Wash day in a hand knit world

looks like this ... or at least it does in our household. Fifteen (15) pairs of hand knit socks. I do have to say the sock drawers were a little empty today, I'm wearing 'shop bought socks'. Bear told me to 'look at the line - there is a blog photo there', and he was right. Today I've got the KSG (Knitters Study Group) class report (slip and mosaic stitches), a thrice knit hat stalled, a finished object - my Nostepinne (yes really), and my Dads replacement hat really wasn't finished last week when I blogged it but it is now, I added a cuff to keep him extra warm.

Saturday was the Knitters Study Group (KSG) class on Slip stitches and Mosaic knitting. Colour and texture work with only one color worked per row .. but rows are often knitted several times with different yarns. Most of the Mosaic work instructions I have are for things knit flat .. and I don't do flat for colour work, so I worked my sample in the round. My most interesting yarns are sock yarns .. so I picked a variegated yarn and a couple of plainer yarns and had a play. My sample is the wee tube with the white background. There are some sections where I purled instead of knit ... or visa-versa as I forgot the instructions were for knitting flat. Going out to knit necessitates a sort of the knitting basket, moving the essentials and the current knitting project into a knitting bag or basket. I do this at least once a week for Thursday night knitting, but sometimes twice for KSG or workshops. Recently the little ball of hand spun hackle blended self striping yarn has been surfacing .. and I've been avoiding it.With only 60m of sport weight yarn I was unsure what was my best option. At Thursday night knitting I started a pair of wristers, 2 at a time, from both ends of the ball. Except the yarn was uneven, something I'm putting that down to the unknown and varied fibers in each colour section, so uneven that the wristers ended up completely different sizes. Back home I wondered about a hat, and so tried one. I cast on 16 stitches and started right in with 2x2 rib, working increases in each purl section every round until I could add in more knit ribs. Its hard to knit to fit without a gauge swatch, so I had to rip back half my work once I discovered it would be to big and knit it again. I'll use the tail to draw in the top hole and close it. For now I've run out of yarn .. so its on hold till I find, dye, buy, and or spin something of a similar weight and suitable colour to complete it.

My first finished object this week is my turned Nostepinne. All done and out of the lathe. Now its not the best turned woodwork ever .. probably on a par with beginner anything. But I'm proud of it. I really need to find me some wood turning chisels .. but for now I can start another piece and start to improve. The Nostepinne is in Rimu a fine grained reddish wood ideal for wood turning, and the walnuts are a gift from my dad. They were fresh from gathering so we washed them to remove the last of the blackened outer husk and now they are drying on the front porch in the sun.

The Robust Romney hat - aka Hat for a boyfriend / father /etc ... was done. At least I thought it was done, but it was single layer, and Dad works outside or in his unheated garage a lot. I had yarn left over so decided to pick up along the cast on edge and add a turn back cuff. I kept it in matching rib, and the pick up resulted in a neat turning line and let me knit until I had only enough yarn to cast off. Poppy offered to model .. but as you can see, she has a smaller head than her Grandad.

My Soctober sock grows, clue II arrived Friday morning, and by Friday night I had it all knit. I'm a little confused by the patterning. Odd how comforting and useful a photo or schematic is to a confused knitter and reassuring them what they have knit looks the same as it should. And odd how disconcerting it is when one can't see what it should look like. Now I had a search for progress photos on Ravelry and I see mine is out of sync with one other. Bother! I had my round set up exactly as the pattern directed and used the charts, but people are human, and erata happen. Easily fixed, and I will fix it. I've also cast on for the second sock ... as the clues are in such small sections that it seems silly not to knit two at once.

So I'm off to knit Soctober sock II, clues one and two.
Take care
na Stella

Wordle,

Wordle is a is a fun thing. Its a reading tool, well a visual reading tool. You can enter a body of writing or link it to a site with an rss or other feed and have the content presented back to you as a text based graphic. We use it sometimes at work to get a feel for a body of writing, to check that we are writing about what we think we are .. and I have students use it as a tool to summarize wordy things - especially when they are stuck. I've just come back from a session in 'embedding literacy' - and it was dense, good but dense. The session left me wanting to play, to work with tools that encourage students to think about meaning in writing rather than think about verbs and nowns and pronunciation. In Wordles words it 'is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text'
When I Wordle my Knitknitfrog blog the result looks like this (I just pasted in the url link). Right click the Wordle-image to open it in a new tab or view it larger here. Apparently I have to attribute the image I made using my own writing in my blog to http://www.wordle.net/ by including it here - so legal stuff considered done.


It is very comforting to see the largest word is Knitting, followed closely by Socks and Sock. What is surprising is make, and start and think, and last, and week and now and done, all feature. Lathe and wood are in there - but I'd expect that, my lathe is a new toy and new toys tend to occupy my mind. Learning, yarn, and family are there ... I like this tool, like it a lot, it is easy to use and the results are either comforting or they make me think (in a good way) about what I'm doing or what I've done.

Try it - with something you like, or something you have written.
My next post will have actual images of knitting - not be a distracted side post.
na Stella

Finished? Maybe, and its ...

Soctober!
I've been aware of this event called Socktober for a few years ... and envy'd the speed at which people knit the socks, but mostly the speed at which they notice and find the sock pattern in time to knit the Soctober socks. Me, I'm always late to the party, often many many months late to the secret mystery knitted things parties, well past sign up and start dates, but not this year. This year I stumbled across the 2009 Soctober at the very start of October .. so this year I'm in, confident I've enough time to take part.


So here is my start, so far one sock cuff, a little rib, a little zigardy zagardy lace, some more rib (how odd - wondering what we knit next) and waiting on the next clue. Of course being ahead of the world on the date line thing, the Thursday sock installments will show up here on Friday's .. so a few more days to wait before I can knit the next section. Maybe I should make a start on the second sock? Me and the 356 people who are registered on Ravelry as knitting this sock .. plus many more any outside of Raverly. I've got till the end of November .. and right now that seems very achievable.


Part two of my dads knitted Christmas gifts is done. Its a Hat fit for a boyfriend (or father, or brother or uncle or self ...), by Sephanie Nicole. Nice, fast, plain in a boy kind of way with neat decreases at the tops of the ribs. I think I've finished, I had planned to pick up along the hem and add a fold up cuff .. just to make sure it was a warm hat .. In truth - when Bear tried it on - it made him look like a pumpkin head, so I really think I should if I have enough yarn left. I'll let you know, there might just be enough hand spun left to do this. I've named this one the Robust hat, and hope it might survive a hard life keeping my dad warm for a little longer than the last hand spun hat I made.

take care
na Stella

Honey I'm home

I do feel like that this week, we are home again. This time I've returned from a 2 day jaunt to my Dads where I learned to sharpen chisels, and turn old files into chisels, and we modified the tool posts that came with the lathe, and scored a wee bit of high quality wood for turning, vintage recycled New Zealand Rimu and Kauri. I also knitted, all of the drive up and most of the drive back (Bear was driving), and now have the first of my Christmas gifts finished and ready to gift. This is the first year I've planned knitted gifts for Christmas .. and its tempting to make long lists and try and knit it all - but I won't, I think I know better than to set up unrealistic gift knitting plans. So today ... there is a finished object, and a new start and a knitting related project in progress.


Mojo II is done, these are planned to be one of those presents I mentioned, for my Dad. He said the last pair of hand knit socks I gave him were the only wool socks he could wear without itching. He had a smelting accident long before I was born - working in a foundry in the early 1960's, it was hot and they were pouring molten metal from crucible to casting - he was wearing shorts and tee-shirts and elastic sided steel cap ankle boots. Health and safety has come a long way since then, something went wrong - and he ended up with a boot full of molten metal. The scar has long since faded .. but in hot weather he says it itches - 'real-bad', and he has never been able to wear other than soft cotton socks. I guess woollen socks have come a long way since the 1960's, and I didn't know he could only wear cotton socks when I gave him a pair of hand knit socks last year. He mentioned in passing - that they didn't itch .. that the ones I knitted were the only wool socks he had ever had that didn't itch and drive him crazy .. so I decided to knit him new socks and a new hat for Christmas, as well as our standard Vintage Tractor calender gift.

Mojo is one twisted sock pattern, in the nicest way possible - but straightens up nicely when worn or blocked. I've made this pair matching, but still think of them as 'Dr Seuss socks' - as in the kind that would have featured in Dr Seuss books, had socks been featured - or would that be sox?

Tech Specs
Pattern:

Mojo(Rav link) by Donyale Grant
Yarn:

Patons Kroy Socks 4 Ply
Needles: 2.5mm circs (magic loop)
Started: Sept 18th 2009
Finished. October 3rd 2009
Left overs: teeny tiny bits of yarn, a frugal sock, and something contrasty as waste yarn for the afterthought heel.

With Mojo done, I had nothing to stop me making some decisions on Frankensock. I had started this a few posts ago but frogged it thinking it was to small to fit. I've begun agai, this time one size up, but still knitting on 2.25mm needles rather than the 2.5mm specified. I just like my socks at a firmer gauge than 7 spi the pattern suggests, I like 9spi, or 8.5 at the loosest, they wear better, and fit snugger and just stay nicer longer. I'm now 3 repeats up the leg .. and realize that I might need to add a repeat or have short socks. Frankensock has optional mismatched colour toes ... so technically I can add a repeat and not worry to much about running out of yarn, I can use the yarn I use to add the Frankenstein style stitching. So far so good .. but its a chart and pattern sock, so not a good traveling sock, and I suspect not a good knit night sock. That means I now need to find a take-out project to start ... more decisions.

And the knitting related mid project report is my very first nostepinne. I'm taking the turning slow .. first because learning new things takes time and energy and effort, and second because I thought it best to take time and find out how to sharpen things. And third - because I've not yet sorted 'proper' wood turning chisels, so I'm running it as a full metal work lathe with little blades held in the tool post and controlled but little wheels that move the blade up, in, and along - slowly. I must have done something right in the sharpening and I ended up with wood shavings below the lathe, not just dust. See - a nostephinne was hiding in the painted wooden table leg that I started to turn last week! Really it was, although I suspect the handle is still a tad thick and needs to be smaller to make holding it easier. I found the Spindlecrafters group on Ravelry, and within it a thread started by Grippingyarn on getting and starting wood turning with a lathe, and contributed to by TinkerJohn with all sorts of wonderful helpful info for a beginning lathe user. I've got a wee bit more to turn on this one, before final sanding and cutting it out of the lathe .. and polishing - although one can buff and polish it whilst in the lathe .. so I might try that.

Its back to work this week and the cubs are in Holiday Programe whist Bear is on long service leave. He has a list as long as my knee high socks of things he wants to get done over the next few week whilst on leave .. I hope for his peace of mind he manages most if not all.
Me I've got a week working before the student return for the final term of the year .. and so its the calm before the storm of final hand ins and graduations...
take care
Stella