Well, we're back from a lovely visitation with family in sweltering southern Indiana. We decided that traveling with the intention to whirl around visiting family is not the same as a "vacation", and so from now on we're calling it visitation. I do not mean to imply that it wasn't relaxing or fun, or any of the other things that vacations (hopefully) are. I simply mean to differentiate the intention behind the adventure.
Our visitation was lovely, though the weather was hard to handle after three years as Seattlites. It was 100+ degrees every day, and I won't even guess what the heat index was when you factor in the Ohio River Valley humidity. We hid out in the air conditioning by day, and wandered out into the pastures at dusk.
To share the love, I've decided to partition out the blog entries by topic (in no particular order). Over the next few postings, you will learn about my sister's Lush party, my Mom & Dad's horse farm, our day at the races and, of course, the knitting.
Let's start with the knitting. As usual, I over-packed. Planning for the possibility of, shall we say, efficient knitting, I brought:
1) Rob's sweater for car knitting, chit chat knitting, movie knitting, etc.
2) Embossed Leaves sock
3) Reading-in-Bed Shrug
3) a ball of Luxury Cotton DK for 2 swatches
4) cotton socks (not yet on the needles, these were for emergency use only)
Between airplane knitting to and from Indiana, and various hours of happily sitting around chatting/knitting, my barely-started projects looked like this by week's end:
The "Reading-in-Bed Shrug"
pattern by Pam Allen, from the Knitting Daily website
Basically, you knit about 23" of traveling leaves in a lovely GGH Soft Kid, then sew an inch and a half or so of each short end together, creating "sleeves", and voila! you have a soft, cozy shrug. It is now finished, and I'll post the details and pix after the travel posts are done.
This funny looking blob represents one ball of yarn and two or three rip-backs for Rob's sweater. It is the culmination of numerous "Here, Honey, try this on real quick" moments, wherein I hope that I won't have to rippit (again). I made the ribbing for the back of the neck a bit longer than the front, per E.Z.'s recommendation. We are both pleased with the outcome. It created a little difficulty for me when I had to figure out where to put the raglan increases, as the neck adjustment was not part of the pattern upon which I'm basing the design. Still, I'm off to a good start and this was, indeed, VERY good riding in the car/chit chat/movie watching knitting.
This is the Embossed Leaves sock pattern from Favorite Socks by Interweave Press.
I had the ribbing and the first set of the lace pattern underway by the time we took off, so all of the rest of the sock was knitted during the visitation. It is now complete (I'll wait until I have a pair to post about it in more detail).
I used Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock yarn, which I like a lot. In fact, I love the colors, but I don't care for the pooling. I originally tried a Monkey Sock, but the colors pooled a lot. I
hoped that a different pattern would produce less pooling, but it didn't. I'm sure that a solid color would do the lacy pattern more justice, but I really don't want a sorta-stripey sock or a very pooly plain ol' stockinette stitch sock. Sooooooo......I'm sticking with this pattern.
While lovely and completely wearable, I have two small problems with the sock: (1) Now that it's done, I can see that I should have made the leg at least a pattern repeat shorter - the CO edge is too tight for the spot on my calf where it ends up. (2) I made the foot shorter than what the patterns calls for, but now that it has a toe, I think I should have made it even shorter. That way it would stretch out the lace a wee bit, showing off its details. I have not yet decided what to do about the twin - make it to match this one and plan on giving them away, or make one to fit me, compare the two, and then make a third (and possibly fourth) sock so that I have a pair (and perhaps someone else would too). Last but not least, I could rippit and start all over...after I test-knit a second sock per my calculated preferences, of course! No use having a lovely sock that I never wear because it's every so slightly too big (and, ironically, too small as well).
Sigh.
What would E.Z. do?
What would you do?
I hate to say it, but you'd probably be best ripping it out and starting again. You won't be happy otherwise, and finding someone to fit your knit is harder than making something to fit anyone!
Have you got your parcel? I'm itching to know whether it worked out ok :S
Posted by: sockymiaowmiaow | August 21, 2007 at 11:04 AM