Video: My Drunk Best Friend
My best friend and I made a video quizzing each other on, well, each other. There’s mention of knitting, so this posting is totally legit.
Pterotactyl
This is still sitting around waiting to be blocked, but I don’t feel as guilty as I might, because I’m still proud of myself for actually weaving in all those ends pretty much right away. About thirty-five of them.
So many ends. SO MANY ENDS. (And so much just back and forth plain knitting.) But once it’s blocked, I think it’ll be a really nice casual shawl.
The pattern is Pterotactyl, knit up in Cascade Heritage Solids. I wound up short on yarn and just did a few extra rows of purple after the last wedge, but I like the way it looks this way, too.
Socks!
I’ve been knitting quite a few socks lately. I knit some replacement socks for my friend’s dad, some warm socks for myself, and these lovely things — which I of course wore and washed before I thought to take a decent picture. I threw them in the machine with some other stuff, to snug them up a bit, which unfortunately made them fuzzy and made it even harder to see the stitch pattern.
They’re Hermione’s Everyday Socks, and they did have a lovely stitch pattern which kind of disappeared into the yarn at anything beyond arm’s reach. I may make another pair in a different yarn, but I’m still happy with this brightly-striped pair. The yarn is Online Supersocke, in the colorway 1389
I also started a pair in G-B Wolle Inka, which I bought a few weeks ago at a yarn fair, to give Cat Bordhi’s Sweet Tomato Heel a go.
I did my first heel and rookie silliness aside, I really like it. The sock itself came out a bit narrow, though, so I made it shorter and will probably send it to my more dainty-footed mom. (With a mate, obviously.)
They’re also the first sock for the KnitPro Karbonz that I also bought at the same fair — I needed some 2 mm DPNs and was really interested in something stronger than wood, and so far I’m really happy with them. They feel sturdy, and somewhere between wood and metal in slipperiness, and the tips are great. I got a shorter set without realizing it at the time, but I kind of like it for socks. Not as fiddly.
Button button who’s got the button?
We went to the flea market yesterday, and one of the things we found was this little tin of buttons. Tin and button together for ten crowns, which is about a buck fifty.
I just love old buttons. I don’t knit enough cardigans to justify all the buttons I have — but then again, I have a wide variety and that means I’m prepared for any kind of cardigan I might knit, right?
I rummaged through the jar when I got home, picking out the more interesting buttons. Even just this selection makes this a totally wortwhile purchase, I think.
Can’t you just see these on a cream-colored little cardigan?
And these roses have a really interesting look.
I think I need to find more vintagey-style patterns to do my vast button collection justice. Or knit a big sweater and sew buttons all over it.
Another Ishbel
So I finished that wine-colored Ishbel for my friend and, really, I think my main lesson was that I shouldn’t make two of the same thing in a short period of time. I figured it was an easy pattern and also I couldn’t unexpectedly fall in love with it and want to keep it for myself. But really, it bored me because I’d just done it. And, of course, I ran short on yarn and had to order more — I’m not entirely sure what happened, but at least this was a yarn that was easier to get more of.
It’s Cascade Heritage in the color Wine, or 5663. I do like this yarn, but it’s a bit annoying to have three-quarters of a skein left now. I’m sure I’ll find a small project for it, and a few yards will probably make their way into the sock scrap blanket. So we’re good.
There are a couple of spots in the spine where the yarn-overs look kind of weird, and I have no idea why, but I think it’s the kind of thing you won’t see when it’s actually being worn. Can’t spot it from the back of a horse, as they say.
Video blog: Sock square sadist
There are so many ways this can turn out.
Video: How I knit
My mom was curious about how I knit and I’m never one to disappoint.
How do you knit?
Video: Two shawls and a haul
Some more pictures of the Book River Shawl — I like how the pattern combines with the color shifts in the yarn to make it almost flame-like.
Blocking really opened upp the pattern, and also left me with a shawl that may be close to six feet from tip to tip. I wound up using pretty much all of the extra yarn, so it came to over 700 yards in total.
Stash flash and crafty resolutions
Even before I pulled all my yarn out, I was pretty sure that the stash would have grown a fair bit since May, when I last posted a picture. I’ve used up some of what was there, but it has more than been replaced. At least I have yet to cover the entire bed, I guess?
I knew there was quite a bit in the boxes (four of them, and a little bit of overflow) but there’s something about seeing it all in one place that makes a bit more real. That right there is definite tangible proof that I really should have stuff to work with for the foreseeable future. (Feel free to remind me of that fact.) To be fair, some of it has already been assigned to a project and pattern, and I mainly have scarf- and sock amounts, but most of it is just frilly folly. I even found two rogue skeins a few hours after packing everything back up. Whoops.
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A few years ago, I posted some crafty resolutions for the year. Some of them I probably have yet to actually accomplish, but I’ve actually done most of the things I wanted to try. I have yet to actually finish a colorwork project, or steek anything, but that’s all I can think of at the moment. It would be nice to do some lace of my own design, too, so maybe those three things are my goal for the year. And the sort of vague idea to “knit a lot of things”, I guess. Preferably with yarn I already have…
Procraftinator 