Sock progress

Jan and I watched several episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Friday night (for those of you who know the series, here's where we are now: Faith just woke up), and I managed to get a lot of knitting done. After the ribbing at the top (to hold the sock up on your leg), it's simple stockinette all the way to the heel, baby--something I could do more-or-less on autopilot. But I'm now at the part where I have to pay attention to what I'm doing (cue ominous music): shaping the heel! Maybe I'll start on that tonight. In the meantime, here's a photo of the progress to date, with a cute kitty in the background for scale and, well, cuteness.

More uses for yarn

Because my nine-a-half-month-old daughter likes to play "grab Mommy's yarn/needles/project," most of my knitting is done after she's in bed or if there are baby wranglers (e.g., Dad, grandparents, friends) about. The Red Heart yarn I'm using for the papipads is ridiculously inexpensive, so I often let her play (under supervision, of course) with a skein I'm not using. I figure that even if she pulls out a huge handful of it and creates a tangle that I have to cut, the loss of even several yards of this cheap-o acrylic yarn is something I can live with. Amazingly, I've always managed to salvage all of the yarn after she's played with it. I think she's saving the Gordian knots for when she gets her hands on some really pricey yarn...

Sock it to me

Last night I made my first foray into the world of sock knitting.

I've long been intimidated by the notion of shaping heels and grafting toes. But, emboldened by my recent more-or-less success with intarsia, I decided it was time to try socks.

Knitting in the round doesn't scare me. Nor does using double-pointed needles. It's that funny shaping business that makes me anxious. Fortunately, socks are knit from the top down, so it will be a while before I have to worry about that!

I'm following the sock pattern in Sally Melville's The Knitting Experience: The Purl Stitch. I like her relaxed yet detailed presentation of patterns and how-to bits--and her books have fabulous photographs showing exactly how to do something. I'm surprised how few sock patterns there are out there, actually. Nearly all the patterns I've come across assume that you already know the basic shaping techniques; this is the only pattern for beginners that I have.

I'm using a fairly unglamourous yarn for this: Lion Brands Magic Stripes (one $5.99 skein from A. C. Moore is supposed to yield two socks). It's mostly wool, with a little nylon for strength and stretch. And it's by far the finest (in terms of weight) yarn I've ever worked with. So far so good: I dutifully knit a gauge swatch, then measured my foot to figure out how many stitches to cast on (56 with size 3 needles). I used a new (to me) cast-on method that Meville recommends for this pattern: the long-tail cast on. It wasn't hard to learn, especially with her great photos to guide me. The first 8 rows are in a 1x1 rib (I'm only on row 5 now), then it's stockinette all the way down to the ankle.

Gone to the dogs

My friend (and roommate from college) Beth, who lives in Springfield, Missouri, is involved in an effort to get local knitters to create "papipads" (I think they are named after a dog named Papi) for the Southwest Missouri Humane Society. These are little blankets that line the dogs' cages, and when the dogs are adopted they take the blankets (by them familiar items) with them to their news homes. Beth somehow (got) volunteered to make eight papipads, one for each branch of the county library. The papipads will be display samples, and Beth is working with kniters' groups (including the library young adult social group) to make blankets.

I told her I'd help her out by making one of the samples for her. I'm using Red Heart worsted-weight acrylic ($2.19 at my friendly neighborhood A. C. Moore!), and I think it'll work out to about one 364-yard skein, plus a bit of a second skein--so somewhere around 425 yards total (the yarn is doubled throughout), I'm guessing. I started with an all-red blanket and size 11 needles, but my knitting is too tight to meet the size requirements. So now I'm working on this striped number with size 13 needles. It's mindless (in that I don't have to pay attention to shaping or changing stitches or anything) knitting that goes pretty fast--and fun, too, 'cause I can switch colors whenever I feel like it! Maybe I'll make a second papipad (I'll certainly have enough yarn for it!) with some intarsia in it! Oooh!

Here's the pattern for the papipad, if anyone reading this is interested in helping out. The address where it should go is at the bottom of the page. I'm sure the dogs would appreciate your efforts!

Intarsia! Whoo!

I've managed to get lots of work done on Anouk over the past few days. I finished the second side on Thursday (didn't take a picture of it 'cause it looks just like the first side, except for the top right corner, which doesn't have a buttonhole) and got started on the pockets on Friday evening.

This is my very first foray into the land of intarsia (also known as picture knitting). I was a little apprehensive about trying my hand at this technique--it's described everywhere as "difficult" and "nerve-wracking" or something like that. These pockets were the perfect introduction to intarsia, though, because they are small...which means that when the inevitable screw-up occurs, ripping out the mistake isn't too traumatic. I did have to redo the first pocket after I'd gotten about eight rows into it, but once I figured out how to twist the yarns so color changes didn't leave gaps, it really wasn't very hard. I don't think intarsia knitting projects are very portable (at least, not at my skill level), because I have to arrange the different yarns around my carefully, so they don't get all tangled up with each other.

Once the pockets (which are mirorr images of each other) were finished, I started on the four tabs that connect the front and back pieces of the dress. I opted to make the two-buttonhole versions, to give Sylvia lots of room for growth. Here they are, in their blurred glory.