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Knitting post.

My knitting life has been full-steam ahead practically since I started. This is not to say that the results have always been great (ha. haha.), but there has always been drive and pleasure in the process. I liked it. A lot.

Somewhere around Thanksgiving, my knitting train started a slow and steady derailing. I finished my white, purple-flecked socks in December; by the end of the month, I'd cranked out a small dolly-angel for a Christmas present for my Grandma, which was finished solely because of the holiday- I lost motivation right after her head and belly were completed; I'd started Nathan's socks... but those have YET TO BE FINISHED (fyi: it's April and I rarely need more than a month for a pair of socks); and there's been this lovely shawl pattern on which I've clicked away a few rows here and there. The knitting train was grinding to a hault.. things weren't getting finished... I could give or take the knitting time... without Maman to knit with, it kind of started to suck.

These are the fruits of my labor since August:

That is, my friends, my big ol' pot of depression soup. Not to say necessarily that I'm depressed, but no wonder I was starting to hate knitting. The only color in my repertoire was khaki green and khaki... and those were linen so they made my hands ache in a deep and exhausting sort of way.

This has been my response to the problem. Color work and holy crap my sock yarn is of the Caribbean.

Interestingly, while I was meditating on my own gray scale pot of depression soup, I realized that I had found my husband's recipe for le soup:
Mendon's solution

C'est tout!

I love the Cable Twist Socks from HelloYarn, especially with Grumperina's mods.
Requisite slouchy sock on the right. :)

Knit on 0's, with Koigu KPPPM. I actually cast on 72 (using 3 purled stitches and 6 knit ones), and decreased in the purls around the 4th repeat to give my legs a little bit of ... leg room. Right.

The other thing I did that was different from anything else I've seen is that I figured out a Right Twist to go with the original left one. (I'm absolutely obsessive about mirroring my socks - Love it). So here's how:

RT - Insert needle into next two stitches as if to k2tog. When pulling up yarn back through, only pull the yarn through the first/far/right stitch and leave the left/second stitch on the needle. Thus, you'll push your needle with the yarn up between the two stitches. You'll note that this will effectively knit the first/right stitch and slip the second/left stitch back around the knit one.

Click for larger, detailed, useful images.

Because of the mirroring, this CANNOT be directly substituted for the LT in the pattern. Instead, you'll need to knit across the knit stitches and start with the last two, moving to the right, rather than starting with the first two on the right, moving left. I really hope that this makes sense to the knitter types.

Also note that this is not the sock. Nay, this is my husband's knitting. He's taken it up as a side-side-side hobby that we can do together once every cool day in June. Right. Regardless of frequency, it's always a treat to knit for a while with him. He's a natural at it, plus it feels good to have him making that effort to spend time with me doing something that I enjoy, even if it wasn't first on his list.

We has to if we knits socks?

These are for Beth. I finished them a few days ago - FINALLY - and do not want to do another cable again on sock yarn for quite some time. Inner voice: Although, really, Kristen, let's be honest, your next sock project has cables, you just think that they're "different" and "exempt" and you're excited just like you were when you made up the last pattern that was a bit of an uphill battle right around the ankle of the first sock. Do you not LEARN from this? Is there some punishment-loving side of you that secretly craves making sock patterns that push you to tears? Although, in my defense, I did find a ready-made sock pattern for my next pair, and I have learned my lesson: a little bit of planning and consideration what kind of sock knitting I enjoy will go a long way for the next design work I do.

Beth has been a dear friend of mine through the past 3 1/2 years. She's another violinist in the music department, who now has a fantastic job in her hometown, and who has been dealing with chemo for lymphoma. You may have remembered the post that accompanied this news. I have this issue, I think it's an issue, that with the news of cancer in a loved one, I rush to knit stinking socks for them. For those who read YarnHarlot Maman and Mendon, it reminds me of the Yarn Harlot's feathers shawl. At any rate, I'm glad to know that she's doing well, that she's beautiful without her hair (gorgeous and bohemian, and to be honest, I agree with her middle school students that she should stay bald), and that she will have socks for next winter. Love that gal!

Also, along those feety lines:

I did this last night and boy! did we stay up late for this decoration. I'm glad I did it, but uhm, would have been happier to have started it around 5 pm, rather than 10.

Posts to follow on the rest of the henna explosion, my blogging thoughts, and jewelry.

Over winter break, Mendon and I did a whirlwind tour visiting my family. While sitting with my father and discussing the enthusiam that Grandmother B- showed for my knitting, how she had cast on a new project (at 93 years old!), and how she'd dumped her yarn stash into a bag for me to take away. Dad, pleased to hear these things, disappeared briefly and brought back this:

This is a sweater that I've seen before. It was from Dad's early years. (ie. it was knit for him when he was scrawny). We laughed at this, he tried it on. We found out that it was knit to be baggy, and that it's age wouldn't show if it could have just another inch or two in length in the body. This, I was certain, couldn't be that hard. I figure that I can just undo the bottom row, let the stitches fall up (EASY, right?), reknit the ribbing straight, and then add ribbing onto that with a different yarn, that SURELY, I could match. After all, it's just a blue sweater.

One of the issues with being a new knitter, evidentially, is the experience of learning your BOUNDARIES, girl.

From there, I found out that stitches, when ribbed, do not casually undo themselves from the bottom up. Nope. So, I had to unravel a row of stitches above the ribbing by hand, undo the kntting, reattach, reknit. I couldn't find a yarn to match (duh!), only one that is close. So, in the past few days, I've spent a lot of time (read: only about 30 minutes, because that's all I have) staring at the sweater.

And then a solution came for me:

The collar was doubled over, and there was my extra yarn for the taking (after I loosened it and took it apart, that is). To work I went.

Half-way through my work, I stumbled upon this little surprise that is something I really enjoy about my Grandmother:

The woman must love tags in her knitting. Really. I remember when I was a kid, she sent Drew and me handknit sweaters that had matching tags (mine was white, his was blue). They read, "From the Hands of Mabel B-" or something like that. They were fantastic and embroidered with (I think) teddy bears. Mendon comment on her tagging inclinations: "Well, yeah, she had FOUR boys!" Plus, we know that Uncle Spurgeon had a matching sweater (the most coveted original), so distinguishing between these two was probably a good thing to do.

Regardless, I wonder about this funny little tag. Why was it covered? Did folding the neck over bug my father? Did the collar irritate his neck (cause I sure don't enjoy turtlenecks)? Who covered it? When - it obviously wasn't right after the sweater was made- the wool that secured the collar into the inside was a different color. Was Dad secretly, adolescently annoyed with his mother's tagging habits? :) I am, yes, quite amused with this hidden finding.

At any rate, the collar is only one layer now, a crew neck, and I've found my matching (!!!) wool to with which to extend this sweater to a functional length. How lovely.