More Socky Goodness

You may be fed up with hearing about the sock, but I’m absolutely in love. This is my first sock pattern that I’ve put a lot of thought into and plan on making a pattern of it. (pssst test knitters don’t do chart three and four cause I’m going to change those) Keeping track of what I’m doing has been a bit of a challenge for good ole me who just kinda wings it a goes with the flow, but that’s what I’m doing. Once it’s all completed and such and I have it completely test knit then you can buy it! I hope. I haven’t actually worked out my webstore’s kinks and such, but hopefully you will be able to buy it! Okay I can hear you all enough of the chatter bring on the pictures. So I’m halfway through chart 2(not that, that information helps you much now does it) which is the point in which the cable starts it’s journey inward.

Work, turn to the left
Work, now turn to the right
Work, sashay shante

I can hear you all go ooooh look at that texture. This shot is just for you.

It don’t matter what you wear
They’re checkin’ out your savior faire
And it don’t matter what you do
Cause everything looks good on you …supermodel

Look at thos bump and ridges. Little morsels of colour popping out at you. BAM! BAM! BAM! The more I knit the more I fall in love with this yarn especially the colours they are just YUM! If your just tuning in the yarn is Vintage Purls Sock in Gondwana. You can buy some by clicking on the link over there ———————->>

Finally after all of that tough modeling work the sock was sweaty and dirty, and my bunny decided that it deffinitle needed a bath. she thumped and thumped when I put the sock away. Maybe I’m not the only one in love.

In a car going far

Well I’m on my way to a conference in a car. It’s been a long time since I was on a car trip. I’m on my way up to Wanganui to speak at said conference , the conference is about diversity which seems to mean a whole lotta queers. My workshop is on transgender rights and such. can I just say that I am on a laptop in a car on the internet how cool is that! I love the vodafone vodems.

But really I’m not here to yack on about conferences and vodems. I’m here to talk about knitting. So I have been just knitting away on my Around the World socks I’m still not at the really interesting bit yet, just still two cables running down the sides of the sock, but I am so close to the part where the cables start traveling I can taste it in the air.

The Vintage Purls yarn still keeps me fascinated on what is going to happen next. I keep going oooh look at that colour, wow isn’t that pretty. I just can’t get over the look of it. Doesn’t it just make you want to sing “What a Wonderful World”?

So Monday I went into my sewing studio with the intentions to make myself a new skirt, only to find out I had a lot less fabric then I originally thought. So no skirt, but I did make this.

It’s a small project bag made out of some vintage fabrics. I really like it, which is odd because it’s not usually my colors or type of fabric.  It was easy to make it could be better done but I was getting lazy and wanted to get back to knitting, naturally.

Well we have arrived so I am going to leave you with this final shot of my favorite rabbit with a sock on her head…

Starting with Lust!

So the Twist Collective’s Winter Issue is up. Do I want to knit any of the patterns oh yes, yes, yes, yesss I do! Actually there isn’t much in it that I don’t want to knit, which is odd because I have never seen a magazine online or dead tree format that I could say that about. My ravelry queue has just gotten much longer. Anne has done it yet again, her farose shawl in this issue is OMGWTFBBQ beautiful! Seriously That issue is so full of beautiful that it may hurt your eyes so be careful.

It was one object in specific though that was in the nifty notions section(that may not be the actual name of the section so please don’t sue me. I’m much too lazy to go back and find the real section name.) that had me absolutely agog that I had to go to the website. It was while there that I laid my eyes upon beauty beyond all other known beauty and I fell in love/lust with this.

Is that not just the very meaning of beauty? It’s a stitch holder that you can slip a sock in progress into then screw the cap on protecting your stitches and needles. I want it very badly but considering I can’t work right now due to Immigration issues the $89.99 USD is a little above my current price range. Since all money right now has to go through Ryan I also can’t buy it on the sly. So I’m trying to convince him that it would be the most wonderful holiday gift ever! In my efforts to do just that I have cast on another pair of socks for him, using a pattern that I have been kicking around in my head for a bit. here they are, they will get more interesting a bit this is the Gondwana colourway by Vintage Purls, a local New Zealand indie dyer. Her yarns are utterly delicious and you should go buy some right now!(Especially if your name is Ryan and you live with me! I love Into the Blue, Maya, Brunswick, and Boysenberry Jive) Her colorway are all rainbow dyed so there are no colour repeat instead just surprising colour magic before you constantly!

I know what you want, you want that very sexy close up, well here it is.

That is the side view the other side is a mirror image of this one. I know it is rather boring right now but in fact it will get rather interesting soon enough I will have to keep you updated on that matter.

In other news some of you(not many tho) have donated to Ryan’s Mo for Movemeber so you get an updated photo of him with his mo halfway through the month. if you haven’t donated you can do so here.

procasti….oh i’ll do that later

What did I do yesterday?

- I organized my desk.

- I made a pot of tea.

- I watched the second series of The Catherine Tate Show.

- I decorated my desk with blue tinsel.

- I asked Ryan what he was doing 327 times.

- I posted 42 posts on ravelry.

- I clicked refresh on ravelry 2,891 times.

- I knit one row on the back of my asymmetrical jacket.

- Read some of “No Plot? No Problem?”

- I fondled some yarn in my stash and planned another cardigan.

- Organized my desk again.

- Researched the nutritional fact of Orange Juice.

- Took blue tinsel down deciding that it looks naff.

- Pondered the oddity of the word “juice”

- Watched more Catherine Tate.

- Put blue tinsel back up after realizing I *AM* naff so thus the tinsel fits in!

- I finally sat down and tried to write for NaNoWriMo.

What didn’t I do?

- Finalise my plot details or character details yet for NaNoWriMo

- Clean of the bench from the part on Friday night!

I should get up and clean the bench then finalise my plot and character details…

Bah I will do that later!

SO what HAVE I been doing.

I suppose there are many of you(who come for the knitting content) that are curious on what exactly I have been doing knit and maybe even craftwise!

I have been knitting! I have been working on a Katia pattern, the asymetrical scotch tweed jacket, in a lovely shade of Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran Tweed. and it totally my usual fashion I have completely rewritten the pattern! the mathe has gotten a little sticky so I’m stuck at the arm holes trying to figure out how often and how much to decrease here.

Other that really the only other knitting project I’ve been working on is the recycled shawl(yes I’m still working on that) I get maybe one or two rows done on it at a time because there are so many stitches per row easily 600+ and increasing 1 stitch each row! It may not look much bigger in the picture then the last time but really it is.

I ripped out alot of things which is how alot of my knitting is ending up lately because I just seem dissatified lately with alot of what I knit. I have tho been doing some embroidery. Infact one of those pieces is taking up all my spare time which isn’t a lot lately. It’s this really wonderful and quirky canvas work pincushion.

(note: the bunny decided she needed to be seen at this moment and in a way that you all couldn’t avoid looking at)

I have also been working on a cross stitch sampler, based of a pttern orginally printed in a 1930 burda magazine. The pattern is a tunisian tree of life pattern. This is going to be my own wedding sampler which I have always wanted to do and Ryan is okay with me starting so that seems good!

So that is really all I’m working on right now(yes I know there are some things some of you all know about that aren’t listed but i’m not actively working on those so thus they do not make it to the blog) and with that I leave you a picture of the cake I made for the cafe I work for.

Organizing!

One of the first things I noticed when we moved into our current flat is that I was going to needa good solid way of storing my stash. Originally we had found this really cool pvc pipe and nylon hanging basket storage thingy that used to be Ryan’s. I thought yes that’s perfect absolutely perfect! At first it was, then I bought more yarn, and more yarn and mooore yarn! The weight of all that yarn slowly caused the frame to torque and twist, while the bags started to rip I started to have to put less and less stuff in the baskets and instead on the floors next to it!

This is what it looked like!

I knew it was time for a new system but what? I started to have a look around and besides your generic large tupperware boxes with lids I wasn’t finding anything I thought would work well. Then I was browsing one of my favorite stores, Plastic Box, which is a lot like the container store in San Francisco, when i found something that would work! There were these stackable baskets that were partially open on one side and seemed really sturdy. The best part was they were affordable! So I started out getting four of them and was able to turn that previous picture into this!

I would still like to get two more of them so that I can put all my UFO/WIP’s in one instead of staking them on top of the whole thing and also so I have one to put needles, gauge rulers, and other assesories into instead of having to put them in random places with the yarn. they also have stable ways to conntct them next to each other! While I was in an organizational mood I made my embroidery threads go from this.

to this.

I love being organized it helps the creativity flow so much easier. When you want to do something with something everything is all right where it should be!

Holy vampires batman!

I don’t know what’s going on but today I was checking the stats of my blog seeing who comes her and how they get here, and the number one search term that people use in finding my blog has nothing to actually do with knitting or such(which i would think would be the case) no the number one keyword is vampires 427 people since April(when i upgraded and thus got stats) have come to my blog(or more specifically one post in my blog) due to vampires! I have never written about vampires in fact the one mention of vampires in this blog was when I was talking about the vampire tours of San Francisco. Oh well!

In other news I have acquired some cracksilk kidsilk night in two beautiful colors starry night, and thunder, and are just beautiful!

I really can’t believe the beauty! I got this at the wonderful Knit World Studio out in the Lower Hutt. I have been meaning to make it there for awhile  but with work and it being so far out when I don’t have a car. Every fortnight they have a little knitting circle there and I finally made it this past Tuesday thanks to the help of Susan. Now I have never actually been to a stitch and bitch that was hosted at a yarn shop, and OMG am I ever so thankful that this was my first! the entire night all I wanted to do was cast on something new in each of the fabulous yarns… They were all so beautiful and wonderful. The actual group was such a lovely group of hilarious ladies, In short I had a blast! Sally who runs the studio is sweet and the studio itself was like a little yarn zen garden of relaxation! I deffinately can’t wait to make it out there again.

Back to the kidsilk night… I am thinking of making something soft, lacey, and feminine with this.. I was thinking maybe a lace ruffled scarf or something I’ll have to think some more about it! For now they will have to be content being desk pets.

Been Awhile…

I am so very dreadfully sorry It has been awhile. I feel like I have been so very busy but now that i sit down I am trying to figure out what exactly I have been doing…. I haven’t been knitting too much… I cast on posey then ripped them. I also have somehow lost ryan’s sock in progress, I have no idea where it is! GRRRR…

Wow! I just took a look at my blog and realized how much growth I’ve got on the recycled shawl! So I just ploped it on the desk to take a picture of it and alas it was too big. So it went on the living room floor… but that meant miss nosey-bum had to investigate it!

It was rather impossible to get a picture without miss bossybum! but as you can see (using bunny for scale) it is about halfway done and looking just lovely I can’t wait to have it finished…. Also soon I should hopefully have some pictures of my fabulous split sweater, which I technically finished ages ago but have only just recently woven in the ends. and unfortunately that is all you are getting for today… I will try to be back soon then a month :-p

Another one bites the dust!

Yep that’s what Ryan’s sock looks like. I bet you were wondering about the progress and where I had gotten with it! well that’s where I had gotten. Oh before you start to think that i ripped out all that work i guess i should show you another picture of Ryan’s sock.

Yep that’s right I finished the first sock and isn’t it a lovely sock. Look at the way it just splays itself along the desk lounging gracefully. It is already begging me to become a model, despite my attempts to remind it of the evils of the fashion industry. For those of you not paying attention this yarn is Lorna’s Laces Shepard Sock in the Shadow colorway. I love the way it stripes causing a nice look.

I have always maintained self striping sock yarns are not for control freaks these socks only prove that matter! I have already noticed that even though both the skeins are the same dye lot they are not perfect. The second skein has more black and mess whit and in general seems darker. I don’t have too many issues with this and nor does Ryan so it should be fine. We will have to see after they are finished. They have been moved up to bus socks so thus they should be finished sooner!

Now I bet you have been wondering what has happened to the bottom up deep ocean vest I’m working on. Well I’m working on it but darn that slip stitch doesn’t want to grow. I really looked at the ribbing and realized 3 inches was much more appropriate than 4.

It’s currently in a total of 4.5 inches long and looking good, the disadvantage of the linen stitch is that it takes two rows to equal one. so this is slow going but at least it’s going! here’s a nice close up of the beautiful yarn! I reall love this color too!

Also a couple of weeks ago I was doing the shopping and saw some beautiful blue and green food dyes that came in pretty decent sizes for fairly cheap I grabbed them and some vinegar and came home and did some dyeing! This is the fruits of my labor! some dyed roving and some blank yarn i had and finally some over dyed yarn (that was a really ugly country blue nasty color)

(Sorry its fuzzy I could NOT get a clear picture of this yarn for the life of me!)

Why Anne WHHHY? Oh and check out this author!

Anne has done it again! She has designed yet another piece that just makes me twinge with need to knit it! I don’t really have the time or need to knit a lacy nothing right now, I need a warm something as the chill of winter pervades my every bone. Yet Alhambra (the rusty red one) calls to me, in a soft ghostly whisper “Brooooooooooooooklynne knit me please! *whimper* Brooklynne save meee from the torment of not being knit! Brooklynne, Broooooooklyne Broooooooooooooooooklynne” It’s maddening! Anne how do you do it? How do you make such compelling items to knit? How many of your patterns do I own? More than I would like to think about!

So instead I have been reading, mostly these books, which are a trilogy, by one of my favorite Science Fiction authors. Melissa Scott writes some of the most intense interesting science fiction I have ever encountered. Her work is often very thought provoking and often challenges your mind to open up more and more. She creates dystopian worlds that are amazingly intricate and complex but doesn’t bombard you with inane details, she doesn’t describe bright blue suns with green skies that go on and one for pages. She tells you what you need to know to understand the story and nothing more beyond that. Which is wonderful because it allows your brain to fill in the gaps if you feel the need to.

I’m not very science minded so one of the things that i like about all of he books is that new sciences that she has created are always explained in a way that I can understand them. By this I don’t mean they are simple explanations, but straight forward and yet again telling you only the important stuff as you need to know it. An example I can specifically think of is in one of her books people connect to the internet by interfacing through cables that plug into your head and then you are in the “net” much like virtual reality. Well when she explains this in the internet she doesn’t go into great detail about how the wires are connected to your brain or how things interface etc. which I often feel are really just unimportant details that often cause my eyes to gloss over. Another great feature of the way she write about technology is that she doesn’t go on and on for pages about the technology for no reason at all, and never just to show off that she’s smarter than you ,like I feel many Sci-Fi authors do. The phrase that I say over and over that I think is really the great part of her books is that you get told what you need to know when you need to know it, and not a moment sooner!

But oh the plots, the plots are what really make her books ace! With worlds and scenarios that are up there with Margaret Atwood but taken to places Margaret is to conservative to go. The plots are intense and twisted often without a clear villain, but more a group of people that are more problematic the pure evil. I hate that in many Sci-Fi books they are these epic adventures with huge goals the crush massive evil, in a way that when the book ends you don’t really care about what happens afterwards to the characters. Melissa’s books aren’t like that, they are fantastic journeys with people on regular events in their lives, sometimes you are 200 pages into the book before you find out what the main event is supposed to be. Some authors this would make the begin drag and the end seem rushed, but Melissa does it in such a way that it mirrors life and is believable. Where some books a riot that is important to the books would happen in the beginning and the novel would focus on those fights happening, Melissa teasingly holds the riot till the last chapter, letting the tension build even within you, really exemplifying the feelings of the people. She draws great complexities within those tensions and shows you the softer side of the “villain” shows’ you the fears he’s reacting on, the fears that make him become the “bad guy” in such a way that you can’t help pity him. She draws this out in glimpses of several peoples perspectives so you don’t feel like life is dragging on, but more so that when that first brick flies, or that first shot is made you want to do the same and join them.

When you come to the last page everything isn’t tied up in a pretty little bow for you. It’s raw It’s imperfect, there are things that have been certain characters goals from the first page you met them that have not been achieved. Sexual tensions between other characters that your sure are going to end up together never end up together. the ending are so rough, tense, and emotional that I often find myself crying. The thing that sticks out the most for many of Melissa’s books is that the ending rings true to life, reminds you that this isn’t the end but just where you have to stop watching. Even though that having to stop often makes your heart ache that in itself reminds you how well written these books are.

I was going to go into a review of these books but i have a feeling that should wait for another time seeing how long this post has gotten so far! So I guess instead I leave you with this picture of yarny goodness that I will talk about in a post to come! If you want to check out any or Melissa’s books I encourage you to do so at amazon.com, I deffinatly recommend the Silence Leigh Trilogy(Five Twelfths of Heaven, Silence in Solitude, and The Empress of Earth), Shadow Man, Night Sky Mine, and The Shape Of Their Hearts(this one isn’t perfect but really gets you thinking!)

So go have a read and tell me what you think!

P.S. There is alsoa crazy pastor by the same name… :-p i find that just hilarious!