WiP Wednesday

Oh yeah. The Blog. Right.

 I feel like the old Johnny Cash song “I’ve Been Everywhere” rather accurately describes my 2013 to this point. But now I can stay in one place for a little while. I have multiple finished projects to show you, but it’s Wednesday, so for now I shall show you my WiPs.

As has become custom, I started a pair of socks while at the Women’s College World Series.


I started it the first day I was in Oklahoma. And that was pretty much the last “normal” thing about the 2013 WCWS. What a strange week it was.

Once I got home, I started on a project I’d been wanting to take on since the Pittsburgh Knit and Crochet Festival in March. I worked in the SpaceCadet Creations booth, and wore one of the shop samples while working in the booth. I got so many compliments on that Lintilla that I decided to make my own!


Yes, I still love garter stitch. I’ll be garter stitching right along for quite a while, and yes! I’m happy about that!

WiP Wednesday: Snoozefest

I’ve been a one-project girl this week. Next time you see this Mondo Pulli, it will have all of its ends woven in, and will be modeled on a human. And yeah, it’s finished other than end-weaving. Which is why it’s inside-out.


I did cruise through a few stockingette rounds on the Musique socks the other night. I’m sure they’ll get a little more air time in the coming week.


Otherwise, gratuitous puppy picture:


Sydney really didn’t want to be photogenic today, so this is what you get.

And, all the stonework is finished and it looks fantastic. Front walk:


The repointing on the house is done too. Unless you’re really looking closely and trying to distinguish the old mortar from the new, you can’t tell where the new stuff is. Oh, the new stuff is smooth. The original mortar has larger sand particles


So that’s about it at casa DPUTiger. Not very exciting, but it’s the best I’ve got. Have a great week!

WiP Wednesday: Vacation Knitting

Hi! There actually has been some knitting going on. My Musique socks got some good air time at the Jammers Lucy-Desi’s game. I turned the heel on a trip to the Quilt Farm in Boston, N.Y., with my mom on Tuesday and finished the decreases last night.


I split for the sleeves on my Mondo Pulli last Wednesday, just before we left for the Lake. I’ve knit about another inch since then, and I’m finished with the third ball of yarn.


Some of the other “same old” stuff is happening because I’m at the Lake. I managed to take a 90-minute walk in the rain yesterday and here’s the glass I came up with


It actually didn’t rain all that hard and the “storm” cleared out pretty quickly. And yet? Another less-than-stunner sunset. A few moments after this photo was taken, the sun hit cloud cover well before hitting the water. Meh.


Since the Lake was fairly high yesterday afternoon and into this morning, it was a banner day for beach glass. I walked to the State Park again (guessing that’s about a 6-mile round trip, it took me over two hours) and had a pocket completely full of glass when I got home. Oh, and sunburn on my arms. Oops.


The best part about being up here is that I have shiny things to keep me motivated while getting my exercise. Yes, I am part magpie. There is no way in hell I could walk for 2 hours, 30 minutes in the gym.

WiP Wednesday: This-n-That

Lots of little going on around here.

Baby Surprise Jacket is just a few buttonhole rows away from finished. But who knows when I’ll pick it up again. It’s just not calling my name at the moment.


The Musique socks are getting a bit of air time. Watching the colors go by and enjoying the base yarn remind me of why I do as much as I can to support Roxanne at Zen Yarn Garden and her work. Love!


The minute I finished my CCS vest, I had an overwhelming urge to start another sweater. So I did!


It’s the Mondo Cable Pulli in The Fibre Company Terra. Wild Clary colorway. Loving it. And hoping it fits. I picked a size that’s a bit small, planning to shrink into it by the time it’s cool enough to wear it. I have 16 balls of yarn, and just started my third after picture taking.

Oh, and there’s another big WiP around here. We’re just about done with a really amazing stone mason working on our house. Spot re-pointing on the entire house. First time that’s been done on a 60-year-old house, so no too bad. He’s also re-setting the middle 80% of our front walk. This pic is from this morning when there were a very few stones left to fill back in. They’re all pointed now (that means there’s mortar between the stones) and they’ll finish up in the morning. It looks fantastic.

WiP Wednesday

One new project this week. I needed a plain pair of socks to keep me entertained while working a fundraiser golf tournament on Monday. I’m on a Zen Yarn Garden kick, so here’s some Musique from the Art Walk club. Subscriptions are currently open, and it’s a month-to-month club, so there’s no big outlay of cash or long subscription.


In other news, I’m Baby Surprising along. I need to do a little knitting tonight at Hurricane Knitters to be ready for the third and final class tomorrow, but that shouldn’t be a problem.


And, in other news, the fronts of my Celtic Cabled Slipover are finished. I’m not going to run out of yarn (something I was worried about, which was one of the reasons I didn’t lengthen the vest before splitting for the neck and back/front). I’ll do a full detail of this pattern when it’s done. I think it’s going to fit just fine, but there are a few things I’m still puzzling over as to how the finished project is going to come together. Rest assured you’ll see/hear all about it when it’s time for the FO-to shoot.


Still crushing my to-do list. I’ll try to write a little bit of that tomorrow. Have a great week!

Softball Socks 2010 • Now with More NCAA Championships!

This is the third straight year that I’ve knit “softball socks.” These were started while I was attending the Women’s College World Series in Oklahoma City, although it was too damn hot to do more than a tiny bit of knitting while I was there. Basically, I cast on the first toe, got the sock into the round and put it away until I could spend some quality time with my good friend Mr. Air Conditioning.

Turtle Daddy sock blockers!

These socks rekindled both my sock knitting mojo and my love for a plain stockingette sock.


I don’t need pattern stitches to keep my interest. I think there’s a beauty and serenity to just going “knit knit knit” in the round. Nothing changes while life swirls around you. Although I did change needles for the cuffs, going up one needle size to make these socks easy on/off.

Toe pic!

I used my very favorite toes for this pair, the garter toe. They could not possibly be easier to execute, and they fit perfectly every single time.

New Pathways arch increases/heel turn

I used my Zen Yarn Garden “Represent” yarn, which was Roxanne’s entry into last summer’s Dye for Glory contest. My BruWins certainly did “Represent” while I was knitting these socks. Softball won its 13th national championship and baseball has played itself into the NCAA Championship Series for the first time in program history (best-of-three begins tonight against South Carolina)

I loved watching the rainbow of colors pass over my needles, as you can see on the bind-off.

Once again, I used Jeny’s Surprisingly Stretchy Bind-Off for these socks. I love how the colors flow on variegated yarns when I use this bind-off. Plus, it does exactly what it says it will. It’s very stretchy!

All in all, I’m very pleased. And yeah, you can expect another ZYG pair of plain ‘ol stockingette socks up next on the sock needles.

Softball Socks 2010

Pattern: Riverbed Master from New Pathways for Sock Knitters by Cat Bordhi
Yarn: Zen Yarn Garden Superwash Sock
Colorway: Represent
Yardage: 430 yards
Needles: US 1/2.25mm for feet, US 1.5/2.5mm for cuffs. 16” Hiya Hiya with “2 circs” method
Started: 6 June 2010
Finished: 27 June 2010

More of the Same

Hi there! I had planned to get a TNNA post up this week, but Monday and Tuesday both kind of went kerplooey for various and assorted reasons. So here it is on Wednesday and I’m feeding the blog during the USA-Algeria World Cup match. I blame any typos on my very split attention.

So I finished the first Softball Sock and started the second one. Currently just a few rounds away from heel turn #2


And I’m also moving along on the Baby Surprise Jacket for a store sample. I want to put more time into this, but I try to remember that since I can’t work on my socks at the store, I shouldn’t work on the BSJ during “my” time. But I still do, a little bit.


Finally, since we haven’t seen her in a while (and she was outside while I was taking WiP Wednesday photos), Sydney says hello!

Hi, puppy!

Smurf Killers

The best thing I can say about these socks is that they are finished.



I had to use a lot of the tools in my arsenal to finish these socks. I’ve previously showed you how my hands looked after knitting on these socks. I got really discouraged at the midway point (one sock done) because the vibrant colors that I had loved in the skein were so muddy in the finished sock



Well, after I finished the Nephew Tulip last Friday, I only had one WiP left on my radar. The Smurf Killer socks (named because Cristi said my blue hands looked like I had choked a smurf). I cast on the toe for the second sock on Friday night and got the garter square finished and got the sock into the round. But my index finger was getting shredded where the yarn is tensioned just before my right needle tip.



So I busted out some band-aids and they took the beating. I managed to finish the second sock in three (long) sittings. By the Monday afternoon session, my middle finger was also getting shredded, so the far-right band-aid was on that

No, I don’t normally save used band-aids, but these were used to protect my skin instead of to cover something icky. I took a picture because I wanted to fully document these socks and tossed them.


See the big “clean” strip on my index finger and a similar less-obvious one on my middle finger? That’s where the band-aids were.



I use a ladder-style row counter to keep track of my two increases every three rows. This one started out white. It got tossed too.


Toe Pic!

Garter toes



New Pathways heel turn following Riverbed increases



About an inch of 2x2 ribbing that I started when I realized I was about to hit the midpoint of the skein. I should have checked the yardage more carefully on this skein. The cuffs are much shorter than my usual because of yardage.

The dyer did contact me on Ravelry about my comments on this yarn. It’s the indigo that was cracking and turning my hands blue. Friction does that. She assured me that a bath for the finished socks would leave me with blue hands but not blue feet. And honestly, I could have dealt with the blue hands, the powder-blue suds when I washed my hands after knitting and the fact that the smurf-choking look made this project NON-portable if the yarn hadn’t shredded my hands while I was knitting with it.

Nothing is for everyone. This yarn obviously was not for me. So I’ll end where I started. The best thing I can say about these socks are that they’re finished.

Smurf Killers

Pattern: Riverbed Master
Source: New Pathways for Sock Knitters by Cat Bordhi
Size: mine (8.5” circumference, 9.5” foot length)
Yarn: Earthly Hues Saplings
Color: Ring Around the Moon
Source: The Loopy Ewe
Needles: 2.75mm needles for foot and heel, 3.0mm for cuff to make it go faster.
Started: 15 July 2009
Finished: 31 August 2009

Spirals!

Houston, we have a finished project!

I cast on these socks at the NCAA Division II Softball Championship in Salem, Va. I needed a plain stockingette sock that I could knit successfully while still keeping most of my attention on the (30) games taking place in front of me over a two-plus week span.

Arch increases on the insteps

This is my second pair of Spiraling Master Coriolis socks from New Pathways for Sock Knitters. I like knitting them because there is just the tiniest possible bit of “pattern” which comes in handy to keep my attention, but it’s still brainless and I don’t have to look AT ALL.

Yes, the spiral continuing into the rib is intentional.

As this is my second pair, I expanded the cuff of the socks a bit as they reached the point where my calf started widening.

Standard New Pathways heels

I’ve done a ton of these socks. I can pick up and put down the heel turn, no problem. Most of the time.

I have no idea how I got the heel turn that f’d up!

Notice there’s about four rows missing between the one stitch that’s dangling and the stack on my left needle. I have no clue how I did that, and since the wraps had been picked up already, it wasn’t worth trying to fix it. That was the second sock and the heel was ripped out and started again.

These socks suffered through multiple week-long knitting hiatus stretches, most recently during last week’s car debacle. I just wasn’t in a knitting mood (or crafting mood for that matter) while I was at the Lake last week.

Yep. The left socks is more blue. The right sock is more red. Three cheers for handpainted yarn!

I picked them back up when I got to Bloomin for work on Thursday and finished them off on Saturday at the store. They got me through Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals (a much better project than the Postwar Mittens I knit … and tinked … during the Super Bowl) and served their purpose nicely in softball press boxes in Virginia and Oklahoma.

2009 Softball Socks

Pattern: Spiraling Master Coriolis
Source: New Pathways for Sock Knitters
Size: mine (8.5” circumference, 9.5” length)
Yarn: Pagewood Farm Alyeska
Color: Crayons
Source: Wolf Creek Yarns, Grove City, Pa. (Purchased at 2009 Pittsburgh K&C Festival)
Needles: US 1.5/2.5mm Hiya Hiya 16” circulars
Started: 22 May 2009
Finished: 27 June 2009
Mods: Increased a bit as I got near the top of the cuff, then did a 2x2 rib instead of garter ridges atop the leg

Note to the curious: Yes, the coriolis socks are a challenge to get on/off of my feet. That's probably because I'm a tight knitter and prefer bulletproof socks. But I've never felt them bind or be in any way uncomfortable once they're on. New Pathways rides again!

Philosopher’s House Socks

These may just be my favorite New Pathways socks.


Meet my Philosopher’s House Socks!


There’s nothing particularly special about this architecture. Well, other than the usual Cat Bordhi genius.

Colors are most true in this shot

They are of the Upstream architecture, the only architecture that has yielded a failed sock, so it was a point of contention that I needed to have a pair of finished Upstreams.


These were my final Summer of Socks pair. They are worsted weight and went very quickly, but I still didn’t manage to start, let alone finish, another pair in time for SOS, which ended on Labor Day.


I’m seeing these as very comfy house socks, and they are a pattern I will most likely knit again.

Philosopher’s House Socks

Pattern: Philosopher’s House Socks (Ravelry) from New Pathways for Sock Knitters
Yarn: Dream in Color Classy
Color: Dusky Aurora (1 skein)
Source: Bloomin’ Yarns
Needles: KnitPicks Options, US 5/3.75mm, Magic Loop
Size: US Women’s 8.5 (for me!)
Started: 9 August 2008
Finished: 20 August 2008
Mods: None! I did use master numbers, but no other changes.
Summer of Socks Counter: 4 of 4
Special Thanks: to my FO-tographer, Michelle, at Bloomin' Yarns!

SOS #3: Black Socks of Doom

I finished these over a month ago. You’d think that the recipient sleeps in Siberia, not the other side of my bed! These socks were horribly baggy on all existing sock blockers, so it took quite a while to get daylight, camera, socks and Ginormous Ski Feet all in the same place at the same time.

Meet the Black Socks of Doom.


These are knit for a U.S. Men’s size 11.5 wide foot. Or, as I described on Ravelry, “Really Big.”


They’re a nice plain vanilla pattern and they went quickly


I did have a “yarn emergency” when I realized that I was either going to knit ankle socks (which the Hubster would never ever wear) or that I was going to need a second skein. Thankfully, the Gourmet Yarn Co. in Oklahoma City was very helpful and solved my crisis.


Even though this yarn isn’t completely monochrome, they are Chris-Approved.


I used Judy’s Magic Cast-On, and this was the pair where I really learned in spades that tight is bad with JMCO. If you do the cast-on tightly, you wind up with Mouse Ears. Judy even got a blog post out of my question about preventing this problem! Yes, I will keep this clearly in mind in the future!

Black Socks of Doom

Pattern: Riverbed Master Pattern from New Pathways for Sock Knitters
Yarn: Fiesta Boomerang (1.25 skeins)
Color: Onyx
Source: The Gourmet Yarn Company, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Needles: KnitPicks US2/3.0mm (yes, I like dense socks)
Started: 8 July 2008
Finished: 26 July 2008
Summer of Socks Counter: Pair #3

Mods: None, but I wanted to share these numbers with you, so that my knitterly friends can be impressed. I used Cat’s Master Numbers for these socks. B, the length of foot number, was 11”. C, the width of foot, was 10”. Now do you see why they’re the Black Socks of Doom?