June 2007

Monkey Magic

Sunday, June 24, 2007

I must be the last knitter on the planet not to have done Monkeys, Jaywalkers, or a Clapotis. Well, not anymore: my first project for Summer of Socks 2007 is a pair of bright banana-yellow socks that I've dubbed Midsummer Monkeys. They're modded, of course, since I like to work toe-up but Monkeys nonetheless. The yarn is German sock yarn from a company called Max Gründl, Hot Socks Laola, colorway #653.

This is what I had 12 hours into SOS2007. That's not 12 hours of knitting -- although I would've been happy with that. :D The starting time, 5 a.m. EST, was 12 noon for me so I cast on on my lunch break on Thursday. The pic above was taken at about 12 midnight on Midsummer Day.

Here's the situation 24 hours later, on Friday night. Some progress, sure, but not as much as I'd hoped.

And here's Sunday afternoon. I got sidetracked with baking. :) Mmm, sock knitting and cake! (I'm sensing a yellow theme here.) My unofficial goal was to finish the first pair over the first weekend but looks like I'm not gonna make it. You can't really see it in the picture but I've already finished the heel on the first sock and I'm currently working on the heel flap of the second one. As far as goals go, I try to...

• Finish at least a pair -- hopefully two pairs -- per each of the three months of the -along.
• Try different yarns and fibers. I don't have a big stash, not even sock yarn, so I want to try out stuff I've never worked with before. Handpainted stuff, bamboo, soy-protein fibers, stuff like that. And hopefully accrue a decent size sock yarn stash for the winter. ;)
• Knit some of the really popular and famous sock patterns I haven't tried yet, like Pomatomus, Baudelaire, and yes, those Jaywalkers too. :)
• Knit some intricate cabled socks.
• Enter the design contest! With cabled socks, perhaps?
• Knit for someone else other than myself. I'm a really bad gift knitter so I want to work on that and maybe finish some Christmas presents early. :)

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My Latest Purchases

Monday, June 18, 2007

Reading international knitting blogs has infected me with taught me two new obsessions I never knew before: drooling over handpainted sock yarn and coveting stitch markers. I've never needed stich markers before. I'm a pretty practical gal when it comes to knitting supplies and accessories, and I've been perfectly happy with safety pins or paper clips. Now all those glass beads and cute charms make me go "ooh, shiny" and I want to buy them all. (Oh, wee ones, how you tempt me.) I've also become obsessed with the idea of making stitch markers although I've never ever tried jewelry making or bead crafting in my life. Go figure.

Last weekend my bf took me to a manly tool store and helped me pick pliers for my latest hobby. Awww. I also ordered beads and other materials online and I hope they'll arrive before Friday so I can fiddle with them over the long midsummer weekend. (No, wait, I'm supposed to be knitting socks...)

I've been drooling over tupasvilla's gorgeous cable hoodie (pattern available only in Finnish -- sorry!), and I'd thought about picking it up as a fall project once the season's new yarns and colors are revealed. On the same trip as I bought the pliers, we stopped by a general discount store to pick up some other stuff. I popped by their yarn deparment -- which is usually nothing special and carries the same boring Novita yarns as every damn store here -- and might have squealed a bit when I saw this:

The same yarn as in the pattern, in the same color, a gorgeous deep, dark teal -- at half price! It must be a clearance sale to get rid of last season's colors. I may have gone a little bonkers and bought more than enough to make the cardi. Just in case, you know? So I don't run out of yarn, right? Right? My bf let out an incredulous laughter when he saw my horde: 1 kg or 20 balls. But it was half the price! ;)

I haven't had much time to knit today but I did this: three freshly potted plants. Now, if someone could clean up the bathroom floor...

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I Can See Clearly Now, the Rain Is Gone

Friday, June 15, 2007

A view from my window on Thursday afternoon. What do I mean the rain is gone? Not that kind of rain.

The Rainy Day Socks are DONE and I'm really pleased with them. :) The lace stitch pattern is really simple, knits up fast, but looks cute.

The yarn is typical Novita and nothing spectacular, but it compliments the stitch pattern nicely. It also behaved nicely and didn't pool. Instead, I have these funky ladderstep/lightning-shaped stripes in the sock soles. :)

Now I'll take a week's pause from sock knitting (although I did swatch a bit lot for my next project) because... Socks of Summer 2007 kicks of June 21st! I already have the first pattern and yarn picked out but I'm gonna have to do some tweaking with the pattern cause apparently my gauge is way off (that's why the furious swatching).

Oh, I also changed the URL for the blog but you shouldn't even notice it. Still, if something's not working right, give me a holler.

Ack, I have a kink in my circular.

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Ravelry Quicktip: Queue Button with Icon

Monday, June 11, 2007

I've been sucked in by Ravelry. I got my invite last Saturday night and, uh, didn't have any trouble figuring out what to do for the rest of the weekend. ;) Holy crap is it addictive! I could gush about the site for pages but I'm not gonna. Let's just say that from the time I heard my Gmail go *pling* late Saturday night I entered into a time warp and didn't get out until it was 10:30 p.m. Sunday night and I realized I had to get to work on Monday morning.

By far one of my favorite features is the Queue where you can put all the patterns -- online or offline -- that you want to make some day, order them around, add deadlines and whatnot. The web elves have also done a handy dandy bookmarklet you can add to your browser's toolbar so you can -- get this -- add any pattern on the web directly to your queue without searching for it in Ravelry. Nice!

I already have so much crap stuff on my Firefox toolbar that it's getting difficult to find the right button without visual cues. Unfortunately, Firefox doesn't allow you to add icons directly but there's a way to work around it. Here's how.

Step 1: Go to www.ravelry.com and drag the green favicon onto the toolbar. Firefox adds a generic icon cause it's stupid that way.

Step 2: Click on the button once and Firefox should pull the correct icon from Ravelry. Here we go!

Step 3: Go to your queue but now drag the green bookmarklet onto your toolbar.

Step 4: Right click on the bookmarklet button, choose Properties, and copy all the stuff in the Location box.

Step 5: Now right click on the Ravelry quick link, the one with the green icon, and choose Properties. In the location box, delete the address and paste in the stuff you copied in the previous step. In the Name box, add a description you want.

Step 6: Click OK, and delete the temporary bookmarklet (the one without the icon). Now you have a queue button with a cute icon. :)

When you come across a pattern you like, just click on the button, add in a few details in the box that pops up, and it'll be automatically placed to the bottom your queue.

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DROPS Fall/Winter 2007/2008 Vote

Tuesday, June 6, 2007

Norwegian yarn company Garnstudio has posted more than a hundred (seriously, I counted them: there's 128) pictures of patterns that could make it to their Fall/Winter 2007/2008 DROPS Collection. Now, if you're not familiar with their work, what they do is they post all their collections as free patterns -- in eight languages, no less -- on their website. So who gets to decide which patterns are included? We do! :)

Each visitor has 10 votes to choose from the 128, and about 60 or so will make it to the final collection. Mind you, the translations take a while to appear but still, now's our time to make an impact.

To tell the truth, most of the patterns underwhelmed me. They look bulky, oversized, and outdated: think mid-90's. It could just be the weather, though. I'm finding it hard to get excited about warm wintery clothes just now. But I did manage to find some really cute designs. These get my vote:

A couple of really simple designs. The cardigan (ee-131) is cute but I'm really liking the green self-patterning yarn (fa-005). Works amazingly well on sweater. Who woulda thunk?

I like cabled cardigans and these three are just so cute. The purple one (sa-020) is my absolute favorite. Gorgeous! I'm willing to bet money -- nay, yarn! -- that it's going to be in the collection. :) The white one (z-281) has what looks like sideways cables in the mid-section. I'd like to see that with long sleeves. The red one (z-284_278) looks like it's knitted entirely sideways. I'd probably make changes to the collar cause it just looks huge. And is that a woolly dress underneath? Ugh. Poor girl, she must be sweltering.

More cables! A sideways shrug (u-520) and some seriously gorgeous cables on the scarf (x-325).

I've been looking for a pattern for felted clogs/slippers (ee-155-a) and these are awesome. Are they knitted or crocheted? I can't tell. There are 3 clog designs but I really like these open-heeled ones. I think these would make cute, easy and fast Christmas presents. It's never too early to plan ahead, eh?

I'm also a sock addict (who isn't? ;) so I was glad to see some -- not many but some -- sock patterns. Stripey knee-high socks (fa-010) of the same self-patterning yarn, Fabel (OMG! they have yummy new colors!), as the green sweater, and -- excuse me while I try not to faint -- cabled knee-highs (u-524). Love love LOVE these. Must have yummy socks.

Just so you know, I'm not affiliated with Garnstudio, just a really big fan of their patterns. Vote your favorites here!

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Dye Another Day

Sunday, June 3, 2007

Better late than never. As promised, tales of my experiments with dyeing yarn with ordinary baking and cooking stuff.

My first dye experiment was with red and blue food coloring liquid. I managed to create pastel-colored self-striping yarn (for socks!) but the colors were not what I was going after.

For my second try I wanted to try using organic materials for dyeing: turmeric powder and hibiscus "tea" (infusion really). This was definitely not a raging success since most of colors washed off into muted fall colors and different shades of brown. This yarn needs an interesting stitch pattern to spice it up. I'm thinking about maybe Pomatomus. Or kew. Pomatomus. kew. Can't decide. :P

The third try was with food coloring, again, because I found it much more easier and faster than the "natural" foodstuff dyeing. This also turned into a tutorial on dyeing self-striping, self-patterning yarn. And I sooo wanna make Jaywalkers with this yarn. By now it's obvious I'm suffering from sock addiction, and I did manage to sign in with Summer of Socks 2007. Just look at all the pretty pictures on the Flickr group. Woohoo, my first KAL ever! :D

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