after a flurried frenzy of Christmas knitting, i took a couple deep breaths... and started back in. although i made a variety of things for charity in honor of special friends, that didn't take care of my public service needs. so to start, i made a couple of preemie sets...
i made a couple burial buntings...
then i felt a lot better about drifting back to less altruistic projects.
Behold! my first pair of socks. i know what you are thinking. you are thinking, 'Why on earth would anyone make socks when you can buy them for two dollars?'
well, i was as sick as sick gets for a while there and reading The Yarn Harlot's books where she waxes poetically about socks. this reminded me of Mickey telling me she used to make all of Grandpa's socks - argyles no less. it just seemed a great way to connect to Mickey's past and i thought it might help me over the stumbling blocks i had trying to make Hailey's stocking last year. i think they turned out pretty cool.
the best way to really learn something is to do it twice but i wasn't quite ready to make TraV the matching socks he wanted. that is just an awful lot of one shade of blue (on US 1's - no less).
did you know they make a magical thing called self-patterning sock yarn? it is pretty slick but you do have to get the gauge right for the pattern to be 'just so'. sadly, that meant that these are being knit on US 0's.
a bit like magic. which is saying something since i still find knitting a magical wonder - you just wiggle your hands for a while and fabric appears. its slow magic, i'll grant you, but magic nonetheless. the other cool thing about yarn with stripes or a pattern is that it accentuates the structure of the sock.
well, a girl can only knit so much on US 0's before her fingers start rebelling. i was going to start work on a pair of slippers but didn't have the right needle size. how that is possible is a mystery for me. here i have been knitting twenty years and yet it seems every project requires a new needle. with one and 1/3 pairs of socks under my belt, i felt emboldened to return to the stocking i frogged last year and give it another whirl. to decrease frustration, i bought a second set of needles (US 6, thank heavens) so i didn't have to knit against tension and deployed a liberal amount of yarn bobbins.
it is coming along nicely i think. it won't exactly match the ones my Great-grandmother Margaret made for my brother and me, but it will be pretty close. of course, making one commits me to making three. Hailey cannot have one while Kylie and Cailee have none. happily i have about ten months and Cailee is young enough that hers can wait till the next year if necessary.
i also cast on the slippers last night but temporary stupidity led to a big enough error that i frogged it and will have to start again later. the bright shining ray of joy? US 15's baby! (and i really need a new pair of slippers.)
pretty weird for a girl that believes in serial projects, but one cannot live on US 0's alone and evade carpal tunnel forever.
Monday, January 29, 2007
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment