Friday, May 16, 2008

The Coriolis Diaries, Part II

Due to the title of this post, my first object of discussion is the Coriolis socks I started a week ago tonight.

Perhaps I was really too tired to be starting another pair of socks late at night, but I made the choice. When it came time to start the Coriolis band (digression: I keep trying to type that "Coreolis") I discovered an oddity: I was minus three of the seventy-two stitches I should have(or so I thought). "Oh well," I thought. "I'll just have another repeat of the Coriolis band rows to add in the missing stitches." I placed my marker and started knitting a whole repeat of the three band rows, but without any decreases. Okay, I should have 72 stitches now. Guess what? I didn't. It seems I was missing 5 stitches in the first place.

Upon investigating the mystery, it seems that my inaugural experience with the JMCO did not work out so well; I lost a pair of stitches, so that there were only seventeen stitches on two edges of the garter square toe. Next, it seems that I didn't pick up enough stitches on the other two sides; leaving me with (3x17)+16=67 stitches. Now, I'm not really sure what I should do, so I'm putting up a poll on my blog as to what I should do:




(Hopefully this will work--this is the first time I've used Bravenet)

In other news, I have finished two other pairs of socks recently, and started several others. I took a picture of all 14 pairs of socks I've made for myself, but at the moment it isn't convenient to attempt to upload pictures.

As well, I got to visit my "L"YS today, and I bought the following:

  • 3 skeins Reynolds Soft Sea Wool in Color #0320 (which is a plummy purple) for the Spiral Boot Socks (Link to Ravelry; non-Ravelers can see the design on this page--scroll down.)
  • 2 skeins hemp for knitting allhemp6, in what I think might be color #102 for the Everlasting Bagstopper (This link is to Knitty--no Ravelry membership necessary)



The Coriolis Diaries, Part I

Technical note: Unfortunately, this post, which was intended to end up on my blog via email, and was written last Saturday, did not appear. I attribute this difficulty to the fact that I have moved control of the blog from my arachnera@the-large-free-email-account-provider-whose-name-begins-with-a-y-here-obscured-against-spammers Google account to the one associated with my Gmail address and the auto-publish blog email was associated with that account. So here it is:

Have finished two pairs of socks and started my first pair from Cat Bordhi's New Pathways for Sock Knitters. I chose the spiraling Coriolis master pattern, wrote down my master numbers, and wrote out a summary of what I need to do as I knit. I'm using size zero needles--4 dpns, and KnitPicks Essential Multi in a now discontinued color way Riverbed Multi. I chose to disregard the whirlpool toe for the moment and go with a garter toe, so I learned the JMCO. Interestingly enough, because Riverbed is a mixture of blues and orange-browns, the colors in my hands were the same as those in Cat's illustration. My gauge is actually at the maximum end of spi in the master stitch number charts! But because my foot isn't that large, I don't have too many stitches.

I haven't reached my E point yet, but I'm working on it. Although I do have to wonder how the toe works out.

I have to wonder though, why in the world, according to the average foot size charts in the back of the book, I should wear a size 5 shoe, but instead I wear a size 7 1/2 to 8. Curious, anyway.

I will try to show you some pictures, but at the moment certain technical factors prevent me from placing pictures in this post.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

This is duck's weather, and it's STILL raining!

Some roads are closed, there's high water just about everywhere, and the weather is just generallly nasty. Good weather to stay inside and knit, but that I don't have knitting with me...

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Theoretically: many stitches, many words, many things to do...

If, perchance, there happen to be sixty-six stitches across the width of a latch hook rug...
And there happen to be ninety nine rows in this rug...
There will be six thousand, five-hundred, thirty-four pieces of yarn in the rug.
This would be the reason why the latchhook kit I recieved December 25, 2006 has long gone without any progress.
But I have managed to complete about 10% of the latch hooking recently. Enough to start getting the lighthouse in there.

If, perchance, there are five long lines and one shorter one per stanza of poem...
And there are, oh, about eleven or so words in each long line...
And about four or five in each of the shorter lines...
And there are eighteen stanzas in the poem...
There are about one thousand, sixty-two words in the poem
No small feat.
But I've memorized The Raven.

If someone should chance to check out approxiamately thirty books from one library at one time...
And one of those should happen to be about quilts, three (albeit one that wasn't very good) about basket making, hmm, I don't know; about a half dozen or more on crocheting and knitting, a tree guide, three -For Dummies computer books, two books on languages, three fiction, four or maybe even five weaving books...
And this person also needs to look up 180 words in the dictionary, do a report for psych class, complete assignments from when they were absent, figure out some wacky square roots, and complete a bunch of work book pages...
Well, needless to say, they will have difficulty getting everything they want to do done.
But I haven't managed to complete all this, yet, either....

Postscript: Hello, hello, hello. This is your beloved antagonist speaking here--Er, wait. Firstly, go over and read Harry's entry if you haven't already. Secondly, for your information, Lemony Snicket's a Series of Unfortunate Events (movie) is mildly beneficial for your knitting, as long as you don't try to eat rather messy popcorn at the same time.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Um, no, there haven't been many posts lately...

Really, there haven't. I have started work on Tala again, and I've started yet another pair of socks.

But I did discover that LOTR2: TTT movie is really great for knitting Mocassin Socks. Over the entire three hours, give or take perhaps thirty minutes for pausing for heel turning, I knitted 90% of the second sock!

Socks on the needles (in no particular order Scratch that. In order of needle size):

  • Crossover Rib (SKS), size 2s
  • Austrian Socks (Interweave's FS), size 1s
  • Eunny Jang's Entrelac Socks (Interweave Knits Spring '07), size 1s
  • The Socks that Shall NOT BE NAMED (SKS adaption), size 0s
  • Mock Wave Cable (?) (Interweave's FS), size 0s
  • Peacock DK socks (Knitty article, Fall '06 (?)), size 00s
  • Wearable Art Socks. (Homespun, Handknit) size 5s

The WAS is my first attempt at Fair Isle style knitting, and it isn't working out too well. The blue of the design is recedeing (ARGH!) and the FI part has very little elasticity.

PS: If you haven't, you should check out Fleegle's blog today.