New Free Pattern!

I just finished writing my pattern for "Jill-Walker socks." They resemble the Jaywalkers of late Mag Knits fame (sorry....no link since Mag Knits has bitten the dust) but in a prettier, girly way. Kind of like the socks Jay's twin sister Jill might wear.

I'm making the move away for posting raw patterns on the blog and will be uploading exclusively to Ravelry...since really, if you're a knitter, you need to be on Ravelry. And if you're not, go join the waiting list right now!

If you can't/won't/don't want to join Ravelry, but still want the pattern, leave your e-mail address in the comments and I'll e-mail you the PDF file.

For those of you who are on Ravelry, you can find my latest pattern here.

I'm Back (well sort of)

We've successfully made it to the West Coast. Sadly the internet where I'm staying is dial up (very slow dial up) so I'm currently at the library and ready to tell you about my latest advanture...IKEA portland.

Some of you know that Joe and I camped in front of IKEA for the grand opening in Stoughton, MA when I was in a wheelchair two weeks after having surgery on both feet. When we got here, we found out that IKEA was opening in Portland and decided that we might as well hang out there since we could bring our laptop and conduct our job hunt from there instead my dad's house and get free stuff for doing so.

And as much as that's fun and all...the thing I think is really funny is that I've been on the news...a lot (look for a girl in the purple bandanna).

If you go here, you can see me sitting on our air mattress working on a pattern I'm hoping to submit to Knitty.

If you go here and click on the "video" link under the picture, you can see me working on a pair of anklet socks with the yarn I picked up at WEBS when we went to see the yarn harlot.

You can also see us here and here (again, look for girl in purple bandanna or a large air mattress).

On the move

Gertrude and I (and Husband) are packing up and heading out. This is a crazy, whirlwind time....especially since we didn't think we'd be leaving Massachusetts so soon...let alone in less than a week!

The good news is that Husband just graduated with both of his master's degrees two weekends ago:
The bad news is that they won't let us put our lease (we live on campus at our grad school) in my name unless I become a full time student through January (not going to happen). So we had to figure out pretty quick-like what we were going to do and we decided that if we're going to have to move anyway, we might as well move all the way back to the west coast since that's where we were planning on ending up eventually anyway. Plus with his shiny, new MA's Husband has some job opportunities out in the promise land that he doesn't have here.

The badder (okay....I know it's not a word) part of the bad news, though, is that because we found out kind of last-minute that we're moving across the country, we haven't had a chance to do the things people normally do when they move across the country like, say, find jobs and a place to live. Or pack. So we're packing now. All while trying to plan a cross-country camping trip and do school work for the 2 classes I'm taking at a school in Missouri on our way to the Promise Land.

If that sounds like a recipe for chaos to you, then I think you'd be right. My main hope is that Husband and I don't kill each other and are still friends by the time we get to where we're going. Nothing like a major cross-country move (especially when one of you has never moved cross-country before) to put a damper on your relationship.

*sigh*

In happier news, my pomatomoi (that's the plural of "pomatomus") are coming along nicely. To try and avoid getting SSS (second sock syndrome) I'm knitting both at the same time. Knit the cuff for one....knit the cuff for the other. Knit the leg for one...knit the leg for the other. I've just finished the gussets of both and now just need to do the feet.

Here's a close-up of one of them:

Thanks :-)

Thanks everyone for the input on what I should do next.

As much as I really wanted to cave to Lana and Jenger and blow off my second sock to knit the option1 top, after talking to Sassy, I realized “I need another ball of yarn” isn’t a great excuse. I thought “but the yarn is expensive” would work better. But when Sass asked how much the yarn was and I heard myself say out loud “six dollars” I realized how utterly stupid I sounded (I’m going to let $6 stand between me and the yarn I need to finish a project?) and that I should take my Punk Pal’s (and everyone else’s) suggestion that I just do the next Hedera and get it over with.

So on my way home from work yesterday, I stopped at the store from whence I bought the first ball of yarn I used for Hedera and they were all out of my color! What to do? What to do? To keep from feeling like my trip to the store was worthless, I bought a present for my soon-to-be-not-a-secret punk pal and another ball of the magic stripes yarn (see option 5 below) since I’m going to need it at some point to make an actual pair of socks. (don’t worry, I’m sure they’ll have more of my yarn soon)

In the end what did I do?

I…er, I mean Gertrude….yeah, that’s it….cast on for the Pomatomus. Can I just say I hate knitting twisted ribbing? Does anyone know if it is somehow superior to regular ribbing or does Cookie just like it? I thought about changing the ribbing but being newer to this sock business and the only sock I’ve knit that “works” was a Cookie A. sock (that and Cookie is a sock knitting genius) I figured I shouldn’t mess with it lest I manage to screw it up. I am planning to do the 2 socks on 2 circular needles thing with them (after I get past the ribbing, which I'm doing on smaller needles that I only have DPN's of), though, so we don’t run into the second sock syndrome problem again.

Experiments with socks

I'm blaming Shadkitty. From a very long way away, this woman has managed to infect me with her sockophilia. So instead of casting on for my second Hedera like a good knitter, I decided I had to try the Child's First Sock in Shell Pattern by Nancy Bush. I have 1 skein of self-striping sock yarn and since it won' t be enough to make 2 Carissa-sized socks, I thought maybe I'd make socks for my littlest sister who turns 10 in July.

So after playing around with gauge swatches for an hour so I could make them fit her wee little 9 year old feet, I then spent about an hour and a half just doing the ribing on the size 0 needles. But then I started the pattern. The pattern was fun and easy but you couldn't really see it through all the stripes:

I think maybe I'll frog it, get another skein and just make jaywalker socks or hiking socks for me to wear on our impending cross country move/camping trip. I guess I will just chalk this up to a "learning exercise." *sigh* Oh well. At least I'll get cool hiking socks out of the deal.

But let's talk about something happy. Did you notice the cool background upon which I shot the above picture? If not, here's a close-up:

It's a bandana with little punk rock cupcakes. How friggin' cool is that? I got it in the mail on Thursday from the very sweet and oh-so-thoughtful Shadkitty. Thank you Shadkitty!!! I totally love it. :-)

Finished Object Alert!

Rember this sad little sock?


With its sad little one-sided yarn overs? Well after a partial frog and a total yarn over makeover, my sad little sock has grown up and turned into this:

Ooh la la. I am very happy with how this sock turned out. My only previous sock attempt was very sad. I was a little nervous about whether or not this time things would turn out well (and therefore whether or not I would just have to call this one a "learning exercise" and never knit its mate) mostly because I have never knit lace before and also because I didn't use traditional sock yarn.

These are my sock's stats:
Needle size: 2
Gauge: 15 sts / 2 inches (little different than called for in the pattern)
Yarn: Moda Dea Baby Talk a 3 weight 55% nylon, 45% acrylic blend
Color: Lilac

Why did I pick such odd yarn? Well, on an impromptu trip to the craft store to kill time, I decided I wanted to knit socks. Being an imprompu trip, I had mot previously researched things like what weight or materials make good sock yarn, so I thought I'd just look around to see what the store had.

They had a section with some self-striping yarn that said you could use it to make socks. The yarn wasn't very pretty but it was 3 weight and 100% acrylic so I figured I needed 3 weight yarn and it was okay if it was acrylic. So I looked around at the baby yarns because they were the lightest weight yarns in the store. I thought this color was pretty and the yarn is SO soft and it wasn't 100% acrylic...so I bought 1 skein.

About half way into knitting the sock (the second time) I did some reasearch and realized I made a rather stupid sock yarn selection and was prepared for it to be awful....but now that the first one is done, I LOVE it. It fits nicely without falling down and they are so so so soft. So laugh at me and my rediculous yarn selection if you will, but I've got me one (soon to be two) of these:

And some of this...