Socks and rants

I'll start with something I love. I love toe-up socks. I love knitting socks anyway, but toe-up is so great. No Kitchener stitch, you can try them on as you go, and they look so satisfyingly sock-y from the very start. I also love this crazy German yarn. It's crazy bright, and I love it. I hope Rebekah loves it, too (sorry for polluting your sock with my foot!):

After all that love, I'm allowed to hate, right? I'm really, really lucky to live in a place where I can ride my bike along the Charles River to get to school/work from my house. There's this beautiful river path, and I feel so happy during the summer when I can use it to get to work. Other than being the quickest way in, it's also lovely. More happiness and joy, see? And note that I say 'river path' and not 'bike path,' which is the way I usually refer to it in speech. But I know that it's intended to be a multi-use path, unlike all of the people very slowly roller-blading with baby strollers and iPods, meandering all over the path without looking behind them and then screaming when a bike passes them, even after the person on that bike has called out 'On your left' 75 times without them hearing. Public space, people!

Ok, sorry. I'm channeling the BikeJerk. Speaking of which, here are his completed Uptown Boot Socks:
They're really lovely (I'm proud of the heel-flap/gusset join). The KnitPicks Gloss looks and feels great - the fabric is smooth and the texture is luscious. I like the way the sock looks and feels (the BikeJerk says they're the best socks I've ever made for him, but he does say that every time), though I can't imagine knitting them if I had to use a cable needle for all of those cable twists! Two mini-rants/modifications about the pattern: 1) I don't understand why any pattern would suggest breaking the yarn and rejoining before the heel flap - I just knit the 16 stitches from the center back. 2) I don't want to be uppity, but I was rather frustrated by the instruction to knit a certain number of inches from the start of the gussets, rather than a certain number of inches less than the desired length - this doesn't allow a knitter to modify the length of the sock. For future reference, the toe is two inches long in the proper gauge, and if you end after a row 3 or 7, then your sock will look great.

It's Me!

I never even knew about knitting blogs until about a month ago, and now I have one. I couldn't resist once I saw all the great stuff going on and the sense of a knitting community. In real life I'm a graduate student, in something other than knitting, which means both that I have limited knitting time AND that I really need it when I get it. Hopefully I can figure out my camera and the intricacies of dealing with pictures on a Mac, so that this will work out!

Here are some of the things I'm working on:

Yes, it's Frost Flowers and Leaves from A Gathering of Lace, not that you can tell, of course. Oh the joys of circular lace, and its consistently looking like a tangled mess! Still, this one has 1/4 of its edging done, which is the real reason to show it. It's for my friend's wedding, and this photo shows it might be done before September (I've been working on it on and off for a year!).

Also, I dyed some purply rovings:

I'm just starting to explore dyeing, so I'm trying to stick within a colorway, but do it differently and see what happens. This is (L-R) merino, mystery wool, and silk. Both the silk and the mystery wool were supposed to have large white areas, but I didn't do as well with the mystery wool. It leaked.

This one is also mystery wool (I lost my labels for the undyed roving - I've had it for a while). You can't really tell from the picture, but it's rather violently orange in places, and sort of pinky in others. It was supposed to be for a scarf for my brother, but I don't think he'd approve of the color combo. Which is all for the best, as it means more yarn for my own evil purposes.


This is a singles spun with a roving I dyed with onionskin. I can't believe it came out so orange, but I love it. Also mystery wool! It's some of the thinnest yarn I've been able to spin, which is exciting. Maybe socks?


This is the beginning of a pair of Uptown Boot Socks from Favorite Socks (which I love! I have a total sock obsession, which is why I'm discreetly putting the sock last. That way no one will catch onto my sickness. It worked, right?) . It's using KnitPicks Gloss in Pumpkin, which feels great to work with, though we'll see how it wears. It's for my husband, which means a lot of foot to practice the very simple cable pattern!

That's it for now! I'll be back soon, with some more WIP and FOs...