Benne,
The e-mail address you sent me as an update didn’t work. I keep getting delivery failures. Please e-mail me directly from the new account so I can change your address for updates.
Thanks,
M
Miriam Felton
Unique Designs & Technique for the Handknitter
Busy busy busy….
Quite busy today… building webpages and having meetings about transferring file servers… got a backlog of mail to take care of on my desk, but hopefully I’ll have some knitting progress to show you tomorrow and mabye something cool for my 25 month (2 years plus 1 month) blogiversary.
M
Kathryn finished her Seraphim shawl in KSH! It’s so pretty! Good job!
Happy Halloweeeeeeen!!!!!!!11one
I know, such an original title for today’s post… but LOOK! I have an FO! And JUST in time for Socktoberfest!
Yarn: Some Norwegian heavyweight sock yarn that Bonnie dropped on the table at SnB to destash. There were 2 skeins of the tweed and one skein of the white. I tried to find this yarn on the internets, but couldn’t…. I used all of one ball of the tweed and part of the second for the stripey bits at the top and part of the white ball. I had hoped to make 2 pairs of socks (one pair for each of my younger brothers), but I think the second pair would be too short with less than one ball of the tweed.
Needles: US Size 2 Susan Bates metal dpns. I also used Brittany birch US 2’s to hold stitches.
Gauge: 6.5 spi and 9.25 rpi.
Pattern: I used the Easy Toe from page 41 of Sensational Knitted Socks and did a 64 stitch sock with k2p2 ribbing on the cuff and instep. A regular short row heel that went down to 12 sts before reversing the shaping and I just made up a 3-stripe pattern for the cuff. The tweed stripes are one row more than the cream stripes so that it appears to be light stripes on a dark background, rather than stacked stripes.
Verdict: They came out REALLY thick, but that will be good for my brother. The ribbing should help them fit his feet, and I think he’ll like the stripes. It was brought to my attention that they look like sock monkey socks without the red. I like them though, and they were quickly knit, so that’s even better.
Have a happy halloween!
M
Check out Rainbow Chills’ Icarus! It’s lovely! 🙂
Links all around!
Today I need to empty my brain, so I’m just gonna dump a bunch of links that I think you should see. I’ll put knitting content at the end 🙂
1. Andie at Renaissance Dyeing has put up the kits for my patterns that use her yarn! You can purchase the kit for the Riverwide Scarf with or without pattern, and you can purchase the kit for the Lightweight Moutain Peaks Shawl there. If you want to purchase just the yarn for that shawl, then you can just order 3-250m skeins from her site. I’m still amazed that Andie can get such lovely and varied colors from NATURAL materials! It’s just fabulous! :) As soon as this posts, I will go add that link to the Design Portfolio page.
2. My lovely nametwin sent me this link in an e-mail and I thought all you knitibrarians might enjoy seeing this. Hot Library P0rn! :D I want to print all of these images out and plaster them on my walls so that I can feel as if I have a REAL library instead of a few overpacked bookshelves and random stacks all over the house.
3. Peeve finished her Sky-colored Seraphim! Go poke her and give her a hard time about not posting anything but a teaser pic!
I did some stash-diving to find something that I vaguely remembered buying – and I can’t for the life of me remember what it was now – and I started creating piles. There is some genetic drive within me that forces me to organize into piles which I then leave lying around in obvious places as sources of inspiration or irritation until I do something with them, whether that be a project, or chucking them back in the stash boxes.
I made a pile of cotton yarn to make facecloths with (it’s a VERY small pile as I generally HATE cotton), and a pile of sock yarn ends and odd balls that got put into the bag ready for a marathon of baby sock making that I intend to do before Christmas (we all know what the road to hell is paved with, yes?), a pile of yarn I would rather shoot myself than knit with (some eyelash and some ladder-type novelty yarn as well as some just wacky stuff), a pile of single skiens suitable for quick Christmas presents, and a pile of worsted weight wool suitable for felting.
My first thought was that I should make a felted bag out of all those ends, with just RANDOM stripes… and then I realized that I was a bad BAD knitter. Norma had sent me some yarn that was donated for the Dulaan project, and looking at all my wooly skeins and balls and jumbly ends, I remembered that box of wool that she sent. And I realized that in all of this knitting for myself and for Christmas presents, I hadn’t knit a STITCH for Dulaan. So the pile of wool bits has been put in a prominant spot (where I’ll almost trip over it everyday) so that I will be reminded that instead of casting anything on for myself, I should be making something for one of the adorable and heart wrenching children in Mongolia.
But my powers of selective vision are astounding, so I need you bloggers to poke me periodically and remind me that I’m supposed to be knitting Dulaan stuff, ok?
But I did have a good bit of time for knitting this weekend. Some of it was done at Erin & Kara‘s house while watching Jane Austen flicks. We drank tea and ate lavendar mint shortbread. And this morning I finished one sock. Since I knit them basically at the same time, I think I can have a finished pair tomorrow just in time for Socktoberfest.
Now I have to go eat something before I go supervise children at the department’s halloween party for children.
M
I'm waaay out in left field.
I just realized that I missed my second blogiversary on October 4th. Maybe I’ll pull something together for November 4th and it can be a 2 years and one month-iversary.
*headdesk*
So I took an unexpected leave of absence….
… and I’m back. It was a bad week, and I didn’t feel like blogging negative things, so I just didn’t blog. But now I’m here and I’ve finished (but not blocked) the Black Pearl Yarns Cashmere pieces. You can see a really boring photo of them all folded up here.
But instead of dwelling on any of the things I can’t really tell you, how about I show you socks in honor of Socktoberfest?
I also bought some yarn for another pair of Christmas socks. It’s Regia 4-fädig Tweed. It’s a beautiful dark charcoal gray with flecks of autumn colors in it. It will be perfect for the recipient, who has proven his love of handknit socks 🙂
M
Lauren finished her Icarus Shawl from one ball of Jade Sapphire’s Lacey Lamb (I have a ball in my stash myself) and it’s lovely! She had some trouble with her dog pulling the needles out and had to start over again, but it seems to be worth the effort! It’s lovely Lauren!
Laura finished her Mountain Peaks Shawl in gray baby alpaca! It’s beautiful!
Oh, and P.S. There’s some minor adjustments to a few of the patterns, that will need to made in the near future. I’ll be e-mailing errata to those who have already purchased them, so be on the look out.
Sneak Peek at the Cashmere Wrap
I’m about the half way done mark now… hopefully if I get a lot of knitting time this weekend, I could be done next week. And then on to finishing all the socks that I’ve got going. And have you seen these socks in the new Knitty surprise? I LOVE them! I printed out the pattern and maybe I’ll find someone to make them for for Christmas because I want to knit them, but can’t justify any non-designing and non-Christmas knitting yet.
M
Joseph's Scarf!
I began work on the blue scarf and found that the yarn was running out FAST! So I dug around in my stash and found the other blue yarn (KnitPicks Twirl) and decided they’d work together. And while digging through to find the Twirl, I found one lone skein of KnitPicks Essential in that rusty orange. So I decided an asymmetrical orange stripe would be good and put that in there too.
Yarn: 1 skein of Manos del Uruguay kettle-dyed in blues, 1 skein of KnitPicks Twirl in “Summer Sky” and part of one skein of KnitPicks Essential in Pumpkin used double.
Pattern: Made up… just a garter stitch scarf knitting on the long edge… I think I cast on 210 stitches and then just changed colors whenever I felt like it. I fringed in the same patter though… so that the Twirl portions were fringed in twirl and the manos portions were fringed in manos…. etc…
Gauge: God only knows… it doesn’t matter to me, but the thing ended up being just over 6 feet long (I think)… which is good because Joey is tall.
Needles: Denise Interchangable size 10.5 (thanks to Margene!)
Verdict: Honestly, I HATED it while I was knitting it. I thought “It’s going to be ugly! I didn’t plan this well enough! The blues don’t go well together!” But I cast it off, and fringed it and looked at it and thought… “Not for me, but it’s really quite nice and Joseph will like it.” So I’m satisfied.
Now back to the cashmere wrap. I think I can get a great deal of this done during the weekend. I am determined to finishe cleaning the house BEFORE the weekend gets here, so I can just sit and relax and not have to worry about anything but feeling better this weekend. I’ve got a book to read and stuff to knit, so I should have plenty to keep me occupied if I get bored. Plus maybe some more applesauce making this weekend.
M
Emily finished her Eleanora Socks in Black Bunny Hand dyed sock yarn. They’re great Emily!
Heather finished her Icarus shawl in a beautiful pink merino laceweight from handpaintedyarn.com. It’s lovely Heather! Good job!
I forgot a title…. um… Indigo Icarus, there you go!
Today we shall overlook my knitting and distract you with pretties made by other people! Specifically That Laurie of Yarn Harlot guestblogging fame. You may recall that she taught us how to dye with indigo in her multi part post. Well, now we see the fruits of her labor!
This might make your day too….
So I’m feeling quite crappy (actually have been for a while) so I’m going home to rest, but I thought you all might enjoy this. I’m bookmarking it and I will visit often. Make sure to turn up your volume on it for full cathartic effect.
M
