Too Much Yarn

Sock Knitting Mojo - where are you?

I have myself to blame. I chased my mojo away by starting too many shawls - Yes, I started another one this week. It is one of the three Punctuation patterns by Romi.  Now, I have all 3 started.  They are all very easy - I don't need to look at the pattern, but when you're working on 3 shawls at the same time, you've just lost interest in knitting anything else.  Let me show you my shawls... Here is a group shot of the 3 Punctuation shawls - the first one I started was the circlely ones - that's Apostrophe.  The one with waves is Caret, and finally, I cast on this week, Ellipses.

and yes, as you know, I love blue!

Now, Caret is the one getting all the attention - I'd probably finish this one first.  Instead of using Fingering weight yarn, I'm using Madelinetosh DK and size 8 needles.  I have 2 skeins of the yarn in Spectrum so I'll just keep knitting until I like the size. It's very cushy, so I'm not sure if I'll block it.  This is where I'm at:

And of course, I thought I was all caught up with the Romi Mystery Shawl... turns out, she left a section out and Clue 1 was released on Friday.  I had Clue 1 from Stitches West, but like I said, there was one section missing so I finished the missing section, which had NUPPS.. ARGH!  But, I will play along.  My Nupps are inconsistent!  Some are fat and some are flat!

I'm not happy with the socks I have on the needles... I think I'm going to frog all of them...  The orange one is the Ernie socks from the Cookie A club.  I'm knitting size small, which has 58 stitches and it increases to 70 stitches, so it's quite stretchy and big for now.. Perhaps I need to keep knitting to see if I'll like it...

The Green one is the Doug Fir socks from the Twisted January club.  It's too big for me and I'm no longer interested.

Sorry... the post up to here was written on Sunday night.  Now, it's Tuesday afternoon...  Since then, I frogged Chart E of the Mystery Shawl and knit it back last night.  I like it a lot more now that my nupps are nice.  I'm in a JAVA Hands-on class this week - no, we're not grinding coffee beans... we are writing JAVA beans.  So I'm knitting while the instructor is lecturing.  There will be plenty hands-on exercises so I will need to put the needles down!

Anyway, I'm not even interested in my Hexagon blanket - I haven't touched it for almost 2 weeks.  I tried to perk up my interest by picking up my mitered squares blanket as I haven't touched it since December... Well, since Sunday, I've knitted about 4 squares so maybe it will keep me interested.  I did, however, wove in ALL the ends!

Trust me!  That's a lot of ends I wove in!  That's how uninterested I was in knitting.

Then, I cleaned my bathroom instead of knitting.

Then, I tried to wind up some colorful yarn and I haven't knitted Socks That Rock for a while - hoping that I'll cast on right away on a pair of socks.  This Hot Sox look so cool in the skein:

did not look as attractive wound up!

How about this one?  Maybe I would use this instead:

That Socks That Rock in Freudian Slip. 

Maybe I'll design a pair of socks instead.

I'm still knitting ... that's good... just not socks.  I leave you with a closeup shot of my Ellipses Shawl, which I hope to finish this week.

 

Stitches West Classes

Forgive me if I'm typing with very poor grammar or if my sentences are incohesive.. I just ran all the way downstairs to yell at my husband, "You closed my window with my blog post not published?  I let you use the computer because you want to play games! You always close everything!!"  "Because it says it's using high CPU Usage!"  Moron!  The game is using high CPU Usage!  Quit messing with my computer!  (I'm sure we'll make up.  I've already hinted about going to the Auto show tomorrow at the Convention Center for a date!  What was I thinking??)

OK... so when I was at Stitches, and I took two classes.  The first one is taught by Candace Eisner Strick.  Apparently, Strick is German for Knit.  So if you want that last name, she has one more son she's trying to pawn off - one who is available for marriage - even if it's for the name, only.  She's a very funny lady, very entertaining, and a good teacher.  The class I took was called "The Art of Knitting Backwards".  Knitting backwards is most thought of being useful for entrelac knitting.  It is also good for making borders.  I did my homework (the green swatch). 

and here, I've knitted backwards on the blue swatch!  Later on, we also learned to purl backwards.  Then, we learned to do borders and mitered corners.  Unfortunately, I did not bring the green yarn, so the joints are not as impressive...  all this knitting without turning the work!

And of course, I have to prove that I've met Candace!

The next class is on Designing Socks by JC Briar.  JC has alwo written some books.  Her most famous one was on reading charts (Charts Made Simple).  The lady next to me has never read charts.  Obviously, she did not read the prerequisites properly.  Besides, if she designed any socks and has no charts, I won't be knitting her socks - unless it's just a 4 stitch-pattern.  Once JC finished her lecture, we were to go over the handouts and pick a few stitch patterns and combined them for our swatch/pattern for our sock.  This was what I came up with.  Not sure if I'll continue with it...

I was actually quite mad at myself in class.  I packed my bag the night before.  Then, at the last minute, I changed bag and left my sock needles in the bag left behind.  All I had was yarn and I could run into Marketplace to buy a set of needles, but NO! I have enough needles.  So what did I do? I had a spare set of size 5 needles (black cable) which I swapped with the needle that was on my Drift socks (heel flap, where the stitches were looser).  But I didn't have anything else for the other needle.  So, I used the string for my badge:

Pretty creative, huh?  Well, turns out, I didn't need a second needle.. We were just knitting flat!  AFTER ALL THAT WORK!!  I also did meet JC - in case you didn't believe me that I took a class from her..  (see the evidence of the swatch I knitted in class?)

I enjoyed the class and learned something.  Now, I just have to design some socks. The wheels are turning in my head. I'm just not writing them down!

This week, there has been a lot of shawl knitting - especiallyl Romi's shawls.  In my last post, I showed you the mystery shawl, for which I've finished Clue 1.  Then, I knitted to the 7th row of the Apostrophe shawl (the one with holes).  And I'm also working on Caret - another of the Punctuation shawls.    I've knitted another repeat now:

and I'm really enjoying knitting this. 

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend.. Don't forget to spring forward your clock tomorrow night and it will still be sunny at 6:30 p.m on Sunday!!  (Grrr.. have to lose an hour of sleep for the sunlight!)

Oh, before I forget... it's been 13 days since I last bought yarn.  I may break this run tomorrow when I go and redeem my Groupon at my loyal yarn shop... but then, if I go to the Auto Show, I can add another couple of days to the stretch... Sunday, I have to go to a friend's memorial gathering for her Mom who passed away earlier this week.

 

Drift Socks

Finally finished my second pair of socks this year, but am falling way behind with my sock completion for the 26 pair plunge.

This was knitted with Bugga in Cotton Stainer.  This is the 11th pair of the 26 pair plunge, that ends on June 30.  Yeah.. not going to happen for me to finish another 15 pairs in the next 4 months - unless I just knit the mates of all my socks in progress.

2013 was supposed to be my year of socks.  It has turned into a year of shawls. In the last 10 days, I've cast on 3 shawls - all designed by Romi.  This is Apostrophe:

The finished shawl should look something like this:

I also cast on Caret today, but my photo is on my ipad and it's not letting me copy it.  Finished shawl should look like this: (my colors are totally different, of course!) - the one in the middle - blue and white.

This is the Mystery Shawl that starts on March 15.  But because I bought the kit from Stitches, Clue 1 was included.  I'm using a yarn I've not knitted before:  A Verb for Keeping Warm in Annapurna in the the Double Delight colorway.

I really should go organize the yarn room.  My son is coming home this weekend for Spring Break.