I am falling in love with Heidi Swanson’s Super Natural Cooking all over again. She just seems to know exactly what I want to eat for dinner. And lunch. This is the Big Curry Noodle Pot — simple, flavorful, delicious.
Also, I turned the (gusset) heel of my second Emerald City sock. Hooray!
Here are my socks-in-progress. (Last year’s Through the Loops Mystery Sock is in my office, nowhere near completed.) As you all know, I’ve made great strides in the sock-knitting department this year: toe-up, magic loop, lace patterns, chart reading, oh my!
Despite these gains, something happened to my sock knitting mojo with the change of the seasons. Yes, it is getting cold enough to warrant the wearing of socks, but the arrival of fall signifies prime sweater-knitting time. I’m hoping to establish a bit more of a balance this socktober, and it would be great to get back on track with the Socks from the Toe Up KAL. (See the July and August socks languishing above.)
Thanks for all your kind and comforting happy thoughts about the flu I’m trying to beat. Even though I spent several hours sitting on the couch yesterday with my knitting in my lap, I managed to knit only about 4 rows of my garter yoke cardigan. (Boo. Sick Rooster.) After lots of whining, several mugs of turkey broth, and a few hot toddies, I woke up today feeling cautiously optimistic that I’m improving.Though I am going to head to campus for a few hours, I promise to continue taking it easy. Happy Socktober!
Apologies if these make you dizzy. Yesterday was a blurry kind of day, so it seems only fitting that the pictures I attempted to take of a stunning sunset turned out this way. (It probably didn’t help that I was fresh out of the shower, still in the process of getting dressed, and therefore more than a little exposed to a backyard mob of mosquitoes that made keeping the camera steady more than slightly difficult.)
A bit of a sock is all I’ve got for you today:
Oh — and my bat came back last night for round 3. My landlord will be here in half an hour to strategize. Hope your day is bat-free!
I am in LOVE. 426 yards of 3-ply, from 4 oz of 90/10 corriedale/nylon from the Spunky Club. LOVE.
This skein made me so excited that I just kept on spinning.
Here’s that cvm, waiting to be plied, along with the resting jacob bobbins.
cvm plied…
hanging to dry…
and skeined.
188 yds of 2-ply, 12 wpi from 2 oz. of cvm from cosy in a colorway called sunset. The color is somewhere in between what you see above — so hard to capture such a rich orangey-red.
Boh is exhausted! (Though not from all that spinning. We took a nice long walk in the woods yesterday, and then went to meet friends at the d-o-g-p-a-r-k.)
Off to pour the coffee — and perhaps ply those jacob bobbins!
This week, I’ve been reading a lot about Progress (with a capital P) and modernization in the 19th century. Something about all the language of improvement, advancement, expansion, etc. made me pick up my toe up sock project again (despite the fact that I think I most enjoyed reading things that explored the uneasiness with ideas of modernity that existed alongside the narrative of Progress).
Strange light in my house this morning — these socks have a lot more green in them than you can see in this photo. The lights and darks are definitely pooling, and there is a big weird dark splotch near the top (a function of the calf shaping I’m adding rather sporadically), but I actually love the big chunks of light/dark that make stripes.
After several false starts, this sock is flying. This expansion of my sock-knitting skill set would not be possible without this tutorial over at knitting by bicycle. The heel does not involve wrapping, and for that, I am extremely grateful. I’m so excited about being able to knit tall socks without worrying about how much yarn I’m using, and I’m thinking that this is going to turn into an almost knee-sock! (Yay.)
I took this picture last week: fried eggs, homemade bread, good coffee, and at least ten minutes with the New Yorker = a good day.
Back to work — hoping to reward myself with finishing this sock today!
I helped frost some Valentine’s Day confections last night — conversation cupcakes, if you will. My friend Sheri has the photo-documentation. If I can get them from her this week, I’ll share some of our creativity.
Onward to this morning’s valentine:
While listening to an episode of This American Life, I worked a few more pattern repeats of Nutkin. I love how the colors are combining in this pattern.
Also, if you haven’t taken a look at this pattern, the cuff is very cool: you knit a band, do a purl row, knit some more, and then fold over at the purl row and by picking up stitches from the cast on edge and knitting together with the live stitches, you create a reinforced stockinette cuff.
Have a lovely day.
I brought some waiting room knitting along to my Honda appointment. As I waited for my oil to be changed and for the nail to be removed from my tire, I pulled out the tiger sock — pictures here. About an inch and a half back, I found a mess of stitches — looks like I dropped a few and knit a few back together in order to get back to the proper stitch count. It looked like absolute hell — and then it hit me. I am over my fear of frogging! I took one look at that this morning and decided that it would not do, even though these socks are for me. This is my second pair of socks, and my first time working on size 0 needles. There are a few mistakes here and there, but overall, I am quite proud of how nice the heel looks. I haven’t actually taken this sock out of my bag to knit on for months, and apparently, in August I was fine with that mess of jumbled, tangled stitches. I am not okay with it today, which means…
I am no longer a beginner knitter! (Right?) I think it is a state of mind, more than anything, but for me, fear of fixing things has been one of those imaginary lines in the sand. There are so many things I want to learn, but the realization that I can rip something back and feel good about being able to pick up the stitches and re-do, rather than just unravel the entire thing and start over (or in this case, create a horrendous jumble) is liberating.
So that is what I did: rip rip rip, right in the middle of a crowded Honda waiting room. The other people looked at me like I was nuts when I brought out the sock in the first place, so I have no idea what they were thinking when I carefully removed my tiny pointy needles from my knitting, placed them on top of the magazine pile to my left and began gleefully unraveling the brightly striped sock in my lap. Before I could get all the way down to the cluster of errors, Mr. Super-helpful Service Man came to tell me that my car was ready, fixed tire and all. I shoved the yarn into my handy ziplock and followed him to the billing station…and they all lived happily ever after.
I think I’m cheating a bit, because I started this sock in July, but I am still working on it. (By working, I mean that I am carrying it around in my bag this week.) It IS October, and it IS a sock-in-progress. The yarn is Fleece Artist in the Tiger colorway, and I do like it a whole lot. The stripes are very pretty, and I am excited to wear these someday. Emphasis on someday.
This is my second pair of socks. My first pair turned out pretty well, though I definitely had some laddering on the sole, and a few gaping stitches where I picked up at the heel. I tend to drop stitches when I work on these before my coffee has kicked in, or when I am trying to watch TV. Another thought: though I have never been into the hands free cell phone thingamajig, I see the value of being able to knit and talk on the phone at the same time…
barefoot rooster 