Yipee! the computer is mine!

But not for long, so let me quickly show you the gloves I knit for my hubby:




That's him at his desk. And yes, he's wearing his pijamas. Did I mention that he works until very late? Incidentally, I made that coaster that you can see in the back. I used a CD-ROM and cotton yarn.

Also, here's how my mouthwash yarn looked once I wound it into two balls:





Here's two views of the short row toe. I wanted to see which side looked better, and chose the second one (it's too late to disagree, the sock is finished):







Here's the short row ankle, which I didn't like much because all the green yarn was used up for the ankle, with no stripes. And on top of the ankle I have a yellow stripe twice as wide as the rest. This made me think that I should try an afterthought ankle, that way the striping would continue with the same pattern.





Finally, this is the ribbing and the kitchener bind off. It's very wobbly, but considering this was my first attempt at kitchener bind off, I'm not complaining.




Froggy mentioned not using Buss's "Big Book of Knitting" much. I confess that I have only consulted it twice. And twice I had the same impression: the diagrams and pictures are perfect, but the explanations are too short.



Isn't it too soon to have second sock syndrome? I'm going to work a little more on my nephew's scarf and then I'll finish the other striped sock.

Blogging without pictures

It's not as fun, but it will have to do. At least I am taking pictures and as soon as I can use my husband's computer I will post them. I have finished one striped sock and I started the second one. I had never knit a toe up sock so I simply did a normal bind off and discovered it was too tight. This really needed a more flexible bind off, so I consulted Katharina Buss's "Big Book of Knitting" about the Kitchener bind off. The diagrams and pictures are great, but the explanations could go into a little more detail. It explains how to do a 1x1 ribbing bind off in the round, but no explanation was given for a 2x2 rib in the round, which was what I wanted to do. There was, however, an explanation for a 2x2 rib on straight needles, so I attempted that and failed miserably. I ended up frogging the 2x2 ribbing and tried instead the 1x1. It looks a little irregular but this is, after all, an experimental pair of socks. Come think about it, I'm not sure I dare to wear these striped socks anyway. If I try this again, I'll aim at narrower stripes, and colors I will actually want to wear (I don't like yellow much).

What I've been doing...

I have been knitting (and frogging too), but I am so far unable to post pictures to prove it. This has turned me into a bad blogger. I've been waiting all week for an opportunity to post my pictures, but my husband's computer was never available. So I decided to post a simple progress report without pictures.

I knit a few rows of the ribbed blue thing. I haven't finished the back yet.

I finished my husband's computer gloves (fingerless gloves, a project I had not touched in months).

I finished the beaded scarf, but frogged the airplane and started again because the scarf was too short.

I started knitting a sock with my self striping, mouthwash-Kool-Aid yarn. I used Wendy's short row toe. I also used short rows to do the ankle and that messed up the stripes. I should have used an afterthought ankle instead. As for the toe, I would try Wendy's figure eight toe. I was lucky this time with the short rows, but maybe next time I won't be.

When Kool-Aid is not good enough

I want to start my socka self patterning socks, but before I do that, I want to practice knitting in the round with very thin yarn. And I happen to have this yarn that seems just perfect for socks. It's wool and it's fingering weight. It comes from my late grandma's stash.










The problem is, I'm not crazy about this pale shade of yellow, so of course I'm going to enhance it with Kool-Aid. Since this is practice for self-patterning yarn, I attempted to create self-striping yarn. Yes, like those pretty Noro yarns that form solid stripes as you knit. I wrapped my yarn around a big plastic bottle, alternating 20 turns on top of the bottle with 20 turns on the bottom of the bottle, back and forth until I ended with two attached skeins, one of which was to be dyed with green apple Kool-Aid. The name of the flavor is actually arctic apple.









Well, this is a bad shade of Kool-Aid to dye with. It turns the water very cloudy. And it didn't help that the color of my yarn was yellow to begin with, I ended up with an unacceptably pale shade of green:











I did not have any more green Kool-Aid, but I happened to have a big bottle of BLUE mouthwash in the kitchen with me (the same bottle I had used to wind the yarn). Why, if you add blue to yellow, you get green, right? Of course, only if mouthwash coloring is taken up by wool.













And yes, it is! I was very surprised. I wonder if any brand of mouthwash could be used to dye wool. In any case I now have self striping yarn with alternating yellow and green sections... though my green stripes will be a little spotted with yellow here and there:









I tried to stir the yarn as much as I could to avoid the "variegated look". I guess the shallow bowl did not allow me much room. If I try this again, I'll use a much bigger bowl and I will keep squeezing the yarn with a plastic spoon, that gave me good results with my last kool-aid experiment.



Gosh, I'm starting to believe that I enjoy the dyeing much more than the knitting.

Turquoise yarn

Thank you to all that posted comments on my scarf graph. I'm glad it's that evident. My husband pointed out that if I knit it this way, the plane will always point downwards. So I'll invert that image and have the plane's nose to the left.

My second Kool-Aid experiment is dry and wound into a ball for you to see:





And here is a progress picture of my nephew's scarf:





As you can tell, I still have a long way to go before I start using that chart.

A Rorschach for you

A while back ago I made a baby sweater with an intarsia teddy bear on one side. No one knew for sure what it was. Some people thought it was a fox. Whenever someone asked, my answer was: "It's a Rorschach". You've probably heard of that test when they make you interpret inkblots and that's supposed to say something about your personality. This is not such thing. All I'm hoping for is that most people will be able to tell what it is.







You cannot have two adjacent beads with this technique, either vertically or horizontally, though diagonal lines are OK. I originally intended to make a five pointed star. I was working on it when my husband walked by and reminded me of something that my nephew particularly likes and talks about endlessly. So instead of a star, I followed my husband's suggestion and tried to depict my nephew's passion, but I'm not sure it works. What do you see?

More dyeing

I finished spinning the rest of my wool rovings. It was much easier than the previous ones that I dyed before spinning them. Also, the yarn looks more homogeneous. I wonder if that's because I'm getting better with my spindle or simply because my dyed rovings were a little stiff.



I used Changing Cherry Kool aid to dye this yarn. I don't have pictures but I basically used the same method as before, except that I spun the rovings first. The color is distributed evenly with a few pale spots here and there, but I believe it looks better than when I dyed the roving. Also, you normally have to wet the wool to set the twist anyway, and the dye bath let me skip that step. The yarn is hanging in my bathtub and as soon as it's dry I'll wind it into a ball and post some pictures.






Missy suggested that I use the extra beads to make a star on the other end of my nephew's scarf. Thanks for the idea! I don't have enough beads to write his name again (or his last name) so a star will be perfect.

A Boy's scarf

This is my progress so far with my nephew's scarf:





I'm done with his name and all I have to do is keep on knitting until I reach the other end and then... what? Should I leave the other end completely bland and unadorned? I still have a lot of beads on that yarn, so I will welcome any suggestions.

Finally, some pictures

This new job is fun, and certainly more interesting than what I was doing before, but I'm no longer in front of a computer all day long. Which is a good thing, having to walk around is better for my legs and for my eyes. However, you can tell that my blogging rate has been affected. And at home, my poor husband is writing all day and hardly steps away from the computer, so I've been unable to upload some pictures. But here they are for you to see. First, let me show you the kool aid yarn, rolled into a ball and ready to use:






I'll use it as a single ply. This yarn is very irregular and I need to practice some more before plying. I've already started spinning the rest of my wool rovings, which will end up as another koolaid experiment later on:



As for knitting pictures, here's a finished baby scarf, already blocked:







Here's how I threaded those beads:




Using beads is certainly fun with a small project like this. Let's see how it goes with my next kiddie scarf. I already have a chart for writing my nephew's name with beads. Wish me luck!