Hosed

Scottische Kilt Hose, from Folk Socks by Nancy Bush
Brown Sheep Naturespun Sport
2.25 mm needles
calf shaping adjusted for the shape of my own calves
toes less pointy than the pattern says



I'm still not sure when I'll wear them, but I'm very pleased with them. Today's late morning photoshoot fashion statement was denim shorts, a yellow tank top, and kilt hose. I don't think that will do for anything but private, in-house photoshoots. I guess I'll have to find a plaid skirt somewhere that complements the socks without making me look like I'm trying to relive the Catholic school girl days I never had.


These socks are finished because I realized that working on the Autumn Color Cardigan was not fun anymore. It will be fun again, but there was no way I was going to have it completed for the county fair and enjoy the process. It's on a short hiatus right now, while I work on other things.

One of those other things is making yarn. I had some problems plying the singles I posted about a couple of weeks ago, and have bought a nostepinne, which might help with the process. I was assured by friends that trying to ply singles from the inside and outside of a center pull ball is not a beginner skill, and that I shouldn't be upset that I had so much trouble with it. A nostepinne might help me tension the yarn better as I pull from the inside and outside of the ball of singles, and I think I'll give it a try this weekend, after I cut off the tangle of frustration I have sitting between my ball of yarn and few yards of ugly 2-ply on the spindle. Right now my goal is to at least know that I know how to ply reasonably well, even if it takes me the rest of my singles to get to that point. It would be nice to have some reasonably okay 2-ply yarn to knit up from that first spindleful, but it will be even nicer to know that I'll be able to create that decent 2-ply on future spinning endeavors. And there's an exciting package on my way from overseas with fibers for me to try out, so I have a lot of motivation to learn how to ply. I don't want to waste that roving, which is a generous gift from a friend.


On the hat pattern... I ran into some trouble with Payloadz, and was so astounded at their terrible and rude customer service that I refuse to use them any longer. Right now this leaves me with 2 options: to use another service that charges $5 a month, or to email each purchaser individually. I think I'm going to do the latter for now, just because I am making so few sales that $5 a month might be all I make. That would leave me with nothing, or very little if I happen to make 2 or 3 sales in a month. I am working on another pattern, and once that is up, I'll rethink things again. Right now sales are still down because I just haven't had the energy to figure out how to set up my Paypal account to do these sales directly. I know there is at least one person who emailed me about buying the pattern. I have not forgotten you, and hope to get things working in a week or so. Thanks so much for your patience.

delayed gratification

That's a lot of sock. It's knit in Brown Sheep Naturespun sport on 2.25 mm. needles. The shaping is altered to fit my leg. I'll go into more detail when the pair is done, but a word of advice to anyone knitting these, or other knee socks: Determine your decrease (or increase) rate by measuring the sock when it is on your leg. My sock is significantly shorter when on my leg than when not, because of the horizontal stretch. If I'd gone by the flat measurements, there's no way this sock would fit me.






I had every intention of getting a lot of sleeve knitting done this weekend. I knit the hem on my smaller needles, wrote out my increases cheat sheet, dug out my 3.25 mm. DPNs, and saw this:



(My needles aren't really this pretty. I was just playing with my photo editing software.)

That's a Clover DPN on the left, and the SRK The Collection circ I used for the sweater body on the right. I don't want to knit with those Clover needles. Not only will it be annoying, but there's a chance it will be bad for my gauge. I think the grey Inox needles might be closer to the SRK needles in terms of pointiness and taper. Maybe I'll run to the fabric store during lunch tomorrow to see if those will do. I think they carry Inox DPNs.

It might be a low-volume knitting week for me. I'm going away Thursday and Friday (and maybe Saturday), and want to spend more of my free time this week on the writing I've been neglecting. I was in a generally crabby mood last week, for no apparent reason, and need to figure out a good way to snap out of it. I thought that way would be to knit 6 beautiful inches of sleeve this weekend, but as even my knitting needles are conspiring against my pursuit of happiness, I'll take the hint from the universe and try to be a more well rounded person. (Sage, if you have my muse, send her home!)

eighteen

This photo was taken a row or two after I finally incorporated the eighteenth (of eighteen) colors into the sweater. I guess this counts as a milestone.

I've had some questions related to using so many colors in one sweater. For those of you who are wondering, I'm spit splicing (so there aren't a kajillion ends to weave in), and there are only two colors used per row. Furthermore, no more than one color ever changes from one row to the next.


I was just talking to a friend about my knitting, and mentioned my knee-socks in progress. She had no idea what I was talking about at first, and I realized that I only blogged about them once, and very briefly. Here's an updated photo of my Schottische Kilt Hose:



That's still the first one. I'm mostly working on it at knitting group once a week, so the progress is slow. Because the sweater is going more slowly than I anticipated, and since I want it to be completed by the end of July (in time for the county fair), I'm avoiding the temptation to knit the socks more than once a week. Perhaps I'll pick up the pace again once I'm more secure in the progress of the sweater. I'll be out of town (and not knitting) for a couple of weeks in July, and I don't want to have to do silly things like pull all-nighters just to get the sweater done in time for the fair. It should ideally be a leisurely, non-stressful process.





While I have your attention, I have a third topic to discuss. (I promise that "eighteen" does not refer to the number of topics in this post. This is the last one, I swear.) Becki recently sent me a beautiful skein of sportweight Morehouse Merino yarn. It's a soft single ply, and I have 220 yards of it. I think that it would make a great scarf, and I've been contemplating making a mini-Cozy. The problem is that I have no sense of whether I could get a decent length scarf with the amount of yarn I have. For those of you with more experience knitting lace scarves with sportweight yarn, what do you think? Could I get a respectable length (say, 48" or longer) 6" or 7" wide Cozy out of 220 yards of sportweight? Or should I give up hope and think of another use for the yarn?

what I wear under my kilt

Picot!

I'm just a bit overly excited about my first picot hem. It's attached to a fledgling Schottishe Kilt Hose, from Nancy Bush's Folk Socks. The hem was a lot easier to tack down than I anticipated. I loosely cast on using a German Twisted cast-on, and found it very easy to pick up loops from that to knit together with hem stitches. I always thought that it would be a very fiddly and frustrating process, and while it definitely took some time, it was easy and straightforward. What a pleasant surprise. I see more picot in my future.

Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while (or who have read the archives) might have a good guess as to what the yarn is. Yup, it's my old standby Brown Sheep Naturespun sportweight, in a natural cream color. The same yarn I used in Ingeborg and the Komi hat and mittens. These socks, which are knee socks (my first!), should use up the majority of my Naturespun in this color. Of course, my Naturespun stash has so far tried to impersonate a bottomless pit. For all I know, I'll finish the kilt hose and find that I've actually gained a few yards of yarn. I don't know what they put in the water in Nebraska, but a small part of me fears that if I don't always have a project going in Naturespun, my house will soon turn into the set of Little Shop of Horrors. (<--- Rachel will agree that talking about musicals is all the rage in blogland as of late. I will follow her lead, call us trendsetters, and offer a meat pie of dubious origin to anyone who disagrees. Show tunes are the new Clapotis. please?)