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.

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!)

Autumn is Upon Us

Well the wind is starting to get crisp. I’m starting to grab scarves when I head out and about. The dew in the morning is starting to look a lot like frost. I’m pulling out my sweaters to wear. I’m even wearing socks inside the house! you know what all of this means? yes autumn is upon us and soon it will be winter.  The other day I knew the perfect answer to out chilly dreariness… STEW! Yes an nice warm yummy stew, with kumara, pumpkin, potato, onion, celery and tomato. Add some yummy herbs and boil it all in homemade chicken stock(made from boiling a roasted chicken carcass until it was boiled to bits) and you have the prefect autumn treat! We had so much of it yet it disappeared rather fast.

What’s the knitting been like? distracted that’s what… I haven’t been doing a lot of knitting mostly because I have been reading and working on my vest design, which I’m happy with and started.

So that is the beginning of the linen stitch vest. I cast -on (5 freaking times! When am I going to realize the long tail cast-on isn’t good for when you have many stitches to cast on) Tuesday afternoon and set it aside after semi trauma of casting on. Have I ever told you that I hate (HATE) casting on, really I would almost pay someone to cast on for me. But yesterday I took it to the Embroiders Guild meeting with me and then today on the bus and am now an inch done with the ribbing three more inches to go! I want a nice thick ribbing on the bottom it make my tummy look well less pregnant.

So really the only other knitting I have to show for myself is the simple moss stitch shawl. the worst part is you can’t even tell that it’s bigger but it is! It’s almost twice the size as it was last time you all saw it! This is my TV project and I have been watching more TV lately I don’t even know why. Well I guess that’s all for now! I have a really cool post about feminism coming up that I hope doesn’t offend anyone but frankly I don’t really care! :-p

Starting at the Bottom

As I begin to look for a side job, one that will actually allow me to eat and such while I start up my fashion design label and get people buying things, I have realized that I have very little to actually wear to a job interview and work in general. So my brain started turning and I looked through my closet then raided Ryan’s closet. I came out of the venture successful, matching a pair of simple black pants of mine, and a hoochie mama vest that i usually wear with my breasts hanging out, and one of Ryan’s white dress shirts left me with a very professional look(placing the hoochie mama vest over the dress shirt). Not only did it look professional, it also looked great! That moment got me thinking why don’t I wear sweater vests and such, oh yeah cause I usually see them in baggy body covering ugliness. About this same time the new Knitty came out with a vest pattern(Honeycomb), that was exactly what I was thinking of.

Except I didn’t like the, stitch pattern….. Or the length of ribbing…. Or the shape of the neck line(especially in the back)…. I didn’t have any yarn on the right gauge… And I wanted to knit my vest in the round… You can see where this headed didn’t you? Darn It I’ll design my own! So I dug into my stash and found the perfect yarn!

Isn’t that just beautiful? The nice deep ocean color of Knit Picks Swish Superwash, and I have more than enough of it! I absolutely love this color and the texture of the yarn it’s sooo soft! It wears rather well too, which is always important! So with a ball of that and my trusty Options set, and a stitch dictionary or 5 i started swatching. many swatches were started only two survived! One of the ribbing and stitch pattern together and the more important one of the stitch pattern it’s self.

This is the linen stitch and is a simple slip stitch pattern with the yarn held in front and alternating stitches being slipped it creates a dense but still stretchy fabric that has a nice woven look to it! The bonus is that the wrong side looks like a regular moss stitch which leave the potential for a reversible vest which I kinda like the idea of.

So after I was happy with both of my swatches it was time to do some measuring and some math, which makes my head hurt in general. Sorry the math has been smudged out due to security reasons, mostly so that you all don’t know my waist measurements. Next comes the fun part of casting on all those stitches… I hate casting on absolutely hate it! Which is a problem considering I love starting projects…. So hopefully in a week or so I will have more progress to show you on this particular vest! I’m still thinking about a tutorial/blog post about steeks and their fabulousness! I hope you are all well and everything in nice in your lives!