly I regret not buying much of anything in the way of groceries last night. Seeing Manly leave to work today, I thought to myself, Manly needs a hat. And suddenly, I remembered a skein of Lamb's Pride Bulky I bought in November, how I planned a Valentine's Day hat for him and never did.

I finished my Kool-Aid socks over the weekend. I washed them in lavender wool soap and a bit of coconut scented conditioner. They smell very happy. These are my "Bed of Roses" socks for Socktopia. There are reds and pinks and whites and yellows, and why, yes, I do believe there are blue roses these days.

I was pleased with how the colors didn't pool and seemed to distribute well throughout the different sections of the sock.

Bed of Roses/Kool-Aid socks:
Yarn: Knit Picks Bare 100% merino, fingering weight
Pattern: Astrid's Twirls (modifications: size 1 dpns, cast on 66 stitches then decreased to 60 after gusset)
Timeline: cast on January 22 and finished on February 11
Recipient: these socks are for me

I've been toying with the idea of trying a dyeing enterprise to explore my love of sock yarn and colors and to also help the bank account. It's an idea I've had for a long time, and I think I should stop putting it off. So I'm placing an order soon for some professional dyes and sock yarn. Now I just need to think of a cute name for an etsy shop.

Happy Valentine's Day, y'all!

Love,
Lone Knitter

p.s. I'll be playing around with my blog template over the next few days. I've been wanting a "cleaner" look to my blog & figure that customizing it and upgrading it to the new blogger would be a good opportunity to change my blog. We'll see how it goes.

Henry; January's contest winner; bed-of-roses socks; sewing update

2007-02-11T10:06:00.001-05:00

Henry

My dear neighbor Henry passed away two weeks ago. He was 86 and died of methothelioma, a type of lung cancer caused by asbestos. He was exposed to asbestos when he worked at the Brooklyn Naval Yard during the second world war. I loved him very much, and have been so saddened by his death. His wife passed away about a year and a half ago, and he seemed to have lost all love of life. I miss her so much, he would always say to me. I think I see her sometimes. And all I could do was hug him and hold his hand. He was the kind of man that would talk to you and listen and look you in the eye and really talk--not just small talk. He would also kiss the ladies right on the lips and he always told me he loved me. Towards the end, I would send Manly out to help Henry sweep and bag the leaves that fell from the autumn trees.

This square is for Henry.

January's contest winner & contest update

Mims from Oregon (blogless) will receive a copy of Knitting for Peace. She sent in three (!) lovely squares in memory of Arrie Mae. Thank you so much, Mims. These squares will make a lovely addition to my and Mom J's blanket drive. We are so happy to have these. Mims earned three contest entries and still has two entries in the contest jar. She also earned six extra entries for the Trekking 126 that will be awarded in June. Thanks so much, Mims!

February is such a short month. I'll accept entries that I receive by March 3 for February's prize. February's prize will be Big-Needle Knit Afghans, which is an incredibly gorgeous book--if you thought that you'd never be into knitting afghans, the patterns in this book will change your mind. And perhaps the Lone Knitter will throw in a little something from her yarn stash as well.

Send in your squares, y'all!

Bed-of-roses socks

This month's Socktopia themes are: Life is like a box of chocolates…; Forever in my Heart; Bed of Roses; Short and Sweet; and Laissez les bon temps rouler!

I liked the bed of roses theme, and I thought I should see how my Kool-Aid socks would knit up. After all, I did dye them about a year ago. I dyed these with Knit Picks dye-your-own 100% merino wool. I think the dying process made the yarn a bit harsh, and I wish I would have used conditioner when rinsing out the Kool-Aid to soften the yarn up a bit. I think I might have overdone it on the vinegar as all. I think the feel of the yarn is keeping me from knitting these up as quickly as I would like. It's just not pleasant when the yarn isn't gliding and soft and squishy. I do think they'll make nice soft socks once they're washed.

Here's my word on Knit Picks merino sock yarn: it does not felt when washed; it does not felt when worn; it is sturdy; it is oh-so-heavenly soft; it is lovely to work with; it is cheap. My one complaint is that they aren't available in fun colors. Knit Picks seems to have done away with the brighter colors in favor of more neutral ones. Oh well! Guess I can always dye my own.

Sewing update

I finally finished cleaning the sewing machine that I've had sitting around my apartment for almost three years now. Mom J was getting rid of it, and I knew I might need a machine to sew up some drapes I was thinking of making. You know, I haven't touched a sewing machine since I was about twelve, but it all came back to me. I plugged in the machine, turned it on, wound a bobbin, threaded the needle, and sewed up the seam that was falling apart in Manly's jeans. It felt really awesome to fix something so quickly. So the sewing machine is working! I'm so excited. Now I just need to finish my prospectus so I can start my quilting.

I've been tagged!: six weird things about me

2007-01-31T20:46:00.000-05:00

Roberta of RobKnits tagged me a few weeks ago. Thanks so much, Roberta, for including me in this fun. Since getting tagged, I've been thinking long and hard about what might be the six weirdest things about me. I've been spending way too much time thinking, and I thought I better post this meme before it falls off the earth. (It's almost everywhere!)

Here are the rules:

"Each player of this game starts with the ‘6 weird things about you.’ People who get tagged need to write a blog of their own 6 weird things as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose 6 people to be tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave a comment that says ‘you are tagged’ in their comments and tell them to read your blog.”

Here goes:

1. For a long time, I thought Mr. Slim Goodbody was god. In my child mind, I thought because I could see his insides, that he must be god. In Sunday School, when our teachers said that we couldn't see god, I protested. He's on my tv, I said.

2. I had a serious, serious crush on the Fonz when I was four. I mean, it was really love. In one episode, Fonzie fell off his motorcycle. Fonzie might be dead. The show was to be continued. I cried. My mother didn't know what to do.

3. I can't go to sleep without socks on. Said socks may come off at some point during the night, but I can't sleep unless I have socks on.

4. I can't think unless my hair is up. Being a writer and a Ph.D. student means that my hair is almost always in a barrette.

5. I keep Chapstick and lip balm companies in business. I even put lip balm on several times during the middle of the night.

6. I'm addicted to my electric toothbrush. I brush more than anyone I know--maybe about six times a day. I know, I know, it can't be good for me.

Not very exciting things. But, it's exciting to think about who I'm going to tag.

You're it:

Crafty Granny
Monica Knits...A LOT!!
a foggy place . . .
From Sheep to Shawls and Socks
Pixiefarts
Monkey Pants and Hippo Dignity

I thought I would take this opportunity to tag old friends, new friends, and knitters I have yet to meet. Have fun!

yours,
the lone knitter

A Square for Stitch Marker; Lucia Socks; More Knitterly Gifts; Contest Prizes Update

2007-01-23T13:37:00.000-05:00

A Square for Stitch Marker

Knitting a square is really a pleasant delight after fudging with socks for so long. There's something delicate and surprising yet ordinary and extraordinary about a knitted square. This square was made for Stitch Marker's Test- Along KAL. I followed her pattern exactly using Knit Picks Sock Garden in the Daffodil colorway (discontinued). As you all may know, I absolutely adore this colorway for the childhood memories it evokes. This yarn was left over from my Jaywalkers and was enough to make this square. I was cutting it close: I only had a few inches left! Participants were asked to block to 7 inches, but this yarn would have blocked to 7.5 or 8 inches quite easily.

Lucia Socks

Dear Lucia,

I finished your socks. I made them over my winter break, which helped me to get them done quickly. Usually, with work and that thing called a prospectus, well, socks don't get churned out quite this quickly. Here are the specs for your socks:

Lucia Socks:
Yarn: Trekking Pro Natura 1602 (75% wool, 25% bamboo, no synthetics). (I know that I might have mentioned before that this yarn was not as soft as Regia Bamboo, but it really is soft and has a nice sheen to it.)
Pattern: Astrid's Twirl s (modifications: decreased to 68 stitches after gusset)
Timeline: Begun on January 11 and finished on January 21

Don't worry about the tops of the socks looking too skinny--they are very stretchy. Now get over here so I can give them to you!

Love,
the Lone Knitter

More Knitterly Gifts

It's a good thing, a very good thing that I'm on a yarn diet. Every year, Manfeet's family does a little Kris Kringle gift exchange. This year, one of his sisters had me, and since I was away in Texas for the holidays, I got my gifts this weekend. I was really spoiled. She got me some nice clothes, three Roland Barthes books, a movie I've been wanting, and lots of knitterly goodness.

What you're seeing are four sock yarns. From left to right, they are Jitterbug in Toscana, the Great Adirondack Yarn Company's Soxie in Maple Leaf, Soxie in Spring Garden, and Jitterbug in Blue Parrot. Manfeet's sister kept saying that if I didn't like these yarns that I could return them. I told her that I loved them, loved them. What I wanted to say was that not even a pack of bears could get me to part with this yarn.

She also got me Sensational Knitted Socks, Not Tonight Darling, I'm Knitting (although the version I have features a funnier cover than the one linked here), and the 2007 Stitch 'N Bitch Knitter's Calendar. Lots of fun stuff to read through. I almost bought the calendar for myself, so it was a nice surprise.

Contest Prizes Update

Mom J assembled lots of prizes for the blanket drive contest. I'm listing them here in no particular order.

- TEN balls of Lane Borgosesia Merinos Extra Fine (100% merino) in color 33 (pink). These were donated by Susan Cahn and Harriet Shafran over at Knit-a-Bit in Westfield, New Jersey. Thank you, Knit-a-Bit!
- Two skeins of Lorna's Laces Shepard Sport in the Watercolor colorway, accompanied by The Sock Journal: Knit the Year in Socks.
- Two skeins of Lamb's Pride worsted in Creme, accompanied by Traditional Aran Knitting.
- Big-Needle Knit Afghans.
- Knitting Journal, a really cool way to keep pictures of your finished objects, ballbands, patterns and pattern variations, notes, and sample yarns organized.
- A fabulous yarn caddy for keeping all those balls of yarn in place when you're using more than one ball at a time.

And, of course, a ball of Trekking 126 will be given away at the end of the contest. For January, the prize is a copy of Knitting for Peace.

Keep your squares, blankets, afghans rolling. Mom J and I are so excited about this drive and contest.

Yours,
the Lone Knitter

Have any left-over sock yarn?

2007-01-19T18:11:00.000-05:00

Larissa over at Stitch Marker has a gorgeous blog, and she's running a little contest involving squares. If you have any left over sock yarn in browns, greens, orange, or deep pinkish reds, then consider knitting a square for her. There's a specific pattern that you'll have access to once you register for the knit-a-long. Your knitting just might end up in a book! Very exciting. But don't ruminate too much--you have until tomorrow, January 20 to sign up.

Say, would you like some Trekking 126?

2007-01-18T16:31:00.000-05:00

The mailman brought me something very special today. I had forgotten that I ordered this yarn a long time ago. I now have four balls of Trekking 126. Would you like a ball of this Trekking XXL 126?

One ball of this highly-coveted yarn will be given away in June, at the conclusion of my blanket drive contest.

If you would like to enter, please see the rules here.

Mom J has also assembled some wonderful drool-worthy prizes for the contest, and I'll be posting details soon about those prizes. (There is some Lorna's Laces involved!)

I'm planning on having a different prize each month until the conclusion of the contest in June. (The blanket drive will probably go on longer, but I'm not sure yet at this point if the contest will. We'll see!) If you aren't selected for a prize one month, your entry will be kept in the bag for the following month.

And, of course, all participants will be entered in the Trekking 126 drawing. In fact, to motivate you all, your entries for the Trekking 126 will be greater if you submit early.

If you submit in January, you will get six extra entries to win the Trekking 126. In February, five extra entries. In March, four extra entries. In April, three. In May, two. And in June, one extra entry.

I haven't received any submissions yet for this month, so if you want a copy of Knitting for Peace, your chances of winning it are pretty good if you get your submission mailed by January 31.

Spread the word, y'all!

Love,
the Lone Knitter

p.s. Try this technique for making an 8X8 inch square.

How to make a simple 8 x 8 inch square:

Cast on three stitches.
Row 1: Knit each stitch.
Row 2: M1 by knitting into the front and back of the stitch, knit until there are two stitches left on the needle (for the first Row 2, this will be the very next stitch), M1 by knitting into the front and back of the stitch, K1.
Repeat these two rows until the edges of your "triangle" measure 8 inches.
Begin decreases.
Row 1: K1, K2Tog through back loops, knit until there are three stitches left on the needle, K2Tog through front loops (as you normally would), K1.
Row 2: Knit each stitch.
Repeat these two rows until you have three stitches left. Bind off. Weave in ends.

This technique works great with all types of yarn. I like using heavy worsted weight on my size 10 needles. You can change colors and yarn as you see fit, and this method sure beats trying to figure out gauge and then getting it wrong!

Opal Rainforest II Snake Socks for MANFEET; Gifts from Mom J; Happy Blog-anniversary to Me

2007-01-15T10:00:00.000-05:00

Opal Rainforest II Snake Socks for MANFEET

I'm back in Brooklyn, just in time for the cold that's heading our way. The airplane ride back was full of bumps, flying over all that weather-radar-green of storms and ice that coveted the mid-west. It's all heading my way.

I finished these socks while I was in Texas, just in time for the cold and my boyfriend's Ph.D. oral examination. (He takes it on Thursday; I've been trying to keep him calm, having gone through it myself back in May.) These are my second pair of MANFEET socks. Everyone seems to have a little nickname for their boyfriends/husbands/partners (the A.D.D. Knitter has her Darling Resident Marxist Curmudgeon and Lazuli has her Coffeeboy), so I'll start calling my boyfriend MANFEET. And, just to make it cute, every once in a while, I'll refer to him as Manly.

Leslie always does a good job of posting the specs of her finished objects. Here is my attempt:

MANFEET #2 Socks:
Yarn: Opal Rainforest II Snake (MANFEET picked this yarn out himself! How cute!)
Pattern: 68 stitches over size 1 Addis using the magicloop
Timeline: Begun on January 4 and finished on January 10

This yarn was delightful to work with. The yarn has so many subtle gradations and variations, and the socks really do look like milk snakes. Milk snakes mimic coral snakes, which are venomous. In Texas we have both milk snakes and coral snakes, so we have a saying that helps us to remember which snake will kill us: Red touch black friend of Jack, red touch yellow kill a fellow.

Gifts from Mom J

Mom J was so overwhelmingly thoughtful. (If you haven't seen her blogs yet, go visit!) For Christmas, she gave me so many gifts. I'll focus on the ones that I know you knitters will love.

Here is the beginning:

This knitting bag was full, I mean full of knitting things: stitch markers, row markers, point-protectors, a tape measure and other thoughtful things of which a knitter can never have too many.

There were also this book on knitting tams, a kaleidoscope, and Knit Picks Palette yarn for a tam project. I'm so excited to learn new techniques, and this tam project is perfect for overcoming my fears of using more than one strand of yarn at a time, combining color, and charts. The kaleidoscope is for viewing color combinations or balls of yarn to see how they'll mesh together. It's a really cool technique that's discussed in the book.

I also got these goodies:

I got sock blockers! Sock blockers! Now my socks can look extra-nice in photos and I can throw out my budget cardboard ones. The sock blockers, in case you're taken, are from this eBay vendor.

I also got two sock yarns that I've been eyeing for a long time now: Lorna's Laces in the Daffodil colorway and Claudia's Handpainted in the Red Wagon colorway.

I think the Red Wagon colorway ought to be renamed to something like Apple Picking, because when I look at the yarn, I don't see a red wagon; instead, I see so many varieties of apples--there's golden delicious, red delicious, Granny Smith, McIntosh, and the whites and cremes of the insides.

The Red Wagon is on top of a new table that Manly got me for Christmas. For a long time, we had a hideous formica-particle-wood-affair that we detested and never used. We were very glad to oust it from our apartment and kick it to the curb where some other Brooklynite gladly picked it up and took it home.

Happy Blog-anniversary to Me

I began this blog on January 13, 2006. I remember reading everyone else's knitting blogs and wanting one of my own, and here I am one year later with real readers. Thank you so much everyone who reads me--it makes me feel so less lonely of a knitter.

Regia Bamboo Socks and, yes, a fabric stash

2007-01-09T13:00:00.000-05:00

I made these socks using Regia Bamboo 1071 (45% bamboo, 40% superwash new wool, and 15% polyamide), which my Hot Socks swap pal Lee sent me. These were a really quick knit. I used a 3x1 rib, Sherman short-row heel, and regular decreased toe over 64 stitches on size 1 dpns.

Regia Bamboo is incredibly soft. It's fluffy and bouncy and has a little strand of something that looks like it's made of pearls. Trekking also has a new line of bamboo sock yarn, but it doesn't compare with the Regia in terms of softness.

The socks are resting on a new addition to, yes, my fabric stash. Leslie warned me that some day, I would find myself hunting down and hoarding fabric; behold, the prediction has come true. The Lone Knitter would like to try her hand at quilting this year.

Opal Hundertwasser 650 Socks; Stash Enhancement; First Contest Prize; Other Things

2007-01-03T10:00:00.000-05:00

Opal Hundertwasser 650 Socks

Here are my miracle socks, knitted in just five days! Perhaps I just loved the Opal Hundertwasser 650 so much. Perhaps I'm knitting faster. Or, perhaps, as my boyfriend says, "Maybe it's because you're not doing anything else but knitting."

These socks were made over 60 stitches on size 1 Addis, with a traditional heelflap and decreased, kitchenered toe. The cuff is my favorite 2x2 2" rib. I think self-striping yarns look best with a heelflap, and I think they also look best when they don't match. Apparently, Hundertwasser never matched his socks, so I really didn't want these socks to match.

Stash Enhancement

I had to go back to NYC for a few days, while there, the mailman left me a little package. Inside, there were six balls of sock yarn. What you're seeing are Trekking Pro Natura 1602, Opal Rainforest II Tiger, Snake, and Caterpillar, Regia in black, and Opal Hundertwasser 894. (These yarns were purchased before my yarn diet.)

First Contest Prize

Mom J and her sister Aunt P are assembling prizes for the blanket drive contest. In the meantime, I'd like to offer the first prize for the contest.

If you submit for the contest during the month of January, you'll be entered in a drawing to win Knitting for Peace: Making the World a Better Place One Stitch at a Time.

Submissions must be postmarked by January 31.

For contest details, click here.

Other Things

I'm back in Texas, but I can't wait to get back to New York. Mom J got me lots of Christmas knitting goodies, and I'm anxious to get back to them. I have pictures to post soon of all the wonderful things that she got me. She really spoiled me: I got Lorna's Laces and Claudia's Handpainted and many, many other things.

I also finished a pair of socks using the Regia Bamboo that my Hot Socks swap pal Lee gave me. I'll also post pictures of those soon.

I'm enjoying Texas and its red sunsets, mesquite trees, rolling purple-green hills, and cacti. It makes me think there ought to be a sock yarn called Texas. Perhaps I'll dye one.

Sister Socks & Texas Orchids

2006-12-28T16:24:00.000-05:00

The first pair of Heelless Sleeping Socks were a Christmas gift for Mom J. The second pair was made just in time to give to my older sister for Christmas. I just about finished these on the plane down to Texas. I love knitting on the plane. And, yes, contrary to popular dismay, you can bring your Addi Turbo circulars aboard. I've done it many a time. These Sleeping Socks were also made with Koigu on size 2 Addis.

The day after I made these socks, I immediately cast on for a pair of my own socks, and there must be some sort of knitting Christmas miracle in the air, because I finished these in five days! Am I becoming a faster sock knitter, or are my socks proof that work and school get in the way of my knitting life? I'll post pictures of these miracle socks soon. (I would post them now, but I just spent the morning interviewing at MLA and need to get the shock out of my system.) Too bad I couldn't be this proficient during the Knitting Olympics.

My mother wore her birthday socks on the day after her birthday! Yes, there must be some knitting miracle in the air. I couldn't believe it. I even washed and dried them for her. (It is true: Koigu can be washed with cold water in the washer on the handwash cycle and put in the dryer. The colors faded just a tad bit, but there was no shrinkage or felting.)

I want to thank all of you who have expressed interest in my contest. I have revised the original post below. You can now make your square or blanket or afghan in memory of someone who had cancer, for someone who now has cancer, or for someone who has survived cancer. I will make a post with all the names sent to me, and you may send in nick names or first names only if you don't want to send in full names.

I'll leave you with some Texas orchids grown in my parents' greenhouse.

My first contest: a blanket drive for Mom J and Aunt G

2006-12-26T09:54:00.000-05:00

There will be many fabulous prizes through the contest and at the conclusion. Prizes include Lorna's Laces and Trekking XXL 126.

* * *

I want to thank all of you who offered words of kindness and support to me and Mom J's family. After I posted about Aunt G passing away, Mom J left this comment:

"Dear Jen, During my Sister's illness on the long nights in the hospital, knitting brought me some comfort, the rhythm of the clicking needles broke the extreme quiet. I did three baby blankets for the two newest family additions born during Aunt G's last hospital stay. I love your idea of a wool diet, which gave me the idea that I would like to start knitting blankets in her memory for cancer patients and donating them to the hospital where Aunt G was treated with gentleness and love. Perhaps other knitters would like to join in. Blankets can be of any size, unfortunately cancer strikes all ages. A cozy blanket will offer not only warmth but comfort."

To help Mom J in this end and in Aunt G's memory, I'm having my first contest on my blog. (I've won two contests this past year, and this is the perfect way for me to repay the generosity that others have shown.)

If you would like to help Mom J and me in offering blankets to cancer patients at the hospital where Aunt G stayed, you'll be entered in a raffle for fabulous prizes. I'm not sure what the prizes will be yet, but they will definitely be worth your time. (Once I have the prizes assembled, I'll post pictures to entice more knitters.)

Here are the contest rules

1.) You can knit or crochet any of the following items: an 8" x 8" square, a baby blanket, an afghan, or a blanket that could be used on a twin-sized hospital bed.

2.) Each item you knit will give you a certain number of raffle entries:

8" x 8" square: 1 entry
baby blanket: 5 entries
afghan: 10 entries
blanket that could be used on a twin-sized hospital bed: 15 entries

3.) Let me know if you are making your item in memory of someone who had cancer, for someone who now has cancer, or for someone who is a survivor of cancer. I will add their names or nicknames to a post. If you don't want me to post their real names, you can give me a nickname.

The squares will be sewn into afghans by me, and you may knit as many squares as you like. Each square will earn you one entry.

I'll accept fibers and yarn of any kind, so start looking into your stashes for those yarns that have been sitting around with no loving and get to knitting!

The contest will be open until June 15. All items should be postmarked by that date.

Update: The postmark deadline has been extended until July 1! Get your squares here!

If you want to participate, please email me at emerald_atlas at yahoo dot com for an address.

I hope you'll participate. Happy knitting.

Love,
Lone Knitter

Guess what?

2006-12-20T11:07:00.000-05:00

I have a finished object! Just in time for my mother's birthday tomorrow, I grafted the last toe of these Koigu socks last night. These socks were made over 60 stitches using size 2 dpns. I used a 2x2 rib cuff for 1.5 inches, a Sherman heel, and a regular toe with decreases and grafting.

I hope my mother likes them. I thought these colors would remind her of Thailand--the sky, the Buddhist robes, the orchids, and rich rainforest jungles. My mother has a tendency to hoard rather than use, so I'll have to think of a clever way to force her to wear her hand-knits.

Do your loved-ones have trouble wearing their hand-knits for fear of ruining them or wearing them out? Any suggestions to calming those fears?

I'm leaving for Texas tomorrow for the holidays. I'm planning a very special blog post over the next week; I'll need your help, so stay posted.

I apologize for the short post, but I have to work and pack and organize and freak out!

Love,
the Lone Knitter

Meredith is having a contest

2006-12-19T12:33:00.000-05:00

Meredith of Crafting Morrighana is having a contest. The rules are pretty simple, but the contest ends tomorrow at midnight. I entered, but in the spirit of the contest, I won't say what my results were. Hope you'll enter and have fun doing so.

2006-12-12T10:02:00.000-05:00

I don't feel as if I can title this post today. I feel that it's best to leave it untitled. After a long battle with cancer, my boyfriend's aunt (Mom J's sister), passed away this morning. It's been a long and hard four months since Aunt G was diagnosed in August. She was well-loved, and there were many family members and friends keeping vigil at her bedside. She was a beautiful and brave woman, and she will be missed very much. Her grandson was born yesterday morning, and she was able to hear the news and lifted her hands in joy.

I had my sock knitting in my coat pocket, and I knitted in the waiting room, I knitted in the hospital room, I knitted in the cafeteria, I knitted in the half-dark, standing among the many friends and relatives who came to see Aunt G and tell her that they love her. I noticed a bag with yarn in the room; it belonged to Aunt G's other sister, Aunt P, who said that she didn't know what she was going to crochet with the yarn, only that she needed to have it with her. Knitting or crocheting does help. It soothes; it calms. It gives you something to do when you don't know what else to do. I only wish I was knitting something that I could have given to somebody there who might have taken comfort in knowing that this knitted item was knitted with love and surrounded by Aunt G and all the love in the hospital room.

Knitted objects have a tendency to serve as memory books, and one look, one feel, can shore up every minute of your life that was spent knitting those objects. Next time, instead of merely taking my knitting with me, I will choose my knitting carefully.

I am going on a yarn-diet for the next six months. The money that I would have spent on yarn will instead be donated in Aunt G's memory to the American Cancer Society.

With love,
the Lone Knitter

Heelless Sleeping Socks Done; a Letter to Lucia

2006-12-01T10:04:00.000-05:00

Heelless Sleeping Socks Done

I finally finished the other Heelless Sleeping Sock. I know, I said that these socks knit up quickly, but, as so often happens with me, the second sock takes forever. I don't know why.

The first sock is always about discovery--seeing how a new yarn knits up, feeling surprised that, yes, your knitting is resembling the pattern, taking pride when the sock is complete and of human dimensions.

The second sock is dreadful, always dreadful. When knitting the second sock, all I can ever think of is: what sock yarn will I knit up next? When it comes to the second sock, I feel guilty. I'm the impatient listener who isn't listening, but rather formulating what I'm going to say next.

These Heelless Sleeping Socks, from Nancy Bush's Knitting Vintage Socks, are absolutely delightful. You must must must knit up this pattern. I'm planning to make a variation of it for my sisters and maybe for myself. The sock has a round toe, the first round toe I've made, so that you really can stick your foot in anywhere.

(I suppose the second sock was also slow going because, alas, the Irish lost to USC. They didn't just lose; they were badly crushed. I can't knit when I'm upset.)

A Letter to Lucia

Dear Lucia,

you are my dearest friend from undergrad. I love you, love you, love you. Twice now, you have asked me to knit you socks. Twice now, you have said, "If I buy the yarn, will you knit me up some socks?" Twice now, I have replied, "Well, . . . I think I would rather teach you how to make socks." Twice now, you have said, "But, dude, I don't know how to purl yet."

Well, Lucia, the time has come for me to make my dearest friend a pair of socks. I have the yarn all picked out. I ordered it from the far-away Netherlands. The yarn is so you, and it's so natural, part bamboo, part wool, and still machine washable! It's all natural--even the dyes. I know you; I know you will love these socks when they are done.

Lucia, all I ask is that you understand that we sock knitters are a very fickle breed of knitters. We have a difficult time doing what we intend. We'll often buy up some sock yarn with such a frenzy and dream of knitting it up with our whole beings, and then we'll keep that same yarn in our stashes for a long, long time, forgetting it's there. Sometimes, a certain yarn or a certain pattern calls us, and we forget everything. We're as helpless as sailors upon hearing the Sirens' song. We forget our dissertations, our grading, our reading, our dishes, our boyfriends, and yes, our dear friends who have been asking for socks.

So, Lucia, please know that your yarn is on its way to me. I'll hold it like a little baby for a few days when it gets here. Then I'll put it in my stash, where it will stay until it starts its little song. When it sings, I will pick it up again and knit you up some socks. I ask that you give me at least a year, maybe two. I know that sounds dire, almost crazy, but really, it's just the way it is with sock knitters.

Yours w/ much love,
the Lone Knitter

p.s. While we are on the subject, I would like to know your shoe size. Also, can you trace your foot onto a piece of paper and then measure the tracing from heel to toe? And while you have the tape measure out, will you measure the circumference of your leg, just under your calf muscle?

Heelless Sleeping Socks & College Football; My Mystery Sock KAL Prize; Behold the Trekking 126 and Opal Hundertwasser; What I'm Doing This Weekend

2006-11-22T13:14:00.000-05:00

Heelless Sleeping Socks & College Football

There are some very non-academic pastimes that I LOVE. Knitting is one of them. The other is college football. I don't know exactly how I cultivated this passion for watching young men hurl themselves against one another, but I love watching a great college football quarterback execute plays and surprising all of us with a clever move when we know just how impossible that certain move should be. I root for the Irish, partly because that's where I earned a graduate degree, and also because I love deep, storied traditions.

I love gameday. It means that I can knit and watch the game. I'll also watch games that affect the ranking of the Irish. This past gameday, I worked on the Heelless Sleeping Sock pattern in Nancy Bush's Knitting Vintage Socks, a book that Mom J gave me.

The pattern is absolutely delightful. The Koigu was absolutely delightful to look at and feel. At first, I was skeptical of the pattern. I didn't quite trust the small cast-on number. I didn't quite trust the "heelless" factor. (I did the original "vintage" 9 pattern repeat instead of the 7 and a 1/2 the "contemporary" pattern calls for.)

Knit and believe. The socks knit up quickly (I cast on Friday night and weaved in ends Sunday morning) and feel great. These socks are Christmas gifts, and everyone that I've given socks to swears that they can only imagine wearing hand-knit socks to bed. The recipients feel that it would be blasphemous to wear them out and about. So, heelless sleeping socks are perfect for gifting, especially if you don't know the recipient's shoe size. (Trust me: if they know you knit socks and you ask for their shoe sizes, they'll know what's up! Better to not spoil the surprise!)

Speaking of giving knitted socks for Christmas. Check out this poll that Spectacled found.

My Mystery Sock KAL Prize

For finishing my MANFEET socks before Halloween, I was entered into a drawing for a prize and won the drawing. Here are the goodies that Amanda of Bulldog Knits and Katrina of Here in Topeka sent to me.

The package was so cute. It was Halloween-themed and wrapped in silver and black tissue paper. I got some Swizzle sock yarn. I was looking for yarn that my little sister might like for socks, and this one is perfect for her. She's a huge fan of black. I also got a Chibi needle set in an orange case. I have been meaning to get myself one, so this was a nice surprise. Amanda also sent a nice card with, of course, a bulldog on it. I also have knitting notecards to send to fellow knitters. In the black fabric with orange ties there were the sock coin purse (how cute!) and the little Halloween-themed stitch markers. The stitch markers have little balls of yarn with little knitting needles in them. Thank you so much, Katrina and Amanda. I love all my prizes, and for my first KAL, this made the experience extra sweet!

Behold the Trekking 126 and Opal Hundertwasser

I got my Trekking 126. I can't believe I got my Trekking 126. I keep staring at it. I keep wondering if it's just a dream. There is a ball of Trekking 126 on eBay right now. It's already over $40. Wow! Good thing I got mine when I did. Thank you so much, Kyra, for sending it to me. I hope your doggie is doing well!

Snuggled up to the Trekking 126 are Opal Hundertwasser yarns. The story goes that the artist Hundertwasser always wore two different socks at once. When I knit up this yarn, I will make sure that the stripes don't match. I love non-matching stripes. I'll probably take the same approach with the Trekking 126.

What I'm Doing This Weekend

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all! On Saturday, I'll be knitting and watching this. Don't forget to vote for Brady Quinn for the Heisman.

With love,
the Lone Knitter

the fee for getting my life back

2006-11-14T09:20:00.000-05:00

First of all, I want to say thank you, thank you to all of you who offered to check their local yarn stores for me. It's so nice to know that there are so many fellow knitters who are willing to help a knitter in need. If you ever need me to scope out some yarn for you, just let me know and I'd be so happy to return the favor.

I have learned some things about the Trekking 126 that I have been coveting: the last bag from the distributor was sent to Abundant Yarn and they sold out of it very quickly; lots of knitters have blasted yarn stores with no on-line presence with emails and phone calls (yes, I am one of these knitters), so even those stores are sold-out; and Skacel is not planning on reissuing this colorway.

This is the heartbreaking email I received from Skacel:

"There is no replacement for Trekking 126, however Trekking color 12 is very pretty similar. "

Hmm...I think this Skacel representative meant to write "Trekking color 128." Lee, my Hotsocks swap spoiler, managed to find a lot of 127 when she was looking for 126, but no 126.

There were three balls of 126 on eBay in the past few weeks. (The person selling them also got them on eBay; she got all three of them for like $13!!!!) The first ball went for over $40 and the second went for about $19. The third went to....................................ME!!!

I paid more than retail for it. It ended up going for $26 plus $5 shipping; however, I have purchased Trekking for $17 retail, and the extra $$$ I'll just consider the fee for getting my life back. Yes, I have been spending too much time trying to track down this yarn. Now I can get back to knitting and cleaning and, oh yes, there is that prospectus that didn't go over too well with my advisor.

A very nice knitter offered to swap her 126 with me for two skeins of Koigu or something very "tempting." Considering that two skeins of Koigu would cost about $24, another yarn purchase to make the offer extra "tempting" would cost about $20, and shipping it would cost another $5, I would say that I made out pretty well getting the 126 from the eBay auction.

Now that I have my life back, I am in a rush to get my holiday knitting done. I have several socks planned.

What you're seeing in the photo above are socks for my mother's birthday, which is just a few days before Christmas. The yarn is the Koigu that I purchased about a month ago.

Here are some skeins of Koigu that I'll be using for other socks. The Koigu knits up pretty quickly and the colors are so vibrant and beautiful that I am always so happy when I'm knitting.

Delivery conspiracy

2006-11-06T16:32:00.000-05:00

There must a delivery conspiracy against me. Today, I waited and waited and waited for a package that I missed on Friday. The notice said that it would be delivered today between 10:30 am and 2:00 pm. Clearly, the notice was a big lie. It's now 4:30 and still the UPS truck has yet to show itself. The only thing keeping me from going completely crazy is that the package contains no yarn or knitting accessories. The package is full of hair products.

A little before Halloween, this came in the mail:

It's sock yarn from Yarn Pirate, in the Culture Club colorway. It was around Halloween when I got this yarn, and the Yarn Pirate threw in that little skeleton guy with a parachute. What a nice touch! I am so into this colorway. It makes me nostalgic for my childhood in the 80s, and the colors are so loud and yet the neon green and neon pink belong so perfectly to the silver and the black that seems to be evoking vinyl records.

I wanted to show you my Koigu sock in progress, but my camera ran out of batteries.

So I'll devote the rest of this post to my sock-yarn obsession.

I have been on the look out for Trekking XXL in colorway 126. Does anyone have a yarn shop near them that has it? Is anyone willing to trade or sell the one they have? Is anyone willing to sell their (yes) leftovers? (Yes, I want this yarn so badly I will take your leftovers!) This yarn is sold out on-line. I have even been emailing bricks-and-mortar shops and they too are sold out. There were some on eBay, but I didn't think paying the auction prices was a good thing for my graduate-student budget.

I've heard that the company that makes Trekking is coming out with a colorway that replaces this one. I don't know if that means they will be identical or similar or nothing alike. I'm willing to wait if they are going to be identical.

My boyfriend wants to know when my yarn obsession started. He says it just started all of a sudden.

I'll tell you when it started: It started when I went to order Trekking 126 and there wasn't any Trekking 126 to be had. It started when I found out that yarns are discontinued. When I found out that once a dyer makes a batch, the dyer may not make another batch or the dyer may, as in the case of Socks that Rock, come out with new yarns every year and there's no guarantee you'll like the new season's colorways.

This is when I become obsessed.

How many times did I see the Trekking 126 for sale and passed it up because I couldn't justify the cost? How many times did I say, maybe I'll order it next month? How many times did I dream about the Trekking 126 and never bothered to spend five minutes ordering it? I just thought, however naively, that it would always be there. I really thought it would be available forever and ever, that I would be able to have it whenever I wanted it. Not so.

And that is why I snatched up this and this. They are limited edition Opal sock yarns designed by a German artist named Hundertwasser. I couldn't find a US yarn shop that carried this yarn, so that's why I had to order it from Astrid's Dutch Obsessions.

What I have learned is, if you see a yarn you like, buy it. Don't hesitate, because when you go to buy it, it will be sold-out, discontinued, selling for crazy prices on eBay. Your search for the yarn will take away from your knitting time. Your boyfriend will wonder whether or not he should back out of the relationship now that he knows you're insane.

I'm still trying to learn how not to go crazy waiting for UPS. It's now after 5:00 and no UPS truck has come up my block. I will try to remain calm; I will try to resist the urge to call UPS headquarters to complain and further cut into my knitting time.

In the midst of autumn, a hat for me; Happy Halloween, y'all!

2006-10-31T09:30:00.000-05:00

In the midst of autumn, a hat for me

I went to a Halloween party at Mom J's house on Saturday. I didn't dress up in a costume, but I seriously contemplated dressing up as an old lady so that I could incorporate knitting into my costume.

I made great progress on this "Silk Garden Beanie" during a game of Trivia Pursuit at the party. I used Noro's Silk Garden in colorway 249. I modified the pattern a bit, but just a tad bit. I used a size seven circular until it was time to decrease and then switched to the dpns. I also knit an inch more than the pattern tells you to. I've made this hat before, about two autumns ago, so I knew I wanted it longer so that it would cover my ears. (I gave the hat away to my dear friend from undergrad. She seemed to like it.) There have been so many brisk wind storms here in New York with the arrival of autumn. I have been wearing a store-bought hat for so long, and I decided that it was time to give myself some knitterly goodness.

I was going to give you a rare (never before?) Lone Knitter moment. I was going to wear the hat for you, but alas, boyfriend is gone and can't take the photo for me.

Of course, it wouldn't be Noro if I didn't come across a knot in the yarn. I still don't know how a company that makes such beautiful looking yarn can't find a way to eliminate knots in the yarn--unless I'm the one who just happens to buy all the skeins with the knots in them. Once, I had a ball of Noro with three knots!

The size seven needles felt as if they were of mammoth proportions in my hands. I guess I'm too used to tiny needles.

Happy Halloween, y'all!

Yes, I do say "y'all." That's the Texan in me. I don't think I'll ever stop saying it. I used to be really self-conscious about how I spoke, especially when I moved to New York. I was trying to train myself to drop certain expressions and pronunciations, but now, I am embracing how I talk, even if it means that I say "y'all."

(Imagine me walking down 14th Street in NYC and a certain children's charity asking me to give money and me saying, "I already give to y'all." "You're not from around here are you?" is the reply. I guess using "y'all" limits my credibility.)

Strawberries & cream socks; hot socks swap

2006-10-27T10:18:00.000-05:00

Last night, at the knitting circle that I go to, I bound off the second sock made with the gorgeous IHEARTPINK yarn that Coley dyed for me. I'm calling these my strawberries & cream socks because, knitted up, the yarn looks like a lovely bowl of strawberries & cream.

These socks were made toe-up with a Sherman toe and heel and a 3x1 rib over 64 stitches on size 1 needles. I bound the second sock off a bit tight. Mental note: as much as I want to show off my finished object to my fellow knitters, I should wait until I go home to bind-off; binding-off loosely, even with a needle five sizes larger, sometimes requires as much concentration as making a short-row heel. The socks, however, still fit like a dream. Thanks again, Coley, for the awesome yarn!

(I apologize for the terrible pictures in today's post; my camera is low on batteries and the picture quality seems to suffer when the batteries are low.)

The Hot Socks Swap recently ended, and I got my package on Wednesday but wasn't able to retrieve it from the post office until today. I was home all day on Wednesday, but for some reason the mail carrier who delivers packages doesn't like to ring my bell. I guess the ten steps up the stoop are too much for her! Anyhow, I'm glad to have my package.

My Hot Socks Swap partner Lee really spoiled me. (She's without a blog, so I can't direct you to her wonderful person! You'll just have to imagine how awesome she may be.)

Here are the wonderful things that my package included: Lindt truffles, Butterfinger and Crunch sticks, chai honey sticks from Stash, mini RSVP pens in five colors, a lavender and vanilla bath products set, Fireside Chai and Lemon Jasmine teas from Zhena's Gypsy Tea, size 3 Clover double-pointed needles, a handmade bracelet, a handmade bookmark, (which Lee told me is called a "book thong" (ha!) in some book stores), two balls of Regia Bamboo in colorway 1071, and a ball of Trekking XXL in colorway 132. Wow! I really got spoiled. Here is a close up of the bracelet and bookmark that she made for me:

I love the yarn. The Regia is so soft, incredibly soft. And the Trekking is self-striping! It will look so cute knitted up. I was going to cast on my Koigu tonight, but the Regia is calling my name. Here's a close-up of the yarn:

I've never knit with Regia before and have been wanting to. Thank you so much, Lee. You're the bestest Hot Socks Swap partner ever!

And, in case you were curious, the organizer of the Hot Socks Swap, Laura of indieknits, was my spoilee.

Who in this universe knows what would make a knitter this happy?

2006-10-20T11:40:00.001-05:00

Can we say whirlwind? Wow. This was an incredibly busy week for the Lone Knitter. Seems as if every time I sat down to update my blog, there was something so incredibly pressing waiting for me in my email inbox.

Part of the joy of being a knitter is rushing up to your boyfriend and saying, "See my socks?" It makes me feel like a child showing off a drawing. So the joy of the knitter-blogger is rushing to the computer to post pictures of the new finished object.

I had a finished object on Saturday. My Trekking socks were finally done. I took them off the Addi circular and put them on my bamboo dpns and they almost finished themselves. I have to say that I was a bit disappointed that the socks were finished just as the Trekking yarn was starting to get interestingly bright. Seems as if I started with the darker end of the ball. But at least my socks ended on a happy note. What you're seeing in the picture above is the happy note that my socks ended on.

These socks were knit using Trekking XXL in colorway 100 across 64 stitches. They started on a size 1 Addi circular and ended on size 1 bamboo dpns. They use a traditional Dutch heel flap and have a 2x2 rib for the cuff. They are incredibly comfy. Incredibly. Quite possibly the most comfy socks I've made to date.

In the midst of a terribly long and sleep-deprived week, the mail truck came. The mail truck came unexpectedly. The mail truck came twice actually: this morning and two nights ago. Look at all the great things the mail truck brought me.

Hmmm....I thought. Who could be sending me all these wonderful knitting books? Who in this universe knows what would make a knitter this happy? Could it be a secret pal? No. Could it be my boyfriend who knows that if I'm not knitting I want to read about knitting? No. Is this some strange, twisted joke that the universe is playing on me to get me to think that magical things can happen if you believe in them enough? No. And then I read a little gift note that came with the books: "Thought that the Lone Knitter would get a kick out of this group of goodies." Well, the Lone Knitter is getting a kick out of these goodies. These are great goodies.

I got Yarn Harlot's At Knit's End: Meditations for Women Who Knit Too Much, Yarn Harlot: the Secret Life of a Knitter, and Knitting Rules. And the creme de la creme of the goodies: I got Knitting Vintage Socks by Nancy Bush. This is a great book. In addition to having really great patterns, it's also a history manual. There's a whole introduction that gives an overview to the history of sock knitting and different types of sock heels and toes. For a sock knitter, these are very, very interesting facts to know. The book is also bound with a spiral inside so it will lay flat as you're knitting. Very handy.

So, the mystery remains: who sent me these goodies? Who is the behind the magic in my universe? Why, it was my boyfriend's mother who, from now on, I will refer to in my blog as Mom J. Thank you, Mom J! You've made my knitting week, my knitting month, my knitting year! I've already started devouring At Wit's End and can't wait to read the other books and look at the vintage sock patterns. What I love about the Yarn Harlot is that she makes me feel normal; my obsession is nothing to worry about. Or, rather, my obsession is not normal, but I can find a method to live in such a way so that others will not notice what they should be worried about.

Out with the new, in with the old

2006-10-11T09:08:00.000-05:00

I haven't posted in a while because, quite naively, I thought that I would post again when I had a finished object. Nope, no finished objects here. I do know, however, what is keeping me from having as many finished objects as I would like: it's the magic loop. It's giving me wristaches. I don't feel like knitting because I don't like the feel of the magic loop in my hands anymore. My Trekking sock mate is almost finished--it just needs a few more inches and then it's done, but it's on my Addis and I don't want to pick them up.

I was craving bamboo double-pointed needles.

I wanted to do something with the yarn that my Secret Pal Coley sent me. At first, I thought I would do this. But then Leslie sent me this link. Leslie caught on very quickly. I, however, have never had a great time doing any kind of increases. I don't know why, but whenever there is a M1 in a pattern, my knitting looks terrible. I did try this method, but it didn't turn out very well and then I had a difficult time trying to figure out how to get two socks onto my Addi circular when I realized that the instructions call for two circulars. So, frog I did.

I went back to my tried and true toe-up sock pattern, and I went back to my tried and true double-pointed needles. No stress on the wrists, and quicker, for me anyhow, than the magic loop.

As you can see or not see in the photo above, I'm knitting my first ribbed sock. I love how the colors are developing on the yarn that Coley dyed. I love getting to the bright patches of color on the yarn.

In celebration of Socktoberfest, I have enhanced my sock-yarn stash.

Stash Enhancer No. 1:

I went over to Knit Cafe in NYC and found lots and lots of Koigu. After hearing the A.D.D. Knitter say how awesome this sock yarn is, I had to have some. What you're seeing is colorway 530.

Stash Enhancer No. 2:

I bought this hand-dyed yarn from Lavender Sheep's etsy shop. This colorway is California Poppy, but I like to think of it as Childhood Lollypop or, more specifically, Childhood-Lollypop-That-Was-So- Big-That-You-Could-Never-Eat-It-All.

I feel as if I'm showing more yarn than finished objects these days, and despite the fact that I made this past weekend a knitting marathon, not much knitting got done. Well, I did knit about half of my Trekking sock and half of the Coley yarn sock. Together, I would have had one sock done. Perhaps I should make a simple hat or something I could whip up in one day to stroke my knitter's ego.

MANFEET Socks/Mystery Socks ALL DONE!!!

2006-10-03T10:52:00.000-05:00

Well, my boyfriend loves, just loves his socks. Yay! I had him try them on this morning, and guess what? He didn't want to take them off. I told him that he had to, as I still needed to weave in some ends. He said that they felt so comfy, like sticking his feet into a soft, soft cloud. I warned him before: once you have a pair of hand-knitted socks, you won't want to wear anything else! I guess this means that I'll be making many, many more pairs of MANFEET socks.

The second sock is a better sock because the bind-off is looser and more stretchy. In fact, it's almost perfect. I just bound off loosely in-pattern using a size six needle. Last time I used a size four needle.

For those of you who are wondering, I made these socks using this Toe Up Sock pattern. These socks are also my Mystery Sock KAL socks. The pattern calls for a tubular bind-off, but I didn't quite follow those instructions to a T. These are, however, my first toe-up socks as well as my first MANFEET socks, and I am quite proud of them.

I made these socks over 64 stitches on size three double-pointed needles using Extra Stampato by Needful Yarns (100% merino virgin wool) in the 1012 (blue) and 1006 (brown) colorways. The socks have a Sherman heel and a Sherman toe and a 2x2 2-inch rib cuff.

Say, do you ever sometimes just check-in to your Site Meter account to see what might be bringing folks over to your blog? I have to say that I'm a little, well, amused (surprised?) by the fact that there is a certain fetish out there and some folks, who are using Google to explore this fetish, have happened onto my blog. I think they must be sourly disappointed.

Someone wanted my MANFEET post in Spanish. Very cool. In Spanish, my blog title is El Calcetero Solitario. This person must had the translation done after doing this search. Notice the first site that gets a hit. (I would have linked it, but I'm afraid of what it might show.)

Someone found one of my MANFEET posts through this interesting search.

Someone Googled "my first time" and landed on this post.

But this, this takes the cake.

Who knew my MANFEET posts would get so much attention?

Needless to say, my boyfriend is a little disturbed at who might be looking at his feet and why. I did have an idea that maybe these folks really do want to knit some bondage-type MANFEET socks for their lovers. That would be an interesting pattern.

My Hot Socks Swap Questionnaire

2006-10-02T09:53:00.000-05:00

So, I did it. I couldn't resist. I signed up for the Hot Socks Swap. I signed up just in the knick of time on the day of the deadline. I suddenly started to imagine my life without the swap and it was unbearable, so sign up I did.

I'm posting my answers to the swap questionnaire here, just in case my swap partner wants to get started with planning and buying.

Hot Socks Questionnaire

1.) What do you prefer - solid, variegated or self striping?
I love knitting with colorful sock yarn. I like variegated yarns, and I also like self striping yarn if the stripes are colorful.

2.) Favourite colours?
I have lots and lots of favorite color combinations. I love browns mixed with blues. I like yellows mixed with blue or pink. I like blues mixed with greens. I like pinks mixed with browns and pink mixed with greens. I like lots of different colors, but I tend to not like red or true blue.

3.) Are you a beginner, intermediate or experienced sock knitter?
I think I may be an intermediate sock knitter. I started knitting socks in December of 2005, and since then I have made about seven pairs of socks (with two on the needles awaiting completion). There are a lot of patterns and techniques that I haven't tried, but there are a lot things that I have. I go back and forth between the magic loop method and double pointed needles. I switch between a traditional heel flap and the short row heel. I guess that's why I love sock knitting so much: the possibilities are endless and you can change your socks according to your mood.

4.) Tea, Coffee, or hot chocolate - what's your favourite? If coffee, what do you use to make it?
I like coffee, but when I'm knitting, I tend to drink tea. So I think I would be happiest receiving yarn with tea!

5.) Do you have a fibre preference? (i.e. Are you a yarn snob like me?)
I don't think I'm a snob, but I do know from experience that I don't like working with acrylic or acrylic blends. I don't mind, however, wool sock yarn that is superwash or machine washable with some polyamide or nylon in it. In fact, I think I prefer it if the sock yarn is superwash because the socks hold up better and won't felt. Basically, I'm very excited to be participating in this swap, and I'm easy to please and I'm sure to love anything you pick out for me. :)

I can smell yarn from miles away; you cannot dupe me.

2006-09-29T09:17:00.000-05:00

The postal delivery lady tried to dupe me yesterday. Yes, she did. I saw her truck drive up. I heard my little gate open, but I didn't hear my bell ring.

I can smell yarn from miles away; you cannot dupe me. I ran downstairs. And do you know what she was doing? She didn't even try ringing my bell. She only rang the downstairs bell. All she had to do was go up the stoop stairs to ring my bell. But, no. She was already filling out one of those "Sorry we missed you!" slips. To think that if my knitterly instincts didn't kick in, I would have missed two packages containing yarn!

I did get two packages, but I'm only going to talk about one today. The package I'm going to talk about is a package from Leslie of the Silver Fork Saga. Why did I get a package from Leslie? Well, she recently held a little contest on her blog, and I won! That's how I got so lucky. I guessed the magical number, the number that would reveal how many skeins of sock yarn she would buy at the Kitchener-Waterloo Knitter's Fair.

Leslie, in her cute little card, asked if I could gaze into my magical ball and reveal a magical date, the date that she will finish her dissertation. Hmmm....I'll have to think on that a little.

(Speaking of dissertations, the Lone Knitter was lying low last week because she was finishing her prospectus and then she came down with a terrible chest/head cold thing. The prospectus has been turned in and is now awaiting approval.)

In the little box above, there were these treats: coffee and green tea cookies, green tea Pocky (I love Pocky!), Latte Chocolat Bourbon wafer bars, and two wrapped surprises.

In the wrapping, I found a gorgeous ball of sock yarn! The yarn is so soft. Unbelievable soft. And it's variegated with beautiful blues, blues that will keep me happy during the gray days of winter coming up. There was also one of the knitting pouches that Leslie recently sewed up. She even lined it with a cute red print with little white hearts on it. But wait: there's more. She sent me beautiful stitchmarkers that she also made herself. How freaken talented is she? Is there anything she can't do?

Here's a little close up of the yarn:

Leslie, you are so awesome. Thank you so much. Now I can knit some blue sky this winter and gorge myself on those cookies and treats to give myself that necessary layer of winter fat to keep me and my socketed feet warm. Perfect!

Well, I don't have any finished objects. I'm still working on my MANFEET socks. I must get them done soon: boyfriend's birthday is just around the corner. Maybe I can fill the socks with some surprises.

On another note: is the Lone Knitter still a lone knitter? She feels as if she has many awesome knitting friends in knitting-blogging land. And she even, yes, yes, she did, joined a knitting circle. That was scary for her. To knit in front of others when you're self-taught is no easy task.

A knitter's nightmare; one FO; current and future; p.s.; p.p.s.

2006-09-20T10:59:00.000-05:00

A knitter's nightmare

The night before last, I woke up believing that I still had so much more exterminating to do.

My boyfriend believes that I don't dream normally. He says it takes me hours upon waking to dispel my dreams, whereas a normal person will quickly, seconds upon waking, realize the dream for its dream and seamlessly slip back into the waking life.

Not me.

I'll ask him, over and over again, why did you do this? What did you do that? And him merely saying, it was only a dream, can do nothing to soothe me.

So I dreamt, the night before last, that my apartment was infested with moths. In the dream, I told my boyfriend that he had to save my yarn. Quickly, I said, go and get my yarn and place it in plastic bags.

The moths were thick and everywhere.

My boyfriend says that my dreams seem to come from my waking life. I know what he means.

In late July, at my parent's place, there was an invasion of little butterflies. They were everywhere. It happens about every five years. They looked like little brown leaves falling from the sky. They fed off our figs. They rushed up in a cloud wherever you walked. The weight of them in the air seemed Biblical.

A few years ago, my apartment was infested with big, fat flies. My boyfriend begged me to stop telling people. He said it reflected badly on us. I tried to tell him it had nothing to do with us and everything to do with the squirrels living in our ceiling, squirrels that our landlady refused to do anything about. We had to call an exterminator, who told us that most likely one of the squirrels had died and the flies were coming in through the skylight that was cracked, a skylight that the squirrels should not have had access to but did because they had eaten a hole to it.

The flies were driving me mad. I sucked them up with my hand-vac.

There was also a post by Pink Dandelion a while ago about moths in a yarnstore.

In the dream, I knew I had to save my yarn stash. I knew I had to save my sweaters and wool coats. I took the hand-vac and started to suck up the moths, but then the moths turned into beautiful butterflies, big and colorful and unlike any butterflies I have seen on this earth. I felt badly; I couldn't kill the butterflies.

And then I woke.

This is how I dream.

One FO

Three weeks post Lasek, and all I have is one FO. Very sad.

The socks above were made over 56 stitches using KnitPicks Parade in the Gumball colorway. I used size two Addis and the magic loop method. I was doing pretty well with getting the stripes to match until the very end of the toe!

I'm happy that the worms are done. I didn't enjoy working with this yarn, but it did knit up quickly. Oddly, for the second worm, there was enough yarn and then some. Very strange.

Current and future

Now, I'm finishing MANFEET sock number 2.

Next, I'm going to do this with the pretty, pretty yarn that Coley sent me!

p.s.

Ever notice how socks look absolutely perfect on some blogs, but when you go to photograph yours they bend and fold over and won't pose prettily? Well, I didn't know this, but those perfect socks look that way because of SOCK BLOCKERS! Why didn't anyone tell me about this? I just assumed that my socks were, well, ugly. Sock blockers aren't cheap, so I made myself some using a budget method: I just cut some out with cardboard. Someday I'll have real ones.

p.p.s.

I signed up for Socktoberfest and am thinking about signing up for Hot Socks.

A Fragmented Post

2006-09-14T09:19:00.000-05:00

Today is rainy and breezy, and I'm so thankful that I don't have to go anywhere today. I'm a little saddened, however, that I can't go jogging today; I haven't gone jogging since Sunday.

The day before yesterday, I wore my sandals, not knowing whether or not the whole day would promise to be sandal-weather. Yesterday felt to be the cusp of sandal-weather and non-sandal-weather; I didn't wear them. I wore my grown-up, big-people shoes and went into work wearing big-people clothes.

I want to make a pair of mittens. I made some wrist-warmers for my little sister last Christmas. Surely mittens can't be that difficult.

I won a contest that was run by Leslie over at the Silver Fork Saga. She went to the Kitchener-Waterloo Knitter's Fair. She brought home eight skeins of sock yarn and thirty (!) skeins of yarn altogether. For guessing the correct amount of sock yarn that she'd buy, she's going to send me some sock yarn!

My Favorite Equation:
Sock Knitter + More Sock Yarn = A Sock Knitter in Bliss

I can't say that my guess was a pure guess. I've been reading Leslie's blog since we were partners for the Knitting Olympics. I made a complicated, calculated guess that included many scientific variables. I'll share that equation with you someday.

On Sunday, when I went for a jog, my boyfriend spotted a stoop sale (for those of you not in NYC, a "stoop sale" is a yard or garage sale, minus yard or garage, usually held on the steps of the stoop of a brownstone; if there is no stoop, the sale is sometimes referred to as a "tag" sale, which confuses me very much), and he wanted to stop by the stoop sale because there were books. He doesn't really need anymore books, but he is always looking for more books.

And on a table marked "FREE" there were those beauties that you're seeing in the photograph above.

I found vintage knitting magazines from the 60s, 70s, and 80s. (For those of you who grew up when I did: there are freaken knits for Cabbage Patch dolls in the 80s mags!) I grabbed a few of the 90s knitting mags as well. I didn't take them all, but I did grab up all of the ones from the 60s and 70s.

The woman who was running the stoop sale ran out of her house, joyously exclaiming, "A knitter! A knitter!" Apparently, these were her mother's magazines, and her mother had passed away, and she didn't want to just throw these magazines away. She was so happy to have a knitter come and take the magazines. I told her that her joy was my joy twice over. (What I was thinking but didn't say was: Will it give you more joy to hand over your mother's yarn stash and needles?)

I don't think I'll knit anything from the 80s mags. I took them because, if you haven't realized by now with my love of things from the 70s, I'm terribly nostalgic, and looking through old advertisements and clothes and styles gives me that certain feeling halfway between despair and comfort.

Some of the magazines are falling apart; they fairly distintegrate when I turn over pages. I think I'll have to excise the pages and put them in page-protectors.

Specs, over at Spectacled, recently fell in love with a particular sweater. I commented that I too had fallen in love with a particular sweater, and she was curious to know what sort of sweater it was. I fell in love with this:

This image was apparently on the cover of the magazine (a Vogue Knitting), but this particular issue, as several others, was missing its cover.

It will be my first sweater. I know, I know. I've flirted around before with the thought of sweater knitting, and I have never ever had anything to show for it. This time I will do good by my sweater. I will see her through.

I promise; I do.

I wish I had paid more attention to my mother when she was trying to teach me to crochet so that I might be able to waste time by making these. CUTE!

As a sock-knitter, all I can say about this is: HOLY COW!!! GEEZ-LOU-EZZ!!! I first saw this method on a beautiful website that apparently doesn't exist anymore. But that website included this little quote for all of us literature lovers who might be compelled to learn this daunting method out of our love of literature and knitting: When the pair was finished, she made a solemn ceremony of pulling one stocking out of the other in the presence of the children. -- Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace.

Will I be trying this method anytime soon? No, thank you, says I. No no no.

Postman, Postman on your rounds, who's the luckiest knitter in town?

2006-09-10T08:24:00.000-05:00

Why, the Lone Knitter, of course!

What you're seeing above is hand-dyed superwash merino sock yarn dyed just for me! My Secret Pal, who dyed the yarn, named this colorway IHEARTPINK. She even put a little ball-band on the yarn! How cute. (If you like her handiwork, you should check out her Etsy shop every once in a while. She also spins!) She knows, very well, that I just simply love pink. When I saw this yarn, I just about died. I simply can't wait to knit it up. I think it will make lovely Valentine's Day socks or star-mint socks in time for Christmas.

Underneath the card and confetti, I found the hand-dyed yarn, a variety of Tazo tea (just in time for the brisk days of fall), a magnetic poetry set (geez, my Secret Pal knows I love poetry!), and a beautiful journal (my Secret Pal knows I'm a writer, too!) that kind of looks like the borders on my blog. She also inscribed the journal with this: Secret Pal 8 06/06-08/06. So now I'll remember this round of Secret Pal every time I write in the journal.

How thoughtful! I can't thank you enough, Coley. You have been the most thoughtful Secret Pal, and I was soooooooo lucky to be paired up with you. All of your gifts were meaningful and thoughtful and beautiful. You are awesome and the best Secret Pal ever! Thank you. Thank you.

I think that today, on this lazy-feeling Sunday, I'm going to make myself some tea, watch the US Open, put the magnets up on my fridge, write in my journal, and pet my new yarn.

(And, of course, I think there is some academic work to do (preparing for the creative writing class I teach and working on a contribution to a book of non-fiction writing exercises) that I don't want to do.)

On a Lasek update: my eyes are getting a bit better each day. I still wake up and think I need to reach for my glasses, and before bed, I always think I need to take out my contacts. It's strange. I still move my head close to my alarm and squint to read the time before I realize that I can read the clock without picking my head up from the pillow. TVs seem very clear, but words seem not so clear.

I just want to be able to knit like a mad woman.

20/25; blind knitting; oyster mushrooms; wild mushrooms

2006-09-06T08:21:00.000-05:00

I survived. Lasek is a very strange experience. I needed two valium. I could have had three.

I didn't feel a thing. The doctor kept telling me not to blink. Try not to blink, he kept saying. Afterwards, my boyfriend told me, How is it that a doctor with four college degrees doesn't understand that blinking is an uncontrolled reflex?

I took a lot of pills; I took a lot of drops. I kept my eyes closed, as much as I was able, for six days. Keeping your eyes closed is supposed to speed recovery of the "mortally wounded" epithelium cells that have been killed by an alcohol solution during the surgery. Because these cells are still regenerating, my vision is less than perfect; yesterday, at the one-week post-op, the doctor said I was seeing 20/25; he says I should be 20/20 by next week or by the end of this week if I'm lucky.

He forbids me from using my eyes too much until I am seeing normally again.

Meanwhile, my socks-in-progress droop in my knitting basket.

I tried to knit blind. But stitches slip so easily.

Maybe I should try to make something with big needles and big yarn; maybe I should make a scarf.

Since I don't have any knitting pictures to post, I'm giving you a little treat from my vacation in Thailand.

What you're seeing above are oyster mushrooms, grown by my aunt (the same aunt for whom I knitted socks). My aunt also goes into the forests to collect wild mushrooms, an activity that she and my mother enjoyed as children. Here are some wild mushrooms that my aunt and mother collected:

My mother had the opportunity to share in this joy again with her sister. My mother was slightly disturbed that she could not collect the wild mushrooms with the same efficiency as my aunt. Apparently, the mushrooms camouflage themselves so well into the forest foliage that they are difficult to make out.

Boyfriends are funny things: MANFEET sock one done

2006-08-29T18:23:00.000-05:00

This weekend, I finished MANFEET sock one. I bound it off on a needle one size larger than the ones I was using. I bound off loosely even, but the bind-off is still a bit tight. Luckily, my MANFEET boyfriend was able to still pull it over his huge MANFEET. (Next time, I'll bind off with a needle three times larger.)

Boys must sweat a lot. When I asked boyfriend to try the sock on, he had just finished working out. I got the sock back in a very damp condition. And just now, when I asked him to merely pose with the sock on, the sock also came back in a very damp condition. He wasn't working out this time.

Boyfriends are funny things: they don't like to sock-pose. They like having socks made for them, but they do not like to sock pose.

This post will be kept short as I have much to do before tomorrow. I keep feeling so scared and nervous. I feel as if I'm doing the wrong thing. And just now, I was on the phone with my folks in Texas and I told them, and I'm afraid that I made my father afraid and so, of course, I'm feeling bad about that now.

Thank you guys so much for your support and encouragement. I really need it. I'm getting the jitters and I keep thinking about all the things that can go wrong. I think that telling my parents was something I shouldn't have put off. Telling them made it seem real, and now that it's real it's very very scary.

The eye center is very smart to make patients put a deposit down--it's harder to back out when you know you've spent the money already.

Anyhow, this will be the last post until my eyes are well enough for computer use. I probably won't be able to read your blogs and comment either. Very sad days ahead!

My Secret Pal

2006-08-24T15:40:00.000-05:00

Tuesday afternoon, there was yet another big box locked inside my landlady's gate. For those of you living in Brownstone Brooklyn, you'll know what I mean about the gate: it's the gate that people usually put up to guard the door to the ground-level floor. Again, I had to use the tie-the-twine-around-the-box-and-slowly-pull-box-up method.

Inside the box were these lovely items, wrapped in purple tissue paper with a nice pink and flowery card, from my Secret Pal. She got me yummy, yummy chocolate caramel balls that I immediately tested. Very good. She also got me a spindle! I have been dreaming about a spindle for a long time now. I mean, I really had actual dreams about spinning with a spindle and now I have one that's all mine. She also sent a little ball of practice roving and a huge 4 oz. wool-blend bundle of roving from Spunky Eclectic. I think the spindle and practice roving are also from Spunky Eclectic. The colorway of the roving bundle is "Autumn Girls" and it is delightful--full of all the bright colors I love and yes, PINK and YELLOW. I keep petting it. How did I get so lucky to get a Secret Pal with such great taste?

Our SP8 Hostess posted our group's blogs on the SP8 website, and I found out that my Secret Pal is Coley of Handmade by Coley. How did I know it was her? She wrote about me often, and she wrote about my going to Thailand. Many of her posts were about things that she was thinking of getting me and things that I like and things that I might like. It was really awesome to read her blog and see all the sweet little thoughts she had. Thanks, so much, Coley! You are awesome!

Since I've revealed my Spoiler, I might as well reveal (since she has already found me!) my Spoilee. My Spoilee is Tess of A Crafter's Journal. Tess is a great crafter and just about dabbles in everything, from knitting to scrapbooking to journaling to embellishing. She manages to find time to work her crafts into her busy schedule of working and being a mother.

SP8 was really fun, and I can't believe I still have one more package coming!

In non-knitting/knitting news, I'm getting Lasek next week. (I know, I know, I must be crazy to take such a risk with my eyes and drop so much (so much! Good God it's so much money!), but it's something that I've thought about doing for a long, long time and turning 30 made me realize that not only should I give this to myself as a gift, but that I was putting it off and it was now or never.) Because the recovery time is longer for Lasek than Lasik, I won't be able to read or knit for three days!!! Good God! Someone help me! The thought of not being able to knit for that long is scarier to me than having the actual surgery. I must be insane. Very insane.

Toe-up for the MANFEET

2006-08-22T08:10:00.000-05:00

Because I'm not sure exactly how much yarn I'll need for my boyfriend's size-12 feet, I'm making my first toe-up sock. I do hate to get out of my comfort zone sometimes, and I have to say it was nice getting to the point where I didn't need to look at any patterns or books when making my top-down, heel-flap, kitchner-stitched socks.

But, alas, it was time to try something new.

After looking at several patterns on-line and taking my gauge and the sport-weight yarn into account, I decided that my boyfriend's socks would need 64 stitches over size three needles.

I decided to use the provisional cast-on, as explained in the lovely video here. It was my first time doing this type of cast-on, and I have to say that, even though it looks scary, isn't at all difficult.

I am using the Sherman toe and Sherman heel, following this pattern, which really isn't a pattern but more like a guide, but it has no picture and thus fulfills the requirements of the Mystery Sock KAL. I do feel as if it's fair game because a.) I've never made a toe-up sock before, b.) I've never made a Sherman toe, and c.) it has no picture. (Okay, perhaps I should do something else, something more mysterious, for the Mystery Sock KAL.)

I'm finding that I knit best in the same way that I read best: just as I have several books going at any one time, I am now finding that I have several socks going at once, and I have no anxiety. None. It's almost zen-like, the way I can float from sock to sock.

But I do have a little F.O. It's an embarrassing F.O., but it's an F.O.

It's the first socks.

By first, I mean first. I started these in December of 2005. I really, really wanted to learn to make socks, so I bought a book and read everything I could on-line and I made these strange looking, but very comfy and warm socks. Can you tell which is the first (the more clumsy looking) sock?

For months and months, all I had left to do was the toe of the second sock, and I just couldn't do it. I couldn't bear the thought of that yarn and those needles in my hands. I don't have an aversion to the yarn (Cascade Quatro, worsted weight) or the needles (size 3) singly, but together, they made a bad combination for me.

Today: more progress on the MANFEET socks and Lewis Carroll's Sylvie and Bruno.

The Postman Cometh

2006-08-19T16:33:00.000-05:00

Usually, I would wait for my landlady to come home. I have to wait for my landlady because sometimes, the postman will throw packages into the four or so inches above her door gate and the packages will stay there, locked inside the gate, all day until my landlady comes home. If the packages are little, I might be able to stick my hand into the lower part of gate and retrieve them, but if they are big, well, I used to just wait.

I was certain that this package, locked in the gate, contained yarn, and I was determined to fetch my package. I could not wait five hours for my landlady. So I devised a little plan: I would drop some twine over the top of the gate, tie the twine around the package, and then pull up on the twine to lift the package. It took about two tries, with my boyfriend holding the ball of twine lest it too fall into the gate, but eventually, I got my package to come up and over the top of the gate.

Inside were the two skeins of sock yarn I ordered from Spunky Eclectic.

I'm really looking forward to making socks with these. Thank you again so much, Secret Pal, for the gift certificate.

The only thing stopping me from knitting these up right now is the fact that I have never ever had such lovely sock yarn in my life and I want to love and pet and stare at these for a long, long time.

What I got from my SP8 Hostess; Trekking sock one all done

2006-08-17T08:55:00.000-05:00

Since it's only a matter of time until my Secret Pal spoilee finds me out, I think it's okay to post that I was one of the two lucky winners of handmade stitchmarkers and a bookmark made by our lovely SP8 hostess Patty.

Patty also sent me a nice card and wrapped her handmade goodies in a beautiful piece of cloth. Can you make out the little flip-flops hanging from the bookmark? How freaken cute is that? The stitchmarkers are so delightful to work with. They sparkle and shine, and I'm such a sucker for little things that sparkle and shine.

(Well, I'm a bigger sucker--a down-right insane sucker--for a one-carat thing that sparkles and shines, but we won't get into that right now.)

Trekking sock one is done. I immediately cast on and finished a 1.5 inch cuff before bed last night. I think a little light (not to be confused with a little sparkling thing) went off in my head: it's easier to avoid second-sock-syndrome if you actually enjoy the yarn you're knitting with.

Since my Trekking sock isn't going to any fun places, as other Trekking socks are doing in the Trek Along With Me KAL, I'm going to let my sock step right on top of Van Gogh's The Enclosed Field.

Baby shower knits: slightly cheating

2006-08-14T08:52:00.000-05:00

Is it wrong to have made a little hat initially for one baby only to give it to another?

That's what I did on Saturday. I had a baby shower to go to, and two days before, I whipped out the One-Hour Baby Booties from Stitch 'n Bitch 2. But let me go back to the hat. The hat is the Umbilical Cord hat from Stitch 'n Bitch 1. I made it over winter break for a baby that was born in March. I never gave the hat to this baby because I never made the matching booties. So, as I put off making the booties, the baby's head, I'm sure, grew and grew and grew.

So, I decided to give the hat to another baby, along with the booties. I had to mattress stitch these booties--one looks like a disaster and the other looks semi-okay.

The yarn is Lana Gatto Baby Soft, 54% virgin wool, 24% nylon, and 22% cotton.

I don't really know much about babies, so whenever I make this hat and bootie set, I always wonder, Is this hat too big? Are these booties too small? Can a baby's head possibly be THIS big??? Good Lord!

And, of course, it doesn't help when your boyfriend says, Say, isn't that hat kind of big for a baby? And I just play the you-wouldn't-believe-how-big-a-baby's-head-is card, as if I knew ANYTHING about that, but I guess he assumes that I must know how big a baby's head is since I am, after all, a woman.

By the way, why aren't my friends having girls??? They are all having boys, and I've been dying to use my pink baby yarn. Or maybe I'm old-fashioned. I think that next time, I'm going to use the pink yarn regardless of the sex of the baby. Besides, a little four-year-old boy loved the Snow White Princess Barbie I gave him for his birthday last week. But the parents of this boy are really open to the fact that their son loves dolls and so-called girlie things. I think that is so awesome. I would be afraid that other parents might not be so open. But really, who wants to shop for action figures and cars? I want to shop for dolls and cut little pink pony things with brushable hair and glittery wings.

Speaking of my love for things pretty and pink, I had fun picking out yarn at Spunky Eclectic and using the gift certificate my Secret Pal got for me. I decided on this gorgeous Pink Lemonade sock yarn, and then I couldn't resist this Neapolitan yarn as well. I'm already staking out my mailbox.

Is this a knitted bowl I see before me?

2006-08-11T08:55:00.000-05:00

What I first thought was a knitted bowl on the cover of the new Ikea catalogue turns out to be some wicker thing; however, after going through the catalogue I found evidence of some sort of knitter-mastermind-plot to introduce knitted goods, knitted-objects-in-progress, and baskets of yarn into the decorating scheme.

Exhibit A: (page 96)

Exhibit B: (page 213)

There were a few more knitted things (or things made of yarn if not exactly knitted) in the catalogue, but I'm already feeling a bit silly for posting about this at all.

In knitting news, I'm making progress on my Trekking sock. I wanted to try a short-row heel with this sock, but then I just couldn't make myself unravel the short-row instructions and I remember just how much I love the way that little heel flap hugs my ankle. I'm afraid I was lazy, lazy.

In non-knitting news, I dyed my hair yesterday by myself with a bottle that came in a box. I decided that I'm not going to spend $1,000+/yr coloring my hair anymore, so all those expensive highlights are now brown and brown they will stay because that is a lot of money to be spending on hair when you're living off of loans! Besides, I can take the money I'm saving and maybe actually go to Europe next summer or perhaps buy more yarn.

A big worm; new sock; birthday yarn; a big thank you

2006-08-07T16:08:00.000-05:00

A Big Worm

This big worm was found trying to cross a little path in Thailand. It was so big that I had to stop and take a picture of it. I asked my little 11-year-old cousin where the worm was going and where it had been. He said it came from the old felled tree and was working its way into the house of people who wanted to eat it.

New Sock

I finished a little worm last night. It's made with some KnitPicks Parade yarn in the Gumball colorway. This worm was a nasty nasty pest at 1:00 a.m. Why? Well, this worm apparently didn't have enough to eat and wanted more yarn just as its knitter was approaching the toe. Very very annoying worm indeed.

Apparently, I'm not the only knitter who ran into this problem. (I read about this happening on other blogs.) This worm would have been a better worm if I had knitted it toe-up and with a short-row heel as short-row heels use less yarn than heel flaps and gussets. But how is a knitter to know? A knitter assumes that one ball of sock yarn will make one sock. Good thing I saved the "starter yarn," which is what I call the yarn at the beginning of a ball that isn't used because you want the socks to match or start with a certain color.

This worm is a bit more colorful, but just as weirdly shaped as the worm I found in Thailand.

Birthday Yarn

My boyfriend asked me what I wanted for my birthday. (By the way, does anyone notice anything different in my blog heading? I'm no longer (gasp!) pressing thirty.) So I told him sock yarn and a foot spa. He must think I LOVE feet. Here's what he bought me:

So this yarn isn't exactly what I think of when I think of sock yarn, so I'm a little wary of the owner of the yarn-shop-that-shall-not-be-named who told my dear boyfriend that this was sock yarn. Nevertheless, I think my my boyfriend did a lovely job. It's so lovely. I love the fact that he went into the yarn store and bought me yarn! What a wonderful wonderful boy!

He even said that I could make him something with the brown yarn and that the blue yarn was for me. Say, ladies, have any of you been brave enough to make socks for manfeet? Frankly, I'm a bit frightened.

A Big Thank You

Today I got a huge surprise from my Secret Pal. She got me a gift certificate to Spunky Eclectic. I'm already drooling over all the gorgeous sock yarn and am having a difficult time deciding on what I want. I haven't come across this vendor before, so getting the gift certificate was like getting two gifts in one. Thank you so much, Secret Pal. I'll let you know what I pick out.

Jaywalkers & Paper Lantern

2006-08-04T14:29:00.000-05:00

There was one thing that I had to absolutely do before leaving Texas. I had to finish and graft Jaywalker 2. But, of course, I also had to cast on for a new project in order to endure a four-hour flight to New York. So there is another sock in the works.

The only variation that I made to the Jaywalker pattern was working the toe down to 16 stitches and not the 28 that the pattern calls for. There is a little error on one of the socks, but we won't talk about that. We won't mention at all how, when I was getting ready to slip the double-decrease stitches over the next knitted stitch someone nudged my arm just the slightest bit and no matter my cursing and picking at loops with a safety pin I just couldn't set that double-decrease along with several stitches that slipped off the needles to rights again. We just won't talk about that.

The Jaywalkers are pictured with a little paper lantern that I bought at the Damnoen Saduak floating market just outside of Bangkok. If you ever go to this market, be prepared to pay tourist prices for goods (unless you're my mother who can work a bargain like it's nobody's business), but know that the prices are still bargains for tourists and the food and fruit are still very cheap. This paper lantern cost me about $2.50, so I'm not complaining.

We paid a fair price for a two-hour boat ride around the market, which included a stop at a palm-juice vendor, who gave free samples, and a fish-feeding frenzy in front of a temple. (You pay 5 baht--a few American cents--for a bag of fish food and when you throw the food into the river, hundreds of fish come up to eat.) My favorite part of the 2-hour tour was stopping to eat "boat noodles," a traditional Thai noodle soup that the vendor prepares from her boat!

But I digress--back to the Jaywalkers. I still don't think I chose the best yarn for the Jaywalker pattern. I do like how the socks look toward the instep, but I don't like the broad stripes on the cuff and gusset very much. Jaywalker 2 definitely went faster than number 1--perhaps because I put it down and picked it up over a long period of time.

The current socks I'm making are my "instant gratification socks." They are made with a sport-weight yarn (Parade by KnitPicks) on size 2 Addis, which are really like a 2.5. I'm already on the heel flap. It would usually take me a week to get this far with a sock. After these, I'm going to tackly my Trekking yarn. But a lie a little bit--I already kind of cast on for that project.