trust the instructions, and just knit

This week I tried to be to clever which resulted in a frog episode, this mornings poolside knitting was totally frogged, and Fannigan is growing slowly. The new Knitty is up and so the list of socks I want to knit next grows, I'm now in Ravelry and have some, two, beginner tips and a round up of the knitting year to date.

so, I've often wondered why sock toes are plain, especially after seeing the images of embossed leaves socks in Favorite Socks, where Mona Schmidt aims to integrate the leaf repeat into the star toe. So trying to be 'to clever' this morning while sitting poolside during small-fry swim lessons I continued the hedgerow rib into the toe section of my sock and worked the decreases into the pattern. Bad move, bad bad move, the toe flares not narrows. The first image is after 3 decrease rounds so should show significant narrowing. Now the togs (swim clothes) are in the washing machine, the kids are playing semi quietly, and hedgerow is shorter than it was 10 minutes ago. I will put her back on the needles - live stitches don't bother me. So sorry Jane - I promise to trust you completely on sock 2.

Some times we learn best by making mistakes, and I've not read or understood before the reason sock toes are plain-ish - thats not to say its not written anywhere, I'm sure it is. Just I learn't the 'hard way', if 30 minutes of poolside knitting could be considered hard.


Fannigan - grows slowly, but not quite as slowly as the garter ribbed jersey for Bear - I think I knit nearly 2 rounds in the last week on that. Once Fannigan is off the needles I'll focus on Garter-Rib. Back to talking about Fannigan, I've just started the raglan happing, and the slivery threads you see are fishing line, quite good stitch holders but you do need a clever fisher folk handy to tie the right sort of knot in the slippery stuff. I use my at hand fly fisher Bear. There are pros and cons of using fishing line, pros are its slippery and very very easy to pick stitches up of, cons - well it is springy and for the first few rows it gets in the way of knitting.


The new knitty - one of my favourite sock knitters Deb has the back to basics sock pattern inspired by Cat Bordhi that is now on my to knit list. Also on my to knit list are the Chalet socks in Nancy Bush's Folk Socks. Pam was knitting these at a knit-night a few weeks ago and the twisting traveling stitches appeal. So that makes the list (in no particular order), Diamante, Chalet, Embossed leaves, Brother Amos, and something by Cat. That book is on my get soon list, which will I'm sure in turn increase my wish-knit list.

Ravelry - its good, for me I've snatched so little time to linger there my page is bare, but you can spend a lot of time just clicking around seeing other peoples projects. I miss the action on KR - activity has really declined recently. I think if I was beginning to make my way into the knitting web-word, Ravelry would be all I'd need, in many ways it replaces much of what a blog can do. I also expect that for people like me who follow some patterns, but design their own, and want to read about techniques and see ideas fleshed out in blogs by very clever knitters, then Ravelry won't ever be enough.

What do those on the Ravelry list need to know,
First - put lots of images of current and finished project, and of your stash into Flickr, then loading up your projects and stash is easy. I had put stash and FO images into flickr in readiness- but forgot the progress images. So this last few days I had to export web ready images of my current wip's and upload them.
If you want to list your knitting books as well, load them up into Library thing, so you just have to export and upload the list. There will be other little things that make 'entering and setting up Ravelry easier - but as I said, I've only briefly visited this last few days. I have found 6 other Dunedin knitters are members, 3 I've meet at knit-nights. And 34 nz'ders. I post links to blogs, where they have them, in a week or two.

and a round up, one of Ravelry's options is to list WIP's, and to mark them as Finished Objects once complete. People are backdating, and loading up FO as well. So I did a quick summary using my blog, my photo library and my knitting workbook/visual diary.
so far in 2007 I have knit (or crocheted),

• 1 childs sweater,
• 2 baby blankets (fair isle and the fish blanket is big enough to use),
• 1 BSJ,
• 1Pr felted fibre trends clogs,
• 3 wash cloths,
• 3 hats (ok one was for a teddy bear),
• 2 pairs childs mittens, and 6 pairs of socks.
• 1 dolls house blanket
• 2 felted bowl
• 2 i-pod covers
• one teddy sweater

I have also revamped a cabled cardigan and will finish Fannigan for me before years end. My knitting for 2006 and 2007 is on show here.