not again...

I ordered _Knitting Full- Fashioned Hosiery_ in the UL yesterday and it turned out to be about machine knitting: total disappointment. Therefore, as a pick-me-up, a trip to Sew Creative was necessary. Two balls of RY Classic Cashsoft 4ply later, the cotton sock had been told it was taking a vacation and this appeared on my needles. Tomorrow: London. Monday: home.

yet more socks

The monkeys have been finished:

I'll get a picture of them on their recipient sometime in the next couple of weeks.






New basic socks in elann.com esprit have somehow been started:

And, this morning, I ran into someone I knew as an undergraduate in the UL. This would be less surprising had my undergraduate degree not been done on another continent...

A finished jumper

I couldn't resist. In fact, I think I'm going to spend some time this afternoon curled up with Harrius Potter et Camera Secretorum... I saw the LOTR musical yesterday with someone I knew in Toronto. Comment on the musical I shall not, however the company was fabulous.









The first monkey is finished (and not blocked) and the second one has been started. I've just finished the second cuff repeat... Maybe I'll have a heel by mid afternoon.




And what's this? The knitting for my sister's Christmas present has been finished. It still has some seams that I've not sewn...but they'll get there. I've been to John Lewis this morning for pins and if I don't spend the afternoon knitting the second monkey, I'll seam and block.

I got a surprising amount of reading done on the train yesterday. I had forgotten how nice that can be -- when one isn't in a car full of screaming infants. I'm ahead of schedule for the self-inflicted-winter-break-reading-list and I think I'd like to stay that way.

Monkey Progress

First off, perhaps, I owe an apology to the weather. Since the snarkiness of my last post, I've seen a lot of blue sky and even some sun! (I reserve the right to snark about the angle of the sun later... and to resume weather related snarking should I ever have to go more than 2 days without seeing the sun again.)

My monkey is progressing quite well. I've turned the heel, worked the gusset and am well into the foot. I can see how many knitters have become so addicted to this pattern and am already contemplating a second pair.

Plans for winter break knitting are taking shape -- provided that I finish my sister's Christmas sweater before Christmas... If not, I think I may have to force myself into some fibre related penance. Like de-stashing. Nothining like an incentive to finish...
So:
1. Work on Kunegunde. I left her in the US and thus absolutely no progress has been made.
2. Attempt to dye self striping yarn.
3. Knit recently designed socks with said yarn.
4. Avoid starting the Tangled Yoke Cardigan from the Fall 07 Interweave Knits.
(Feel free to remind me that I hate knitting sweaters...)
5. Try to convince self that, since said cardi is knit with spot weight yarn, it won't be much different from knitting a few pairs of socks, order yarn, and cast on anyway.

New socks!

The rain has let up enough for me to go outside and photograph my latest socks. I'm certain that this is just some sort of ruse on the part of the weather -- something to lure me in to thinking that I can get to the library without getting wet. It'll start to rain again as soon as I forget my umbrella and walk out the door.
First up: finished Charade socks in knitpicks essential plum. I'm not sure why we have a laundry rack in our back yard, but it could be that I've misunderstood something and that one hangs one's laundry there to wash it rather than to dry it...
Up next, a close up shot of the same:

I got to be quite fond of this pattern and my only modifications resulted from misreading the instructions for the toe -- my toe is a bit longer than the pattern intended...










I have caved and cast on for a pair of Monkeys.
The wool is Lorna's Laces in Amethyst Stripe, that I had been hoarding since a trip to Knitch (Delafield, WI) with E. some months ago... The pattern is quite enjoyable but not really one I can work on whilst reading.

December!

Tomorrow is the feast of St. Nicholas, which, in my candy and coffee worshiping family, means that my mother has sent me a care package. I know that there is yarn in this package because mum refused to tell me about Loop's new shop, instead telling me that I'd find out on the 6th. It's taking all of my self control to not open the package.
Term ended last Friday; I hope to never see critical theory again. I finished a pair of black socks this evening that are too boring to photograph, so I'll leave you with a picture of the purple socks I began a couple of days ago.

pink

Yesterday was very productive from a knitting standpoint and thus, my "day off" for the week.
Ours models my new scarf, which I'm calling big-pink-fluffy-thing:


I'm not feeling very chatty today.

More socks

Socks are comfortable, easily slipped in my backpack, and (most importantly) not my sister's Christmas present. So, I present the sock of the week:

Fortissima Colori Socka Color, colourway 9069, purchased a long time ago from Susan's in Columbus, WI. I brought only 2 balls of this to Cambridge with me and the LYS here doesn't appear to have it. However, I'm planning a research trip to Germany that will bring me in close (dangerous) proximity to many yarn stores... That said, I'm quite fond of the LYS that I've found. They have the Regia Crazy Colour (previous socks) colourway that I had been looking for for more than a year in Wisconsin as well as an all around good selection of yarns.

I moved to England in September to start my PhD. It's now November and I haven't managed to update this blog since August. How thoughtless of me. Gone (or rather, remaining in the States) is my parents' camera, so I'm afraid that the mobile phone camera will have to suffice for a while. Here are the latest socks --

I'd like to lose control...

How much angst is too much? And why am I this angsty? I really don't have any excuses for this. Here's some knitting:

The cover sweater from the summer Interweave Knits has been altered to stay up on my shoulders. I took out the ribbing from the pattern and re-knit it with a much smaller needle. I also did a few vertical decreases over the shoulders. This tightened it up quite a bit and I could now wear it, if it weren't 90 degrees today.

A couple of weeks ago I took a trip to Susan's Fiber Shop in Columbus, WI. There were no major yarn indiscretions; only the purchase of enough Regia for a pair of socks. The first of the pair has been my reading sock lately. The sock comes to just below my knees, so I think I could wear them with the skirt I'm supposedly sewing. My sewing machine had a few choice words for me the other day and then decided that it's going to chew up anything I try to sew...

I finished the cover sweater from the summer Interweave Knits and it's too big. I made the smallest size and tried to adjust for the fact that my bust isn't near 35 inches. I even added a few extra decreases near the top to try to keep it up on my shoulders. Nonetheless, it has quite a bit of room in the chest and slips off my shoulders. I can deal with the room in the chest, but I'm going to take out the ribbing on the yoke and possibly a repeat or two of the pattern at the top and reknit it with a smaller needle. But now, Sherlock Holmes is on MPTV and the mohair is calling me.

ps. My camera is in Ireland. Pictures will return when it does.

leaving you for me

Knitting is happening over here, regardless of the lack of posting...

First up we have the finished striped socks. They're almost perfectly matched which makes me quite happy.

Second up is my (lack of) progress on Mystery Stole 3. I like the pattern but there are two things holding me back: I can't read while working on it and the cats I'm sitting for don't understand that chewing mohair isn't a good idea.

So, I'm working on the cover sweater from the summer issue of Interweave Knits. I've been able to read through most of the body of the sweater and am just getting to the cabled section, which will require some attention.

Maybe I have time for a Pfarrer Braun rerun before orchestra...

Today, as I searched our house for a copy of a book called Applied Statistics, I realised that we have at least 4 copies in at least 3 different editions (I think we have an instructor and student copy of one of them...) of Mansfied's Microeconomics. I didn't find Applied Statistics itself, though I did find the instructor's manual and the test book; apparently someone here taught it at some point. How nice. Glad it wasn't me. I settled for Basic Statistics instead as there are some tests that I'd like to run with my latest neume counts.

Knitting content will return as soon as my parents (who are actually responsible for the econ/stats books) unpack from their trip to Washington.

Juli

New fibre! I know, I just said I was going to focus on knitting simple things so that I could read whilst knitting. E. came up on Saturday and we went to Mayville. There's an LYS there that I like to visit when time permits. They had a bunch of 225g bags of colourful wool top, one of which said, "Take me home!" to me. (Note that the wool has mastered the use of the imperative.) I relented, took it home, and immediately started to spin it. It's dreamy, drafts beautifully, and doesn't have any plant matter in it.

Specs: Northern Lights wool top, colour way violet.

Socks in Nature

Two new socks have been completed recently. Memorial sock 1, and reading sock 1. An explosion in the self-inflicted reading list has caused a change of knitting plans. Kunegunde is patiently waiting for attention, which she is not receiving. Instead the sock yarn from the indiscretion earlier this month is rapidly becoming simple stockinette socks. Why? Because I can read while I'm knitting them. I can't read books or articles and an intarsia chart at the same time.I was innocently reading an article on early music writing in Europe when suddenly, a mess of new articles I thought I should read started popping out of the footnotes. It snowballed. Each new article generates several more that I should read; it feels like it's out of control. There must, however, be an end because earlier this week I went to the library for some early German neumes and ran into the local med-ren musicology prof. He was sitting in the library leisurely reading an article, as though he hadn't another care in the world. He had evidently caught up. Never mind that he entered musicology at least 30 years before I did and therefore not only was present for many of the important moments on my reading list (like the St. Martial Polyphony arguments), but also had a smaller corpus to read through before he could simply keep up with recent publications.

The sweater of doom

is now finished. Kunegunde can now be begun without guilt.

I've been sharing my towel rack and bathtub with yarn lately. This should be single ply sock yarn-- but my technique/accuracy aren't quite what I'd like them to be yet and it's not terribly even. It does, however, feel quite nice. I'd like to do something more creative than my standard stockinette socks with it, but I'll let it dry completely before I really start thinking about that.

The memorial socks are coming along nicely. I am enjoying the colours and have come to terms with the fact that I'm not going to see the type of contrast I wanted between the blue and the purple. You can probably see it, although I can't.

While in Kalamazoo this weekend, I picked up some yarn for the memorial socks. The pattern is from Das Geniale Sockenbuch, Socken mit Norwegermuster. The original pair was made out of red, orange, yellow, and pink.

The new yarn is Sisu, which is machine washable... I like the colours I picked individually, but in this pattern I'm having trouble distinguishing between blue and purple (nothing new there...) I'll knit another repeat before I decide whether or not I should rearrange things.

We regret to inform you

of the unfortunate felting of one of our favourite socks. Said sock hid in the cuff of a pair of pants and was found late Thursday evening, felted, in a laundry basket. The situation was too awful to photograph. Plans are in the works for a memorial pair using the same intarsia pattern but different colours and superwash yarn.


I've been back in Kalamazoo, this time for the Kalamazoo Klassic, where I placed respectably in the 5k competitive walk. Yes, I can walk faster than some people can jog. I'm not ashamed of this.


I finished a pair of children's socks from the left over Shelridge Farm yarn. I really enjoyed knitting with that yarn; I don't always love a yarn enough to make something out of the leftovers.















This is a new project -- illegal, because I haven't finished the sweater yet -- the yarn comes from the recent indiscretion...






Finally, Amys:

New Toy

I got a spindle and half a pound of wool today! I've managed to spin some inconsistent singles... More on that later; I'm too busy playing!

More socks...

Here are the completed Shelridge Farm socks. They will be making their way to their recipient via the scenic route early next week. They are being modeled by my dining room floor, as the cats refused to comply.

Yesterday's possible yarn indiscretion is still not being discussed.

half off sale...

There may have been an indiscretion today involving the purchase of half a kilo of sock yarn and some mohair-merino lace weight. But we won't talk about that.

June!

My tonsils hurt. All of the other symptoms from the recent awfulness have disappeared-- except for the pain the the back of my throat. I wonder if I should return to the doctor...

Knitting around here has been minimal. I've completed the Shelridge Farm socks and have knit the first of a brown pair in Online supersocke. I've already lost the band.

Amys is looking at the sock, wonder why I've moved it from between couch cushions (where it was happily wedged) to the floor in front of him. Really, I just think he's cute and want to post more pictures of him.

Kunegunde has been charted and yarn has been ordered. However: I have resolved that there will be no knitting of on this project until I finish my mother's birthday sweater and the 230 pages of reading left over from my May list. Which I should be doing instead of blogging...

Good night!

Neumes and a sock...

I've been sick all week with some sort of stuffy-nose-sore-throat-achey-body madness. It's wretched. However, I did produce some neumes for you. On the right, you see some quadratic notation. From the left, a C clef, a clivis (my favourite neume), a pes, a virga and a punctum. I don't normally work (academically...) with quadratic notation; I prefer the German neumes of the 14th century. However, wouldn't have been able to knit them with worsted weight yarn. Their base shape is a rhombus. I'll knit some when I have some fingering weight yarn in the necessary colours.

In sock news, the Shelridge Farm yarn mentioned in the previous post has become part of a sock:

I never get tired of plain, stockinette socks. I rather like this colour way; I think I'm in an unrelenting pink phase. I'm not upset buy the way it is sort of pooling and there's probably nothing I could do about that, save knit a pattern into the fabric. I'm using US2 dpns and I rather like the weight of the fabric produced.

And now, back to the unscheduled coughing that is taking up too much of my time...

Post-Kalamazoo haze

I returned from Kalamazoo last night after a drive lasting more than an hour longer than it should have; I can't wait until the construction on the Dan Ryan is done, but I have a feeling I'll have started, finished my PhD and have tenure before that happens... I stopped briefly at Stitching Memories to peruse their sock yarn selection and came home with some Shelridge Farm 3-ply in a pink-orange colour way. Unfortunately, the price tag is covering any further information.

Here's sock 27 of the year; the mate of the sock in my previous post. It's resting on the windowsill of my dorm room at Western Michigan. My mother yelled at me because the first picture I took was of my knitting; not of my friends, not of the campus.

I didn't get as much knitting done as normal; the trade off, though was that I heard some interesting papers, made good contacts, and saw many non-knitter friends. I also received a scarf in a wool-soja blend from a Canadian knitter--also a friend. It's lovely and will match my winter coat quite well.

Finally, I want to mention the beginning of a new project. The Kunegunde Project will attempt to create a knitted tapestry of my favourite miniature of my favourite Saint. The miniature is found in a 14th century Gradual from the Archdiocese of Bamberg, which Kunegunde and her husband Heinrich II founded in the early 11th century. I've begun to chart the image and assemble the required yarns. More to follow.

I had about 64 grams of Dream in Color left over from the previous pair of pink socks and since I love this yarn so much, I'm not going to let it sit in my stash. The skein was about 128 grams when I first got it, so I used half for the first pair, which were a larger size than I usually knit. I've been keeping track yarn usage by weighing the ball on my kitchen scale (which, admittedly, gets more use as a yarn scale than as a kitchen scale...). The stitch pattern comes from a German sock book --Das Geniale Sockenbuch-- I got a few years ago. It was published by Topp, but doesn't seem to have a publication year.

I'm off to Kalamazoo on Wednesday! I don't think there are any sessions on medieval knitting though -- neumes, to be sure!

A Thursday

I'm tired today; I think everyone at the office was suffering the same thing. I've made a bit of progress on the Hedera (op. cit) but started to wonder if the chitin in the yarn could have a negative effect on the intended recipient of the socks, whom I believe is allergic to shell fish.

Here's a picture of my cats. I should have introduced them earlier, as their knitting help is invaluable. The cat in the foreground, Patch, is 13 and the one in the back, Amys, is about 6.

I've got just a bit of toe work to do on another stockinette sock, which I'd like to have done by the time the national news is on, giving me roughly half an hour.

22 and 23

Socks 22 and 23, out of the previously mentioned Dream in Color Smooshy were finished today. White paper provided for contrast... The colours are a bit lighter than the picture shows. I've not blocked them yet; I'm not actually planning to block them... They'll be passed on to their future wearer in just over a week at the Kalamazoo Medieval Studies Congress.

I went to the LYS in Delafield yesterday and came home with some lovely Lorna's Laces 3-ply in two shades of purple. That, however, has been stashed in favour of finishing up the Tofutsies (op cit.). I only used 34 grams for my first pair out of that ball, so I've cast on for knitty's Hedera. No pics yet, as it's just ribbing.

New Yarn

Yesterday I went to my favourite LYS for some new sock yarn and came home with 4oz of lovely Smooshy in colour 260. By 9 pm I'd already wound it. I've cast on my standard 60st. stockinette sock, as I need to have this pair done by the second weekend in May. Pics to follow. The weather here is awful today; cold and rainy.

Sock #20 of 2007

I started knitting socks as an exchange student in Tübingen, Germany in 2003. My sock production for the first few years was meager, but has increased significantly since 2006. In that year, I finished a record 54 socks.

My current pair:

yarn: SWTC tofutsies in colour 720, sweep you off your feet.

needles: US size 1, set of 5dpns

I've not managed to get all of the cuff, but that's k3p2 ribbing for about 3/4 of an inch before I switched to stockinette.

Welcome

Here begins a blog of knitting and neumes. Welcome.