mayflower

My dear first sock will be frogged. After knitting 2-3" of the foot in denial, I could no longer ignore that it had a severe case of what I like to call heelus massivus. Yes, dear sock has a big ole, floppy heel! Technically I could give it to someone with bigger feet, but after what I've been through with this baby, it's going to be for ME, and I'm going to wear it all the time, dangit!

the only thing I like about frogging is how cute and curly the yarn looks!

I took ballet lessons as a wee little mayflower. All I can really remember is the way the sunlight streamed into the studio and sitting in a circle chanting "good toes, bad toes". The instructor was teaching us pink leotard clad munchkins how to point our toes.

bad toes...good heel

it's only pretending to fit :( Oh for those of you that were wondering and missed the earlier post, the yarn I'm using is KP's merino sock yarn dyed by me...read about that adventure here!

good toes...baaaad heel

I do understand that the heel will slack a bit, but dear sock's slackage is quite obnoxious! I had followed knitty's formula for the number of stitches and rows for the heel flap...unfortunately it's about 1/3 too long (at least!) I tossed this sock aside for reference of what-not-to-do and started on a new one. So ONE FINE DAY (don't wait for it!) I'll have a pair of socks to show ;)

I have a whole room in my apartment devoted to PAINTING! Yes, my humble little corner of the living room studio has moved into a room of its very own! In a nutshell, I had a youngun' of a roommate whose life was riddled with ISSUES, she went nuts and dropped all her classes mid-semester and moved out. Enter Mark, my sister's mature, SANE boyfriend who just happened to need a place to stay. Fast foward a month... Mark moves to Phoenix to be with his grandpa....and I have the whole apartment to myself! Crazy Roommate 1 is still on the lease until May and has to pay rent...and i have the whole apartment to myself! WHEEEE!

A studio of my very own...I'm THRILLED! A lot of my paintings are 2-4 feet, so being in an actual room gives me plenty of floor and wall space to paint and pool! All these are very much still in progress, and I have less than a month to get them to a resolved point . I'll take slides of these at the end of the semester and I might just share a couple :D

I've started a top from the latest Interweave...any guesses? Find out next time!

Have a great, knitty weekend!

So the other day I sat in bed knitting away on the Rebecca sweater sleeve feeling rather BORED, and suddenly thought "I really want a soft violet-y merino sweater". Between the yos and cables, I mentally sorted through my wool stash and remembered I had 5 more skeins of KP's cream merino sock yarn somewhere. whoppeee! I tossed my sleeve aside, jumped out of bed and started digging through my VERY cluttered closet.   I finally found it, perfect and beautiful, and still in the plastic packaging! I hopped in the car and drove to the nearest grocery store. From knitting  to driving was only a period of about 15 minutes! Yes, I can be super impulsive with my fiber-related endeavors. I've always believed that you should follow your fiber inspirations...immediately! (This is how I ended up with a humungo pile of ufos!)

Doing a small test-batch would have been the good-dyer thing to do, but I was feeling far too excited and inspired by the vision of beautiful purpley skeins of yarn! Soon a pot-o-yarn sat on the stove in a dark purpley kool-aid mix getting quite happy. When it was time, I pulled it out, gave it a rinse and held it up and exclaimed "ewwwwwww! this is the ugliest  dye-job ever!!" (then immediately thought.."no I've seen worse!" I'm sure you have too).  It was streaky and very much variegated. I don't use variegated that much because a lot of it pools, and ugly pools are just plain....ugly! I had wanted a pretty even color, with minute color variation (sort of like the HPY merino I used for the ribbed cardi). I ran upstairs and grabbed another skein, and changed my method up, really believing this would alleviate a lot of the color variation. NOPE! Still variegated!(though not quite as badly) I was so disappointed! I hung them both in the shower and forgot about them til the next day. When they were dry I wrinkled my nose and scowled thinking "I just wasted about 800 yarns of yummy merino!". I twisted them into little skein-balls and the more I looked at them the more I thought "hey! you guys are kinda pretty!" And they are! Look...

Here are the mixes I used

on the left:
5 grape
2 berry blue
1 red something (maybe cherry?)

on the right:
5 grape
3 berry blue

I soon grew quite enamored with these skeins...they looked so pretty, were violetty without being obnoxiously PURPLE, and were buttery soft. The fact that they weren't on the solid side, and would definitely not become a sweater stopped bothering me so much.  I decided that they were destined to become socks! That way, if they pool too terribly, they can just hide in my shoes :D So I balled 'em up on my loovveelly swift and ballwinder. They're even pretty in ball form!

Hehe, and yes, you read right! I who have never knit socks, never had the desire to knit socks, and almost swore to never knit socks will be knitting socks!

The yarn made me do it.

Plus I'm hoping I'll figure out what the ginormous FUSS is about SOCKS.... you crazy  sock knitters with your massive sock yarn stashes ,sockapawhatas, jaywalkers, and constant in-progress sock pictures. Of course I have no idea where to start....I know I need dpns (though there's that constant chatter about some magic-loop business) but I haven't the slightest clue beyond that...gusset? short rows? heel flap? whaaa? So crazy sock knitters...help a newbie! :D

I knitted a little swatch to check out the color...not too bad!I think they'll make cute socks! :)

(the color is pretty close, but still a little off)