Finished Mitts

I did run out of green yarn, as expected. Luckily I was able to finish the thumbs and then use gray yarn to finish the cuffs. I originally chose a lighter shade of gray but the spouse disapproved. So I ripped the light gray cuffs and let him choose another yarn. I think I am spoiling him.

I spent Friday teaching a friend to knit two socks at the same time from the toe up. I was very surprised to find out that she knits the same way I do: with the yarn in the left hand, knitting from the back and purling from the front with the yarn below the needle. What she did not know was that when knitting in the round you purl from the back and knit from the front. Up to now she had been making socks with twisted stitches and had not noticed.

Although she is American, she spent her childhood in Mexico, and apparently that is where she learned the basics. Why is it that many of us in Mexico knit this way? I know that at least Andrea knits this way too. It was the Spanish who brought knitting to Mexico, but in Spain they knit using the British method.

I used to think that what best defined my style was the combination method, but in Anne Modesitt's book she never mentions purling from the back. In fact, she says that when knitting in the round you have no choice but to purl the "traditional way", which means wrapping the yarn above the needle when purling. This I find clumsy and unnecessary. The important thing is to pick the stitch from the leading edge. How you wrap of pick your yarn does not really matter until the next row, when again, you just have to make sure you pick the leading edge.

It is the Russians that use this method. How this came to be used in Mexico remains a mystery. Anyway, this is the video I shared with my friend to use as reference:

Another hat

Pardon the bad picture. You all know how hard it is to make pictures of yourself. This is the hat I started recently on the addi express. Basically, I knitted 25 rows, picked all stitches up and continued knitting in the round using two 6 1/2 mm circulars, decreasing in a five point star pattern. The hat is a bit pointy. I usually decrease in a six point star pattern for hats but, what can you do with 46 stitches? I made one decrease in the first row and after that based my decreases on 45 stitches, which is divisible by five.

As for the edge, I picked up the stitches and, as I was binding off, I was also dropping every other stitch for five rows and picking it up with a crochet hook from the inside. The dropped stitches become purl stitches on the outside, creating the ribbing. I think this dropping/picking up stitches took me much longer than the 25 rows I knitted on the machine.

I also made another pot of black beans and took the opportunity to test the use of Epsom salts (magnesium sulfate) as mordant.




Because even if alum is not toxic, and they use lots of it in treating drinking water, aluminum has been linked to Alzheimer's disease. And yes, I know correlation does not imply causation, and that alum is used in preserves and no one has had a problem with that, and that some of the studies liking aluminum to Alzheimer's disease were controversial. Anyway, magnesium is actually one of the essential minerals one must consume everyday and there is no controversy around its use. Not that I would recommend eating Epsom salts. I just want to try other alternatives.

It is interesting that the pretty blue I got using alum did not really come out with Epsom salts. You can tell the difference in the dye water itself, wich turns blue when you use alum as a mordant, but not when you use epsom salts. I thought the blue was a result of the pH change, but I believe now that aluminum somehow interacts with the dye, like many metals do. That is why they tell you not to use metal pots for dyeing.

Sock hanger and a few things

Not all pretty things are useful, but this one is.



It is also cheap and thus fragile. From the moment I bought it I promised not to cry when it finally breaks, but it has lasted a few months now.

My scarlet fever socks have heels.



The fingerless mitts have thumbs.



And I am struggling to make another hat on the addi turbo. So far so good.



Is there a way to correct a dropped stitch? I literally had to put a marker on the stitch, keep going and then use a crochet hook to pick up all the missing rows. I am lucky this happened towards the end.

Well, this toy is useful for making something else...



It's a sock blank!



I have been ignoring the castoff instructions, which require you to thread the stitches. I've been pulling the stitches off the machine and casting them off by hand. This will be particularly usefull when knitting from the sock blank.

Scarlet fever

That's the look of the new socks I'm knitting. It's just plain socks, no pattern. I felt the urge to knit and knit until I run out of yarn, using Opal Crazy Color #1903. This is the way it was supposed to look, with the red spots spiraling around the socks.

Instead, I got ret spots all over the socks.



Which is still very pleasant to the eye. What bothers me, though not much, is finding a knot.



Now I've had the tortuous experience of having a knot in a self striping yarn (Schoeller Fortissima Socka Colori), with the new strand knotted backwards and, of course, completely out of sequence. Brrrr. This knot, in comparison, was easy to deal with. The yarn was knotted respecting the color sequence. I still cut the yarn on the other sock and took out 10 cm in order to make the socks match. That's another advantage of knitting both socks at the same time.

Speaking of which, I am now knitting a pair of fingerless mittens from the Ultra Alpaca Fine yarn that was left over from the previous pair of socks.



When I was making those socks, I used a single center pull ball. That meant that, as the yarn was unwound from the outside of the skein, it got twisted with the central strand. So every few rows I had to let the socks hang free, needles and all, and allow them to untwist themselves.

I am doing the same thing with the fingerless mitts. I only have 21 grams of yarn and I have no clue if it will be enough. So knitting both mitts at the same time will allow me to use up the yarn evenly on both mitts. I am also knitting them from the top and not from the cuff. I expect to at least complete the hands. If I end up with a short cuff, or using a different yarn for the cuff, it will not matter, as long as they match.

Final Version

So here they are, bound off, washed, blocked and modeled by the proud owner.



I tried a new way to bind off:



It is, indeed, surprisingly stretchy.

Ripped and re-knitted

I had finished the cuffs and was about to cast off when I asked the spouse to try the socks. And good thing I did! When I said that the socks were not too tight I should have really said that the socks were not tight at all. So I ripped back to the heel and got rid of the increase. I am finally catching up, and in a couple of rounds I will start the ribbing.



I feel like a little girl who cannot play with her new toy because she has to finish her homework first. I want to fool around with my knitting machine, and I have tons of ideas that I cannot try out yet because I want to finish these socks.

Hat break

I halted all sock progress to make a hat. Not because I was tired of socks, or because I wanted to knit something with larger needles... It's just that I bought a new toy: The Addi Express. I got the King Size version, with 46 stitches.




I knit up the hat really fast, then took it off the machine and finished the crown by hand.  This was tricky and I messed up a bit. Then I picked up  the bottom stitches and made the  ribbed edge. I used the yarn that came with the machine, a wool acrylic blend called Zermatt. Today, with some difficulties, I managed to knit the rest of the yarn into a flat piece, proving that the machine can be used also for flat knitting. The equivalent needle size is about 6 mm.

It's fun, but it's an expensive toy.

Other than the price, my main objection is against the number of stitches.Why did they choose 46 needles? If you  plan on adding any decoration like duplicate stitches or buttons, or even for making crown decreases when knitting a hat, 46 is a really bad number. It is divisible only by 23 and 2. The perfect number would have been 48: divisible by 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12 and 16.

The advantages of marrying a code monkey

My wonderful spouse managed to rescue the entries from the old blog and transfer them all to this blog, including comments. This blogdrive to blogger process took him a few hours that I could not have been able to afford at the rate he charges, so it is really a significant gift. The Spanish blog is full of special characters that required some fine tuning, but it all turned out perfectly. I love how my entries are all archived in a more intuitive way than the little calendar blogdrive uses.

It is a pity that all the images from the first posts were lost when voila cancelled my account about a year ago. There's also the issue of pictures disappearing from imageshack. But overall, I am happy with having all my blog posts here, comments and all.

I have a crappy picture showing some sock progress. If you strain your eyes you'll find increases about an inch below the needles, on the center of the sock.

The pattern  (ravelry link) is written top down but I converted it to toe up. There are decreases down the leg which translate as increases when going upwards. I made the first increase but I am guessing that I will not get to the next increase, since the spouse does not like his socks that long. Given that the increases disrupt the pattern, should I get rid of them altogether? The socks are not tight, and I don't mind ripping one inch of sock.

New Blog!

So here it is, my very first post on my new blog. I'm still struggling with attachment issues to the previous blog, mainly because it was with me for so many years. But I'm sure I'll get over it. I might even be able to rescue my old entries and comments. Other than the contact form, I don't think I will miss it.

And for my first post, I have a couple of pictures of my husband's not gray socks:








They have heels! Can you see them? They are so dark that it's hard to figure them out. Here's another sideways picture.








I have not sent my sister her socks. I am waiting for some amazon stuff I ordered for her kids and I will send it all together. The socks were never intended as Christmas gifts but the timing seems perfect.

Socks completed

Here are my sister's socks, finally finished, cast-off and washed.



And here are the spouse's socks, which I was knitting at the same time, though not at the same speed.



They are greener, but I am having a hard time capturing the color with or without flash. I stole a picture of the original yarn:

Which is ultra alpaca fine, 50% wool, 20% alpaca and 30% nylon. The colorway is peat mix.

I am getting ready to move to blogger, and I will post the link soon. I will leave my old entries here, as long as blogdrive allows me to.

Fiber arts videos

Crochet coral reef:



Very constructive use of crochet. I wonder how many people crocheted these reefs and how much yarn was used? I'm willing to bet they all used their stashed leftovers.

Fluid Knit dress:



Certainly beautiful but not practical at all. Who would want to walk around carrying a pump behind her? It's interesting to note that the artist used twisted stitches, probably to avoid straining the tubing. Or maybe to improve flow dynamics?

Heels

The sister socks have heels. And are getting close to being finished.

Top view:


Side view:


The image problem is solved, but I am now having problems with blogdrive. I changed the format of the page, but those changes took forever to show up. Plus my last entry did not show up in more than 24 hours. Apparently, their servers were down during a power outage a week ago.

I started this blog more than 6 years ago. Back then blogger was already more popular than blogdrive. I did not use it because I liked writing my own html. Whenever I made a mistake, blogger overwrote my own code. Not a big deal, links got converted into text, images were erased... What really bothered me was that, if I tried to go back and correct my own code, it was gone, blogger had rewritten it and I had to start all over again.

Many years later, blogger dominates the market. Lots of new nifty gadgets have been introduced and it looks really cool. It works like a little black box that more or less covers your expectations without you having to write any code yourself. Which is good, because it is still erasing the original code whenever it encounters a mistake. So I still don't like blogger.

Still, I am considering moving over. I am willing to bet that their servers are never down. Also, I fear the extinction of blogdrive. It does not seem to be evolving and it actually seems to be shrinking (their helpdesk people used to reply right away, but now they don't even bother to answer). They have added a few bells and whistles to their blogs but you have to pay for them, not so with blogger.

I know this blog already has lost its readership, and it should not bother me to start anew. Still, it breaks my heart to think I would lose 6 years of entries and comments. Blogdrive does not even allow you an export function. And I don't blame them. Their business seems to be dying, why should they make it any easier for their users to leave them?

A little color

The grey socks have a heel but no picture. Instead, I have pictures of a colorful experiment. Kathy over in Runs with Needles has dyed several sock blanks, which eventually tempted me to buy one.




I left it alone for a while, but the recent epidemic of gray and dark green left me lusting after some bright blues, greens and purples. Undecided, I used all three colors. Actually, I used five different dyebaths. The result is a progression from deep purple to green.



There are a few irregular splotches here and there, so it is not a very smooth progression. I used plain food colorings and vinegar. Lots of both. All these bottles were new from the box when I began.



Lessons learned? I should have threaded stitches on both sides with waste yarn before dyeing. As you can tell, both ends kept unraveling. Some of the splotches can be blamed on those unraveled ends coming in contact with sections not yet dyed (notice that I am not blaming my own lack of hindsight or dexterity). Another lesson is to use two different rinsing pots and hold the blank from the middle while dunking it into these two pots. The middle is best rinsed under running water. The final lesson is to have everything ready before you begin and not worry about the cleaning (or anything else, phone included) until the process is over, even if the process takes about 6 hours.

Two pairs of socks

Imageshack tends to eat my pictures. Generally the old ones, so I used not to care about the broken links. But I've recently noticed broken links with some of the newer pictures, which is very annoying. So now I'm using flickr. I hate monopolies, but sometimes they make sense. Plus, I figure yahoo needs all the traffic it can get.

I started a pair of gray socks for my sister, who likes neutral colors. I'm using Maizy, since she's allergic to wool. This shade of gray is too somber for me and makes me not progress much.



Now, the spouse had recently expressed some interest in a pair of socks, so I dragged him to a yarn shop and asked him to choose some yarn so I could work on two pairs of socks simultaneously. The idea was that if I got tired of the gray socks I could work a few rows in a different color. But what color did he choose? Gray. Comfort sock, a nylon and acrylic blend from Berroco. I promised to turn that yarn into socks later on, as long as he chose a different color for now. And he nicely went ahead and chose some green yarn. A very dark shade of green. Here are the two new skeins, side by side.



The green yarn (which they kindly wound into a center pull ball at the store) is Berroco Ultra alpaca fine, a wool and alpaca blend in a color adeptly called peat mix. I am already working on it.


Now I alternate between two pairs of gloomy socks, and there is yet another pair of gray socks in my near future. So much for bright ideas.

And more crafts

This craft at least is actually related to knitting. I ended up needing two blood transfusions back in March (thank you, anonymous donors!) and was still severely anemic, so for quite some time I was eating lots of iron rich foods. Among them, black beans. Beans, of course, have to be soaked before cooking, resulting in some really dark water.



After I don't know how many pots of black beans, I started to wonder if wool would take up the color. I know, it is not a pretty color, but it was something edible (so I could use it in my kitchen) and it was already available. Long story short, don't use vinegar as a mordant, use alum. The high pH itself turns the water from black to purple.



And then the yarn ends up with a pretty gray-blue color, that I certainly did not expect. Here are the before and after pictures.



I am only hoping it lasts, because the Serratia marcescens yarn I dyed last Summer has faded to almost white by now.

And some other crafts

My main craft is knitting, but I do some other stuff sometimes. So I thought these vinyl car decals would fit here. I call them the Geek and the Freak, and they are supposed to represent my husband and myself. I'll let you guess who is who.



And a view from inside:



These could not go in the rear, they need to be inside the car since static alone keeps them in place. I made them with window decoration paints.

Finally, some knitting

Yes, because this is a knitting blog and unless I have some knitting to show I have nothing to post. This is not a space to vent about whatever is going on in my life. Still, a few things are worth mentioning: I almost died in March, the pooch died in April and I quit my job in May. There's more but I guess that suffices to explain why I've been a tad gloomy lately. And yet, here we have a pair of fingerless mitts for one of my friends with really, really tiny hands. I never got to measuring her hands, I just compared mine to hers and noted that hers were about 1 cm shorter. Here's the result:



I am sending them out today and hoping they fit. I made them with some Regia self striping sock yarn that I had leftover from a previous pair of socks for another friend.

World Cup Socks

This is the fastest pair of socks I've ever made. It took me two weeks, during which I was regularly following the FIFA games in South Africa. I finished them last night, as the spouse was opening the Freixenet to celebrate Spain's victory.



I took the picture this morning, while still in my pajamas. The pattern is called "dead simple lace socks" (no wonder I finished them so fast), found in Wendy's Socks from the Toe Up. The yarn is Simple Stripes, from Knit Picks. It's 75% wool, 25% nylon.

I'm Back

At least I am back to knitting, so I might as well come back to
blogging. What brought me here today is a
pair of corn socks that I finally completed.

                


The color was impossible to capture. The manufacturer calls it "cactus", and it is a light shade of green, but not as light as the pictures. The yarn reminds me a lot of fixation yarn, only with a finer gauge.

I am not happy with the tuft. If I were to knit these again,
I'd leave more space between leaves and tuft, and make the tuft narrower.



It took me a long time to finish these socks because I associated them with a
negative period of my life. Finishing them gave me a sort of closure. I
still don't plan on wearing them anytime soon. Which is all right, because
it is warm enough for sandals and I will not need socks for a while.
Mind you, the corn fiber is like cotton, so they would still be
great for Summer, but I am stashing them away for now.

Sad Days

What I feared to lose, I already lost
What I expected to win, I no longer expect

                                           Antonio Gala