Six Sox I Heart Gansey Progress

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I made a lot of progress on the Gansey socks during my yard sale last Saturday. It rained on and off all day, and there weren’t too many customers. It wasn’t much of a sale, because I forgot about a whole closet full of junk I’d been collecting. I sold the food dehydrator for $3.00, so the event was a total success!  I’m using Fortissima Cotton yarn on a 40″ long 2.0mm Addi Turbo.

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Six Sox Iris Garden Finished

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I love these socks! I’m wearing them right now. They look kind of funky off the feet, but they fit well. Actually, the heels are a little too long, but that’s my fault. The more I knit, the looser my gauge got. Things I learned from knitting this sock:

  • How to break away from absolute perfectionism… The make 1 left took me about 5 minutes each time, so I just started doing make 1 rights instead. And told myself it’s okay because they were on the sides of the toe and nobody will ever know. Well, you know now…
  • How to do an afterthought heel. It turned out to be much less complicated than I ever imagined.
  • How to do a crochet bind off. Very nice and loose!
  • How to get a braided effect by having the floating yarn in front. Very clever!

The pattern was designed by Rae Blackledge of Rae’s Yarn Boutique. Thanks Rae!

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Yarn Purchases

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Stash enhancements: I’m on a lace kick. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Interweave Knits seems to be on a lace kick… The first is from Black Bunny Fibers, 100% laceweight merino hand dyed beautifully in a color called Jade. I’m in the process of joining the Black Bunny Hopalong sponsored by Knitty D and the City. Fun fun fun!

 

The pattern I chose is from Shawls and Scarves: The Best of Knitter’s Magazine. It just happens to be another pattern from Eugen Beugler

Corner To Corner Pattern

And here’s a start I made. I like the diagonal variegation, and the bumpy garter stitches. I think in the end it will look a little like a woven ruana I craved but couldn’t afford.

Corner to Corner Start

The second purchase is 100% Soy Silk in Nearly-Solid Eggplant from a local dyer, Conjoined Creations, which I purchased at Needler’s Nest. I was only going there to get more yarn for the Icarus Shawl… I got a pattern for a shawl by Two Old Bags called Concert in the Park. I think this will be absolutely gorgeous!

The ladies at the shop had a hard time winding it in to balls, the yarn kept getting tangled. They ended up doing one by hand, the sweethearts. The theory was that it was so difficult because the yarn was sticking to itself.

Soy Silk Yarn & Pattern

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Icarus Shawl Progress, ran out of yarn

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Today I’m going to Needler’s Nest to get some more Alpaca With a Twist, because I’ve run out! The yarn is 70% baby alpaca/ 30% silk, very very soft and nice. Now, the pattern says they used 90 grams from a 100-gram, 875-yard skein of Suri Elegance. The Alpaca With a Twist is the same, 100 grams and 875 yards. I still have 10 rows to go, plus 4 rows of edging and the bind-off. I must admit that I didn’t check the gauge (shame on me!), but that seems like too much of a discrepancy.  And $21 more than I planned to spend! The yarn kept slipping off my Addi Turbos, so I got some size 3 Addi Natura needles, and I love them. The Clover cable was driving me nuts because it’s so stiff. I may get rid of all my Clovers so I can afford more Naturas…

 

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6Sox Iris Garden Progress

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This is a great pattern, and I think the socks will be very pretty. I’m using Elann Essential 4-ply solid in purple, and Blauband MaxiRingel for the contrast color(s). I finally figured out how to keep yarns from getting totally tangled when doing 2 multi-color socks at once on one circular. You arrange the balls of yarn in a gallon ziplock bag thus: the first sock’s main and contrast, then the second sock’s main and contrast. The bag is the right size to keep the skeins in a line so they don’t wobble around. The Blauband was a silly purchase. It’s very soft but the dye job is pretty bad – the yellow is full of splotches from the other colors, and the darker colors have faded spots. In my defense, I was looking for solid colors and they didn’t have any; I wanted something wacky; and (most of all!) I couldn’t leave the store empty-handed. The color imperfections enhance this pattern.

I’m just starting the cuff, and of course I changed the pattern on the instep because I didn’t feel like concentrating…

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My Fair Lady Shawl

Dayflower Daydream Shawl

or, “Knitting in the Orchestra Pit” In late November 2001, I started working for a production of My Fair Lady at Arizona Theatre Company. The show opened in Tucson in December and went to Phoenix in January 2002. There were about 75 performances altogether. Added to the touring production with Richard Chamberlain I did a few years earlier, I’ve done this show at least 91 times!

On Wednesday of the week before Thanksgiving, I moved into the apartment that the company provided in Tucson. On Thursday we had 5 hours of rehearsal on My Fair Lady, then I drove to Phoenix (eating dinner in the car), rested for about 30 minutes in the parking garage, and played Mozart’s Don Giovanni for Arizona Opera. I drove back to Tucson after the opera because home was 30 minutes in the other direction. I repeated this routine on Friday and Saturday, except Saturday night I got to stay home, the final performance of Mozart being on Sunday afternoon. During my night driving, I was entertained by the Leonid meteor showers. I jammed all my private lessons into Monday and drove back to Tucson on Tuesday for rehearsals the rest of the week.

By the time Thanksgiving arrived I was in no mood to spend any time in the car! I talked my husband into coming down to spend the weekend with me. On Friday we went to Purls yarn shop and I talked him in to buying me:

  • Shawls and Scarves: The Best of Knitter’s Magazine
  • 2 skeins of Lorna’s Laces Helen’s Lace
  • Needles: 1 set of dp, and 2 different lengths of circulars

It all came to about $95. Today, I think it would be almost twice that… I cast on immediately and spent all my off-hours knitting the shawl.

Dayflower Daydream Shawl

There is quite a bit of dialog in My Fair Lady. Many musicians read during dialog, but I’m always afraid that I’ll get too engrossed and miss an entrance, so I usually just sit there or watch the stage (if I can see the stage). After a week I realized that a couple of the dialog sections were pretty long, so I brought my shawl and worked on it: yarn in a bag on the floor, bass leaning against me for quick retrieval, and pretty much in the dark. There are probably lots of mistakes, but I haven’t searched for them. I finished it a few weeks after the show closed.

The pattern is “Dayflower Daydream” and was designed by Eugen Beugler.

Finished just in time

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Kelly may have her baby this Friday.  She’s been on complete bedrest for 2 weeks and they may induce labor on Friday. This is made from Elann Sock-it-to-me sock yarn (this color and pattern isn’t available at Elann today, so the link is to their home page), using the free Opal Baby Cardigan Set pattern.  You should have a little experience with socks because the sock pattern is just a chart for numbers of stitches. I made the set all at once on one circular!  I used 2 skeins: one for the hat, and pulling from both ends of the other for the socks.

 

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Lily Chin socks

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This is a pair of socks I made in July 2005, mostly on a trip to Ohio. The pattern is from Lily Chin’s Knit and Crochet With Beads. The yarn is Lorna’s Laces Shephard’s Sock, which is some of the softest sock yarn around. They provided comfort during our brutal winter.  Don’t laugh, we have tile floors…

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My knitting history

My mom and the next door neighbor collaborated in taking Ellen and me to all sorts of classes — piano in 3rd grade, dance (I was enthusiastic but uncoordinated), and knit and crochet lessons at a local yarn shop.  It was just the two of us at a table in the shop with the owner.  The shop is long gone.

All I remember making from those lessons was a pair of crocheted slippers.  I crocheted a lot of stuff over the years, but didn’t knit much.

I made a fuzzy white sweater with lace in the yoke in the early 80s that was not very fashionable and actually fit despite my avoidance of gauge, and there is an unfinished sweater in the closet that is a lace sampler made from fuzzy Olefin (!?!).  I’ll put a picture of it up sometime, under the “what was I thinking?” category.

When I was pregnant with my first child over 20 years ago, I made some intarsia blocks for a blanket that was never finished.  (These are also in the closet…)  Then nothing until I discovered beaded knitting in the late 90’s and made about 30 beaded amulet bags with 0000 needles and size 8 perl cotton.

The next “real” knitting I did was from the Fall 2001 issue of Interweave Knits.  I made Mariloise’s Scarf by Myrna A. Stahman (if you search for Myrna you’ll find lots of beautiful lace patterns) on p. 57 and used Lorna’s Laces Helen’s Lace because Myrna said to…  It was a Christmas present for my mom.

In October and November of 2001 I made some washcloths and (back to lace) some soap sacks.  Coming up:  the My Fair Lady shawl and the sudden but inevitable knit addiction.