Some of you know that I was trying to finish my pullover for Christmas Eve.  Well, that didn’t happen :) I finished the first sleeve and then tried the sweater on.  It was beyond horrendous.  The decreases occurred too seldom, the stockinette insisted on folding over the seed stitch panel and the cuff (which I also did in seed stitch) made it look as though my wrist had gained 10 pounds all by itself.  Uck....

I put it aside for a while, knowing I was going to have to rip it our but unwilling to admit it was all my own fault just yet - and for a little while, I did other things :)

I started these socks in October but only got the first one done.  It sat in my work basket for almost three months before I picked it up to look at the cables.  Myria, seeing this, observed, “That’s a nice sock”.  I pretty much agreed and thought how nice it would be to be able to wear them.  Of course you do usually need two socks for that to work… So I cast on the second sock and worked on it off and on for about a week until it was done :)





They are warm, comfortable and fit perfectly :) I had thought I would use the second sock to work out a little fine tuning but in the end, I just decided to go with what I already knew how to do.  The leg is a bit loose.  However, thanks to the cables having so much...body...the socks stay up just fine.  If I make this design again, I may try smaller needles or do something else to provide a slightly snugger fit.  On the other hand, the chances that I’ll make this exact same design again with the exact same cables in the exact same places is, well, pretty small :)

I also did these:

...in a super soft alpaca yarn using this pattern on US size 3 (3.25 mm) needles.  The Flair pen is there for scale.  This is a lovely little pattern and you can turn out a pair of these little beauties in an evening.  I’m told that socks are much more likely to stay on babies’ feet than booties so that’s what I went for.  I’m hoping to get several pairs of these into my Dulaan bag.  Let’s face it, I’d make them anyways just because they’re so darned cute!

About now, I finally faced the unlovely music about the sweater and frogged the sleeve.  I had just had to do something constructive before doing the destructive thing of taking the sleeve out.  When that was done, I wound up the frogged yarn and put the thing away.  I wasn’t quite raady to tackle the re-do just yet…

After I’d finished up the cable socks - and I admit I hurried through the second one because I had seen the Lacy Mock Cable Socks and was obsessed :) Among other things, I had gotten some beautiful sock yarn from a friend for Christmas and I couldn’t stop thinking about making those socks with that yarn.

So I finished the second cable sock, worked in the ends and immediately cast on with this gorgeous, washable merino.  This yarn makes me think of a bright garden with the sun pouring down on it.  I expect I will always think of these as the summer garden socks and while I usually wouldn’t recommend working a texture stitch in a variegated yarn, this seems to work just fine :) By the way, the pattern is very simple and has a great deal of stretch built into it because of the ribbing.  If that isn’t enough leeway, the pattern is worked over 4 stitches and 5 rows so it’s small enough to be quite flexible and adaptable.

And, speaking of gifts and pleasant surprises (we were!), this came in the mail this weekend:

This is a gift from the clever, color savvy, not only knitting but spinning and weaving craftsperson extraordinaire, Rob over at robknits.  Spunky Eclectic sport weight yarn in the Tahiti colorway - a rich, brilliant sunrise of a yarn :) This may indeed go for socks, but I’m going to take my time deciding and until I find something that makes me obsess - like the combination of the yarn and sock pattern above - I’ll wait.  I may hang it on the wall while I’m waiting though; it’s almost too gorgeous to hide away in a cabinet :)

Tonight, I sat myself down and worked out the necessary math to get the sleeve decreased properly and not wind up with a sleeve that stretched from hell to breafast.  Thanks to a mini-lesson offered by our own barb-in-east-texas, I believe I’m on my way.  I got going on it again a while ago and things seem to be going nicely.  I am going to finish this sweater!  I’ll keep you posted :)

Chatters is on for tomorrow night!  See you then :)

Okay, I did finally get the pictures uploaded :)

I have read about this on other blogs and web pages, but have never had the opportunity to try the process myself.  However, when I found a wool/angora/nylon sweater in good shape in the thrift shop last week I couldn’t resist giving it a try.

I was a woman on a mission - I was going to salvage the yarn :)

I’ve been keeping my eye open for suitable candidates for a while now - they are fewer and further between than you might imagine.  The garment should be in good shape - you want the yarn to be useable after all.  The material should be decent - for my purposes that meant wool or at least mostly wool.  Finally, it had to be a garment in which the pieces were knitted separately rather than cut out of a large piece of knitted fabric.  This isn’t too tough to determine as cut pieces will have overcast edges to keep them from unraveling.  Knitted pieces will have...well...knitted edges.

I noticed this hanging on the rack, my attention first drawn by the yarn itself.  It is, I think, the largest scale yarn I have ever seen or handled.  I later checked it out and it comes up at 7 wraps/inch - chunky yarn, I think.  The sweater was a little pilled - but that’s typical of angora and since there were no stains and the garment was in good shape otherwise, the pills weren’t significant.  I checked the seam line - and here, the chunkiness of then yarn was very helpful in seeing that the pieces were indeed knitted separately - the knits and purls were clearly visible along the edges.  The item was clean with no tears or stains and I could already see yarn ends where I could begin to frog the yarn.  Aside of the funky brand name, this seemed to be a perfect candidate - so I brought it home.

The seams were chain stitched and disassembling the pieces was fairly easy and quick.  It was a simple matter of finding the end of the chain, snipping the thread and just pulling it out.  To my surprise, the collar was made in two pieces, front and back, knitted up from the neckline of the sweater and seamed at the sides.  Taking the thing apart presented no real challenge except for the damned label which I swear was attached with rivets!  It took more work and time to get that thing off without damaging the yarn than any other part of the procedure.





Then came the actual frogging.  All in all it was maybe two hours work to take the sweater apart and frog the stitches.  I wound up with about a pound and a half of lovely feeling, somewhat dense yarn which I separated into four, roughly equal hanks.  I wasn’t knocked out by the color but it was pale enough so that over dyeing it wouldn’t be a problem - aha!  More fun :)





The next day I retrieved one of the hanks and prepared it for dyeing.  I went with mostly grape Kool-aid with a couple of other minor things thrown in to temper the aggressive purple :) Let me tell you, the aroma of fake grape combined with the vinegar in the crock pot was enough to clear sinuses for a 10 block radius!  Whew!  You can read about this process in A Bubble off Plum over at The Dye Pot (click on the post title or the blog name to go to each respectively).

Then I spent a few impatient days waiting for the stuff to dry (it seemed to take forever!) because I was dying to try knitting with it!  But finally it did dry and I wound it up and cast on :) Nothing fancy - just a standard adult watch cap.

The yarn was absolutely delightful to work with - soft and buttery in the fingers and the cap is very comfortable and warm.  Not only was this experiment a success, I have another 12 ozs of this delightful stuff to play with!  Whee!  What a fun thing to do to welcome in the new year :)

Aside of the yarn, a few other things were accomplished which I will go into on Wednesday.  A lot of it has to do with socks :) See you then!

I got an odd message this morning when I tried to upload my pictures - StartLogic seems to be under the impression that its disk is full and is advising me to try again later.  Since this is a holiday, I’m thinking that later actually means more like tomorrow :)

Oh well…

I have a lot to tell you about - last week was both productive and fun - but I’ll wait until I have the photographic back-up.

In the meantime, I wish you all a Happy New Year and beg the Universe to shower our little world with tolerance, compassion, understanding and humor!