FullOfStitches.com blog.A good laugh leaves me in stitches!

Storms in Northern Ireland -hurricane, really-are keeping the knitting world in suspense. Many Sock Warriors world wide chose to have a sleepless night to start socking as soon as possible. Those knitters now look to the news and take to prayer that our dear YarnMonkey (among the many others affected) is at the least safe and sound.

Though we hope that the emails will go out to the world this weekend, the first thing we want is knowledge of YarnMonkey‘s whereabouts. My hope is that she was not in transit during the storms, but safe inside somewhere and that she’ll post on her blog as soon as she can that she is well and the potential new date to begin.

… because he loves me?

Thank you, Ben. I love you, too.

It’s the international death by sock loser takes all championship. It begins within the next 24 hours (have yet to find out if that’s going to be done by time zone..) with our host in Ireland emailing the needed information to over 700 sock knitters world wide.
I’m off gauge. 6st/in when I need 5.5! Tomorrow, I’ll either seek the next size up needles or just try out the Jo Sharp Dk hiding in my stash. The yarn I bought for this (which isn’t nearly such a bright red) seems lightweight for a DK, more of a sport -I hadn’t realized that in the store. Either way, I shall be ready for the tournament!

Today, I hope to make gauge with my Sock Wars yarn. I bought some bamboo DPNs last week at my LYS for this. Funny, it’s supposed to be a stash buster type thing. Instead, I have to go out and get a new weight yarn and new needles. Oh well, I joined to have fun, not to work my stash. I love the colors I picked out, but who knows if my target will! I hope you like boring socks, whoever you are!

I have the mate to the blue motif sock done past the heel scrap insert (whatever you want to call that), I’m almost to the 2 motifs on the leg. I’m taking pause to work gauge for SockWars.

I have no idea what’s up with the appearance of my site. Did I get hacked and they just removed the color? I dunno. I’m fielding questions to my semi-mute husband.. — (note: apparently it was just my computer, it’s fixed now, looks fine to me again)

It’s Tuesday night, or rather Wednesday morning. Are you ready? Have you been practicing your lightning fast needles? Are you geared up and on gauge for SockWars??

It’s good to hear someone is!

Me? I’ve been learning new things that haven’t much, if anything, to do with SockWars. Yesterday (Mon), I started a new sock! Today, I finished it and began it’s mate. You wanna see? It’s so cute! I’ll give you a peek:

This is the first Samplers pattern on page 92 of Ethnic Socks & Stockings by Priscilla A. Gibson-Roberts (I’ll post the link when I have more time – if you don’t have this book, borrow or buy it!). I learned how to do intarsia in the round.. More later on that..
I wanted to use black for the background, but the black available was too thin. I used size 1 needles, it’s a 44 stitch sock and it fits loose (in length) on BB (2yo), but I think I held the yarn tighter than usual and added more rows than I thought necessary. When the second is finished, they’ll make cute booty-slippers for her for the ‘winter’ months. The first is on her foot, much to her chagrine (she hates it when I put new socks on her feet, I’m not sure why yet). AJ loves the look, so I may go on to make her a pair.

For now, I must go get some sleep!

I tried on the ARRRRgyle this morning for the fun of it because, when I had Ben try it on Saturday night, it just looked stretched. It seems to fit my ankle near perfectly! So, I guess I’m making me a pair of Arrrrgs -the need to finish them in sufficient time has gone. I can get them done on my own schedule, though it would be cool to go end Summer of Socks with a bang! Then, I can start again to make Ben’s pair with larger needles!

I think the heel flap is too short and I want to add another half repeat of the diamonds. I prefer longer socks than Ben does, and don’t like the look of the pattern ending so abruptly at the heel flap (so, here’s a heel to frog!). Beyond that, I think I’ve fallen for stranded knitting!
Jeremy was here when I stitched it up and heard all my errors noted. He queried me as to whether I’d purposely repeat those mistakes to make the other sock match. LOL.. uh, no. This is the first and I think it’s pretty darn good (at least from a distance) for a first stranded knitting project. But, it will remain unique, even with it’s mate. The mate has been worked to the first half diamond and I think I have one hole where I forgot to twist the yarns. Not bad, I think.

http://knitty.com/ISSUEfall06/FEATextreme2in1.html
Double Knitting 2 separate socks/sleeves/whatever. This rocks.

I would like to make AJ a sweater for her birthday… I may have decided not to crochet it.. The sleeves would be good practice, they’re tubes.

Can you believe Sock Wars is already beginning *this coming Friday*!!!!! EEK! YarnMonkey called for a gauge of 22st/4in (5.5st/in) in DK weight yarn. Saturday morning, I dug through my sock patterns for anything close and came up with one pattern (I may have more, but stopped at the first one), and it was a reasonable practice sock!

Not only is it cute, but it fits my 2yo great! This is supposed to be an ornament, but I continued until I ran out of purple.. which means this sock has no mate Which means no points toward Summer of Socks (Judges, may I have 1/2 the child’s size sock points?)
I’ve got some red DK and more of this black yarn, I’m thinking maybe I’ll make her some snazzy Christmas socks, but I must work tomorrow to finish Ben’s Flying Spaghetti Monsters (FSMs for short)… er, I mean ARRRRgyles.. Talk Like A Pirate Day is Tuesday!! Last night, I sewed in all those ends, seamed it -my first mattress stitch!!!- and worked the heel flap. This morning, I turned the heel and began the gussets. The mate is only a cuff. I still have to begin the colorwork.

I think the black points are actually closer to matching than in the pic, but the sock is a little wonky – somebody didn’t take the time to block (it’ll be around his ankle anyway!), the white lines line up nicely.
Yesterday, I took some time at the park with Ben and the children. It’s not the place for lots of loose balls (before the Arrrrg diamonds were done), so I took Sue’s socks. She’d picked out Mineshaft in Lorna’s Laces for her next pair and it took me some time to get gauge, but they make nice park knitting:

I see why they named it mineshaft! 9st/in attained this fascinating swirl thing. Wonder how far it’ll continue, or if it’ll pick up again after the heels/gussets.

Today, we went to the Pinnacles again. Had a much nicer hike – only like 4 hours instead of 5-6. That’s 2-3 miles with 3 children. Ben’s friend Jeremy and his camera joined us, so I may have pictures of that shortly. Knitting socks in the car makes Ben nervous (something about me or baby-to-be getting impaled with 4-5 thin needles if an accident occurs..), so I took some crochet. I’m working on a shawl, but don’t have the pattern handy. I think I’ll wait till it’s bigger to get a picture because I’m really making it for the edging and I’m not there yet. The body is a triple-crossed dc stitch. Pattern called for 2 balls of Lorna’s Laces and I thought, ‘Oh, I’ve got that.’ After it was started, I read the Lace weight bit.. I’m using sock yarn.. I hope 2 balls will make the body and the third ball -which has the same dyelot batch #, but is a darker color- will be the border.

Let me count the ends…

I decided to take on the ARRRRgyles as my first stranded knitting project (link is to Moth Heaven’s July page – tons of argyle info!!). After all, Mom’s birthday is Talk Like A Pirate Day and Ben needs *something* to wear to work! My dear beloved keeps looking over and commenting about the Flying Spaghetti Monster loosed in the living room.. I simply reply that I love him.

Because our feet are about the same size!

I started making these socks with Cascade 220 (worsted weight) that I had sitting around. It’s a nice dark gray, light gray tweed (? it’s a 4ply with 2 plies in each color) that I lost the ballband to long ago.

I was just going along with the women’s s-m size ‘Starter Stockinette’ in the book Knit Socks! when I decided to finally try them on at 7 inches past the heel (about 2-2.5 inches before the tips of the toes, right?). Well, they were loose and at my toes. Hmm.. well, Sue likes looser socks, and they’d be plenty warm in her flipflops, so I decided to split these as practice Tabi socks. I borrowed basic division from Lucia’s blog and tried them on to see where I really wanted to divide. Well, across the tops, my toes are just under 3.5 inches. These are 48 stitch socks. I decided on 14 stitches for the big toe (7 from each needle on that side of the sock) and cast on just 3 extra sts between the toes. The yarn between the socks is all there is left! I wasn’t sure when I started if I could make the toes the same color as the socks. Looks like I’ll be fine! I just need to graft the toes, then I can finish knitting the big toes.

(later:)
To finish the big toes, I picked up the 3 stitches, plus 3 (1 on 1 side, 2 on the other) to make an even easily reducible number of stitches (20). Then I knit even in the round till my toe begins to taper in:

On each round after that, I decreased by 4 stitches until there were 4 left. Then I just sewed them shut and tada!
Tabi Socks!!