Of Socks and Books

Before I get into the meat of my blog I wanted to show you a package I received in the mail last week. Inside was a pattern for a baby blanket.
If this is how my mail looks before the government starts going through it I hate to see what it will be like when they do. Hopefully yarn and patterns will not be considered terrorist level threats.

I have started the test knitting socks for Warm Woolies. This is how far you can get in one day.
Toe through the afterthought heel and onto the leg.

And the next day you just might have this:
I like this sock. 1. It's toe up. I love toe up. 2. It had an afterthought heel which I had never done before but fully enjoyed learning how to do (P.S. I think if you actually follow directions you will a) not run out of yarn on the heel and b) not have a super pointy heel like I did, though I'm holding out hope that it will block out a little.) 3. The heel and toe are knit on smaller needles making them sturdier. Simple. Genius.

These are actually a really nice fit for me in all except the toe where it's an inch too long. Which is good because my feet are exactly 9 inches long and these needed to be 10. Perfection. Except that pointy heel....blocking, my hope lies in thee.

On Sunday I went to Woodstock to hear a book reading by the Yarn Harlot, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee.
Standing around pre-talk with all her books. Crazy to think they are all humor books on knitting. What a niche!
During her talk/reading.
Post talk getting goodies.

I would have liked to have gotten a chance to go by The Whole Nine Yarns (the LYS who was hosting the event) but I waited until the end of the line to go through and get my book signed and get a picture of this:
Stephanie with my current socks in progress, the Warm Woolies test socks (and proof that the second sock has indeed been started).

The Yarn Harlot is always great fun to have a visit from and she did a nice little talk and book reading. I'll hopefully get the chance to go out to The Whole Nine Yarns because it seemed lovely in the 10 minutes I was in there picking up my ticket and a bottled water. For now I'll be knitting on the socks, finishing a sweater, and starting a baby blanket. The light at the end of the tunnel is that tomorrow is my last day of teaching with students for this school year. My summer break will almost be here!

Star Struck

This spring break is starting off great. Today was the Yarn Harlot's visit to Atlanta. I was able to get a seat about 5 rows from the front.
Here's the YH talking a picture of her sock and the crowd.

And starting her speech.
It was hilarious. And, I know, this sounds weird, but I was really interested in hearing her voice. I always imagined it as a "normal" woman's voice. Kind of high and well, typical. I was so glad to hear her voice and realize it's not girlie but a little on the deeper side. This is not a slam in any way. See, my voice is on the lower side too. It's not very girlie in my opinion. My thought was, if Stephanie Pearl-McPhee can have a voice like that and get on stage and tell a combination of stand up comedy and life advice and write books on knitting, then maybe I won't turn out so bad.

And then the best thing happened. I stood in line to have the YH sign her new book for me (P.S. I only bought the book while I was in Knitch. I didn't even touch any yarn. Otherwise I would have bought a hundred skeins.) And when I got to meet her I asked her to take a picture with my knee high sock. And boy was it a picture!

She told me this was a "serious sock," "more like a foot oven." And then she took my picture. I don't know if it will end up on her blog. But I really hope so. And she also signed my book for me (of course).Sorry it's sideways. I forgot to flip it on its side before I uploaded it.

When I got home I sewed in all the loose ends and voila! A knee high, stripped sock.

This is the first time that I got the toe as square as I wanted it (why do my first few Kitchener stitches look all wonky like that every time?).
See how the increases and decreases look so lovely? And how the cat tries to act interested? And how bendy my leg is?
Look at my partridge heel. So sturdy and effective.
I would have liked my ribbing to be a little tighther but I like this sock. Don't you?
I've cast on for the second one but seeing as how I knit at the Knit-In and during the YH's talk today (about 3 hours total) I think I'm going to read through my new book and admire my sock.

Catching Up

I uploaded my picture software to my work computer so I can finally put up some pics. I finished the back of the pink sweater. I tried to hold it up and model the size. I'm not really sure it's a very good picture but you get the idea. If you look very closely you can see where the bottom half has a weird texture to it from being ripped out and re-knit. Hopefully after I finish and block it it won't look wonky. I also realized that I had knit the 1x1 ribbing using US size 9 needles when I was supposed to use a US size 7. But by that point I had already cast on for the front of the sweater so I didn't sweat it too much.
This is the amount of yarn left over when I finished the back. One whole skein gone. It was pretty awesome to see such little waste.
Right now my personal knitting is going slowly. I started my morning knitting class at school again with a whole new group of kids. Most of them are fairly quick to pick up the technique and there are some kids who are zipping along. I've been spending every free minute studying for the GACE test I have to take next weekend to get certified to teach elementary school. Therefore, I will apologize for the spaciness and infrequency of some of the upcoming posts. Once I get past this test then it will be (almost) Spring Break and a visit to see the Yarn Harlot!

FO's Abound!

I finished up on a lot of stuff between last night and tonight. First off, the 4th baby hat. I tried to get Penelope to model the hat...
But she didn't want to wear it on her head. How about here?
And....ta da! Yellow socks!

So cool...oh wait...what's that?
Oops, different decreases on both socks. On the left sock I did the gusset decreases on ever row and on the right I did them every other row (as suggested in the Yarn Harlot's recipe). I like the decreases on the left sock and in the future if/when I make these socks again I would probably do the decreases that way.
I still love these socks. I kept them on until my feet started to sweat because it was 80 degrees in my apartment.
So, there was celebrating...
Once I finished those I immediately cast on for an ear flap hat from the book Knitting in No Time. I finished it tonight.

Side view:
Side view 2:
Whee!
I like this hat very much. I was afraid that I would run out of yarn so I did a crochet bind off (a la the Yarn Harlot) instead of a regular bind off. In the future I would do a regular knit bind off. There was plenty of yarn left over. Also, the ear flaps come down past my ears. But it looks pretty cool none the less. I really like the colors and the hat is really warm. Penelope came to check out the action. However, she didn't really seem to care too much. Maybe I should have let her try and wear it...

One Down

One yellow sock finished. One more to go. I think I did pretty good for my first (correctly gauged) hand made sock
My Kitchener stitch on the toe needs a little work. Right now the corners are a bit pointy.
Still, so awesome.
And look at the heel! The gussets, the short rows, the heel flap! And no hives on my part. Just, beauty. I owe this all to the Yarn Harlot and her simple socks recipe from Knitting Rules! Every instruction she gives is spot on. One thing I'm totally blown away about is how big homemade socks are. But so much nicer and warmer than normal store bought. Just hope I don't get second sock syndrome so I can have a cute pair.

A Realization, A Dictionary, and An Explanation

Dear Friends,

I am willing to admit that I am shamefully out of the loop on a lot of things. I don't watch the news and I hardly ever listen to the radio. When it comes to the world of knitting I feel as if I am even further behind. I only got serious about this hobby about 6 months ago and since then I've been trying to play catch up on a lot of things that people have known about for years. This morning before school I was reading some Yarn Harlot (I call this research. I do teach a knitting class...) and I noticed that she mentions WEBS. I am woefully ignorant of WEBS so I clicked on the link. What happened next was mind blowing... It was like walking into a yarn mall so chock full of good things it was breathtaking... and then I saw the "sale" sign.

My pastor once spoke of people who only buy things because they are on sale. I am one of these people. I cannot resist a red (or blue, or yellow, or any color for that matter) tag proclaiming "I was once more expensive than this." The last time I paid full price for pants was when I was in college. But, dear friends, this was more than a sale. This was a good sale. Good yarns on sale for reasonable prices. Do not click on the WEBS link and buy things that are on sale unless you are buying them for me. Otherwise we could have a problem. My credit card would already be out if not for the fact that I have to browse all the yarns and pick out ones that look soft and have cool names before I will buy them (another caveat of mine).

Ok, :::breathe:::, moving on....This morning I had to leave my office for a bit and walk around to keep from feeling light headed at such a monumental occurrence.

The real reason I am writing this blog is because I have been told that some of my knitting terms need explanation for the non-knitters (aka muggles) out there reading this. Thus I give you...

Melissa's Dictionary of Knitting Terms
Knit: to make things out of magical sticks much like Harry Potter (except without as many near death experiences...I hope), also a type of stitch which is basically loops that go through each other
Purl: a reverse knit stitch, instead of loops going through the bottom they go through the top, just think of it as another loop
Stockinette stitch: looks like this (little v shapes)
Garter stitch: looks like this (little sideways c shapes)
Anything other than Stockinette or garter stitch: very complicated loopy patterns
Needles: the magic sticks used to turn this into this
DPNs: double pointed needles, two sharp pointed ends for maximum pokeage, a miniature double edged sword if you will
Casting on: putting yarn onto the magic needles
Binding off: taking yarn off the magic needles
Ripping back: removing the magic needles and pulling the yarn out of what you just knit so that it unravels some (or almost all) of the way. This is so you can try and put the yarn back on the needle and fix a stupid mistake you made like knitting when you should have purled (Why should it matter really? It's all just loops!)
Frogging: Remember the Weezer song that had the line "If you want to destroy my sweater/just pull the string as I walk away"? That's what you do to your project. On purpose. Because you are an idiot and did everything so wrong it will never be fixed unless you just start over. But you still want the yarn.

J.M. that was for you. Hope that helps. If you need any other definitions you can just ask.

And, as an explanation as to why sometimes things seem to happen slowly around here, I give you this picture:
This is how my cat sits on me. Notice she props herself on my arm. What you can't see is that she actually shifts all her weight so it is on that arm and I can barely move it. Sometimes my hand falls asleep. She is so co-dependent.

It's Beginning to Feel a Lot Like...Christmas?

I'm having mixed feelings about the weather here in the South lately. On the one hand I'm very excited that it's so mild and feels like spring is around the corner (I hate cold weather). On the the other hand there are 12 days until Christmas and it is 80 degrees outside...how am I supposed to get in the holiday spirit when it feels like I should be at the lake?!?!

In the knitting world I have been working on the final front panel for the preemie sweater. The only difference between this panel and the other one is that the cables go in the opposite direction. I don't have pictures but you can imagine what that looks like. I'm hoping to finish the preemie sweater (well, all the parts at least) today.

I teach a knitting class at the very beginning of the day at the school where I work. Today the little darlings were learning how to bind off so they could take their "finished" projects home over the Christmas break. They were supposed to be using a garter stitch and making a scarf. However, I had several variations on a scarf that look like amorphous blobs, some that looked like Swiss cheese, and one who gave up completely and decided knitting wasn't for him. All in all, out of the 10 kids in the class I would say we got five good scarves. But at least they learned how to knit and I'll be sending them home with instructions for making other things if they like.

My list of knitting projects is growing. And on top of that I have one cross stitch WIP that really needs to be finished just so I can say it's done. Smart one here picked up 3 more very involved cross stitch patterns from a fellow teacher the other day though I have no idea when I will start and/or hope to finish these things. My knitting "To Do" is as follows:

1. Finish preemie sweater, block, and sew.
2. Block multi-colored baby blanket (pictures to follow).
3. Finish faggot stitch scarf.
4. Make a present for The Boyfriend (I know exactly what it's going to be but I want it to be a surprise for him).

Speaking of The Boyfriend... he gets major props from me. He came over to my apartment after our Bible study last night and helped me make muffins. Then he actually acted somewhat interested in my knitting projects. The thing that wins the major points though is that he helped me clean my living room. I despise cleaning in any and all forms and have seriously considered hiring a maid to clean my apartment. He's a sweetheart and I'm not letting him go. Sorry girls.

P.S. I have just discovered an awesome blog written by the Yarn Harlot. I know that some (if not most of you) have already heard of her but I love her blog. And the fact that she has a fluffy cat and, from what she writes, a fairly "lived in" house just like me.