Discouraged

I spent all Summer waiting to apply for a position that was going to be opened "anytime soon..." Specifically, the person filling that position announced since May that she'd be leaving in September, and I was recommended for the job. But the position had to be submitted for approval, approved, filed, opened to internal candidates, waited on, internal selection made, no internal candidate found, approved for opening to external candidates, filed again and so on.

For those of you lucky to start working whenever you please, the fact that there is an emergency hire and they want someone to start ASAP wouldn't bother you.

Me, I cannot start working without changing my visa first. It's not hard, really, I make an appointment with a US embassy back home,  and a week later I present all my certifications and letters of recommendation along with a letter of employment. I get my new visa another week later and I can come back to the US and start working.

Not hard, but it does require a wait of about two weeks.

Well, this is yet another job opportunity I have to let go because they're not willing to wait two weeks.

So now you know why I'm discouraged.

Curly Singles

My singles were overtwisted on purpose, because I don't want any slubs showing once I'm plying. Want to see how overtwisted they were?



Just in case, I decided to also set the twist before plying.  A little warm water and overnight stretching has straightened those singles into submission.



Back to a cardboard tube, from which it will be plied once I'm done with the second batch of singles.



I don't see many slubs, so I hope I can really make socks from this yarn once it's been plied.

The chocolate socks for the spouse have grown a few rows, but I didn't feel like taking a new picture. I should be starting the heel now, but I want him to try them on briefly before that.

Weekend dye job

Last year made a pair of fingerless mitts with my handspun yarns and I liked them a lot, but I kept thinking I should have made them longer. So I'm using up the rest of my handspun yarns in a second pair of fingerless mitts.  That also gives me an excuse to spin the rest of the colored rovings.


It occurred to me that I am finally spinning singles that are thin enough to make socks from them. Of course, I could be wrong and slubs may show up while plying, in which case I would use the yarn for mittens. In any case, I'd need more purple singles, and that's why I dyed another batch of purple roving. I don't expect a match, but at least I'd be plying with a similar shade of purple.

          

I used solar energy, which I hadn't tried before. After a whole day on my balcony, this is the result.



As usual, I used regular food coloring and vinegar. I wish I had a white enamel pot so I could have seen clearly when all of the dye was taken up by the yarn. Also, if I ever move to more toxic stuff, I might not want to use the same pot where I cook my frijoles.

The spouse's socks are growing. I chose the undulating rib sock pattern, also from the Favorite Socks book. The pattern is very easy to memorize so it won't bother me that I'll have to return the book to the library before I'm done.

Done!

Stubborn as I am, I kept on knitting according to the pattern even if I knew the cuff was not tight. I did try the socks on before going on and they seemed to stay in place. I did a very loose bindoff the way Vaxgirl taught me and wore them right away, no washing or blocking. But wool socks in August are not a terribly good idea, unless you're wearing sandals. I believe wearing socks with sandals is in good taste if the socks are handmade. The spouse agrees with me.


The socks are very comfortable and I hope they remain so after washing them. My feet were happy and I guess I'm lucky, because that means I can choose either a gussetted heel or a short row heel when making socks for myself.

I picked up the pink lacy thing and guess what? I still hate it. But I did get to the armholes before starting something else.



Those are socks for the spouse. He will have his own gusseted socks and provide further input. I did not use a figure eight toe, but a Turkish toe instead. I think I like it even better.

Cuffing

My philosophy with these socks has been to keep knitting and, unless it's horrible or unwearable, don't rip. This applies to the cuff, which is sort of inelastic. Even the model has problems keeping her cuffs up:



Or maybe she's doing it on purpose because it looks cute. Still, should I be reasonable and rip in order to make a better cuff? Or just keep going according to the pattern? This is my cuff so far:



You can tell that the cuff is not pulling the stitches together and tightening the fabric like a cuff is supposed to do.

Both Andrea and Jennifer  pointed out that the short row heel is not as comfortable as the gusseted heel. So now I understand why so many people prefer the gussets. I will wear my gusseted socks and decide for myself whether or not I like them better than the short rows. If I do, I'll give gussets a second chance. Andrea also pointed out a tutorial by Grumperina to avoid holes when picking up stitches along the heel flap. Very helpful for cuff-down socks, but I need a better solution for toe-ups.

Ivy asked me about the yarn I'm using. It's Mama E's sock yarn, in Glampyre colors. I got the yarn as a prize from the Glampyre herself. I have checked Mama E's website but I don't see that colorway available. Maybe she just made this one batch for the Glampyre, who knows?

The pooch is doing well and his wound is healing wonderfully, but his behavior is less than wonderful. He obviously hates the collar, and he lets us know by reverting to his early childhood behavior, when he was a very naughty puppy indeed. I just hope he goes back to his old self when we remove the collar.

Sock Talk

You mean those potatoes were still edible? I doubt it, they were soft and squishy. I keep most of my fruit and vegetables in the fridge. Even when I buy stuff in small quantities, it lasts very long because I'm basically cooking just for myself: The spouse gets fed at work and he likes eating out on weekends (which is really nice).

The socks are progressing beautifully. I decided to challenge myself into knitting a gusseted heel to make them more interesting. I got the idea from Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles, by Cat Bordhi, which was my inspiration for these socks. There is a beautiful toe-up pattern called "Leaf and Tendril" that I would have chosen if I were using a solid color instead of a variegated yarn. The instructions are very clear and the only confusion arose from my knitting style, which orients the stitches on the needles in a different way than most Anglo-Saxon knitters do.

Why is it that almost everybody uses the gusseted heel? It messes up banding patterns. Also, it is not particularly pretty, and knitting it is too complicated. The toe-up method saves you from picking up stitches, but I still believe the short row heel is easier and looks better. I had holes along the heel flap:



At first I thought It was my twisted stitches, but then I took a close look at another gusseted sock knitted from the top down:



That picture comes from the book No Sheep for You, by Amy Singer. I can definitely see holes where the stitches were picked up. So it is not me, it is not my twisted stitches and it is not the toe-up direction of the pattern. Bordhi's book does include recommendations to avoid holes by twisting the stitches when you pick them up, but I doubt I'll ever do a gusseted heel again. Still, I'm glad I gave it a try.

I did like the stitch pattern, and I hope it really makes the heels last longer. I believe this can be applied to short row heels and I might try that later on.

I should add that I didn't buy either of those books, nor the book I took the "Go with the Flow" pattern from: they are all library books. I do buy knitting books if after checking them out of the library I feel the need to possess them, but I am too frugal to let that happen very often.

Some bad news this week: The pooch turned fifteen and I wanted to take him for a day trip as a present, but the car door got in the way. So he instead got an emergency visit to the vet, four stitches and an Elizabethan collar.



I doubt he liked his presents.

Stuff in my fridge

I thought I had a reasonably clean fridge. I really don't clean it that often, but it doesn't get dirty, and I'm prettty good at not allowing food to spoil in my fridge. That's why I don't understand how this happened:



Does that count as spoiling? After all, those sprouts are thriving. And yet, I'm certainly not eating those potatoes.

In other news, I've been working on my new sock project. I chose the "go with the flow" pattern by Evelyn A. Clark, published in Favorite Socks by Interweave. It's not a toe-up pattern but it makes no difference. Or does it? I don't know if I'm supposed to read the charts from the top down since this is, after all, a cuff-down pattern. The fact that the instep section has the first two purls outside the repeat section makes me think these charts were made to be read from the top.


Just in case, after two inches of pattern I inverted the ssk and the k2tog. I'm not going to rip all the way down to implement this change, because really, those two inches are going to be inside the shoe and besides, the difference is very subtle. Also, I learned early on that if you take the socks off the needles, it is very hard to get them back on in the right order. Other than that, this idea of knitting two socks on two circular needles is great.

The figure eight toe was also a success. I learned how to make symmetrical increases to avoid twisting. I also like how the colors are banding diagonally. The purple and orange are alternating within one single band, like striping within a stripe.

Two-ply vs. three-ply

The doggy rug, which hasn't been touched for a long time, was originally a "learn to spin" project. So I tried different things with my spindles and spinning wheel and incorporated them into the rug. One thing that surprised me was that a three-ply yarn knitted to apparently the same gauge as a two-ply yarn. But my yarn was slubby, lumpy and uneven, and I tried different stitches too, so there is some uncertainty there. I'm testing that hypothesis now by spinning two-ply and three-ply yarns, and when I get to that rug again I'll use the same stitch so I can really tell what's going on. So here they are, two-ply and three-ply. There is no obvious difference.

       

And yet, my spinning wheel does not like three ply yarns. I have to stop often and wind the yarn myself, because the yarn gets stuck in the flyer and is not properly wound. Also, Navajo plying is pretty rough on the hands.

Buuuuut... a long time ago I came across a humongous crochet hook that came with many knitting supplies I got in an estate sale. I didn't know what to do with it, and for a while I put a cd "whorl" on it and used it as a splindle, but now I found a new use for it: Assisted Navajo plying. Nice!



And since the yarn winder was out, I took the opportunity to wind my Glampyre yarn into a center pull ball:

       

That's 100g of Mama-E's sock yarn, 100% merino. It makes a huge center pull ball that looks quite unstable, like it's about to fall apart into a messy tangle. That means I need to knit it right away don't you agree? Plus, I finally need to come to terms with the fact that I don't like pink. I've been in denial, trying to finish a couple of pink things for months and I hadn't realized it yet. I still mean to finish the pink Kiri and the pink Lacy Tee, because I do look good in pink, but I definitely need some green and purple in front of my eyes right now. I don't know about the orange. It does pull together the green and the purple, and I'm curious to see how it knits up.

Here's a short preview of what I'll do with that center-pull ball




Yeah, socks on two circs. Two socks at a time. With a figure eight toe (which I had attempted before without success). If I were smarter I would not try three new things at once, but I'm not smart, I'm adventurous.

I worked a litte more on the Lacy Tee in spite of its pink-ness, but there's only six rows between the last picture and its current state. I'll post another picture once I reach the armholes.

It's Over

I mean the microscopy class, not this blog. Though given the poor attention it has received lately it wouldn't be surprising. But here I am, still knitting, though at a very slow rate, and blogging about it at an even slower rate:


I know, were it not for the funny colors, it wouldn't look much different from the last picture. It is a lousy picture and I thought about making one in natural light, but this way you get to see that it is indeed a different picture from the last one I posted.

And here's another thing I've been working at:



Those are Shetland singles. After looking at them under the microscope, I want to use them up as soon as possible. The doggie rug lies abandoned but hopefully all these singles, once plied, will be enough to finish it.

Many thanks for the positive comments about my electron microscopy project. I had lots of fun working on it.