Girl on the Rocks

Finished! May 31, 2006

These are toe-up socks of my own design knit out of koigu. Interestingly, one and a half of these socks were knit on two circulars… One sized 1 and one sized 0. oops! Here is a detail of the pattern.

It is a slip stitch pattern that I thought kinda gave the illusion of a cable (slip stitch pattern from Barbara walker’s Second treasury)… I wanted to have the look of a cable but not deal with the extra needle. I used a short row heel for these, and while it was nice to put the socks right on when i finished knitting the cuff, I was cursing about it the whole time. Also, i tried wrapping the stitches and everything, but I just don;t like how the heel looks. There are still tiny holes along the increases. I thought i might write up the pattern (Gerald, I’m looking in your direction) which is a challenge for two reasons. First, my foot is pretty small, so I think that I would have to call it a ’small’ size and also figure out a medium size. Second, i can only really work out patterns if I write them as I go, so I have to make another pair…

But I already got started with that!

I started another pair in with the yarn that i dyed (the poppysocks color).

Edit:Tragically, this sock is actually a medium, and my foot is a small. I will have to rip back and undo some of the increases. poo.

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The couch of shame May 26, 2006

If it seems like I have been busy finishing crafty projects, let me show you what I haven’t been doing….. I present a gallery of barely UNfinished objects on the couch of shame.

To begin, at the top left, the drop stitch cardigan from the Fall 2005 Interweave knits. The yarn is handpaintedyarn.com ejido in “fondo marino.” I really whipped this thing out - it was finished with the knitting in no time. I applied an i-cord edging, then i hand-sewed a zipper into it and wore it school. Like this:

with the zipper sticking out of the top like a big ol’ dork. and then i wore it like that to school again.

Next we have my most recently unfinished object, the Deep-V argyle vest from eunny jang made from knitpicks merino style (asparagus and white). i made it through the steeking okay, and i managed to add a neck band, but i didn’t make it through the arm bands before i decided to wear it out and about.

Luckily my friends were there to help tuck the waste yarn back into my armpits. aaawwww, isn’t that sweet…. And if you are interested, you can see a photo of our wine tasting adventure here (somehow, the sweater is completely obscured).

And finally the oldest unfinished object, my Lamb’s pride worsted weight Rogue Cardigan. what can i say… i keep meaning to order a really nice two-way zipper from zipperstop, but I haven’t. so instead i still wear it all the time and safety pin it shut.

Not pictured: The Ribby Cardi. Current Status: unassembled in a ball somewhere we are not talking about it.

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This was just practice, but I like it May 24, 2006

A while ago (weekend before last?) I dyed some sock yarn to practice up for Dye-o-rama. I wanted to practice not getting colors to run together, but still dyeing them in the crockpot. It is amazing to me how much the colors stay put. I put half of the yarn in, added some brown dye. then i added the rest of the yarn and poured on the pink. It turned out pretty good! Some of the pink was above the water line in the pot. This wasn’t good. any extra dye in the water seemed to concentrate at this leve, so i got a lot of brown in the pink, but only right at the waterline. interesting…..

And recently I made a few dye-o-rama stitch markers. they will look so cute when i am knitting up my dye-o-rama yarn! (I also stuck a few in my shop).

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Watch us knit! May 22, 2006

Edit:I stickied this post so everyone from the PixiePurls Podcast can find it.

This weekend, Abby and i spent some time working on a top-secret knitting project. There is a little something that we can share, though. We used a digital camera to take crappy little movies of us knitting with two colors. For your entertainment (oh and please mute your computer so you don’t hear our dumb voices. who knew it recorded sound!?)
Abby knitting:

Me knitting two-handed with one color in each hand:

oh man. the internet is cool.

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Orange Wedge Pincushion May 21, 2006

I threw together a little pincushion for BoogaJ’s Pincushion challenge.

It is made out of felt and stuffed with yarn scraps that I was happy to get rid of. I guess i could put up the pattern too… Anyone interested?

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Can I be emotionally abused by a yarn company? May 15, 2006

I believe it was because of Tina over at Purls Gone Wild that I first heard of Handpaintedyarn.com . It was love at first visit. I love the kettle-dyed colors (variegated yarn is my favorite), and the prices seemed pretty reasonable. i bought enough merino for a top-down raglan (which, by the way has 1.5 more arms on it than when that picture was taken) and fell in yarn-love with it. Then…. tragedy struck. Something about the brothers that run the place splittign it up into two companies, one that would cater to retail stores…. Malabrigio was born, and it got custody of all of the merino. I suspected as much, after seeing that beautiful merino for twice the price on the Webs page. Even though it has been a year since this happened, the Handpaintedyarn.com page claims

We have run out of our Merino worsted weight. You can try at your preferred yarn store, we will make it available in our site as soon as we can.

No you aren’t. You aren’t trying at all! Don’t string people along like that!

What could I have done to prepare for this tragedy? All I can figure is that I should have stockpiled more yarn…

This incident has placed a little bit of fear into my brain every time i get yarn from the,. If i order something and i end up liking it (like the Ejido that i made a sweater out of) i immediately order some more - you know, because it might disappear.

I tried a little bit of their roving and then immediately ordered more for fear it would be discontinued.

Don’t get me wrong, all of their stuff is nice and I have never been disappointed - i just don’t like to shop in fear.

Here is where it gets sad. They have done it again. The superbulky has disappeared from their site. I first took notice of the yarn because Abby made such nice hats out of it… And Carmen took to it immediately - churning out a whole pyramid of hats.

(aren’t they cute? Let’s bother Abby until she puts that pattern up on the internet). And then they took it away. From a newbie knitter!! Since both Abby and Carmen have had a go at it, i guess i will tell you that the ebay identity “Sanfelipeysantiago” is in fact handpainted yarn, and they were recently dumping all the reat of the superbulky there. I like you guys (my ten loyal readers) but I couldn’t tell you sooner because i didn’t want you bidding against those gals.

So overall the lesson here is that though we love handpaintedyarn.com for their great yarn and reasonable prices, they totally have us by our balls (of yarn). we have to abandon yarn diets and budgets to get more than we need of something we like because it could go away at any time.

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Yummy… bugs! May 11, 2006

My sundew got a big bug.

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You might want to avert your eyes May 5, 2006

You might not want to read this for two reasons. the first is that i am going to talk about how sick i was the last two days. really sick. some horrible gut wrenching flu that sucked the life out of me. Really, it was the kind of flu that kills old people. couldn’t even keep down liquids. But now i am immune - hahahahaha!

the second reason is because of something that I did on wednesday night and didn’t tell you about…

I cut it. It was awesome and I can’t wait to do it again. still no finieshed pics though… Still needs some bands around the arm holes and the neck.

Tomorrow I am going to Sonoma for a little wine tasting. I doubt I will have much wine, but maybe i will try a little MoBlogging…

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RSS Feeds finally fixed May 3, 2006

Whew. I have been tracing the path of the RSS commands through tons of files that i barely understand. Then, finally - i found it! One of the files wasn’t uploaded properly and was essentially empty. Once i fixed that, I just had to undo mess i made by tryng to edit the code myself.

Now if i can figure out why only about 25% of images show up in firefox (whether they are hosted on my site or on flickr) I will be settled in to my new home. Any ideas?? help??

And as a reward for reading this technical and boring post, check out this page of free fonts.

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Too cute - even for me! May 2, 2006

Originally uploaded by kweaver614.

I made some plastic buttons that are for sale in my etsy shop. Perfect for little knitting projects….

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