Matching Hands and Feet

Autumn in New England is ever-changing; crisp days, cool nights, a freak snow storm (seriously that was not cool - I am not ready for snow). I thought before I had to bust out the serious hand knits that I would be able to use these new mitts at least a little. Actually I have been wearing them more indoors than out. I have one of those apartments with steam radiator heat and if it's not cold outside then the heat doesn't kick in and the apartment is just a bit nippy. These mitts do the trick, keep my hands warm but fingers free for typing, fast-forwarding thru commercials on the DVR etc....

The pattern is Elphaba knit in Knitpicks Felici. I am such a sucker for self-striping yarn. Super straight-forward pattern and the only mod I made was to add an additional 12 stitches since I have big hands. They fit great. I would show you in a picture but it is freakishly hard to take a photo of your own hands.

They took just about a skein to knit and then I was left with another skein just sitting there mocking me. So I decided to make a pair of anklets. While I was pretty precise in getting the mitts to match I didn't really care on the socks. I knit these toe-up because I wasn't sure how far my yarn would go and since the anklets were going to be pretty easy I figured I may as well try out an afterthought heel for the first time to up my degree of difficulty as it were. It was not hard to do at all really and it keeps the striping going unlike a big heel flap.

Check out my brand spanking new sock blockers I picked up on my recent trip to Webs.

I Was a Knitting Moron

I present  my Coralicious Socks knit in the Piedmont Wildsocks yarn I bought while in California. They really should not have taken as long as they did but I had a touch of the moron that slowed down their creation. I tried knitting them as Artichoke socks and after knitting over 4 inches there was no denying it they looked like crap. Maybe the yarn was meant to be toe-up socks so I tried Victory Socks - about 3 inches knit, again crap. Seriously what was going wrong?   Was I screwing up when doing a yarn over between a knit and purl stitch? So I hit the you tube videos and the truth was enlightening and embarrassing. Somehow I had forgotten how to do a simple yarn over. I had been doing them in the wrong direction. I have done yarn overs before, lots of them. No problems. Honestly!

So I started fresh with the frogged yarn rewound and a new pattern picked out. And lo and behold - not crap!

I know I've mentioned before how freaky my feet are but seriously check out how much wider my right foot is!

Yikes!.

They are organizing..., a photo by Sarahland on Flickr.

I am a bit overwhelmed by all the zucchini and squash I am getting in my CSA.

Toe-Up Stripey Goodness

Yay! A finished project. These are my Toe-Up Stripey Noro Socks and I love them. I even kept knitting them higher than I normally wear my socks because I loved seeing the colors change and contrast with the black.

They are far from perfect. there some serious color jag issues in spots and yet, still love them. I love them because they fit just right and because they are my first toe-up socks and because I figured out Judy's Magic Cast-On (which is freakin' brilliant, by the way) and because I knit them while I was visiting Ariel and because the second sock flew off my needles within days and because it was cool that flight attendants would stop by my seat and ask about them and compliment the socks (and therefore me) and because Noro is just so damn pretty. 

The details: Wendy's Fingering Weight Toe-Up Socks with Gusset Heel in Noro Kureyon Sock (left over from my sister's socks) and Valley Yarns Huntington.

Sights of San Francisco

I took a whole slew of photos of San Francisco and I thought I'd share a few. If you want to see them all head to my flickr stream here.

Knitting Out West

Greetings! I am back from my trip to West Coast to visit the fabulous Ariel. It was my first time to the San Francisco/Oakland area and it was great. A wonderful mix of sight-seeing, eating, imbibing and knitting. Since this is a knitting blog,I figured this first post will focus on the knitting bits.
My first day there we popped into Article Pract in Oakland.  A wonderful store with a large variety of yarn, really helpful staff and they were having a sale. A sale on ALL yarn. Really, it would have been simply rude to not buy anything. (I am all about the good manners.) As much as I love stripey and variegated sock yarns, I realized that for certain patterns I really need to have some nice solid tonal yarns in my stash.  This madelinetosh sock is so soft and the color just so heavenly.

A trip to the Mission had to include a stop at ImagiKnit. A big store with a huge variety of yarns, where I think I was so overwhelmed I walked away empty-handed. But being the good friend that I am, I did find perfect green yarn that she simply I knew Ariel would be unable to resist. I can spot Ariel green's and orange's from a good 15 feet away.

I really wanted "souvenir yarn" something either spun or dyed local so we hit up  Piedmont Yarn for some of their hand-dyed Piedmont Wildsocks. I am pretty certain I already have the pattern chosen for this yarn. Stay tuned...

Even better than the new yarn, it was so wonderful just to hang out with Ariel and knit. It reminded me how much I miss knitting with others.   Our weekly group kind of faded away a while back and while I have seen some of my knittah's socially we haven't sat and knit together for a long time. Ariel and I would pull out our socks and knit all over the place. We scoured projects on ravelry together when we discovered a shawl pattern we loved from someone we met at Article Pract. I may have even have been molested by some of her stash. (I am working hard to repress that memory).   We chatted with one sweet woman on BART whose husband was very well-trained to feign interest in the difference between DPN's and circulars.  Nearly any time we stopped to rest our weary feet out came the knitting. A fellow knitter understands that we are not leaving the cafe in North Beach until I have finished turning the heel.  I loved when one of her friends asked us how we knew each other and Ariel said simply "knitting". The look on his face was one of such confusion, it was priceless.  One evening after a lot of walking, Ariel said "How 'bout wine, knitting and Firefly?" and I could not imagine anything better. 

My sock in progress while enjoying an afternoon beer.

Fabric Napkins with Freezer Paper Stencils

I kept meaning to whip up some cloth napkins but it was one of those fleeting thoughts that never occurred to me when I was someplace that sold fabric. But I actually remembered when I visited Gather Here on their opening day. Gather Here is just adorable; fabric and sewing patterns that makes me wish I was a better sewer, pretty yarn, inviting space to sit and stitch, just a really lovely store. If you're in the Cambridge, Mass area - go there. I was so overwhelmed by all the pretty that it was hard to restrain myself to only buy some fabric that I had an immediate use for.  But I was good and only bought some Kona Cotton in a gorgeous shade that matches the blues in my kitchen just wonderfully.

I can manage to sew a straight line (sort of) so sewing up the napkins wasn't that hard. I think the ironing and pinning took longer than the actual sewing They needed a bit of something so I decided to try freezer paper stencils for the first time.  I made two of a silverware place setting and two of artichokes.  Oddly enough, the artichokes with far more cuts and chances for things to go wrong came out better than the relatively simple silverware. Who knew?