Cheap Knitter

Monochrome Argyle

2012-02-19T20:12:00.001-08:00

I finished today the spouse's socks, the ones that were originally on my needles. I finished them using my grandmother's needles which, unlike my addis, have a stiffer cable and the union between cable and needle is not as smooth.Anyway, picture time:Regarding the swap socks, this is the Rabbitworks yarn in the "Cryptic Notes" colorway. The camera does not do it justice. It combines several hues of deep blue. I look at it and think of sapphires.And this is how it looks when combined with "Revenge" using the Pinwheel pattern:I had to add a stitch, given that when knitting with two yarns you need an even number of stitches. Also, I refuse to make a pinwheel garter stitch toe. I know the garter stitch pinwheels are what give this pattern its name, but I personally find garter stitch toes very uncomfortable. This is the toe I prefer to wear, and so I used it for this pair of socks too.

Better than nothing

2012-02-16T20:12:00.000-08:00

At least I am past the toes. Which isn't much, especially considering that I am going to rip the few rows I've knit after finishing the increases.

I am making Pinwheel Socks. I have made two pairs so far and feel confident enough with the pattern that I will not have to worry about screwing things up. I also wanted to try it with a single yarn, given that so far I have used this pattern to get rid of scraps.

It turns out that the real beauty of this pattern lies in the vertical stripes. Using only one yarn is creating a very boring pair of socks. Luckily, I have another skein of this Rabbitworks yarn, in a pretty blue colorway called "Cryptic Notes". I hope they work well together.

Shame

2012-02-09T21:05:00.000-08:00

Last week I posted a picture of my sock swap yarn, wound up into two nice center pull balls. Have I made any progress? Why yes, I put the yarn in a baggie:

You might have noticed that there are no needles in the baggie. That's because the needles are currently in another baggie, holding another pair of socks I thought I would have finished by now:

Yes, I know, I should not procrastinate, after all there's a deadline. I am posting this to shame myself into hurrying up.

To hell with shawls

2012-02-02T22:04:00.000-08:00

So, way back in October, I was working with a yarn that had glitter in it but was still very soft: Lanalux. I wanted to create an object of beauty and I chose the Sheri shawlette pattern, simply because it allows you to use up all the yarn with not much waste, since it is knitted sideways. I called this thing boredom because it requires a lot of boring stockinette.

Speaking of which, all that stockinette might have worked with another yarn, but my shawlette rolls at the edges even after wet blocking and steam blocking. I don't dare to use the iron because of the glitter. Don't let it fool you. It's lying flat against the sofa but in reality it rolls on itself without provocation.

In November I moved on to another shawl, something more challenging and without any stockinette: Haruni. I used two balls of kidsilk spray and finished the second to last row. Alas, there is not enough yarn to finish the last row. Kidsilk spray is, by the way, discontinued. So the future of my shawl is bleak.

After three failures in a row (I am counting the Garden View Shawlette as a failure) my knitting mojo dried up.

But I find myself itching again for the needles, so I joined a sock swap for Spanish speakers: Swapetines. I used to participate in that sock swap, stopped for a couple of years, but now feel like it's time to rejoin them. Today I split the skein into two pull out balls:

This is 75% superwash merino from Rabbitch, in a colorway she calls revenge. I had originally ordered a different colorway, but she had ran out of it. She reimbursed me, including shipping, and then sent me a skein in this colorway free of charge. Isn't she a nice lady?

The yarn is beautiful, though these days I find myself gravitating towards browns, grays and tans. When I learned that my swap victim likes bright colors I thought it was time to knit up this pretty yarn.

Soon to be frogged

2011-10-12T20:28:00.000-07:00

Another September Project.

The pattern is the Garden View Shawlette. I like the pattern, but not with this yarn, which is Newton's Yarn Country Rayon Ice Hand Painted. Rayon has no memory at all, and a stockinette shawl, no matter how well blocked, just rolls on itself. It slides of my shoulders, even after tying it.

Also, where did all the yardage go? The pattern calls for 200-300 yards. I started out with 2200 yards, according to the label. The fabric was thin and my gauge was way off. I order to get a better fabric and also to hit gauge, I used two strands, which meant I had 1100 yards, right? Enough to make a much larger shawl, with 9 or 11 leaves instead of 7. That’s why I started out with a long garter strip to be able to tie it behind my back.

Well, I am glad this pattern is constructed sideways. This allowed me to weigh the skein as I went. After three leaves I realized that I was approaching the middle. I had to settle for 7 leaves. Of course, The shawl is more triangular now than crescent shaped, given that there is only one center leave instead of three. Also, the tie strips are now pointless.

I am afraid to confess that for the first time ever a FO is going to the frog pond. I just do not see myself wearing this monster.

Snakes and Ladders

2011-10-03T08:08:00.000-07:00

Another September project. I did not know if I wanted lace or cables in my socks, so I went with both. Someone from India told me years ago that she knew knitted cables as "snakes", and so I thought of the game "snakes and ladders" as I knitted the socks. Later I learned that in the US the game is know as "chutes and ladders".

Thanks to wikipedia, I now know that the game originated in India, and that over there it is still known as "snakes and ladders". So I'm sticking to that name.

I used a yarn called Summer Sox, which was a pleasure to knit with, though the ends tend to get splitty and weaving them in was not easy. In keeping with my obsession of using up all my yarn, I used the leftovers to make fingerless mitts for a friend, in the same pattern.

No leftovers! Yay!

Now with pictures

2011-10-02T13:01:00.000-07:00

September was a productive month. Sadly, it was not a camera busy month. For one reason or another, I was posting to ravelry but not taking the time to take pictures of my stuff. But now that I did, let me show off, starting with a raglan I made with Sinfonia cotton that I got in Mexico eons ago:

I did not want to run out of yarn, so I started from the top and kept going until I had used up all three skeins. Yes, I am lucky to be short.

The one thing I regret is that I thought a seed stitch edging would be decorative enough, but it wasn't. Towards the end I added a few lace butterflies. If I were to knit this again (but I am not) I would add the butterflies at the neckline and at the sleeve cuffs.

The spouse concurs. Only to him those are little holes, not butterflies. But to him, all lace projects are just random holes.

Waffles

2011-09-12T21:04:00.000-07:00

This was an August project: Socks for the spouse. Well I think I actually started them in July, but had to interrupt them to make the Shedirs. Which reminds me: Many thanks for those of you who offered to pray for my sister. She keeps to herself these days, and I repeat to myself over and over that no news is good news...

Anyway, onto the pictures:

Socks in a very boring gray, knitted with 2 mm needles (that's US size 0). They would have been a drag were it not for the fact that heritage quattro is really nice to knit with. Also, the Ridge Squares pattern was easy to memorize.

Nowadays I knit mostly socks. And I always start them from the toe with a figure 8 cast on, and I always do a short row heel, and I always cast off with Jeny's stretchy bind-off.

There was a time when I liked trying new techniques and I even bought Cat Bordi's first book on adventurous sock knitting. I usually do not buy many books, much less knitting books, so that was a biggie. But I never bothered with the second book. I didn't even try to check it out of the library.

As for Sock Summit, as much as I love the concept, I've never been there. Let's face it, I'm too settled into my sock knitting by now. I know what works for me, and I am not itching to learn anything new.

I am one boring knitter.

But Rabbitch's post about Sock Summit got me thinking about another undesirable aspect of my knitting. Why am I so cheap? Why can't I splurge once in a while? Especially when it comes to independent artists. I love the stuff they make, my mouth waters when I see their lovely merchandise, and yet I never buy any fiber or yarns from them.

Next year, I will skip Stitches West and spend some money on Etsy instead. I will try Rabbitch's goodies, of course, but I will also consider other Etsy shops. Does anyone have another favorite Etsy yarn or fiber shop to recommend?

Mini

2011-09-05T17:07:00.000-07:00

I somehow missed blogging about this sweater for the new pooch. Heck, I guess I did not even blog about the new pooch. She's a rescue pooch, presumably a dachshund and poodle mix.

Anyway, she had a small wound that she kept scratching, and this sweater was the solution. It's made with cascade fixation.

It's truly a mini sweater since all I needed was to cover her shoulders. I could have done a one shoulder number but that would have been even more tacky.

Chemo Caps

2011-08-21T11:45:00.000-07:00

I wish I'd made something else, but my sister started chemo recently, so this is what I made for her. I wanted to knit a Shedir, but was unable to find a soft cotton yarn at the right gauge. And so I modified the Shedir pattern using five repeats around the hat instead of eight. I wrote my modifications on ravelry.

That's the spouse, kindly modeling for me. Please say a prayer for my sister if you read this.

I want one!!!

2011-08-14T14:25:00.000-07:00

I am talking about this gorgeous R2D2 sweater. It's so wonderful that I am shamelessly stealing the picture:

I know, that's really bad and one should not do it... but I guess it's better than linking to the image itself, no?

The link is from boing boing, but the seller is, of course, on Etsy.

I don't have 450 dollars. I don't have 70 or 80 hours to spare. But, deep down, as much as I like the sweater, I don't think I have the guts to wear it in public either!

Nano

2011-08-09T12:10:00.000-07:00

I had a physics teacher that hated the use of the term "Nano" to refer to tiny things, when they contained no parts that were actually sized in the nanometer scale, or had nothing to do with nanotechnology. He always gave as an example the iPod Nano.

Well, screw that. This shawl was a disappointment in that it turned out too small. So I'm calling it Nano. I actually finished it in July, blocked it and stashed it away immediately. When winter comes, I might pull it out and use it as a scarf.

This is Wendy's Summer Mystery Shawlette, which contains no gauge information. In fact, I remember she said that gauge does not matter with shawls. Well, I proved her wrong :)

By the way, I used my Serratia marcescens yarn, the one I dyed with bacteria.

Labyrinth socks

2011-05-20T13:03:00.000-07:00

So this is the pattern that was playing in my head. It does not work in the round with all those diagonals, so it's mainly on the top of the sock. After the heel I added a bit of the pattern to the back without completing the whole circuit to avoid staggering.

Did you notice that they are mirror images? I am sometimes anal like that. If I have not made a Pomatomus pair it's because I am too lazy to figure out the mirror image of the pattern.

By the way, I know I said these other socks look like camouflage, but the name fits this yarn much better.

If you ever want to knit a pair of socks to go with a camouflage outfit, choose Panda Soy in the Chocolate Almonds colorway.

I am still busy packing, we are moving a week from now! Here's one sock on a foot, posing on one of the moving boxes:

More Scraps Soup

2011-05-16T21:14:00.000-07:00

This is my second version of Scraps Soup. This time I used only one strand of yarn when knitting the cuff, though I did change yarns halfway. I'm not sure I like how it looks.

I am running out of ideas regarding what to do about the cuff. I am also running out of scraps, which is actually a good thing, because I was itching to try a non-wool yarn and a different, lacey pattern that has been running through my head lately.

I actually finished these socks more than a week ago, but I have been very busy lately. Why? Because we're moving to our own home pretty soon! We are ecstatic, but overwhelmed with packing. I started with the books, and I've filled up 50 boxes already. Luckily, I have the ideal packing material.

Scraps Soup

2011-05-01T17:58:00.000-07:00

Not that you'd ever catch me making soup from food scraps. It's just that I find the name fitting for socks made with leftover scraps from two previous pairs.

The pattern is the Pinwheel Socks by Elise Duvekot. Except that they don't have the characteristic pinwheel on either the heel or the toe. I prefer not to use garter stitch on my socks, that's why. Additionally, they're knit from the toe up, using 60 stitches for toe and heel and 40 stitches for the body of the sock.

I added a knit one, purl one cuff after increasing again to 60 stitches. I was making all the purls with one yarn and the knits with the other. I don't like the results much. The cuff is not as stretchy as it would have been when using only one yarn, and it does not create the contrast I expected.

Still, I am not ripping, just making a note an moving onto the second pair, with more scraps. Though not with these yarns. This is all I have left:

Pretty in Pink

2011-04-21T07:37:00.000-07:00

Well, I finally finished those sleeves. I must have knit them three or four times before deciding on a final version. Even now, I am not totally satisfied with how they look. They are a little baggy.

Also, I was unable to block it properly, given that all I have is this piece of styrofoam. It has worked for me well with all my sleeveless projects but now there was not enough room for the sleeves. I had to improvise, block it sideways and fold the bottom lace section up at the seam and pin the lace edging to the body.

It did not work. That bottom part took two days to dry and the lace was still a bit curly.

After adding the crochet edgings, here's the final result:

Yep, the sleeves look baggy, but so be it. Either I learn to live with them or I bring the whole thing back to a plastic bin to age for another three or four years.

I wore it to work, got a few compliments, and nobody said anything about the sleeves, but maybe that's because they're too polite.

Remember the lazy pink thing?

2011-04-17T08:22:00.000-07:00

This blog has been all about small projects (socks, mitts and hats) for too long. I am kind of fed up and want to go back to larger things. Which brings me to the lazy pink thing that I started back in 2007. I hated it then, having made some mistakes when modifying the pattern and then having to start over. Also, I was a little fed up with pink back then.

I am less averse to working with it now. Except for the sleeves. They are designed so they stick out, just like t-shirt sleeves. My first attempt at a sleeve looked really awkward when sewn in. My poor sewing abilities are partly to blame but I also think they would look ugly anyway even when sewn in by a pro.

Here's when ravelry saved me. NaiadKnitter finished this project but wrote on her notes that she would pick up stitches and knit the sleeves down from the shoulder on the next one.

And that is, precisely, what I am attempting to do:

I hope it works...

Chess Whim

2011-04-15T12:49:00.000-07:00

The husband wanted a very thin hat, in a solid color. I chose "Merino Dream" by Lucy Neatby.

Oh, how I regret that decision.

I started with 3 mm needles (the recommended needle size on the label), and ended up going down two needle sizes and using 2 mm. That's US 0. Which meant that I needed hundreds of stitches (Oh, how I miss the joy of the Addi hats, with their 46 stitches).

The yarn is also splitty, and uneven in both texture and color. The label warns you about color variations, but what I encountered were spots where the hank had been tied too tightly and the color did not penetrate. I seriously hate, hate, hate this yarn. I have about 55 grams left, enough for another hat if I wanted to, but I don't. The spouse suggested matching mittens and I growled at him.

Another problem was that the spouse wanted to have chess pieces as decoration. Without the benefit of a contrasting color, my only choice was garter figures. As I found out, those work well with light colors, but not with pitch black. So even after spending some time charting the figures and experimenting until they satisfied the spouse, once on the hat, they are very difficult to figure out.

Oh well. You can't always be happy with all your knitting projects.

Another Hiatus

2011-04-10T18:54:00.000-07:00

Well, I have been knitting, but obviously not blogging. Rest assured, all is well and it's just been a matter of being too busy. I'm still enjoying the new job.

I finished the tabi socks. I followed the method described by Lyn Vogel in the Twisted Sisters' Sock Workbook. Here's a picture of the sock before the big toe was finished.

My, the spouse really has an ugly toe.

And here's the final results.

I hope they fit my father, who is the actual recipient.

New Project

2011-03-02T20:14:00.000-08:00

Ugh. Another grey one. This one will be for my father. I have not made a cuff down pair of socks for a while and I think I made the cuff too long.

Final Results

2011-02-27T09:54:00.000-08:00

I like my new socks. I was not crazy about the colors but let's face it, neutral colors can be combined easily with any attire. I could have made them longer but did not bother.

Panda soy is splitty and caused me some headaches, so I will not buy it again. Unless, of course, I find other advantages after wearing and washing them several times.

Camo socks approaching the end

2011-02-22T19:03:00.000-08:00

I started the ribbing and noticed that somehow, I was missing a stitch in one of the socks. Somewhere I must have missed an increase. I was straining my eyes, trying to find the mistake when it downed on me that if I could not see it up close, I could completely ignore the mistake. So I just added one stitch at the ribbing and all I have to do is finish the cuff and bind off.

Last weekend I was at Stitches West. I only went to the Marketplace, and did not attend any classes. Here's what I got:

I was searching for bargains, but did not find so many. Still, I am happy with my stash. We'll see if I ever get to use it.

Camo Socks have heels

2011-02-11T20:04:00.000-08:00

They also have a hump on the front, where the pattern begins. Hmmm. That did not happen with my previous pair of jaywalkers. Did I do something differently? The humpis not noticeable when I wear the socks.

Not so ugly

2011-02-09T19:59:00.000-08:00

This is how the socks look after several blue dye baths. I would have continued to dye them a deeper green, except that the bands started to disappear. Call me sentimental, but self-striping yarn is hard to achieve, so I wanted to keep the bands.

Ugly Socks Finished

2011-02-04T19:59:00.000-08:00

Here they are, in morning daylight:

I finished them yesterday. Today I am soaking them in a blue dye bath, hoping to get deeper greens.

I also started a new pair of socks using Panda Soy. The knitted look resembles camouflage.

I am making my own version of jaywalkers. Once more I had to change the total number of stitches.

DIY knitting loom

2011-02-02T18:03:00.000-08:00

A co-worker showed me this video and I thought I'd post it here. Sadly, I was unable to embed it. It's in Japanese, but it is self-explanatory.

I've been working on the hideous socks. It's funny how I don't find them that hideous anymore. Ugly, yes, but not hideous.

I still want to give them another dye bath when I'm done.

No more squeaking

2011-01-26T19:44:00.000-08:00

Thankfully, I finished the socks. The spouse likes them:

He wore them today and I missed taking a picture this morning with daylight. Sorry for the evening blurry picture.

I dug out some yarn I dyed in 2006. I predicted back then that it was going to take me a couple of years to knit it up. Well, as usual, I was being over-optimistic.

And as I go on knitting, I realize how hideous the color combination is. That's the problem with dyeing, you never know what you get because wet yarn looks darker that it actually is. I will keep on knitting and maybe later give the socks another dye bath. We'll see.

Almost Done!

2011-01-23T11:52:00.000-08:00

Thanks to watching "Bones" over Netflix. We still don't have a TV and don't miss one, but it's nice to catch up with popular TV shows without publicity.

I have done about 1 cm of ribbing. Maybe I will finish them up today, let's see if I manage.

Heels and flowers.

2011-01-16T17:37:00.000-08:00

The squeaky socks have heels. If I'm watching a movie while I knit the squeaking is bearable.

Oh yes, and the spouse sent me flowers. He's totally earning these socks.

Squeaky socks

2011-01-09T10:28:00.000-08:00

It's time to start a new pair of socks for the spouse. I did promise I'd use that gloomy gray yarn soon. But alas, not only is it gloomy, it also squeaks! It's all synthetic: nylon and acrylic. It's driving me nuts. Stitch after stitch, it squeaks loud enough that I can hear it and even feel the vibrations on my fingers.

The pattern is Gentleman's Fancy Socks (ravlery link). The spouse chose the pattern, which by coincidence I had also chosen for myself (from the same library book) three years ago.

Tomorrow will be my first day at the new job... I'm so nervous... maybe that's why I can't stand the squeaking.

Happy New Year!

2011-01-04T15:14:00.000-08:00

This year starts well enough for me, with a recently finished pair of socks. I said I was going to knit until I ran out of yarn, and I did!

I tried that once before when knitting the sunset socks, also with Opal yarn. In that occassion I was using the Coriolis pattern and I ran out of yarn earlier. Coriolis looks simple enough but it does use up more yarn than a plain sock. These socks are definitely longer.

They stay up if I am not moving around much, but I plan on adding elastic thread later on.

I used this bindoff, which is a variation of what I always do (learned from Vaxgirl), except I do purls instead of knits. The results are very similar.

Another great thing about this New Year is that I will be starting a new job soon. I will not be making as much money as before, but it beats being unemployed, right?

Finished Mitts

2010-12-19T11:05:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-16T13:42:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-14T15:46:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-12T19:08:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-09T18:42:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-05T21:24:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-01T16:44:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-28T18:34:00.000-08:00

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!

2010-11-26T18:47:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-24T11:49:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-22T10:08:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-20T09:46:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-14T11:30:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-10T21:17:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-03T17:07:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-29T12:17:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-26T13:51:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-12T12:20:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-09T15:57:00.000-07:00

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

2010-03-23T17:33:00.000-07:00

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

Antonio Gala

Corn socks and Merry Xmas

2009-12-25T15:58:00.000-08:00

Again, I stopped blogging for a while, but I am still knitting and wishing everybody happy holidays. Here's what I've been working on:

Made with Maizy (82% corn fiber). I tried as best as I could to come up with a corn plant pattern. The tuft is going to be a challenge, but I think I can tackle it. What saddens me is that I could not come up with convincing corn ears, so I took them out.

Meanwhile, I hope everyone finds the time to knit over the holidays and enjoy themselves.

Baby Knitting

2009-11-22T21:18:00.000-08:00

I hate baby knits. I know I sound bitter but that's the truth: I don't enjoy knitting for other people's babies given my own infertility issues. That said, I do share the joy babies bring to my friends' lives and am very happy for them. They know not to make me an outcast just because I have never experienced what they are going through, and they are wise to share the news and baby pictures, because they know I still love them and want to be part of their lives.

I am thrilled that one of my friends from college recently gave birth to a baby boy, but I felt terribly guilty about not sending in a handmade item. So here's a quick knit, from Bernat.

I used some leftover Caron Sayelle ack-rylic that I have had for quite some time. Not very absorbent, so probably a bad choice. But, it's machine washable, which is good, right?

Reno Socks

2009-11-08T21:28:00.000-08:00

Recently I went to Reno with the spouse. My intention was to enjoy myself and knit a lot. Sadly I came down with a cold. I did manage to kint a lot (it happens when you're in bed two days in a row, I guess).

Anyway, here's the socks prior to ribbing, knitted on two circulars:

These come from Wendy Johnson's Socks from the Toe Up. The pattern is called Ribbed Ribbon. I was hoping that the yarn would work with the pattern but sadly it does not. Those muddled colored bands concealed it completely. Live and learn.

Here's one complete sock with ribbing.

When knitting lace socks, I should stick to solids. But solids are so boooooring...

Finished!

2009-10-18T13:07:00.000-07:00

I refuse to find out when exactly I started this shawl. It was more than a year ago, and that is bad enough.

But here is my finished Kiri, made with three balls of Kid Merino:

Of course, it looks prettier when actually worn.

And now, what shall I do with two balls of Kid Merino? Any suggestions?

I'm not dead!

2009-10-11T10:49:00.000-07:00

Although this job is killing me! Who would have known? But I am not here to complain about my job and the lack of knitting. I'm here to show off:

Yes! I completed that blasted Debbie Bliss baby jacket after chasing down the errata on Ravelry and squeezing barely enough time to cast off, block, seam, and give it to my friend right before she relocated. And of course, I forgot to take a picture of it, but my friend kindly sent me one.

Now that I have it, it would be a shame not to post it, don't you think?

There is something else I managed to complete but I have been unable to get a good picture of it. But it will appear here soon, I promise.

In Other Crafts

2009-05-10T16:07:00.000-07:00

My sewing machine and I do not get along very well, but we had to work together for this project. On top of that, I had to freshen up my embroidery skills, on which I had given up years ago.

I don't want to show the complete names but I think the letters came out well. I am still not 100% satisfied with the sewing results but I cannot waste anymore time working on it. The bride to be, one of my best friends from college, assures me she is going to like it no matter what. I hope so. I will not be at the wedding, which breaks my heart. At least I get to sign the guest book anyway.

List of finished books:

Breaking Dawn, by Stephenie Meyer.
Finally finished the series. It's not so great but it kept me entertained.

Stolen Innocence, by Elissa Wall
More about the polygamous mormon sect.

Tear Down this Myth, by Will Bunch
I always thought the Reagan administration was overrated. Now I know how and why that happened, plus I got the real facts.

Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.
I missed the movie, which given the bad reviews, might have been for the best. The book is great, but one has to keep in mind that it was written during the 80's.

The Hero of Ages, by Brandon Sanderson
The last book in the Mistborn Series. Finally the whole thing makes sense. I liked it a lot, especially compared with the second book which seemed to have been written in haste.

Purple Socks!

2009-04-26T12:08:00.000-07:00

My socks are here! They were knit by Nutsue, who used a lovely embossed leaves pattern.

I have to show you a close up, this is a very pretty pattern indeed.

The socks themselves are wonderful, but she also sent me a few goodies, including a postcard from Paris, a Monet fridge magnet, two pens and some Fortissima Socka yarn with beautiful tweed colors.

All in all, a wonderful Spring package. I hope mine arrives soon to its destiny too. I never took the time to post a picture of the finished socks, but here they are:

I also tackled the task of culturing some S. marcescens and figuring out how to use the pink pigment from the bacteria to dye some yarn. It wasn't easy! The bacteria produced very little pigment when grown in a liquid culture, and also the pigment has low solubility in water. I did get a skein to absorb some color:

But that pale pink is very different from what I was hoping for. I am thinking of giving this skein a second dye bath. Should I?

Plan B

2009-04-03T09:41:00.000-07:00

After weeks of knitting and ripping one single argyle sock, I realized I was not going to meet the deadline if I did not switch to another pattern. But having mastered the grafted toe, I searched for a top down sock. I settled for one of Cat Bordhi's innovative patterns. I chose the "sky" architecture, which has the heel increases on top of the foot. Her pattern is called Bartholomew's Tantalizing socks, which has a very pretty linen stitch between the increases. I did not like the fold over cuff so I made a regular ribbed cuff.

Another change I made was to put the reinforced heel stitch on the back of the heel. I don't know why Cat likes to put it on the bottom of the heel for all her top down socks. It makes no sense to me.

These are my readings since the last post:

The Dark Elf Trilogy, by R.A. Salvatore (three books!)

Lyonesse, by Jack Vance

Eclipse, by Stephenie Meyer

The Green Pearl, by Jack Vance

Escape, by Carolyn Jessop

All of them Fantasy with the exception of the last book, about a woman who escaped a polygamist mormon cult. I find it hard to believe that such groups still exist.

Finally, here is a picture of a plate inoculated with the bacteria Serratia marcescens. Whenever I look at that beautiful pink pigment I have the same idea.... Can you guess what I'm thinking?

Argyle Socks

2009-03-01T21:00:00.000-08:00

This is what I learned to make this weekend:

Isn't it cute? I took a class at Stitches West with Suzann Thompson on how to knit Argyle socks. I was yet undecided on what to knit for my sock swap victim but, after taking this class, I am very tempted to scale up this sock and make a pair, of course, with more attention to detail. Some of the cross hatch stitches are not tight enough and there's a few twisted stitches on my little sample.

The only thing that worries me is the color scheme. A lot of people complimented it, but the spouse does not like it. He says I should ditch the purple, and make blue the main color with yellow diamonds. Should I? Or should I stick with these colors?

Beheading

2009-02-24T20:23:00.000-08:00

Yes, it is a horrible concept. But according to these two websites, it had to be done. My African violet (remember her?) had stopped flowering, and was starting to look like a miniature tree.

So I gathered all the courage I could and beheaded my dear potted plant, who's been with me for more than four years. It broke my heart. Then I discovered that she actually had three heads instead of one, and I felt better. I hope at least one of them survives.

Here's the picture of the fingerless mitts I made last month.

I'm looking at the last issue of knotions and trying to figure out whether or not I should knit bifröst for my swap victim. I love the look of it, but it is a top down sock. I'm not sure if I should try converting it to toe-up or try toe grafting once more and see if I do a better job this time. What would you do?

Sock Swap

2009-02-21T11:24:00.000-08:00

This will be the third time I participate in Swapetines. This has always been a very small exchange, which gives it a very intimate feeling. By now I feel I know most of the people participating in the swap. I might have never met them in person but, with the exception of some new faces, I have been more or less following their blogs for two years.

Things at work have kept me busier than expected. One more person at work is also under treatment for breast cancer. That's two in a row and it makes us all very depressed. Plus, we had to find someone to substitute her during her leave, and even though we found three wonderful people (yes, it takes three part time people to cover one full time person), they are all on their learning curve and that puts a heavier load on some of us.

So I make no promises regarding blog updates. I will, however, make sure that I do not disappoint my swap recipient.

Somewhere in my camera there's a picture of the mittens I made for the other coworker that underwent chemotherapy last semester. I'll get it later.

Meanwhile, let me bore you with books I've read since my last post:

The Blade Itself, by Joe Abercrombie
Buzón de Tiempo, by Mario Benedetti
Before they are Hanged, by Joe Abercrombie
The Well of Ascension, by Brandon Sanderson
New Moon, by Stephenie Meyer
When you are Engulfed in Flames, by David Sedaris
Last Argument of Kings, by Joe Abercrombie
La Cena Secreta, by Javier Sierra
Novela de Ajedrez, by Stefan Zwieg (The original novel was written in German).

My, it seems that when I'm under stress I read a lot. Not all of it was good. I did not like neither The Well of Ascension nor New Moon. Both are second parts in their own series. There's a pattern here. An author can write a wonderful first novel in a series but then become very sloppy with the second one.

It had been a long time since I last read a book in Spanish. The Stefan Zwieg novel was a gift, that's why I read a Spanish translation. Otherwise I would have probably read an English translation. I should maybe ask for some more recommendations for books written in Spanish.

Booties

2009-01-18T17:38:00.000-08:00

Yes, and happy new year, along with hope that recession is not getting to you either. I've been a bad blogger but still trying to keep up. I never posted a picture of the pair of booties after finishing them, so here they are.

I finished them at about the same time that I was reading The Hype About Hydrogen, an interesting book, even if a little outdated. That's the problem when writing about technology. I know new nanomaterials are lowering the costs. There are also some uses for fuel cells that were not covered in this book, like using them to power laptops and other portable devices.

But the bottom line still applies: If you're making hydrogen from fossil fuels, you're still producing CO2 and contributing to global warming. The technology is not cost effective, neither for power plants nor for vehicles, and it comes with many risks attached.

Baby sweater? One sleeve seam down and that's it. I am in the middle of an urgent project. A person close to me underwent five months of chemotherapy and among all the unpleasantness of it, she ended up with peripheral neuropathy. In her own words, it feels like getting her hands and feet constantly pricked by a thousand needles, and the cold was making it much worse. Given that she has to work in an unheated environment (yes, she ran out of sick leave and vacation and even extended sick leave, so she must go back to work), I set out to make her a pair of fingerless mitts (pattern here, though I of course made some changes to it).

By now she might not need them, given that it is so much warmer now in California, but I am going to finish them anyway. I finished one and am in the middle of the second one.

And finally, happy Martin Luther King's day. I feel quite cheerful knowing that his dream is closer to becoming reality. But having an African American president will not magically set things right. Back in North Carolina, I used to live on a street with a really dull name, and when the name of the street was changed to "Martin Luther King Blvd" there was a public uproar. Homeowners complained that the value of their property would go down. Incomprehensible, but true. There's still people out there that refuse to live on a street named after a black man, no matter how noble and wise he was.

Sleeves

2008-12-28T10:20:00.000-08:00

The two sleeves are finished, though they don't look too cheerful.

The winter light makes everything look gray and I am too lazy to play around with my camera to fix that. I am bracing myself for the seaming. Side seams are not so bad, but I have to tackle the sleeve seams first, which, at least to me, are harder.

That book is Cory Doctorow's Little Brother. I thought that after so much fantasy, some science fiction might be a nice change. Well, if you like techno-geek teen stories, this book is all right. There is little consolation in knowing how plausible this "big brother" scenario might actually be. Having a geeky teenager take on the Patriot Act is quite entertaining, but there were some parts of the book that got me yawning.

One more birthday went past, which I celebrated at work with my lab assistants and two of my co-workers with an excess of the really bad carbohydrates: cake, cookies and soda. I gave in because it was a very nice detail. Most people, including myself, take off long before my birthday comes around. In fact, we must have been the only people left in the whole building. Later the spouse took me out for dinner to my favorite sushi place.

Christmas itself was a quiet affair. We spent the afternoon having cookies and cake (more bad carbs) with some friends, and later went to have dinner proper with a different group of people my husband had met through someone from work. All of us came from different countries and we were all in different trades. The only thing we had in common was that we had all decided that flying home for Christmas was not worth the expense.

I am not complaining. I started this year with my family in Mexico and I actually got to travel home two more times during the year. I do hope everyone out there had a nice Christmas, hopefully with their families, unlike myself.

Still knitting

2008-12-21T12:03:00.000-08:00

I've been too busy lately but I've managed to keep knitting and reading. Here's proof:

The left front joined to the back, with markers where buttons will be, so I can knit matching buttonholes on the right front. That novel is Mistborn, by Brandon Sanderson. It is the first of a fantasy series and so far so good. Fantasy worlds can be very repetitive but this one is very original. It made me want to read the first novel he wrote:

As often happens, his first novel, Elantris, was not as well written as the second. Nevertheless, I found it as original as Mistborn. It seems to me that he was testing the waters before embarking in a larger project. I finished it along with the right front of the baby jacket, which has an endless amounts of ends to weave in. I should start doing that soon.

But first I will work on the sleeves. As much as I hate sleeves (and sleeve seams), knitting them is better than weaving in ends. That last book, Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer, has my husband constantly making fun of me for reading teenager chick lit. I remember Jennifer mentioning to me that she was reading the second book. Well, if she liked it enough to read the second one, I reasoned that the first one must be good. And it is. It is not something my husband would enjoy, but hey, it's letting me progress nicely on the baby jacket. I don't ask for more.

Errata

2008-11-26T12:33:00.000-08:00

I wish I had taken a look in ravelry before knitting this jacket, because they have a link to this pattern's errata.

Not that it did me any good. By now I am done with the first pocket. And that's a problem. According to the pattern, you place the liner, leave the pocket stitches on a stitch holder, and there is no further mention about what to do about them later on.

Because I did not know about the errata page, I had to come up with something, so I based myself on the pictures in the book. I did not knit the liner separately, I picked up stitches from the bottom, saving
myself a seam, like my mother taught me. She also taught me to bind off
my pocket edges prior to joining the liner, so that's what I did. And because there appeared to be a seed stitch border, I knit that border before casting off.

That picture was taken before the liner was finished and joined.

Now that I've checked the errata, it appears that I should have added the border after placing the liner. I did think of that possibility, but then I would have to sew the border on the right side of the jacket. Having all seams on the wrong side made more sense to me. And really, there is no difference, except that the pocket is a tad narrow.

I don't mind, and I'm sure that my friend's baby will not mind either. I will have to remember what I did so I can repeat it on the right side of the jacket.

But once more I am glad this was a library book, and that I don't bother buying knitting books.

Not that I'm buying many books lately. That's the blessing of having a well stocked library.

That is the Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss, another fantasy book that kept me turning page after page. That is the spouse's recommendation. I am very happy I married a guy who shares my reading tastes.

In that picture you can also see the pocket after joining the liner. It needs a couple of side seams on the inside, but no seams on the outside will be needed.

Slideshow and baby jacket

2008-11-16T16:34:00.000-08:00

I made a slideshow out of some of my pictures form Oaxaca.

And here's the new project, cable and moss stitch jacket, from a Debbie Bliss book I checked out of the library.

That's the back of it, posing next to Lia's recommendation: The thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield. This novel has a little of everything: mistery, romance, madness and a few skeletons in the closet. It was a good read.

I am much less pleased by the Debbie Bliss book. The amount of mistakes and omissions in the pattern makes me wonder why they bother paying an editor. I had to figure out some stuff in order to work the back. I cringe to think of what awaits me as I begin the left front.

That novel is Comfort Food, by Kate Jacobs. I don't watch TV and I don't like to cook, so reading a novel about a cooking show host seemed like a bad idea. But I kept on reading, trusting Pilar's judgement. It is not my type of story, in that I like conflicts to be a bit less inane than a simple rivalry between TV hosts. And yet, once in a while I can enjoy a lightweight, friendly story.

Progression

2008-11-09T21:37:00.000-08:00

This is how the socks were progressing as I was reading some of the recommended books .

First, another Hellboy comic (I'm going through a phase, I guess).

And then, The Spanish Gardener, by A.J. Cronin, recommended to me by Sandra:

This is a very bittersweet story that I would have enjoyed much more if the main character had been more credible: a very poor Spanish boy who, even though he could not afford an education and never left his native hometown, could easily speak, read and write in English. And though his English is perfect, the author has him constantly repeating "señor" and "amigo", as if those were the two words he did not bother to learn. I had read another A.J. Cronin book before: The Green Years. Perhaps that raised my expectations too much.

I took a break from sad stories and from the socks (the colors were becoming too dull to my eyes) with Letters from the Earth, by Mark Twain. This was Thuy's recommendation. The first part, the actual letters from the Earth, is very funny and invites you to reflection. The rest of the book contained many unrelated pieces of writing, some of them more interesting than others.

Those booties are for a friend of mine who is having a baby in February. Knitting them was a breeze but I hated seaming them. I am still not done with the second one. I did keep knitting the socks and finished them before packing, but I did not have time to wash them. I did so on my first day in Oaxaca and took a picture of them in my hotel room before meeting the recipient for breakfast on the day of the wedding.

By the way, Oaxaca was great. The people are fun, they dress beautifully, they cook wonderfully and the roads are a disaster. But every sight was worth the drive. I wanted to make a collage of all my sightseeing, but I hardly found the time to make this post.

I already started another project because those booties seem like a smallish present. I will post about it later.

More Hellboy and another book

2008-10-13T21:19:00.000-07:00

Don't ask me why, but I enjoy Hellboy comics.

For me to like a comic book, the art and the plot must be good enough. The drawings are wonderful, no question about it. The stories... well, those are quite absurd, but amusing, and I've always liked fantasy.

Talking of fantasy, here's some from Lois McMaster Bujold: Passage, which is the third book of a series called The Sharing Knife.

I believe I have read all of her books. I liked her more when she was writing militaristic science fiction, though she's also written excellent fantasy books, my favorite being The Curse of Chalion. I don't think that The Sharing Knife is as good as other stuff she's written, but maybe it's just that her style has changed, or she may be trying to accomodate other type of readers. I do feel she is now concentrating heavily on the romance, which she was not doing before.

The idea of not doing any patterning made these socks go fast, didn't it? I do want to finish them soon, because I will be going to a wedding in Mexico and these are a gift for a friend I will be meeting there. And no, they are not a wedding gift! The couple will be getting money. Boring, but that's what they asked for.

Two books

2008-09-29T22:15:00.000-07:00

I might not be blogging, but I have been knitting and reading.

That is Zoe's Tale, by John Scalzi. My library owns the first three books on this series, and yet when I suggested that they buy this one, which could qualify as the fourth, I got a message stating that Scalzi was a fairly unknown author and that the library would not be getting this book. So I let it drop, hoping that the book may become available later on through interlibrary loan (oh, I am so cheap). Well, all of a sudden, I got another message from my library that the book was ready for me to pick up. Apparently, enough readers requested it that they went ahead and bought it. And the best part was, I was the first to read it.

It took me about two evenings to finish it, but that is not surprising, it happens to me with all of Scalzi's books. This is the same story of the third book, but written under a different character's point of view. Not boring at all, even when you already know what is going to happen. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The second book is The Nuclear Jihadist, by Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins. Now that's a depressing book. You see, A.Q. Kahn, the scientist who developed the Pakistani nuclear bomb, went on to traffic nuclear technology with countries like Lybia, North Korea and Iran, all the while under CIA surveillance. And nobody stopped him, because nobody wanted to cause any turmoil in Pakistan. Well, Pakistan is in turmoil anyway, and now the genie is out of the bottle. Depressing indeed.

So let's talk about something more cheerful, shall we? How do you like the sock striping, so far? I like how it is coming out and I am thinking of making a plain stockinette sock without any bells and whistles. Any attempt to incorporate texture would ruin the wide stripes, don't you agree?

Hellboy

2008-09-19T22:33:00.000-07:00

This was not a recommendation from a fellow knitter, but from my husband. So I trusted him and read the comic. I confess that I enjoyed it a lot. It was a good beginning for the toes.

But now it's time to start reading some of the recommendations I got from knitters visiting this website. Luckily, my local library has them, so I will get to them eventually. Thank you so much for your suggestions!

There!

2008-09-10T21:16:00.000-07:00

Finally, here's a finished pair of sunset socks:

To celebrate, I decided to start a new pair of socks with some Knit Picks yarn. To my dismay, the skeins were wound up from different ends. I kept unraveling while searching for the same sequence on both skeins until I discovered what was wrong. By then, it was just easier to manually wind one of the skeins backwards:

Has anyone had this problem before? For me, this was the first time ever.

Anyway, please help me celebrate the completion of my eternal socks by suggesting me a few books to read for the current pair.

Almost There

2008-08-22T11:30:00.000-07:00

Yes, this pair of socks is almost finished. And I also finished Valerie Plame's Book: Fair Game. It is full of "redactions".

Luckily, you can still make sense of what's going on. And the afterword, by a different author, fills up the gaps with information already available to the general public.

I feel sorry that someone who was working so hard to keep her country safe was betrayed by her own government.

Refried Book

2008-08-04T18:57:00.000-07:00

Back in Mexico, I used to scan the section of English language books in Sanborns, searching for science fiction. While not strictly SciFi, Robin Cook's books were a neat substitute: medical thrillers. But I often felt, after reading a few pages, that I might have bought a book I already owned. Checking my shelf, I would then notice that no, I had made no mistake and this was, in fact a new book. The problem was that Robin Cook was repeating himself. So I stopped reading him.

I was browsing the new books section in my public library when this Robin Cook's book, Crisis, stirred some memories. Maybe I should give him another try, I thought. Guess what? Even after so many years, I recognized the same recipe: A few mafiosi, a good doctor, a bad doctor, and something to criticize about modern health care, in this case, concierge medicine.

The good thing is, he's still a page turner. It was over soon.

Once Upon a Quinceañera

2008-08-01T16:55:00.000-07:00

I am still not sure why I picked this book by Julia Alvarez. I was never interested in quinceañera parties. I did not have one, and none of my close friends did. Some people I knew did, I attended as a guest, and that only made me even happier about not having had one. Back then me and my friends thought quinceañeras were a cheesy thing of the past. Who would have told me that here in the US it is such a huge deal for young latinas?

For my 15th birthday I went skiing with my family. It was an expensive trip, but considering what I just read, it was quite cheaper than the modern day quinceañera.

I wonder why is it that young girls try to integrate themselves into the American society as much as they can, but at the same time they wish to keep this expensive and primitive tradition alive. And, from what I read, it is becoming more and more expensive and complicated. Why bother with such a waste? Wouldn't it be wiser to set up a college fund for the young girl in question?

A beautiful book

2008-07-26T13:38:00.000-07:00

The author is David Sheff and the title is Beautiful Boy, just like the John Lennon song.

I think this is the saddest real life story I have ever read. I know there are worse tragedies than addiction, but never before had I read about the horrible life of an addict and his family in such detail. It is a very depressing book, but it is lovingly written.

No time to knit...

2008-07-18T10:44:00.000-07:00

... or to blog. But there's always time to read.

Yes, comics count as reading.

Another inch, another book

2008-06-30T22:15:00.000-07:00

The book is Into the Wild, by John Krakauer. This is Jennifer's recommendation. Actually, she recommended the movie, but I thought the book would be more interesting, so I got it from my local library.

And interesting it was. I had not heard of Christopher McCandless, who after earning his college degree cut off all links with his family and basically became a hobo. Two years later, he died of starvation in Alaska. Knowing the outcome from the beginning of the book was no spoiler. Rather, I was amazed on how much my opinion on McCandles evolved as I kept reading. The author was very thorough in following his steps and narrating them in detail. This book would be excellent were it not for the inclusion of other similar cases or the digression about the author's related experience. This book was supposed to be about only one person and I wish it had remained so.

Allergies, socks and twinkies

2008-06-21T12:51:00.000-07:00

I finally went to my primary care physician and insisted on getting allergy tests. Which did not do me any good, since none of the stuff I brought from work produced a reaction. The doctor explained that the test is only for a short term reaction. I need what is called a patch test, so they can test for prolongued exposure.

Meanwhile, it was fun (though quite itchy) to see little rows of welts develop on my forearm and learn that I am allergic to grass, pollen, dogs and cats. Since I've never had problems with any of those, I cannot take those tests seriously. Having a welt when you actually puncture the skin is very different from breathing in an allergen or rubbing it against unbroken skin. I certainly don't plan on getting rid of my dear pooch. The doctor recommended that I always wash my hands after touching him but guess what, I've been doing that with all pets all my life. That's probably the reason why I've never had any problems. He also says that the pooch must not sleep in our bedroom. Good luck with that one. We've tried that and all we get is hours and hours of howling. He does not like being away from the pack.

The Summer of Socks has begun and I never took the time to add a button to my sidebar. Heh, I have not updated my sidebar in years. I am a lazy blogger. Maybe this site should be the lazy knitter instead of the cheap knitter. I am counting my current pair of socks for the Summer of Socks. I don't know if it is against the rules, but I do know that this Summer is turning out to be much busier than I expected.

I am reading a foolish book: Twinkie Deconstructed. The author, Steve Ettlinger, picked the twinkie as a typical example of a processed food item, and then went through its label exploring the origin of every single ingredient. Some of those additives are incredibly complicated. They may be synthesized form petroleum, rocks and/or industrial by-products, and then end up present in the twinkie in really minute amounts. But they need to be there in order to acheive good taste and prolongue shelf life. I am not new to food chemistry, and yet I never realized how processed foods relied so much on some unsuspected sources such as mining or palm oil production in the third world. It is also weird to find out that some of those ingredients are also needed in a lot of non-food items such as vaginal lubricants or candles. I cannot remember when I last had a twinkie but I can confortably say it was really the last one for good.

Ankles!

2008-06-15T22:51:00.000-07:00

OK, now that both heels are completed, I can keep going round and round unitl I run out of yarn. There will be some increases down the way, but those can easily be handled by the coriolis stripe spiraling around the leg: I'll just skip the corresponding decreases. It will still take me a long time, but having both socks on the needles will help.

The book in that picture is Ladies Coupé, by Anita Nair. It seems that I am drawn to women issues when it comes to reading about far away lands. I was very surprised to see how many things I felt women in my own country have in common with women in India. I could relate to many of the issues that each character brings up. Yet, I felt very distant from these characters. It could be because the setting was just too foreign for me, but I think another problem is the way the book is written. It is neither a novel, nor a set of short stories. It feels like a lot of loose ends who the author tried to tie together, not entirely succesfully. Nevertheless, it was a very enjoyable introduction to a culture I am only slightly familiar with.

The slowest socks

2008-06-11T20:38:00.000-07:00

The Summer schedule is killing me. Classes have not even started and I am already exhausted by the time I get home. I cannot imagine how it will be later on.

Here's the heel of the second sock:

I can't wait for the weekend...

I won!

2008-05-26T20:40:00.000-07:00

I won Mathgirl's contest! She randomly chose my entry on unusual or obscure holidays. Where I come from, Candlemas is not that unusual, but people in the US or Canada don't really celebrate it. Here's my prize:

It is a skein of Mama Llama Monterey from Woolgirl. Thank you, Mathgirl, you made my day! I've never knit anything with seacell in it, and I can't wait to try it out.

The semester was officially over last week. That means that things are going to slow down until the Summer session begins. I will try to finish my sunset socks before then. Here is one heel, completed.

I recently finished reading The clash of Fundamentalisms, by Tariq Ali.

This is another depressing book which gives the historical reasons of the mess we have in the Middle East. Here'a a quote: "To fight tyranny and oppression by using tyrannical and oppressive means, to combat a single-minded and ruthless fanaticism by becoming equally fanatical and ruthless, will not further the cause of justice or bring about a meaningful democracy. It can only prolong the cycle of violence."

Which reminds me of a song Nacha Guevara used to sing in the 80s.

I will not bother translating the whole song. It's horrible. In the beginning, with much optimism, she decides to stamp out all hatred. But in doing so, hateful methods are adopted. A very sad message.

I succumbed

2008-05-18T00:08:00.000-07:00

Oh yes, The online Coriolis pattern was enough to tempt me and now I am the owner of Cat Bordhi's New Pathways for Sock Knitters. My library does not have it, it was not available through interlibrary loan, and I really wanted to explore more this idea of not having any gussets but having a heel flap.

So far, no buyer's remorse. I had already begun these coriolis with the idea to keep increasing after completing the heel in order to make the arch a little bit more roomy. Now that I have the book in my hands I see that Cat's method actually teaches you to take row gauge into consideration, unlike the online pattern which was kind of vague (it says to start the increases at 5-3/4" less than desired length, and I'm not sure that worked for Caroline's socks). I like the way the book is teaching me to think of socks in a new way, but is still lax enough to let me try stuff my way. I might even venture into cuff down socks again thanks to the alternative toes her book offers. Oh, and I am happy to report that the mistake I found in the online pattern is not present in the book.

Another book flew by this week: Agent to the Stars. This is Scalzi's very first novel, which nobody wanted to publish, as is usually the case with unknown authors. So he uploaded it to his website and it became a major hit among Science Fiction fans. He got more that $4,000 from this shareware novel before someone finally decided to publish it.

I got a copy through interlibrary loan, but if you like funny Science Fiction and a quick read, you can follow the link to the whole novel, which is still online.

Sunset socks

2008-05-12T08:48:00.000-07:00

WIth the pretty Opal yarn I got fron Nutse, I started a new pair of socks. The pale blue contrasting with the warm colors reminds me of a sunset at the beach. This will be another Coriolis pair for myself, with some modifications. My progress would be faster paced were it not for a book that I found hard to put down: The Logic of Life, by Tim Harford. I finished reading it last night.

In general, I am not interested in economics, but in this case the author tries to explain things such as sexual behavior, racial discrimination, CEO pay, o inequalities between cities and rural areas. According to him, people making really foolish decisions tend to have what turns out to be a rational base, even when the consequences are to everyone else's disadvantage. He cites a lot of behavioral experiments conducted by other researchers, and in some cases the results made me very sad. How can we humans be so selfish and biased?

Afghan Squares

2008-05-06T10:39:00.000-07:00

These are the two afghan squares I contributed to this year's Rainbow of Heroes. In previous years, I had been given at least three colors of yarn, but this year I got three balls of yarn, all in one color. Also, I did not have much time, so I ended up sending simple mitered squares.

I recently finished The Android's Dream, by John Scalzi. Crazy book. But then, Science Fiction tends to be crazy. There's two other books by him that I consider to be much better written than this one, which is an earlier book. You can tell he is getting better. Now, don't get me wrong, this book is still very funny and it kept my interest all the way through. I was actually sad when it was finally over.

My swap socks

2008-04-27T11:22:00.000-07:00

Nutse sent them from Catalonia, they fit perfectly and I love the colors and texture. She sends a crochet flower brooch along with stitch markers, Opal sock yarn and a postcard and bookmark from Barcelona.

I was in Barcelona many years ago and I loved that city, especially all the Gaudí architectural feats. I even keep a Gaudí memento on my bookshelf, see?

That bookmark and that yarn will be put to use immediately. Thanks Nutse!

Not posting does not mean no knitting. I'm contributing two squares for the Raibow of Heroes afghan. I'll post the pictures later. I also finished a couple of books. The first one, by Ibargüengoitia, was somewhat disappointing. It was a volume containing three plays by him, none of which I liked much: Clotilde in her home, The Superficial Trip and Bird in Hand. I believe he must have based his novel Two Crimes on the last play. The novel is great, but the play isn't.

The other book I finished was The Gospel of Food, by Barry Glassner. It is refreshing to have someone tell you to stop worrying about what you eat, especially in this culture where skinny people are all over the media and everyone's complaining about how fat the rest of us are. Still, I do watch what I eat, and enjoy my food. I can't see why one thing would exclude the other.

Coriolis

2008-04-23T20:57:00.000-07:00

I was late in sending in my swap socks. To make it up to my sock recipient, I sent them by UPS instead of regular mail. The pattern I used was Coriolis, by Cat Bordhi. I believe the web version of the pattern contains two mistakes (hopefully her book does not), but I liked it a lot. The increases are on the top of the foot, curving diagonally. A very interesting way to construct a sock, but not the best choice when you have a deadline and little time to learn new techniques. Anyway, the socks are on their way and I have a few pictures to show.

I followed the pattern as written except for the toe and the bindoff. Here is the heel, which is just like an ordinary toe-up heel with a heel flap:

You can see how he diagonal ridge continues after the heel just as a decoration. Here is one sock right before the edging, showing the ridge on both sides of the sock:

The pattern calls for a seed stitch edging, which I was unsure of but I went ahead and used it. What I did not do according to the pattern was the bind-off, which required four strands of yarn. Instead, I did a purl bindoff, using the technique I learned from Vaxgirl. Here is the result:

Please ignore my hairy legs. The sock is a tad big for my foot, but I should fit the recipient. For the record, I did wash both socks before sending them in.

This very unusual sock design has piqued my curiosity. I am itching to try Cat's new book: New Patwhays for Sock Knitters. Does anyone recommend it?

Eight days

2008-04-07T20:58:00.000-07:00

Oh no! My intentions were to at least turn the heels this weekend but it just did not happen. I like this pattern a lot but I do believe there is a mistake in it. After starting the arch increases I realized that the socks were not symmetrical, so I had to rip... again. Luckily, I only had to rip one of the socks, and now that I caught up they look just right. Here's one of the socks on my own foot:

Can someone attempt a guess at the pattern? It's really cool, but I hope it gives me no more trouble, since I do want to finish these socks on time. I'm planning to knit tonight until I turn the heels, or until I drop, whatever happens first.

Catching up

2008-03-22T11:58:00.000-07:00

I'm much happier with the width of the socks. Of course, now I have to hurry up as much as I can in order to meet the deadline (April 15). I will start the increases pretty soon.

I finished another book this week: Fatima Mernissi's Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood. Quite an interesting first person account of a muslim woman's family traditions and her point of view on poligamy, the veil, and women's limited freedom. I read a Spanish translation.

The title in Spanish is quite different: Dreams at the Threshold. When I encounter such differences I always wonder what the author's preference would have been.

Dialogue with myself

2008-03-15T13:50:00.000-07:00

-These socks are too narrow.
- No they're not. See? They stretch.

knit knit knit knit knit...

- You did not swatch, remember?
- No need for it, I used the same yarn before, and I am getting the same gauge, see?

knit knit knit knit knit...

-They still look narrow, why don't you try them on?
- Oh, well.... hmmm, just a little tight.... they are OK, though.

knit knit knit knit knit...

- You know you're in denial, just look at them. Why don't you try them on again?
- Oh shut up, they're not... well.... maybe... Oh shoot.

rip rip rip rip rip rip.

*Sigh*

I did start over, and I hope to catch up soon. Lately, I am too busy to knit or blog. I still have time to read, though. Maybe I should blog about the books I finish, though I hesitate to write reviews about what I read. I recently finished this book:

I love interlibrary loans. I couldn't find this book anywhere and I really wanted to read it. I did not know the author but someone recommended this as a good ghost story. I did enjoy it, though at times it is more cheesy than spooky. Still, it kept me interested page after page.

As for my swollen face, it turned out not to be eczema, but allergies. I already suspect some stuff I use at work, and whenever I handle it I take my precautions. I would still like to confirm my suspicions but for some stupid reason there is a waiting list at the clinic where I get my primary care, and I am now with an HMO so I cannot go elswhere for allergy tests.

New job woes

2008-02-24T21:25:00.000-08:00

I was going to show a picture of my eye, but it looks so red, swollen and ugly that I chose not to. My eyelids are covered with eczema and so are my lips, which are really inconvenient places: I cannot apply my usual coal tar gunk for fear of getting it in my eyes or ingesting it. The last time I had a bad eczema flare it was a job related issue involving the powder in my lab gloves. This time I am not sure of what the cause is, but I do believe it is job related, since this is my third winter in California and never before did I get eczema on my face.

Until I see a doctor, all I can do is apply cold compresses. When I am not doing that, I am working on the socks to be swapped. Thanks to ravelry I have seen the pattern of my choice from many angles and I believe it will look great with this self striping yarn. The only thing I don't like is the garter stitch toe, and I figure my sock swap recipient would not like it either, so I began instead with a figure eight toe.

This color scheme fills me with awe. I would have never chosen these colors to go together, and yet they look great.

Old socks, new socks...

2008-02-19T21:15:00.000-08:00

I did not want to begin my sock swap without finishing the pair I had on the needles. I originally wanted them longer, but never found the time to figure out how to adapt the increases to the pattern. Finally, I decided that it was time to move on, so I made the cuff and finished them.

I used a short row heel...

And here's my attempt to show a close up of the pattern.

Now I can start knitting a new pair. This is the yarn I chose:

I already found a pattern I like a lot, except for the toe. Of course, I could make a regular toe. I am going to think things over before casting on, because I also have to adapt the pattern to my gauge.

Sock swap

2008-02-10T13:08:00.000-08:00

...and Happy New... February? Oh well, such is life. You get a job and all of a sudden you don't have time for other important thigs. But because I am joining Swapetines once more, I WILL finish a pair of socks and blog about their progress, honest.

Rest assured that I am very happy in my new job, even if the hours are crazy and I feel really tired when I come back home. It's still a nice feeling.

In the U.S.

2007-12-21T12:39:00.000-08:00

Yes, I'm back in the U.S., with a work visa good for a year, and a smile on my face. Whew! A pretty surprise welcomed me home:

Isn't she gorgeous? I love her big eyes and skinny legs and arms. She traveled all the way from Málaga only to be stored at the Post Office because they would not let my husband pick her up. After some negotiations they agreed to deliver it and let him receive it if he was home. Thank you, Magdalena, she is a wonderful gift!

Here's a progress picture of my socks. I would like to knit them much longer, but I have not figured out how to make the increases without disrupting the stitch pattern.

The truth is, it will take me too long to work things out, because even after returning to the U.S. to sort things out with my new employer, I'm still going home to spend Christmas with my family. And when I get back I will have to catch up with the finals I missed, in addition to getting used to the new job, so it seems to me that knitting and blogging will not happen as often as before.

In Mexico

2007-12-05T09:37:00.000-08:00

I was given an appointment this morning at the US Embassy in Mexico City. I hardly had the time to get a ticket and gather my documents, much less to blog about it. My new TN visa was approved, and will be printed on my passport. It will take them another week to send it to me, but everything seems to be going smoothly. I brought my blue socks with me, and I have worked both heels. I wish I could show a picture but that will have to wait.

Many thanks to those of you who kept sending encouraging words and wishing me luck. This was one big step ahead!

Ode to my Socks

2007-11-29T10:34:00.000-08:00

Maru Mori brought me
a pair
of socks

knitted
with her own
shepherd's
hands,

two
socks soft
as
rabbits.
I
slipped
my feet
into them

as if
into
jewel
cases
woven
with
threads
of
dusk
and sheep's
wool.

Audacious
socks,
my feet
became
two
woolen
fish,
two long
sharks

of lapis
blue
shot
with a
golden thread,
two
mammoth blackbirds,
two
cannons,

thus
honored
were
my feet
by
these
celestial
socks.

They
were
so
beautiful that for
the first time
my feet
seemed
unacceptable
to me,

two
tired old
fire
fighters
not
worthy
of the
woven
fire
of those
luminous
socks.

Nonetheless,
I
resisted
the
strong temptation

to save
them
the way

schoolboys
bottle
fireflies,
the way
scholars
hoard

sacred
documents.

I
resisted
the wild
impulse
to place
them
in a cage
of gold
and
daily feed them
birdseed
and rosy
melon flesh.

Like
explorers who in the forest
surrender
a rare
green deer

to the
spit
and eat
it
with
remorse,
I stuck
out my feet
and
pulled on
the
handsome
socks,
and then
my shoes.

So this
is
the
moral of my ode:
twice
beautiful
is
beauty
and what
is good is doubly
good
when it
is a case of two
woolen
socks
in
wintertime.

Pablo Neruda

Sock/Visa progress

2007-11-27T21:40:00.000-08:00

I got the second version of the petition letter today, and I already submitted it to the embassy. I'm so happy I cannot stop knitting.

Of course, this cheerful colorway helps. I don't usually use variegated yarns much but I'm loving this one. It's called "funny blue". I like the pattern too. It's very easy and in my opinion goes very well with this yarn. I'll be doing the heels soon.

Chocolate Socks

2007-11-24T11:28:00.000-08:00

I finished the spouse's socks. I wanted him to model them but the socks are still moist.

Now that I'm done, I feel like starting another pair. Browsing around I came across an Opal sale. I like the look of Opal yarns but I've always been too cheap to try them. This time, at $11.10 per skein, I went ahead and ordered some. Of course, that means that I should at least get started with some of the sock yarn from the stash. I chose some Regia Schachenmayr in funny blue, and Nancy Bush's Gentleman's Fancy Sock pattern from Knitting Vintage Socks. I'm knitting backwards, from the toe.

The toe up method with a figure 8 cast on is good for lazy knitters like me: I did not knit a swatch, I just casted on 16 stitches and increased until the toe felt right on my foot. The toe is a little pointy but otherwise OK.

On the visa issue, I've no idea when I will get the second version of the letter. I need to learn to be patient and stop worrying. Marlena suggests finishing the pink thing so I can wear it in Mexico. Mexico City will not be warm enough for me to wear it, but if I have the chance to escape to the coast, then I might!

Back to the Knitting

2007-11-19T10:54:00.000-08:00

Yeah, because this is a knitting blog. So. Here are the chocolate socks. I'm making a cuff, even if the original pattern does not call for one.

And, here's the pink thing. The back is now as long as the front. Too bad the weather does not call for sleeveless cotton tanks anymore.

As you might have guessed, classes have kept me busy. Jobwise, there's great news: They want me for the lab position! Now it all becomes a different bureaucratic matter: The petition letter they write needs to please the US embassy so I can get a new visa. The first one was returned requesting revisions. These are going to be interesting times: The semester ends in less than a month, and during that time I need to travel to Mexico and change my visa. I have no idea when, so I cannot discuss the dates my professors in advance. They know about the job situation and they have been very supportive, so I am hoping they don't mind me being away during finals or handing in final projects early... or late.

Menstrual Stem Cells

2007-11-06T10:49:00.000-08:00

Yes, I'm going way off-topic. Also, this poor blog has had no attention for a long time. Instead of showing you pictures of my sad wips, I bring you this link for a press release.

It's cool, isn't it? Finally something good's coming from your monthly mess. If you were too lazy to click on that link, I'll summarize it for you: Your menstrual blood contains stem cells that may one day save your life or that of a close relative. And, how convenient, there is a company willing to store yor menstrual blood for a fee.

And yet, the press release contains this little statement: "The use of these unique menstrual stem cells in pre-clinical studies
for human cardiovascular, diabetes and neurodegenerative regenerative
therapies is under evaluation."

Pre-clinical? This means they have not done anything beyod the petri dish, maybe a mouse or two. In other words, no human being has been treated with menstrual stem cells. I wish the company's website were a little more clear on that.

I'd give you that website, but you will easily find it with a google search. And I suspect it will soon pop up in many internet ads, too.