SpringPlum

All over the blogosphere–specifically the crafting blogosphere–are posts about how knitters turn on the TV as background noise while they knit or to make row after row of fingering weight stockinette more bearable.  My mother would always turn on Victor/Victoria while working on a long sewing project.  Or they knit while their spouse watches football or their offspring watches Elmo and Big Bird.  These crafters aren’t really interested in what’s on the screen.  To them, the show is for someone else or just so there isn’t dead silence.  On the flipside are the knitters who actually watch the TV and knit to keep their hands busy.  I suppose that this latter group is where I should be classified although I don’t pick up my projects because of itchy fingers–I knit during TV out of guilt.

I will start knitting so that I have an excuse to turn on the TV.  I will masquerade as a non-watcher while actually being engrossed in the program.  See, I come from a long line of doers and makers.  My mother sews and quilts and my father has his fly-tying and assorted fix-it-ups.  My sister loves wood-working.  Although TV watching was never forbidden in our house, it was never encouraged as a primary activity.  We were supposed to be productive.  This sounds admirable but it’s become a bit of a neurosis with me.

This Tuesday, I realized that I might have a bit of a problem.  The Lost season premiere was on and I really wanted to see it.  Matt and I sat down, turned the set on, and the guilt set in.  I was about to watch 2 hours of TV for its own sake and I didn’t want to do anything else during the show.  Now, I’m a grown woman and, my mother can’t ground me for being lazy–but I still felt awful.  Watching isn’t producing.  Intellectually, I know that there isn’t anything wrong with watching a bit of TV now and again–and Lost certainly takes more brain power than most shows.  My hands didn’t want to be busy, but I felt like they had to be.  I’ve got to break myself of this, or at least change my outlook.

The good thing about guilt-powered knitting is that I’ve finished up to projects this week.

Boy Blue is finished and fabulous.  And I also finished up some socks to clear the way for my Olympics project.

They are a bit small on me but that’s good since the recipient has smaller feet than me.  Hopefully she doesn’t mind a little bit of Freya kisses either.  On a bit of a side note, it is impossible to take an attractive picture of your own feet.

Behold!  I have started Matt’s socks.

Hmm, kinda looks a little like a brown, wooly bra?

But what is this?  No DPNs?  That is correct.  I am attempting to magic loop socks.  Not that I’ve ever magic looped socks before.  And I think I may have jumped into the deep end of the pool without swimming lessons or a life preserver or a life guard.  Because I’m not just magic looping socks, I’m doing toe-up socks…two at a time.  Also, because I am lazy in the name of efficiency, I choose not to separate the yarn into two balls and am instead knitting from both ends of the ball at the same time.  It is possible that the yarn has gotten a wee bit tangled a time or two, but I’ve got the hang of it now.  Riiiiight.

I think I may have a problem.  Some knitters collect more yarn than they could use in one lifetime, but I’ve already covered that I try not to buy yarn without a pattern in mind.  Instead, I seem to keep buying patterns even though I don’t have enough time to knit what I’ve got on the needles.  On my way to Sunday’s stitch and bitch, I stopped by the cutest little yarn shop ever:  The Shabby Sheep.  Knowing that I had this little purchasing problem, I still browsed through their massive patterns binders.  And found this treasure–The Peacock Feathers Shawl.  Now it calls to me, begging me to buy yarn for it, pleading to be cast on.  I have made a deal with the patterns in my filing cabinet.  I will start the Scotch Thistle when I am finished with the Voyager Lace, and I will start either the Sheep Shawl or the Peacock on the first day of summer vacation.  Let’s see if I have the willpower to stick to this schedule.

I finished one of the Moc-A-Socs.

The shoe part is done in Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino–colorway: tan.  The cashmerino line is always a very nice yarn to work with no matter the weight.  This is the first time I’ve used the sport weight but I’ve used the dk and the aran before.  Although I wouldn’t advise it, my Fetching mitts went through the washer without felting.  I assure you that this wasn’t my mistake–I would never be so careless with my own handknits.  The sock part is done in a yarn called Schewe Filigrana.  Haven’t heard of it?  I’m not surprised.  Until I received it in a secret Santa gift, neither had I.  It is a German yarn.  As near as I can tell (the label is in German which I can’t read) it is 100% mercerized cotton.  Usually I try to find something to love about every yarn, but this one is difficult.  Filigrana is just not fun to knit with.  It’s so stiff and knits up like a cord.  But if I rub it with my hands, it softens up considerably like linen yarns do so that it feels more like a regular cotton yarn–which is what I wish I was using.   However, it is pretty and soft enough on the sock which is why it didn’t get frogged and replaced; I’d never give someone a gift made of a yarn that didn’t feel good on them.

Speaking of gifts, my husband’s sock yarn came in.  No, Matt isn’t taking up knitting; he’d have to put down the Xbox 360 controller for that.  I bought yarn to knit him some socks.  He has huge feet.  Size 14.  And he likes tall socks.  That’s larger than a 100g ball, or pair of 50g balls, of yarn can handle.  Luckily, I found Fearless Fibers and her sock yarns come in hanks of 550 yards which should be enough for a pair of Matt socks.  He picked the Tiger’s Eye colorway.

It’s the last day of spring break which never lasts long enough.  I got a lot of knitting done but not as much as I would have liked (but what knitter ever gets as much done as she/he really wants).   I purchased the yarn for the Voyager Lace Stole and began it.

Those who are familiar with the pattern will remember that it calls for a provisional cast-on that you pick-up and bind-off later.  Notice that there is no provisional cast-on attached to this fine bit of knitting.  That’s because I can’t stand trailing around all that extra yarn and I think it looks tacky to boot.  So after I knit the six rows of garter stitch, I went ahead and picked up the stitches, unpicked the crochet chain, and performed the longest picot bind-off that I’ve ever managed to date.  No more trailing, turquoise waste yarn.  Behold–a close-up:

During my visit home to see my folks and my sister, I managed a feat so spectacular that I still get breathless and my pulse races just thinking about it.  Are you sitting down?  I talking them into an LYS crawl.  And none of them knit or crochet.  Even my father went (although he didn’t go into the stores–that might have been expecting a bit much).  At Sealed With A Kiss In The City, I scored some Sockotta yarn.  BTW, when the directions say to look for a green house, they aren’t kidding–the house is margarita green.   Then we moved on to The Gourmet Yarn Company, where I found my real prize–

Earlier that day I found out that Matt’s cousin Blair and his wife Andrea are expecting their first child.  In fact, this is the first kiddo on my husband’s side of the family since his cousin Sara was born 18 years ago.  This means that I get to start knitting baby things.  It’s a good thing my mom was at the store to reel me in; otherwise, I would have walked out with the yarn for a blanket as well.  As it is…well…I noticed later that the Soup Socks by KnitWhits are for ages 3-6 and it’ll be a while before the sprogling will be that old so I bought this pattern:

Don’t know what yarn I’ll use yet–maybe Baby Cashmerino or Knitpicks Shine.  Hope to have both the Soup Socks and the Moc-A-Socs finished by the time we see Blair and Andrea in Captiva.

I am still on track for my one-gift-a-month goal which must mean that I finished Branching Out.

Bed-Time Bear was kind enough to lend his modeling services:

But here is a close-up of the actual stitch work:

I used KnitPicks Shadow in the Grape Jelly colorway.  I cast-on using the lace cast-on because I like the loops that droop along the bottom edge, I knit the pattern mostly as-is, only adding one stitch to either side on the garter stitch border (so I cast on 27 stitches instead of 25), and then I cast-off using the knitted loop bind-off to match the droopy loops of the cast-on edge.

I’ve still got my knee-highs on the needles.

The sock is relieved to have a heel because now it can actually be called a sock (or at least a socklet) in case of severe knitter attention loss.  Said knitter is now considering a new project and that scares the sock, but the knitter has not forgotten its intriguing pattern or bright jewel-like tones.  The knitter just likes to have 2 projects going at all times and has now gone 20 hours with only the sock.  (What Persephone Scarf?)

Matt is my hero. For Valentine’s Day, I got a dozen roses and this-

a ball winder! , no more hour long, tangly, tedious wool winding sessions =:>) Now, I can neatly wind a ball of yarn in just a couple of minutes. So I have been. Lots of it. Nothing takes the edge of my Jeep being in the shop–that’s right, my brand-new Jeep >:( –like winding sock yarn. Also, here is the progress on the Eyelet Links sock which felt very pretty today.

The day started off pretty good. The kids are doing a practice run-through of the TAKS tests this week. Because I don’t work for Dallas ISD, I’m not supposed to have anything to do with the tests, so I got to sit around and wait for either the kids to get finished or things to get so busy that the school needs me to do something anyway. Luckily, I had my handy-dandy knitting bag with me that contained my brand new sock-in-progress. Bored? Not me. I got paid to knit through 1st to the end of 4th yesterday and 1st to the end of 5th today. Life is nice indeed. This is what I’ve got so far.

Pardon the crappy quality–taken with my camera phone. Almost makes up for getting 3 inches down the sock, realizing there was a typo in the pattern (thanks a million Vogue), and having to rip back the entire thing Monday night. There were tears. But the day did not end so well. Dave and Nea’s dog Keeva is very sick. She and I had to take her to the emergency animal hospital where Keeva is still staying. Keeva was in shock and severely dehydrated; her body temp was so low that it didn’t register on the digital thermometer. The vet still isn’t sure from what. May have been an allergic reaction. So she’s staying overnight for observation and a fluid I.V. Poor puppy.