Twinkle Toes update

well I have inc the number of sts needed for my partners foot....actually I'm not doing the Twinkle Toes pattern, just using it as a guideline....but I should have probably inc the number of cast ons to 12 (total) and worked 2 inc rows before moving onto the inc row/k row combination.

Also I waited until I had 32 sts on the two needles before splitting the stitches onto the 4 needles....I found this gave a better base to the sock and helped to prevent the needles from twisting backward--I actually got stitching and found that one of the needles had twisted around making a very ugly pucker...had I been working a cable st it would have been different, but it would have been very uncomfortable on the bottom of the foot....or on the top of the foot for that matter.

These are going to be some very interesting socks--not only am I using different tachniques for each of them....I did decide to use different needle sizes. This means that one sock will be just that much bulkier than the other...but hopefully not so much as to cause a real problem...I really like the concept.

The only thing the socks will have in common is the yarn, but even it will be slightly different due to pooling effects. I loved the way it ringed around the toe area! I wish it would do the same all the way up, but it has already gone to the single row of a single color...although it does change a little sooner than before so I'm hoping it will start to swirl around.

Now to prevent having to over frog I have inserted a peice of emb floss thru the stitches/loops of the last reg row for the toe---just incase I go on and find that I do not have enough stitches I will be able to stop the unraveling and easily find the stitches to simply pick them up and replace them onto the needles.

If I do not need to frog then I can simply pull the floss out later without having to pick it out--just so long as I did not split the floss at any point without realizing it.

I will more than likely do this every few rounds just to save myself some work--by doing a little more work now---should a problem arise like a dropped needle, a dropped stitch, a picked up stitch, etc.

This technique will come especially handy when I get to the heel flap/gusset.

Because I have never done a toe-up sock before I am anticipating a lot of issues with the "wrap, turns" on the short rows. I will check out knittinghelp.com as well for a video of the procedure but I want a stand by just in case as well.

If I run into too many troubles I can always contact one of these sock groups on Yahoo groups that I belong to:

T_Socks_KAL:Townsend Current Knit A Long
TownsendSocksKnitAlong:T-Knit A Long (I love the current group photo!!)

If you aren't familiar with Jeannie Townsend, that's okay...I didn't know about her until I started looking for sock groups either...if you decide to join check out the groups files---she offers tons of free patterns there, all of her own design! Some of the members have posted their own patterns up there as well. She is very talented, I don't know why she hasn't sold any of her patterns...although she did say once that the purposes of the group was to build internet buddies not make money....so its probably because she just has a really big heart!!

If you are interested she also has a blog:

Just Jeannie

Home Sweet Home

I am so glad to be home. I enjoy going on vacation but it is always nice to get home to my full stash, um, I mean, my own bed.

We had 10 days of pure work work work. We got up on a Friday and the work didn't stop until Monday after the reunion, my mother-in-laws family reunion. I doubt there will ever be a reunion on my FIL side or even on my own parents side....which I think is really sad, but that's the fact of life.

I will try to write more personal stuff over on my yahoo blog because I have some major gossiping to do and this isn't the place to do it, the private blog is.

I did get some stitching accomplished:

I finally finished the first sock for my daughter, now the second sock will have to wait for me to finish my HSS partners socks...I am kind of disappointed with the way they turned out actually. I messed up the pick up stitches on my gusset and now I have some pretty big ventilation holes there...oh well...it is also the first time I've done a tailored sock so I was having some problems with double increases/decreases...I also got interupted so often that I had made one section too long and the other section too short.

So after I take a break from them and work on my partners socks (using a pattern type I'm used to) I will be comtemplating whether I will let the sock stand as it is now or make a new sock ripping out the stitches from the old sock as I go.

But I will wait....I may even wait until after I finish my daughters brownie socks, even though I was planning on them using the same pattern. I did find however that each sock takes one ball of Bernat Sox yarn...or about 1.75 ounces...50 grams....203 yards....186 meters.

so I was right in buying two skeins of yarn in each color. I found some hair binders at walmart while on vacation that will match them wonderfully!

I even had time to knit up something special for my partner using pearle cotton and size 0 needles...I will probably make another for her using even smaller needles but not until the kids start school so I will be nearly uninterupted, and I can put on three pairs of magnifying glasses w/o worry of being picked on.

I feel kind of bad because I came back from vacation and found that there have been some trivia questions going on the HSS2 blog that I've missed and let my house down on...time to pull out those books and keep them close to the computer I see.

Actually it reminds me alot of the trivia contests we used to have on the WB HPbbs...one person would ask a question and then whoever answered it would ask the next one, the moderator would decide the difficulty of each question and award points...only this time only McGonagall will ask the questions. Either way I've found it is helpful to keep the books handy...along with the URL for the HP lexicon!

Well football is coming on in about...ewww, NOW! Got to go.

Go Vikes!! I bleed purple.

Partner sock update

Okay so I got out my black, got out my yellow and tested/swatched the pattern that I thought would make a great Hufflepuff sock. Hmmm, tried doing it with black as the background color but it got lost in the yellow, so I switched....figured if the yellow was too overpowering I'd try the black as the main color, but it too "disappeared" with the yellow.

I really like the pattern but it just won't work with what I have....so what is it about the yellow that makes the black disappear, you might wonder?

I'm not telling! Back to the drawing board.

I'm not giving up just yet....there's a few other patterns I thought would look great too that might work out better actually!

Kids and Knitting do NOT mix

I love my kids, I really do.

I was in the bedroom (where the HD tv is) and I was working on my current sock...see previous photos...when the phone rang and I put down my work. I had just gotten to the heel flap so had switched from my size 2 dpn's to my size 1 circs, figured I would make life easy on myself and if I put the work down for a long period of time I could slip the stitches down onto the cable. Good Idea, right?

I'm not used to working with circs....I only got them because I was going to try making socks using the Magic Loop system but couldn't figure it out...so there they were laying on the bed.....next to my 11 yr old son....who was watching television with me....apparently he is not the fan of the news because as soon as I got into the quick conversation on the phone he decided to get off the bed....the call lasted all of 50 seconds....literally, if even that long.

Son and I passed each other thru the door...when there on the floor lay...you guessed it---the circs....no sock....just the circs!

I had cataract surgery about 4 years ago, at age 38, so my eyesight is not the best but even I could see I had a BIG problem on my hands.

So I popped on my magnifying glasses over my regular glasses (it makes my entire lens the same prescrib as my bi-focals) and proceded to slip as many of the loops back onto the circ without loosing them....this is not easy for anyone, but try to do it while fighting the urge to find the kid that did it (I know it was my fault for not sliding down those stitches)

{sighs} so I get all the stitches on, give it a gentle tug just to make sure...a run is easy to fix at this point, but {wiping sweat from brow} luckily I didn't have any runs--all the stitches were saved. Right??

WRONG! I started to do the next knit row. It was great the first half of the heel flap==not a problem EVERY single stitch was twisted correctly and right where it belonged, but once I passed the marker that's when the problems began.

1. most of the stitches are actually the ones from the previous row, or a mix of the previous row stitch and the present row stitch.
2.still hadn't dropped any rows, no runs...well that's good news at least...but I have stitches where I caught PART of them...which means I have split the yarn...which weakens it. On the heel this is not a good thing, in fact its a very, very bad thing.
3. hubby came home and now I haven't had time to straighten out the mess....only reason I'm writing this blog now is because I'm waiting for my stroganoff to meld together (keyboards are easier to clean than knitting while its on the needles).

So now I am sitting here dreading having to get out the crochet hook and redoing 15 stitches so that I am catching all the yarn fibers that should be there----and seperate the previous row from the current one.

You know the devil on my shoulder is saying "just stitch it the way it is, no one will notice the heel"....but I just can't do that....{sigh}

On the bright side I told my daughter, they are her socks, what had happened and that I would have to fix her heel and she said "on my leg or on the sock?" Maybe she knew I could have used that good chuckle about then.

On My Needles

Not too shabby for two days worth of work and doing all the other stuff that has to be done at the cabin as well, huh? This is the test for the "Arachne Sock Calculator" that takes your measurements and makes a simple sock pattern for you. It can be found at:
http://www.panix.com/~ilaine/socks.html
This pattern is great for self striping yarns like the Bernat Sox that I'm using in Hot Tamale! I also thought I would challenge myself and broke out the size 0's for the ribbing, a single row in size 1 to step up to the size 2 dpns....normally I hate working with anything smaller than a 3 but I like the fabric made with the smaller sizes much better (I even make my washclothes with size 4s instead of the 7 or8 that's recommended).

I purchased the yarn last year when I was planning on making tons of socks for my niece who we dubbed "Dobby" because whenever you asked her what she wanted for Christmas or her Birthday the answer was always the same---SOCKS!!

The Sox yarn is made of 60% acrylic and 40% nylon which gives it a wonderful memory, it doesn't hurt my hands like wool tends to, but I know many sock enthusiasts are just dieing now yelling "NO USE WOOL"...I'm sorry my hands just can't take it, but then I've only used LB Wool-Ease yarn so who knows what other brands will be like.

Actually this is the second attempt at these socks....I was almost finished with the leg last week when I realized that I had been marking my rows wrong and I hadn't put enough rows before the decrease began and then had too many rows between the decreases. So I frogged it all and restarted it last Friday night and churned this much work out on Saturday (sunday was a travel day so nothing got done....I can't knit in the car).