More bandwagons

Another week and we finally got some sunshine in the city. So after a bad weather induced knitting funk, these past few days I have been a knitting machine fueled on sunshine :)

While a lot of my knitting time was taken up by a (I can't believe I'm saying it) new project, first and foremost I must mention my sock progress for the Summer of Socks. Normally, I would've waited until tomorrow because of a bad blogging error on my part but I must get this updated for my blog reader (Hi Jen!).

My sock accomplishment of the week was the completion of my very first toe up sock! Only I made the mistake of making it on four needles (all my five needle sets were in use) and so I couldn't try it on as I was going. If I had I would've noticed that they're a bit more than snug. I am a very tight knitter and that came back to bite me. Especially the bind off. After ripping it three times because there was no way it was getting on my foot, I went up two needle sizes on the bind off, tried my hardest not to tighten anything at all and it's still on the tight side. *sigh* So I decided to wash and pin in hopes of stretching them. My fatal blogging error being that I soaked and pinned them before photographing. So here is my very first toe up sock all pinned out on the futon:

This sock was made in Cherry Tree Hill's "Brights" colourway using Wendy's general toe-up formula on size 1 dpn. I think my toe is pretty cute but my heel has some definite issues. Like bad hole issues. I'm finding the double wraps on the stitches impossible to pick up (particularly on the purl side) with the stitch and am wondering if I'm doing it right... Maybe it just takes practice in the form of the second sock? Also, you might notice some dye issues on this sock. My hank was a bit defective with some odd black patched in it. In the end I decided against returning it (though that was offered to me). Just some sock eccentricity right?

This past week I've also been working more on the cabled baby blanket (September is fast approaching!) and it is several repeats bigger than the last picture but still looks very much the same :) But the big new project is (and I'm sure anyone who's been paying attention to the latest knitting bandwagon can guess) Mystery Stole 3! The premise being that every Friday Melanie releases a "clue" in the form of a part of the pattern for a stole (except the Harry Potter release weekend). We have no clue what it will look like in the end. There's a bead option which I'm foregoing though. I started almost a week late last Thursday so Thursday through Saturday I was madly knitting up clue #1 & #2. I've tried a bit of lace but nothing like this before. Here's how it's looking so far:

Maybe it's just me but that kind of reminds me of a scarab. Perhaps an Egyptian theme? There's muchos theme guessing going on in the discussion group at the moment. The only thing we've been given is that Melanie suggests that it might not be appropriate for a wedding gift, hmm...

Well, this week will most likely include a toe for the second toe up sock and more baby blanket with the weekend for lace. I must pace myself for the following week when I road trip out to a math conference with a fellow math geek. That's 30+ hours in each direction so there will be lots to knit. And with all my projects on the needle, well, I doubt I'll be running out of things to knit on the trip :)

Hope you're enjoying the summer!