Love Hurts

Oh, how I love this hat, but it is treating me badly. The WBBF asked for a hat for Christmas. He picked out the yarn on our trip to Ashland, saw a hat he liked at the outdoor theater, then picked the stitch pattern from my Vogue Stitchionary (I am one lucky girl, I tell you). The half of the hat you see below is great. Love it. Was such fun to make, enjoyed every stinking minute and was almost sad when it was over.

Dale of Norway Falk, Vogue Stitchionary "Butterfly Effect"

It is lined to make it nice and cozy and compensate for that whole less-elastic side effect of stranded color-work. It fits. No, it doesn’t just fit, it fits perfectly. And he professes to love it.

The crown? Oh yeah, the part that isn’t there anymore? Did I forget to mention that in my hat love-fest?

Ripped out.

I think I hear the ode to my socks playing in the back of my head…. It was too small (short, actually, left his poor little ears exposed in a very unfriendly fashion). Happily, the fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants pattern came together well, and I was not all that satisfied with my work on the crown anyway, but still, the holidays are no time to be spending time ripping back and starting over. There are deadlines, people, deadlines! And I was almost thinking I was ahead of schedule (pride goeth before the fall), ah well….

Composing a little song to my socks

It goes:

Tink, Tink, Tink, Frog,

Tink, Frog,

Tink, Frog,

Tink, Tink... Tink, Frog....

I bet you get the picture.

But, like someone with a sensitive stomach that still eats spicy food, I keep coming back for more. I love these socks.

I have ripped the toe out (because I wasn't paying attention and shot way past the cable twist), the entire foot (because I was impatient and didn't check my gauge), the heel flap (because I didn't like the way I was twisting the stitches), and most recently, about half the leg (because I (once again) wasn't paying attention and went way off the pattern, apparently intending to make a sock for a much taller person). I have tinked back more than I would be inclined to admit, if I could even recall. Almost always for really dumb things, too.

Through it all the yarn has remained resilient, springy, not fuzzed up one little bit and is still treating me like a queen. After all I have done to it. I can not say enough about how wonderful the yarn is, oh, and the color, soooo beautiful!

This pattern is quite well written, and very engaging. I wish I were a little more disciplined, then I might, oh, read it? Yes, I think that would help immensely.

Thank goodness I am thoroughly enchanted with the yarn and pattern, I am sure I would have given up otherwise. I am a very slow learner, apparently.

But I am so completely happy with my single, finished sock that i could not care less about these little disputes the sock and I may have had in the past. That is all behind us. The sock fit is amazing, the yarn is not only beautiful to look at, it is a soft treat for my feet.

I fear I may need to wait to knit the second sock until after my holiday knitting is done, and that makes me very sad indeed.

For now, I am just wondering if this is too odd a look to finish out my workday with. Probably.

Sottopassagio, knit in Black Sheep Dyeworks Fig Multi

Coming soon to needles near you!

If, you know, you wanted to knit this, anyway....

Pictures taken at the Botanical Gardens in Tilden Park

I am not a big tooter of my own horn, but last year I knit this hat for myself, and I loved it. While I love to knit, love to knit hats (or just about anything) and think that, empirically, hats are a really good idea, I also think I look pretty stupid in them. But I love this hat. I even think it looks cute on me. My knitting pal Jenny who claims to not like to wear hats because she says she looks silly (she is way too pretty for that, you can see for yourself below) "appropriated" the sample I knit for the shop and wore it every day. In the summer. In Southern California.

Pictures of Jenny taken at Balboa Park by the amazingly talented Trevor Cornell

And it was fun to knit, kept me interested but was not so challenging as to make me curse at myself and let me play with some new (to me) ideas.

When I was home in December my sister and the WBBF encouraged (or badgered, depending on your point of view) me to write it up.

That is harder than I thought, so just about in time for the fall weather this year, I think I have it all done. Final formatting and proofreading approval pending, there will be a hat pattern coming soon!

Lara, How Exactly Did My Car Get Covered in Buckwheat?

A very good question! See, it was like this....

There was a deadline. No, not a work deadline or a tax deadline or an organ transplant deadline, this was important, people! I was not finished with my monkey. With mere hours to go until the baby shower, I had no ears, a disconnected tail and about half a head finished. I also had no idea how I was going to get the buckwheat hulls into the head and make them stay, as they are not as obedient as polyfill. They are also lightweight and like to jump around, as I discovered....

But the World's Best Boyfriend (wbbf) produced a funnel and had the brilliant idea that I stuff Mr. Foster over a tupperware container (I would highly recommend this, it makes clean up much easier). With a really big knitting needle to guide the hulls through the funnel and gently beat the hulls into submission once into the wee little legs, we were on our way. He drove and I knit. And I stuffed. And I knit. Then we stopped in Pasadena and he stuffed and I knit. More driving and I sewed on ears. And I knit. And I stuffed. And I knit. I sewed on the tail outside of the showerand we were only about 15 minutes late, which for this crowd is almost like being early. I had to change my shirt in the car, but these are small sacrifices to make for one's art.

And that is one cute monkey.

Oh yeah, the stuffed one, too.

Monkey Business

Started working on Mr. Foster from Knit Picks for a dear friend who is expecting after a color selection disaster for the intended baby blanket/sweater/hat set she was supposed to be receiving. Why I thought it was a good idea to make a blanket that looks like it belongs in someone's basement with the shag carpet and other really ugly things left over from 1974, I may never know, but it did seem like a really great idea at the time....

Mr. Foster is pretty cute, though, and I hope will make a nice substitution. If I can just get him done by tomorrow morning.... Thankfully, the amazing boyfriend has offered to help me stuff him once I get done knitting. I am not sure there is going to be room for two people to work on this little guy, but it was awfully nice of him to offer.

Stuffing the monkey with buckwheat hulls from this place, they make a very nice natural alternative to polyfill and the folks who sell them are really helpful.

Pictures to follow.

Oh, the difference a single stitch makes!

So, I am making these socks for my boyfriend (he is amazing and I suspect it would disgust most anyone reading this if I were to wax poetic about how great I think he is, so I won't) from yarn he picked out. I would not have picked this stuff for him, but he likes more color than I realized. And it is very pretty and nice to work with (see? I am starting on how great he is again).

Anyway, I have these two matching skeins that are dyed by a computer, started them together, exactly the same....

And yet, my socks do not match....

I can't tell you how many times I thought I counted the stitches on each sock to make sure I had the same number. Turns out, if you keep counting the same sock over and over, that does not, in fact, help you figure out that you have different numbers of stitches on the back of your two socks. Who knew?

Ah, hubris, my old friend....

Lucky for me, he says he likes them this way. We'll see what happens now that I have added a stitch to the back side of the short sock and will correct the stitch count when I am finished with the heels.