The Sock Situation

Alright, photographic evidence of my socks-in-progress delinquency:

SIPs of shame

There had been more, many more, but I frogged a few that I knew I would never finish. These are the 7 pairs that I will finish in 2012, in addition to the 17 new pairs I would like to knit from start to finish this year. It sounds like a lot, but I know I can be a speedy knitter when I focus, and since I'll be unemployed shortly, I anticipate an increase in my standard amount of free time.

These socks all stalled due to a few reasons: a fussy pattern and lack of time (top left pair and top right pairs), a dislike of the needles (top middle, bottom green, and bottom right), or a dislike of either the yarn base or yarn color (bottom left, bottom pink, and bottom right). However, I will overcome these silly little obstacles, because all of the knitting pictured above could've been 4 finished pairs by this point!

I added a sock ticker to the top of the blog to keep me honest. The one pair I finished are the ribby holiday socks I discussed yesterday, but I can't show them to you because I left half the pair in my office desk. They were great work-knitting socks because they were mostly plain. My next work-knitting pair will be the Cotty socks I discussed earlier. I decided to change my January sock knitting goals back to what they were originally (my goals, my rules!) which are as follows:

1. finish X-mas Rocks socks (DONE!)
2. finish South Fork socks (60% done)
3. start Blathnat socks start (and finish?) Cotty socks
4. start secret Valentine's Day socks

I would love to both start and finish my Cotty socks in the remaining 2 weeks of the month, but that might be delusional. We'll see, sock hope springs eternal!

Some Progress

Even though I've been working 14-hour days trying and failing to get my thesis data to model correctly, I have been making some progress on my four 'active' works-in-progress lately. Time for update pics!

Sock 1 of my South Fork Socks is complete, with the second one begun. This pattern is really enjoyable, I highly recommend it.

STR Mediumweight, colorway Puck's Mischief

This is sock 2 of my made-up-as-I-go ribby holiday socks.

STR Lightweight, colorway X-Mas Rock

 The first is done and since this one is so close,  I think I will bring it with me to my Fiasco's family's house today while we visit. That will give me a couple of hours of driving time to knit on them and since they are so simple, I might even be able to finish them today!

Here is the progress on my super-fussy-yet-wonderful Flint mittens:

The Sanguine Gryphon QED, colorways Radius and iSkein (blue)

The yarn is quite thick and the needles quite small, so the cabling gets tough to do at times, but I think they are going to be fantastic when they are finished... and practically bulletproof.

Finally, the metal needles I was waiting for came in and the mawata/silk hankie mittens were so much easier to work than when I was using bamboo.

Blue Moon Fiber Arts Mawata, colorway Aurora Borealis

It's not the neatest knitting I've ever done, the thickness of the silk fluff varied considerable in the first few layers that I prepared for knitting, but now I know what thickness I like so when I separate more layers I will know better how much to stretch them out before knitting with them. I love the way these feel, they are amazingly soft. I am using Kollage Square DPNs in size 5. Square DPNs are supposed to be easier on your hands and for some people they tighten up their gauge while they knit as well. I've noticed that mine tightens up a bit, which is good for things like socks on thin yarn where I would need to use needles smaller than 2.25mm to get a tight enough gauge, which I don't like doing. My only issue with the Kollage needles is that they are very blunt, so it is difficult for me to manipulate stitches like K2tog or SSK or cables. So I reserve my square DPNs for plain knitting, but I do like using them.

That's what I've got going on. What's your favorite WIP at the moment?

Silk Is Fluffy

Unspun silk is super fluffy! I was surprised. The other night I took my mawata / silk hankies and started playing around.

BMFA Mawata, colorway Aurora Borealis

I peeled off a layer, stretched it out until the center became so thin it turned into a big ring of fiber, then broke the ring and yanked on it until it evened out thickness-wise.

Ball-o'-fluff!

I then took my newly-formed cotton candy fluff and cast on for some mittens.

Needle-o'-fluff!

You can see that I haven't quite got the even thickness thing down yet. The stitches to the left are kind of sport-weight sized and the stitches in the middle are worsted/aran weight sized. No matter since I'm frogging this anyway. I suffered through several rows before I realized that the reason every stitch was being a pain in the butt to knit was probably because I was using bamboo needles to which the unspun silk clung too tightly. I'm waiting on some new metal needles to arrive before I continue with my fluffy mitten adventures. I'm excited, how about you?

Midnight Knitting

It's totally normal to stay up until 3am knitting because you didn't get home from work until midnight and you were just so excited about mittens you couldn't wait to cast on...right?

I swatched while reading (the Kindle is a bookish knitter's best friend, I swear):

On the Kindle: "Hit by a Farm" by Catherine Friend

I tried and failed (again) at the provisional cast on, so I said "screw you, provisional cast on, you're ugly and I don't like you!" and just went with my tried-and-true nice-and-stretchy Twisted German cast on. Instead of unzipping the waste yarn and placing live stitches on the needles, I just picked up the required amount from the cast on edge, easy peasy. I mean, it's for the inside of a mitten cuff, I don't care if it's invisible!

A many-needled knitted thing

I then played a fun game of knitted fabric origami to make that look like this:

DPNs within DPNs!

Finally got to knitting the hem together:

Yup, knitting stitches together across two different-sized needles while alternating two different colors... crazy.

And ended up with a beauty of a mitten cuff:

Love that braid!

This pattern (Flint by Jared Flood) is extraordinarily fussy but I love it already. We will ignore the fact that that little slip of knitting took me nearly 3 hours to produce. Whatever. All in the name of pretty mittens!

Mitten Madness

A while back, the Yarn Harlot made a blog post about her Mawata mittens that started something of a silk-hanky-buying craze at Blue Moon Fiber Arts. It was so neat to see her stack of whisper-thin layers of cocoon silk turn into rustic, colorful mittens. I instantly wanted to try it and just got some in the mail yesterday:

BMFA Mawata / Silk Hankies, colorway Aurora Borealis

These feel incredibly soft and light, I absolutely cannot wait to turn them into mittens. Silk is many times warmer than wool, so even though they are lightweight they should keep my hands nice and cozy, if winter ever arrives. (50 degrees F in January, really?) I actually had the chance to see how silk hankies are made at a knitting event at my local yarn shop. I got to pull the cocoon off the pupa and stretch it out and over the square frame to dry. It's a little bit squicky, especially if you don't like insects, but they're dead already anyway and it was too cool not to try. Each hanky is comprised of layer upon layer of these stretched out cocoons, it's really neat.

So many layers!

There's another pair of mittens I'm really excited about, as well. This obsession is particularly strange because I'm really not into knitting mittens, I've yet to complete a pair, I'm easily confused by cables and am usually not interested in 8 page patterns or fussy knitting, but I saw these mittens and just had to make them ASAP :

Copyright Brooklyn Tweed / Jared Flood

Those are the Flint pattern by Jared Flood. I love the cables, the texture, the colorwork braid. LOVE. As soon as my Mawata mittens are finished, I will be casting on those lovely, fussy little things, and it will be glorious!   :-D