Almost There

I've finished the back!  I've just got the front to do, then joining the shoulders, weaving in ends and doing an edging on the arms and neck.  I think the pattern calls for a knitted edging, but I might do a crocheted one instead.  I'm still on track to finish by midnight, Monday night.

Have a great weekend!

And Now, For Something Completly Different...

I've been working on a project for a couple of weeks now, but for some reason it hasn't made it to the blog yet!  Right before Caleb came home, ESK announced a Flash-Craft-A-Long for sleeveless tops.  I ignored it at the time, because we were busy preparing to head to Galveston to move Caleb out of the dorm.  Once we got back and had settled him back in, I took another look at it.  We had until May 31 to finish it and since I had been thinking about knitting one of the designs in the bundle of patterns they had chosen, I decided, "Why not?"  I ordered a few skeins of Juniper Moon Farm's Zooey DK and cast on!

I'm only a few inches away from the place where I'll divide the front and back to do the armholes and neckline and I hope to start that later today.  The pattern I'm using is the Notched Hem Tank Top from Purl Soho.  I'm knitting it in the Sloop colorway of Juniper Moon Farm's Zooey DK, which is a cotton and linen blend yarn.  I think I'll be fine, time wise, but I should probably stay focused on it until it's done if I intend to get it all finished by the end of the month.  And hey!  It's not a sock!

A Finished Sock, But Not Really

I finished my first Vanilla is the New Black sock.  This is an interesting construction and one of the reasons I wanted to try it is that I heard it fits well for those with high arches.  I have high arches and while I've never had trouble fitting a sock with a traditional heel flap, I figured I'd give it a try.  On US 1's (2.25mm) needles, I get about nine stitches to the inch and a 64 stitch sock usually works perfectly depending on the stitch pattern (cables and traveling stitches both decrease elasticity while most laces and ribbings make a sock more elastic).  Naturally, when I started this sock, I cast on for the 64 stitch size.  When I finished the sock and tried it on, I realized that there was a problem.  The lower leg/heel/upper foot area is too big.  Not just a little loose, but seriously floppy with extra sock fabric.  The leg and the foot themselves fit fine.  So, while it's an interesting construction and I'm glad I knit it, I decided to frog it.  This photo is the only evidence that I knit it.  I will be casting on a different sock pattern later today with a traditional heel flap.  I do think this design would be great for people who find their socks too tight in the heel/beginning instep area, and I'm sure there are some foot and leg shapes out there that would be perfect for this shaping.  It just doesn't work for me.

In other news, I got some sewing projects cut out yesterday: a skirt and two pairs of pajamas.  I actually cut out two pairs of shorts for each pajama set because I cut one from my self drafted pattern of my favorite store bought knit pajama shorts and then a second pair of the Brianna pajama shorts to try them out.  I love the full length Brianna pajamas and would like to make a pair, but checking the fit on shorts seems like a good idea before committing to a full length pair.  The photo above is one of the pajama top back pieces in possibly the most awesome fabric in the universe.  The skirt I cut out is the Emaline Skirt.  This is the first time I'm making it so I used some stash fabric to check the fit.  Now I've got to straighten my sewing room up enough that I can actually sew in it.  In the continuing effort to keep Newton safe, a lot of things kind of got dumped in there.  I need to do some organizing.

Back To Socks

All is well here at Chez PinkLemon at the moment.  Mickael and I have talked about getting one of those signs like they have in factories and industrial jobs - "__ Days Without An Accident."  We would hang it down at kitty eye level.  Anyway, I've been knitting socks.  I finished my Hermione's Everyday Socks.  These are knit in Blue Moon Fiber Arts Super Sparkle in the Chasing Flamingos colorway.

Since the stitch count changes at the heel flap and gusset decrease area (heel and the portion of the foot right after the heel), the striping pattern in the pooling changes as well.  On this pair of socks the colors mirrored each other with one side pink and one side dark!  That was a fun surprise.

I also started a new pair of socks.  This is a second attempt at the Vanilla Is The New Black pattern, knit in Madelinetosh Twist Light in Hydroponic.  Hopefully I'll remember to follow the pattern at the heel, and not just auto-pilot knit this time!

I hope you all have a great weekend, and may your fur babies all make good decisions in their activities!

Last Thursday

Last Thursday morning I woke up, fully expecting to blog, and discovered that little Newton had eaten yarn.  I still have no idea where he found the yarn.  I know yarn is both tempting and terrible for cats.  I know Newton can't even sit next me while I knit without attacking the yarn.  I'm very careful to keep it put up and out of his reach, I thought.  He'd thrown some of it up, but having no idea where he found it or how much more he might still have in his system, we were off to the vet's office as soon as they opened.  He spent the day there getting X-rays all day while they followed a Barium dose through his digestive system.  By late afternoon the vet was confident that he didn't have anymore yarn in his system and he wouldn't have to have surgery.  Meanwhile, Newton had been so charming and cooperative that not only did he have the entire vet's office head over heels in love with him, the nurse that was working with him that day was able to do the X-rays without additional assistance.  (Maximus, on the other hand, once attacked several nurses and assistants there after getting his teeth cleaned.)  At the end of the day, we were very happy (but also emotionally exhausted) to bring him back home, knowing he was healthy.  Also, Newton isn't allowed full run of the house anymore overnight.  (Four weeks before the yarn eating incident, he decided to jump from the upstairs to the downstairs in the middle of the night.  He didn't break anything but he was definitely feeling it.  He got some kitty anti-inflammatory meds for that.  He's wearing us out.)

I am still knitting.  I replaced all of my project bags that had drawstrings with project bags with zippers, but I'm still knitting.  I've finished the first sock of my Hermione's Flamingos and have a good bit finished on my second sock.  Last time I blogged about this sock I mentioned that I was loving the way the colors were pooling and I think I should clarify - I love the way Blue Moon Fiber Arts' yarns pool.  They almost do a self striping thing and I enjoy it.  I don't like all pooling.  When I first started knitting socks I discovered very quickly that Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock, despite being a very nice base and dyed using very nice colors, pools in ways I don't like.  To this day, I refuse to buy anything Lorna's Laces (or Mrs. Crosby, their other line) because of the pooling.  This is silly, they dye solids too that wouldn't pool at all, but that's how frustrated I was with that type of pooling.  So I guess I'm picky as to how the colors randomly line up in my knitting!

I hope to be back Thursday, but I'm just not going to make any promises at this point.

Something New, And It's Not A Sock!

Don't be alarmed, I am still working on a pair of socks, but I decided to start something else as well.  This is the Stole Dunes wrap, knit in Malabrigo Sock in Cote D'Azure (Color A) and Indonesia (Color B).  The pattern is designed by Svetlana Gordon and I've been drooling and favorite-ing her designs for several years now.  I finally decided to start knitting one.  

The pattern sample is knit in a long color change yarn, using only one colorway for both the background and foreground by starting in two different places in the color repeat.  I decided to use two different colors, using a mostly solid navy for the background and the multicolored Indonesia colorway for the foreground.  I haven't knit a swatch, but I think this pattern would actually work in a single, light colored solid color.  There's a definite texture difference between the background and foreground "waves."  I think it's a really striking design, but once I'd worked through the first repeat and figured out what was going on, I was able to watch TV pretty easily while I work on it.

Last week we went down to Galveston to move Caleb out of his dorm.  We ended up driving home in a really bad thunderstorm, but we all made it safely and we're so glad to have him home.  Last fall semester he came home several times for hurricanes and tropical storms, but this spring he stayed there and between the freak winter weather with rolling blackouts and Logan's extended recovery from his foot surgery, we didn't make it down to visit him either.  Fortunately, he wasn't homesick like he was last fall when he first went away, but he's happy to be back home too.