A Tale of Two Socks

I am about halfway through my second sock and I can't help but notice a problem:

The second sock is significantly smaller than the first. Same needles, same yarn, same pattern - different size. This is, ah, unfortunate and most likely means I'm going to frog it and start over and think loose thoughts. Not too loose, obviously, as loose socks are socks you'll walk through quickly. Bugger.

This happened with the second ladybug (in most thing I will pick the British terminology over the American what with living in the UK and all, but it's a bug not a bird!) booties, too. Maybe my tension increases as my confidence grows? I don't know, but it's definitely something to watch for.

In other news, I started the first sunshine booty (waaaaay too big - going to frog and knit on the 2.25mm needles conveniently freed up by frogging the sock), bought more sock yarn (addicted already!), and bought little yellow buttons for the sunshine sweater.

Also, the knitting needle give-away ends tomorrow! Speak up before they're gone forever.

Today I knit a hat

Today I knit a hat while watching the Scottish Open, hosted here in my lovely corner of the Highlands. The golfer I was cheering for, selected randomly because I like his name, didn't do well but I think he's previously earned his invitation to the British Open next weekend, so I may or may not continue watching and root for him in an entirely distracted manner. It's worth noting that my only interest in watching today was to see coverage of my new home (and the swanky golf course everyone keeps talking about).

Did you hear about the freaky weather we've been having? I personally have no reference (I've wintered here twice but this is my first summer) but I'm told this isn't a place that gets oodles of rain or thunderstorms and this weekend we've had both - so much so that the golf course flooded and the surrounding hillsides slid down across the course. The thunder woke us both up shortly before 5am, Saturday morning, three or four miles off. It quieted down and we got back to sleep but it continued to rain and occasionally thunder throughout the day - especially over the golf course. We weren't going to watch the match but followed the news throughout the day as they kept postponing the start time before eventually calling it off altogether at 7:30pm. Very disappointing for the Highlands as getting this tournament is quite the coup. Fortunately the sun came out in the evening and things dried up a bit and, while it rained off and on at our place today, the course mostly stayed dry.

Yesterday, we went to the local garden centre and bought oodles of bird food, mostly b1g1, and an African Violet for me. We also got new water bowls for the cats as Chris is convinced that the reason they like drinking from the Christmas Tree stand (yes, we still have it out in July for Oliver and Libby to drink from, no we don't still have the tree) is that it's bigger and they can both drink at the same time. So we bought a really big bowl for downstairs, where the tree stand was (they seem to like it well enough even though it says DOG), and a slightly-smaller-but-still-bigger-than-their-previous-water-bowl bowl with polka dots for upstairs.

Today we slept in, cleaned (I hoovered downstairs and the stairs, Chris did the loos and kitchen) and watched golf. First I finished attaching sleeves to the sunshine sweater, knit the collar, and wove in the ends. I'm not a huge fan of assembling sweaters and think I'll seek out knit-in-one patterns for the foreseeable future. Then I cast on the matching hat and finished that over Top Gear. I started casting on the booties, modifying the knit-flat pattern to a knit-in-the-round pattern on the fly but I realized I did half the CO with the tail, not the main thread and frogged the whole thing. That'll wait till tomorrow.

Anyway, hat is finished, sweater just needs buttons, and the booties should follow quickly. Pictures will have to wait as they're a gift and the recipient should get them before seeing a lot of pictures on the web. I'm wacky like that.

On the Needles

I have two projects I'm working on atm, a red shawl for me and a yellow baby sweater for Baby O'Connor:


Summer Mystery Shawl 2011 - Wendy D.
Supreme Possum Merino 4ply - 50g/210m - 40% possum, 50% merino wool, 10% silk
This is my first Mystery Shawl - a pattern where you don't know what the finished object will be (other than, in this case, a "shawlette") and you get the instructions ("clues") over a span of weeks, rather than all at once. The idea is to finish each set of instructions before the next one is issued. I joined this one later, before the third clue had been released and then accidentally knit the second clue first so I had to frog everything and start over. When the third clue came out, I only had time to knit the 24-row repeat once before setting the project aside to work on shawls for my bridesmaids so the fourth and final clue came out and I was nowhere near ready. I've since done two more repeats of the third clue and, because I added an extra repeat to the shawl, probably only have two more. It's bottom up so with each row there are less stitches to knit and it's going, ahem, increasingly quickly.


Basket-Weave Baby Sweater - Frances Hughes - Creative Knitting Sept. 2004
Baby Classic DK - 50g/151m - 50% acrylic, 50% nylon
Back when I started working for Barnes and Nobles, when magazines didn't sell, the covers were "stripped" and returned to the publishers and the rest of the magazine was recycled or thrown away (depending on the facilities available to that particular store) or, and this is the relevant part, employees could take them home. During this time, I acquired a lot of issues of a variety of knitting magazines (which I eventually tore apart and sorted the patterns I liked into plastic sleeves and binders - yeah, I'm that person). When I moved to Inverness I pared this collection down to bare bones and, even though I wasn't at the time knitting any fitted garments, I kept this pattern for a baby sweater, hat, and booties. I don't think it'll be a favourite pattern, but it's a nice project for when I'm lying (sitting up) in bed and have caught up on my RSS feeds and Twitter.

I learned to knit at a Renaissance Faire and loaned yarn and needles from one friend and taught to knit by another. This second friend is allergic to the wool I was using and taught me without touching anything and as a consequence my technique wound up a little...unique. For a while I was twisting my stitches and when I realized that, I changed my technique to prevent twisting and somehow wound up getting everything backwards. This was fine for most things, but both my k2tog and ssk leaned the same way and I only just recently realized why (I was wrapping my yarn around the needle the wrong way) and decided to fix it. A few projects ago I corrected my purl stitches so my stockinette lace would be correct and on this project I'm practising wrapping the yarn under the needle on the knit stitches.

This sweater set will be for Baby O'Connor, who is due later this summer. His mother is having a really rough time of it and they're hoping to induce as soon as the foetus is viable, so if I have time, I hope to knit some premie-sized stuff as well.