I haven’t posted much about my knitting lately, but that doesn’t mean the needles haven’t been out. In fact I’ve sort of developed an addiction that is often triggered simply by sitting in front of the television. I can’t watch TV any more without my knitting in my hands. I guess that’s a lot better than not being able to watch TV without a two pound bag of M&Ms in my hands, right?

I’m attempting to embed a PhotoBucket slideshow above, with pictures of many of the recent things I’ve knit. These span from the standard array of socks and mittens for everyone at Christmastime, to a couple of hats (another new favorite; hats knit up so quickly!) to an eyeglass “sleeve”.

That came about because I got new glasses and cannot locate the case for my old ones, and I didn’t want to just toss them in a drawer without protection. So, I planned to just knit a quick tube in the round and stick them in it. That led to “maybe I’ll try my hand at Fair Isle colorwork”, and the “quick tube” took well over a week to complete thanks to Old Fumblefingers here. However, I do plan to keep at the colorwork and eventually become one of those people capable of juggling more than one color of yarn without risking self-strangulation.

Eventually.

The “Cranberry Beret” was fun, especially when the dog saw me putting it on the cookie jar and then following me around the house till I took it off the “cat”. He then sat quite contentedly while I tried it on him and snapped a picture.

Last year, Kai had to have a cyst removed from his thigh muscle. I had knit him a legging, to keep him away from the stitches while he healed. He rather liked it, and would come right over and ask to have his “pants” put on after trips outside to potty. After he then asked to try on the hat, I promised him I’d knit something else for him.

Ergo, the current project on the needles is my first foray into knitting a dog sweater. I’ll post pictures when it’s done (unless, of course, I manage to royally foul it up somehow).

So, enjoy the pics in the slideshow.

Feel free to leave comments below and let me know what YOU have been knitting or otherwise creating lately!

PS: I wonder why I’m now craving M&Ms….

Related posts:

1. Daylilies, Knitting, and Stuff
2. Creative Overload: Knitting and NaNo!
3. Knit Wit: Sock Education

No, seriously.  When I learn to do something new, I start scouting around for easier, faster methods and will finally settle on the one that gets the job done fastest and with the least amount of work or brain-power.  Take the Lifestyle Socks method by Charisa Charn, for instance.  I’d done a few dozen pairs of socks before finding this simple method of doing toe up socks that can be adapted to every sock pattern and I haven’t looked back.  I use it every time I knit a pair of socks now, and I even went a step further.  I figured out how to do two at a time.

How pathetic is that?  But hey, it works.

When you look at a little pair of socks, compared to things like sweaters and afghans, you wouldn’t really think that they’re a ton of work.  So why be so lazy?  Well, let’s look at a sock in detail.  In order to have a durable pair of hand knit socks, you have to select fingering yarn, which is really thin, and tiny little size 0 or 1 needles, which are kind of like knitting with toothpicks.  Lots of little bitty stitches because you want the gauge to be tight.  After all, people tend to, well, walk on their socks.  They need to hold up.

So, being the odd duck I am, whose brain, when it gets moving along such lines tends to get lost in deep layers of trivia, let’s look at a pair of knee-high toe up socks done two at a time on two size 0 circular needles using one of my favorite self-striping fingering yarns.  This particular pair adds up as follows (and yes, I counted.  I am not obsessive.  It was just research.  Ahem):

One pair of socks, Thirty-Six Thousand stitches and (at the relatively boring speed with which I knit) 20 hours work.  Okay, real hard core sock knitters are laughing at my slow progress, I’m sure, right now, but still.  When broken down into numbers, I think I understand why, come mid-October, I’m not sure I’m going to get all my Christmas knitting done in time!

I still love knitting socks, though.  Socks are the one thing that, at least in my little easily entertained mind, no one can have too many of, after all.  I mean, one can only have so many scarves or fit so many sweaters into the closet, but socks?  You wear socks till you wear them out and then, if you’re like me and stuff them into a darning basket you never get around to tackling, you need more socks to replace them, right?  And don’t you think everyone would like a few pairs of nice cozy hand-knit merino blend socks to add to their packaged every-day fare?

Still, though, I do branch out.  I’m trying to balance the socks with other things this year.  Things like mittens, gloves and hats.  Charisa Charn has a great Lifestyle Hats formula that makes them as easy and trouble-free as her socks, by the way.  Yeah, I found that pretty quick once I started venturing into hats.

And these days, there is also a high-speed way to learn just about everything you need to know about knitting, including the fast and simple methods.  It’s called YouTube and is a newbie knitter’s paradise.  Yeah, no great secret revealed there, eh?  Sorry, but hey, if it works….  When learning the Lifestyle methods, it was easy to head there and watch the various components being illustrated in video.  I ventured into mittens by taking Kelley’s Mitten Class on YouTube.  Just about everything I’ve tried my hand at so far, I’ve managed to find someone on that site to show me the method in easy step-by-step ways.

Years ago girls learned to knit by sitting at their mother’s knee, painstakingly following her methods and instructions.  Now we have a world wide network of “mothers” out there who can teach us everything from a continental style purl stitch to how to do fancy cable work to spinning the fleece from your own llamas to building your own spinning wheel out of a bicycle wheel.

Now, “spinning” is something I can’t quite get the hang of.  One actually needs some semblance of coordination and timing to do that right. But when I’m ready to try again, I know I have YouTube to help me out.

A friend once said, when I first told her that I was taking up knitting, that she prefers crochet because knitting is so slow.  I guess it’s true that when you have to hand knit 36,000 stitches to create a pair of socks, that’s a lot of work.  But with the invention of circular needles, two-at-a-time toe up methods, and YouTube, it’s a lot easier for a lazy knitter to join the fun these days than it used to be.

On to the next pair….

Some Links of Interest

• Charisa’s Lifestyle Socks
• Charisa’s Lifestyle Hats
• Kelley’s Mitten Class
• Hand-made Spinning Wheel from Bicycle Parts (the creator’s a bit spacey, but I thought the concept was fascinating)
• Ravelry (a world of fun for knitters)
• KnitPicks.com (my favorite place to buy yarn and supplies; I so love my Options circular needles!)

Related posts:

1. KnitWit: Sockin’ Around the Christmas Tree
2. Knit Wit: Sock Education
3. Knit Wit: My First Scarf

Daylily Season has just begun here in upstate New York.  In the spring, I began moving some of my daylily collection up here to Pop’s house, where we moved after his death.  Our other house, where my daughter and her partner now live, was the long-time victim of my obsession with Hemerocallis, the lovely Daylily. I had over eighty varieties, and probably close to a hundred actual clumps, planted down there.  I managed to get about twenty-something moved before my health fell apart again.  Gladly, those twenty seem to be doing well (better than their Mom, LOL), and are beginning now to bloom.  So, below, I’m going to begin sharing pictures for your enjoyment.

Getting photos has been a chore, as thanks to the leg and the fact that the leg threw out my back, until today I haven’t been able to get down the deck stairs to get decent photos.  Thus, a lot of these were taken from the deck with a telephoto lens!  Today, however, I did manage to make the arduous four stair climb to the yard, and H. Primal Scream, H. Demetrius and H. Siloam Double Classic (which opened it’s first flower as a single bloom) had their pictures taken from several angles.  Primal Scream’s first flower didn’t open in full splendor–that is one of my all time favorites, and when opening in its normal state, it’s a gorgeous, huge spider-like UFO form.  Still, I love it, and love the colors, so couldn’t resist getting some shots of it.

I’ve been doing some cleaning up of the website lately, because a recent WordPress update (which runs this website) broke several of the plugins I have used for a while.  One of those was the image gallery plugin, which I’ve not been able to fix no matter what I do.  Therefore, I’ve had to uninstall that photo gallery viewer, and have been going through old posts, finding spots where I’d used it, and replacing photos using WordPress’s internal image gallery function.  It’s not as fancy-schmancy, but at least people get to see the pictures.

In the process of those edits, I came across a number of my knitting journal posts, and realized that, due to one thing and another, it’s been quite a while since I picked up my needles.  That led to the thought that it’s July, and I had promised myself during last year’s rush to get stuff knitted for Christmas that this year I was going to knit all summer long and stockpile home made gifts.

The best laid plans….

The thoughts got me itching to knit again, though.  I’m most likely going to start by getting out the sock pattern I like so much, and brushing up on the process of knitting socks.  I hope the old muscle memory kicks in before I mess up too many pairs!

Maybe I’ll post some pictures as I go along.  It was fun looking back at my earlier efforts.

I hope everyone is enjoying their summer so far, and that my U.S. friends had a nice Independence Day yesterday.  Devon and I spent the day home, due to me not getting around all that well quite yet, but Joe, Jess and Chris were at two different fireworks celebrations, and had a great time (even though Joe was working).  We did catch the Macy’s show here at home on TV, though.

Related posts:

1. Daylilies on a Cool July Morning
2. Doctors and Daylilies..and Birdies
3. Recent Knitting Projects

Well, Christmas is over, so I can now post photos of everyone’s tootsie-toasters online.  I’ve actually already got them in my Ravelry account, but the family doesn’t visit that site, so no chance of them having seen them there.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve taken an interest (in my usual obsessive over the top way) in learning to knit socks.  I’ve been hanging out at Silver’s Sock Class, with a set of #6 double pointed needles and a whole bunch of worsted.  Typical of the way I approach life, one pair of socks to follow the lesson wasn’t good enough.  Since Thanksgiving, I’ve knitted six and three-quarters.  The three-quarters is because the pink pair with the windsor blue heel and toe in the photos above isn’t done.  I’ve got a sock done, plus the cuff, heel flap, heel turn and gusset of the second.  I’ll finish that today.

While cranking out Christmas Slocks (“slock” = a sock you wear as a slipper, phrase coined by my daughter Jess … at least in this house, though I’d bet others have used it, too), I got to the point that I could knit a sock a day, if I really focused.  Of course doing things like eating, sleeping, working, and going to the bathroom would sometimes rudely cut into my knitting time.  This latest pair, I’ve taken longer to work on, though, and have been at them for about three days already.

All of the socks above were knitted with the one Silver’s Sock Class lesson set (one cuff-down sock on four double pointed needles).

For Christmas, however, my darling son (who looks smashing in his red socks … which my hubby almost made me go outside to knit, being a Yankees fanatic) gave me a fabulous book:  Charlene Schurch’s “Sensational Knitted Socks“.  I’m now itching to get to work on some of the great patterns in that book, and turn out something other than a basic sock.

Plus, my bestest friend in the whole wide world (::waves to Dede::) sent me an entire set of KnitPicks interchangeable circular needles!  I’m so psyched.  I’ve been watching videos on YouTube about knitting socks on circular needles for some time.  Silver’s class has two circular needle lessons as well, and I am really intrigued by Cat Bordhi’s (etc) method of knitting socks on two circulars.

So, the next step in the journey deeper into sock addiction will be to make the “class sock” from Schurch’s book, do the Silver’s Sock Class circular lessons, and start making really cool socks with regular sock type yarns that you can actually fit into a shoe and wear as, well, as socks!

It’s a darned good thing socks are one of those items of apparel one can never have too many of.

I’ve also, just as a mention, been told that I can pick out whatever fleece I want from the animals at Northeast Llama Rescue and Barnyard Sanctuary at shearing time.  I may try to figure out a way to make that into a fundraiser … as soon as I figure out how to clean and prepare the fleece, spin the yarn, etc.  Yes, I know … spinning is as addictive as sock knitting.

Well, if I’m going to be addicted to anything, at least it’s something that will keep me and my family warm in the winter, right?

Links of Interest

• Charlene Schurch’s “Sensational Knitted Socks“
• Silver’s Sock Class
• Northeast Llama Rescue and Barnyard Sanctuary
• My Ravelry account
• Cat Bordhi’s Sock Books

Related posts:

1. Knit Wit: Sock Education
2. Confessions of a Lazy Knitter
3. Knit Wit: My First Scarf

I love socks.  Not as much as my daughter, who would probably buy a pair a day if she had the opportunity, but I do love socks.  I also consider them one of the most useful things to knit.  I mean, you can only find so many scarves useful before they start just taking up room in the closet, but everybody wears socks, right?  You wear your socks till you wear them out, and then you need more.

So, it was only natural that I would no sooner learn to knit, than I would want to learn to knit socks.

I’ve had friends who knit tell me that a beginner really shouldn’t tackle socks.  Socks are complicated.  There’s a lot of stitch counting, increases and decreases, heel turning and joining gussets.  Plus, socks are round.  You can’t just take a pair of straight single pointed plain old knitting needles and knit a sock.  You need some way to make them tubular (and suddenly the theme song of The Exorcist is running through my brain).  This means learning to knit either on circular needles, or double pointed needles.

Most of the tutorials on the Internet … and let me tell you, the line-up of how-to-knit tutorials, and sock tutorials, on the Internet is unending … start you out on double pointed needles (DPNs).  A dear, dear friend of mine (visit her Tangled and Warped blog … see the right side bar) warned me that at first knitting with DPNs is rather like wrestling a porcupine … but you get used to it.

I’ve now completed my fourth scarf (three of which were successes, and one of which got turned into a hood to hide some of the utter destruction caused by learning to knit continental style on needles too large for the yarn).  So, in my classic obsessive way, I found a sock tutorial site online that I really like, picked up a set of seven inch #6 double pointed needles, and I’m … wrestling porcupines.

I actually think I’ll prefer the circular needles. I’m not just saying that because my hands are being turned into a spaghetti strainer by the DPNs.  I have been watching videos and reading tutorials for a while now, and I find that I’m just drawn to the two-circular-needle style such as promoted by experts like Cat Bordhi.  She’s got a line-up of sock knitting books out that have peppered my Amazon wishlist, and I love the humorous style she portrays in her YouTube videos.

However, after looking at quite a few tutorials, I felt drawn to Silver’s Sock Class, with some video help from VeryPink.com, and Silver’s starts you out on DPNs, then gravitates you to circulars.

So, I’m starting out on larger DPNs and worsted yarn, which will really make more of a slipper than a sock that you can fit into a shoe … or that I can fit into a shoe, anyway, since with my foot the way it is even that is a task and a half.  They’re good for practice, though, and learning to juggle about three thousand very sharp points.  It feels like three thousand, though in actuality it’s only six plus the two on the working needle.  So far, I’ve got the cuff and heel flap done.  Today, I tackle what is reported to be the most difficult part of sock knitting … turning the heel.  It really doesn’t look that hard.  It will just take a lot of concentration.

I’ve discovered that I need to take notes, lots of notes, as I progress.  Knitting in the round turned out, as I struggled to work around all of those extraneous needle points, to be a lot harder to focus on than straight knitting.  While I’d done k2 p2 ribbing before in practice, and it’s very simple, I kept losing track of whether I’d finished up with a knit or a purl on each needle.  Once I started making a note of that on paper, the pattern straightened out.  I’ve got sticky notes all over the place with kkp|, kkp|, kkp| all over them — marking the rows on the cuff and making sure I kept the pattern straight.  Once I get the hang of this, I’m sure it won’t be necessary to do this any more, but it helps for now.

I also had to go with a different hold of the thread than I’ve gotten used to.  I’m much more comfortable with continental knitting than english style now … but my yarn hold doesn’t work that well with the DPNs.  My fat fingers were getting in the way.  Thus, the process is very slow right now.

But, despite all the fumbling and fussing, and the fact that I hit a huge yarn tangle in the skein of worsted I was working with and wasted three hours the first night untangling it … I’m knitting a sock!  How cool is that?

I was warned that sock knitting can become an obsession.  I think I can see why.  I’m finding it frustrating and satisfying at the same time.

And I can’t wait to graduate to circular needles.

My first sock, cuff and heel flap done

Interesting Links

• Silver’s Sock Class
• Knitting videos at VeryPink.com (the owner of this site has Basenjis, so it’s also sort of sighthound relative)
• Cat Bordhi’s YouTube videos
• Sock books by Cat Bordhi
• Ravelry (my profile)

Related posts:

1. Knit Wit: My First Scarf
2. Knit-Wit
3. Recent Knitting Projects

Knit-Wit Update

The past few days have been filled with creative fun.  I finished that second scarf, to start with, on November first.  It was supposed to be for my daughter, I thought, but turns out she really wanted it for her boyfriend.  That’s fine — I like him, he’s a nice guy, and I’m pleased to know the scarf is needed and appreciated.

I’m working on my hubby’s brown one now — though it’s not going to turn out as even and well-crafted.  I’ve been practicing continental knitting, where you hold the yarn in your left hand.  It’s faster than “English” style, and I was impressed by the YouTube videos I watched.  I’m not so sure I’ll get the hang of it, though.  It’s, to be honest, a bit of a mess.  I can’t seem to control the tension.  The videos warn that your stitches will be looser with continental — but I don’t think they meant half-inch wide holes showing up in it here and there.  I’m committed to it on this scarf now.  Perhaps by the time I reach the end of the scarf, I’ll have mastered keeping my tension even.

Any continental knitters reading this who might have some tips for me?

NaNo Is Awesome

The big story, however, is that I passed 8,000 words the second day of NaNoWriMo.  My novel is just crankin’ along, and I’m really having fun with it.  It’s been so long since I sat down and really focused on my fiction writing that I didn’t realize how much I missed it.  I’m getting to know the kids from the first book again, getting back into their personalities, and the story is coming through from the Powers of Muse in a pretty nice flow.

I’m hopeful that I can keep up the pace, and pleasantly surprised at how many words I can get typed into the file in an hour’s time.  The first night, between the midnight starting gun and a little after 1-a.m., I’d already passed two thousand words.  I was over 4400 by the time I shut down the file the morning of the first.  Yesterday, I just wrote away, and was quite surprised at the end of the session that I’d almost doubled what I had written on the first.

Fun!  And believe me, there are plenty of writers out there who have topped my total by far!

Are you a writer?  Have you tried NaNoWriMo?  It’s a bit late, I believe, to sign up this year, but visit the site, look over the details, and make plans for 2010.

Links of Interest:

• NaNoWriMo
• Ravelry.com (A Fiber-Lovers Community)

Related posts:

1. Daylilies, Knitting, and Stuff
2. Six Days To NaNo, and a Goal Achieved
3. Recent Knitting Projects

My first actual knitting project is finished.  Yes, it’s just a simple scarf, but I quite like the way it turned out, especially considering that I’ve never knitted anything before.  It has a few bumps and bubbles, of course, but I don’t think it turned out half badly.  Neither does my daughter, apparently, as she’s put in an order for a black and red scarf for herself.  This one is for me, though.  It goes with my sage-green winter jacket.

The scarf measured, while I had it on the needles, sixty inches long, but after binding it off, I appear to have lost two inches.  I didn’t think I was stretching it when I measured, but I guess I was a bit.  That’s okay, though, it wraps nicely all the same.



Here we have a closeup of the colors/stitches.  I’ve got about half a skein of this yarn left, and think I may try my hand at socks … that is, if they’re not too difficult … to match the scarf.  What do you think?  Or maybe I should play it safe and simply knit some granny squares with the leftovers, and eventually make a patchwork lap throw.

Whatever I decide, I’m pretty pleased with my first efforts at learning to knit!

I also picked up a crochet hook the other day, and did a few rows of simple single stitch crochet.  I found that my hands cramp up and I don’t like it anywhere near as much as the click and slide of the knitting needles.  Mom was a fabulous crochet artist — but I will leave that legacy to her memory.  Apparently her daughter is a knitter.  I still feel like I’ve honored her by “doing something with yarn” and discovering, to my totally non-domestic surprise, that I really enjoy it.

I’ve got another set of needles on the way, one size larger, and will see about playing with the differences.  I’ll do a few test swatches with both the tens and the elevens to see which looks nice for my daughter’s scarf.

Eventually, visitors to the Knit Wit topic of this blog will be seeing something more interesting than scarves, I’m sure.  But for today, I’m quite pleased to share my first endeavors!

Related posts:

1. Knit-Wit
2. Knit Wit: Sock Education
3. Creative Overload: Knitting and NaNo!

Now, this is rather odd for me.  I’m not very domestic at all.  Though I love my daylilies, my physical problems over the past year have kept me from getting down and dirty in the gardens.  I have a to-do list a mile long every day that most often doesn’t get completed.  I have writing projects waiting to be done, I’m whittling away at freelance work, I schedule in my animal communication sessions every day … and now I’m knitting.

I’m not knitting very well, of course, but give me time.  I may not ever create amazing works of fiber art, but I’m sure I’ll at least get to the point that I keep the family supplied in scarves for life.

What started this odd obsession?  For yes, an obsession it is.  My “extended artist’s date” for The Artist’s Way has been a weekend of You Tube, reading websites, following instructions, and teaching myself the basics.  I started out with a pair of sharpened pencils and a ball of package twine, which looked so silly that my husband came home with aluminum knitting needles tucked behind his ears the other day.

(Like that didn’t look silly?)

I thought I might find some yarn in my mother’s belongings, but a search through closets and drawers yielded only three crochet hooks.  She hadn’t crocheted for years before her death, due to arthritis in her thumbs.

And that was what started it.

I lay in bed the other night, and, despite knowing better, each time I’d start to drift toward sleep, my mind would begin to focus on worries.  I know that negative thoughts should be replaced with positive, an overwriting of infected mental files, as it were.  I was fine with doing that as long as I was alert enough to hold the thought, but as my mind grew drowsy, the worries would poke their ugly heads back in.

Then, in front of me, so clear I could almost touch them, were Mom’s hands, crocheting.  I watched how her fingers worked the yarn, the in and out of her crochet hook … so soothing.  I fell asleep with Mom’s hands comforting my thoughts, and woke in the morning with the overpowering urge to do something with yarn.

I couldn’t find a crochet hook at home, nor could I find any yarn.  So, out came a pair of sharpened pencils and a ball of string and I started to knit.

Now, I find the click and slide of the aluminum knitting needles almost hypnotically relaxing.  I’ve been absorbing kitting how-tos all weekend long, and I am eager to get some real yarn, and make some real … stuff.  I’m sure, like many, I’ll start with a simple cable-stitch scarf, or some squares to sew together into a lap throw.

I never expected to find myself, at fifty two years of age, taking up knitting.  It seems so much like something Mom might do, but not me.  It works, though, and it’s good, and I’m looking forward to continuing the process.

As to the lack of time, knitting is something you can pick up in those fifteen minutes between projects, when you really don’t have time to start something lengthy.  Between finishing a website update and starting dinner, I’ll knit a few rows.  While the pasta is boiling and the garlic bread’s in the oven, I’ll complete a swatch of color.  In the evening when the family descends on the television in this room and I can’t concentrate to write, I’ll turn the heel of a sock.

It’s all good.

I thought I’d start a new category, here under my “hobby blog” section of gazehound.com.  I will photograph some of my clumsy efforts and share them here, and perhaps those who also enjoy yarn crafts might like to share, as well.  Comments are always welcome.

I have found another good excuse to take up knitting, too, though I stumbled across it accidentally while reading how-to articles on about.com.  Sarah White, in her blog on that site, talks about knitting as a way to help people lose weight.  Have a look:

http://knitting.about.com/b/2009/09/19/another-good-reason-to-knit-potential-for-easing-comfort-eating.htm

Makes sense to me!

Maybe I’ll post some photos of the new, thinner, me, as well!

Happy Sunday, everyone!

First Knitting Practice

Related posts:

1. Knit Wit: My First Scarf
2. Knit Wit: Sock Education
3. KnitWit: Sockin’ Around the Christmas Tree