Things on the knitting front have been slowly plotting through. I've been working on my Waving Lace a.k.a. "Thank you for hosting wayward mathematicians" socks and am nearly at the toe for the first one. They clearly won't be done by the end of the month but so is life. You also may have remembered me mentioning a secret project back in August. Well, it was supposed to be a surprise thing for the first day of university. While I did successfully knit it in the two weeks before classes started, I did so much knitting on it in such a little time that I couldn't bring myself to do the finishing. I am 7 ends in need of weaving away from being able to block and then show it. The plan is to do that tomorrow evening and hopefully I can sport it for Monday! What was my incentive to finish it? An entire sweaters worth of yarn purchased with the extra tutoring money I've been making. I have the pattern all picked out and I'm itching to cast on but I won't until this project is done. So close!
This past little while I've also been trying to challenge myself to push my boundaries and try some new things knitting wise. In particular in my sock knitting. I've gotten in a very comfortable groove with my dpns and can knit socks without a pattern now. Any who knows me would know that some good words for me would be "perfectionist", a bit "neurotic" and definitely "overachiever". I just hate thinking that there are all these other techniques out there that other sock knitters can do that I haven't even tried to look into. So I've set out to do some socks using other techniques. This aren't major knitting projects, but pick at when I get the time to try things out and just to learn.
The first sock is being made out of Duets "Lemonade Stand" on two US3 circular needles:
And then two socks on one circ magic loop style made out of Regia in the Kaffe Fassett line:
The socks on two circs are working out just fine. Though I am definitely not sold on the method. Though I think that may be because I'm not using the best needles and the cords are a bit long. It gets tiring pulling the knitting down the needles constantly and the extra points keep flapping and hitting eachother making insane clicking noises. Though that may be because I have yet to find a comfortable method of holding them too. But I promise to plod on. The knitting does look good and I'm not getting any ladders. And I also appreciate being able to try them on at all points while knitting (which I've always thought to be the main advantage why one would want to use two circs... oh, and it's much harder to lose a needle, lol).
The two socks magic loop are going a bit more...interesting. My cast on is too loose so there's some pretty gaping stitches. My m1's are leaving huge holes in the first round. This I attribute to it being my first time with the technique. I do have every intention of eventually ripping and re-knitting but I figure I should give myself time to get used to the method before I try again to hopefully avoid some of the folly the second time around. But my biggest problem would be that everytime I start a fresh round the two working yarns are twisted around eachother and I have to pick up one of the balls to untwist it (particularly unpleasant as I also have the yarn vomit to move at the moment too). Are there any ardent two socks at once on magic looper's out there who can tell me what I should do to avoid this? Any advice is appreciated.
I'm glad that I'm keeping myself on my knitting toes so to speak. I would also like to get my hand on Cat Bordhi's new book to try out new sock archetypes. However I'm at a bit of a road block as Chapters and Amazon.ca don't carry it. Any Canadians know how I can get my paws on it? I'm just dying to try it all out. All this talk of lettered stitch markers is too intriguing!
But it's late I should get to some sleeping. Hopefully I'll have my big project to show you Monday. Have a happy Friday all!
3 comments:
How are you doing your M1's on your magic loop socks? I just followed the only M1 method I knew for the longest time, and then I realized that I was leaving huge holes everywhere, so I did some looking around in my knitting books and found other techniques that worked MUCH better than the beginning one that I had been employing. E. Zimmerman's 'backward loop' method of making a stitch is wonderful - and also the pick-up one from the row below (I know that my official title for that method needs a bit of work to explain what it is that I actually mean!) is good - and both are virtually invisible once they're completed. If you'd like me to scan in the techniques for you from my knitting books & e-mail them your way just let me know!!!
Jenna... BREATHE!!!! there that reminder should last you a while. I can not even imagine how busy you are since I feel swamped most of the time. Just think how good it will feel when we finally get those degrees :D. You are quite ambitious with your sock knitting, i haven't even dreamt of trying anything other than dpn. I'm gonna take a wild stab at what your secret project is... is it your first sweater?? or is that still hibernating??
I sure like the lemonade yarn. Hey, bring whatever ball of yarn in to the U, I can wind it into a cake for you.
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