Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Most rewarding socks ever

Plain socks, Indigo Moon (spring flowers in twilight?). Miraculously perfect fit. I really, really hope she wears them out.
We love you, Po.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

11 degrees and dropping

Ah Sylvi. The bigger you get the more entrancing you are. Your fronts knit up like the wind (although the shaping could not compete with a late-night George Clooney movie) and I so cannot wait for you to be complete.

Blocking you was hard, very hard. How you resisted conforming to the shape I sought. I knew it was possible as I had bent the back to my will but you, gentle fronts and arms, were not blessed with as soft and spacious a blocking spot as he had. No, you were put on the knitting equivalent of the rack - the drying rack.

However, persistence won through - you are worth it, sweet Sylvi. Only 90 minutes of toil and you were in position. I truely expected you to be dry this morning, but circumstances have foiled us again. Damn furnace - I see your attempts at sabotage, but my good repair man will fix you up quickly and we will soon be blessed with warm drying winds again. As we speak, Berlin is sourcing an ignitor at great expense, but it's worth it for my red love.

I'm sorry for the rack, but there is no pleasure without pain.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Out out, damn hole.

For the love of all that's holey (har), why me????

Socks are not supposed to wear out so fast and I am sick of it.

That is all.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Yeeeeeeeee haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Look. Look! LOOK! It's a sock! A whole sock! With only one itty bitty mistake!

I worship at the ground of my machine.

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Quality control? I don't see no quality control.

Less than a year after I made them, my first lace socks, the ones that started my love affair with Indigo Moon, have HOLES in them. Not little ones, from a nail snag or something, but giant gaping acreages of wear. I am NOT pleased. I can't figure out why the purple ones are still going strong (yes, I am totally jinxing myself) but these are crap.

Are my expectations out of whack? I don't think it's unreasonable to expect socks to last a while when it takes me MONTHS to knit them.

The picture of the heel (on the right) does not do the hole in the heel justice and the one of the toes is the toe I have not fixed yet. The other one was WAY worse.


I have decided subtlety is not the way to go. I'm fixing these puppies with something that shouldn't wear out so fast: the lovely and talented Noro. Cool colours and has the added bonus of reminding me, every time I wear them, not to use 100% wool for socks... ever.

I am very pleased with the final result, but it was a total pain in the arse fixing the heels. Picking up, short rows, math. Feh. I haven't worked up the strength to do the other sock, but I will. Someday.


Is it karmic justice that I was knitting these exact socks for the owner of Indigo Moon when mine imploded? We shall see how hers wear...

Sylvi is out of the "rest" pile and back on the needles (it was frightening how long it took me to find her - stuffed behind the couch in the pile of wool Jack likes to sleep on). It must be the warm weather threatening to appear before she is finished.

Quirky Nomads (or QN as it's called now)? Best podcast ever. She is so funny!

On a more interesting note, I think Lulu may be trying to make a reappearance. She's decided that "relationship" may not be for her, but is willing to give it a week or so of serious attention before she slinks sluttily back to orange. Troglodytes beware.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Look what I made!

I have not been so inordinately pleased with myself in ages! So much pleasure out of something so horrible. Maybe I should give it to my mother, as it's about on the level of a grade one mother's day project.

I give you... my first machine made sock (or some reasonable facsimile thereof):



The scale seems seriously fucked up. In case you need a better look:

Note the heel is half way down my foot and by my calculations this should have been a knee-high. Har.

As I was taking the photo I had a blinding revelation. Machine knitting is all about gauge. Know your stitch and row gauge, then you don't measure anything, you just count. (It's impossible to measure on the machine. IMpossible.) My gauge couldn't have been THAT far off, could it? Really?

cue bolt of lightning

Nope. But when you're knitting in the round, the counter counts each pass as a row, so a round needs TWO rows. When you think my masterpiece is shrunken by a factor of two, it's not really so bad. One might even say... pretty good.

Know any shrunken midgets with fat legs who need socks?