Surprise

At first I didn't have internet on my computer, and then I spilled coffee on my keyboard and got by using my mouse alone, and all the while I was spending most of my knitting time working on secret projects, but eventually I bought a new keyboard and finally found time and inclination to show off some knitting on my blog. Surprise!

I thought it was appropriate to take this opportunity to show off a project that I was working on sporadically for the better part of my blog silence. Though I don't think I mentioned it on the blog, my brother was expecting a baby boy in mid October. I decided that this was a good excuse to make another Baby Surprise Jacket out of handspun. To this end I bought some superwash merino roving and dyed it blue, yellow and brown.
Since I'm not crazy about spinning superwash merino worsted style, I took my hand cards to the coloured roving and turned it into a pile of rolags. This mixed the colours and toned them down.
I then sat down at my CPW and made a nice woolen 3 ply.
Sometime in the course of all of this my nephew Liam was born. Since he arrived on time in the first half of August, there was no real hurry to get him wrapped up in a wool sweater. However, as the end of September approached it seemed like the right time to get the sweater started. I finished it on October 4, just after the cold weather arrived.
There was a day delay between when the sweater was all ready to go and when I could drop it off, so I took some of the leftover yarn and knit an Aviator cap. I'm really glad I did, too.

Sadly without internet

Things may have been quite on the blog the last couple of weeks but that is because they have been crazy in ever day life. I've just finished moving, by which I mean that everything has been moved to the new place and things are slowly emerging from boxes and looking for places to settle. Now I'm just waiting to have the internet hooked up at the new place (the long weekend isn't speeding things along) and borrowing my brother's computer once in awhile to check email and waste time.

Soon, though, I will have my computer online again and I can dig my two almost finished projects out of wherever they got packed and take pictures and everything. See you again soon.

Flyer assembly

Having promised pictures of a near completed scarf I will now have to renege. I did some knitting on the scarf and some knitting on the long neglected Tempest sweater but I failed to take pictures of either before it got dark. Since I am off work at 6 tomorrow there is some chance I will take pictures then.

I did, however, take pictures of the flyer assembly of my CPW in order to help answer Jane's question in yesterday's comments. When it is all put together and ready to spin my flyer looks like this:

and all taken apart it looks like this:

So now I'm curious what part, if any, Jane is missing.

For anyone interested in CPWs there is a great resource developing in one of the groups on Ravelry.

Mother and daughter spinning wheels

My current work schedule gives me Sunday and Monday off and has me working a mix of morning and evening shifts the rest of the week. This does not make it easy to find the time and motivation to blog twice a week. I will keep trying, though.

Despite the weird work hours I am getting knitting done. I finished the last pair (for now) of ankle socks but then gave them away before I got a picture of them. D'oh! I'm also about two thirds of the way through my flutter scarf. I promise to take a picture of it tomorrow; it might be finished but it probably won't be blocked.

I did take time, yesterday, to take some pictures of my old Canadian production spinning wheel and my mother's even older Canadian production spinning wheel.
Mine is the one on the right. One of these days I will do a proper post about these wheels. They are fantastic machines. I really want to find the time to figure out their dimensions and ratios. Until then I will just say that there is a good reason that this was the wheel that I packed up and moved across country with me, despite the fact that it is much larger and less collapsible than the Lendrum that I parted with. To spin on a CPW is to never want to not spin on a CPW.

200th post

My second post of the week, like my first post of the week, is mostly socks. I've finished the pair of ankle socks I was making with my leftovers from the Monkey Rooster socks.
I used a short row heel for these socks. I discovered that I prefer the fit of heel flaps to the short row heels on these short socks. I find the short row heels cause the back of the sock to ride a bit too low.

So for my next pair I went back to heel flaps:
I used some Trekking leftovers for these and let the self striping yarn make them look interesting. My next pair will be knit out of a solid coloured Opal yarn so I'm going to knit them in the Monkey lace pattern to make things interesting. After they are finished I may take a break from ankle socks for a while.

Also on my needles is a nice straight forward lace project, the Flutter scarf:
I'm using the leftover Habu silk laceweight from my first lace project, the Icarus shawl. It should make a lovely scarf. It will have to wait until I finish this last pair of ankle socks, though...

Still more socks

Here I was thinking it had been a couple of weeks since I last blogged and that I should get back to it only to discover that it has been more than a month. When I think back to all of the things I planned to share I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. From now on, though, I fully intned to blog at least twice a week. With any luck this will also motivate me to knit more than just plain mindless socks.

When last I blogged I was half way through a pair of Wanidas. After I finished the second of the pair (which I still haven't photographed) I cast on for a pair of Rick socks from the same book.

This pattern makes a beautiful pair of socks (again, only one of which I have managed to photograph). All of the twisted stitching make it a more time consuming knit but well worth the effort.

The Rick, Wanida and Grey and Blue Monkey socks were given to my mother for her birthday. I managed to finish the Rick pair the night before her birthday, much to my relief. I was also relieved that she hadn't guessed that the socks that I was knitting and she was admiring were in fact for her. So you can blame at least some of my lack of blogging on my mother.

The next pair of socks on my needles was another pair of Monkeys. These were comissioned by my mother for one of her friends. They are knit mostly out of Kroy sock yarn, but since I ran out before the end of the second sock I had to employ another bit of stash yarn. Had I been making these for myself I would have ripped out the first toe and knit it to match. My mother has an odd penchant for asymmetry so the socks don't match. I've been thinking of these as my 'toe the line' monkey socks.
Lest one get the impression that all of my sock knitting was for gifts, here are a couple of pairs of ankle socks I have been working on (one pair finished and one half done):
Since I am wearing shorts at work a lot I decided that ankle socks would come in very handy. Of course, since I finished the first pair the weather has become cooler and I have been wearing pants and full sized socks but the theory is otherwise sound. By the end of the summer I hope to have quite the collection of stash busting ankle socks (just in time for winter).

Socks, socks and more socks

Having not done a lot of knitting in the past couple of months, I am now on a sock knitting jag. It started with the pair of Monkey socks I cast on at the end of the month. I chose to knit them because I was in need of a pattern I could knit easily and I had some stripy yarn in my stash that I thought would work well. I'm quite happy with the result as is my mother who has claimed them for herself.

I planned to follow the pattern as written but I forgot a couple of the plain knitting rows in the pattern. I didn't feel like ripping back so I knit both socks with a slightly compressed lace pattern. They are knit out of the Austermann Step sock yarn that contains Aloe and jojoba. It is nice soft yarn but it makes my nose run when I knit with it so I don't think I will be buying more of it.

I finished the Monkey socks on the fourth and immediately cast on for a pair of Angee socks from Cookie A's new book. I used the Louet Gems yarn that didn't work for the Intertwined Leaves socks and a 2.5 mm set of needles. I'm much happier with how the yarn worked with this pattern. I still found the fabric a bit loose and when I knit with this yarn in the future I will try to remember to go down to a 2.25 mm needle for the heel and sole of the sock.

I was far enough into the foot of the sock when I realized I wanted the fabric a bit tighter that I didn't want to rip back. Since the yarn is super wash I simply put the finished sock in the dryer for a little bit and that tightened everything up just enough.

I finished the Angee socks on the seventh and the next day I cast on for the Wanida socks from the same book. By tomorrow I should have the pair finished. I hope the next picture I take captures the colour of the yarn better. It is Shelridge Farm Soft Touch Ultra in Pumpkin, though I find the colour much more coppery in person. It has a lovely shine that is really hard to photograph.

The Wanida pattern is a much quicker knit than the Angee but that might be in part because I have already knit a pair. In fact I knit the pair that appears in the book.

The sample knitting was fun and the fact that a pair of socks I knit appears in a book makes me happy. It doesn't hurt that I also get my name in the acknowledgments. I would jump at the chance to sample knit again.

Finally, while I am on the topic of socks, I should share a pair of socks that I knit just before my life got turned upside down. I knit these out of yarn I spun up back in October of 2007 (and blogged about in November 2007). Since I only had 200 yards, I knit them toe up and finished them with a picot edge. They fit much better than my first pair of handspun socks and I only wish I had had more yarn. Still, having ankle socks can be quite useful in the warmer months.