Sproingy Yarn

Day Seven: What a Yarn -- Blog about a particular yarn you have used in the past or own in your stash, or perhaps one that you covet from afar. 

Again, I can't pick just one, but I'm finding that I do really enjoy working with yarns like Blue Moons Fiber Arts Socks That Rock, Colinette Jitterbug, and Claudia Hand Painted Yarns -- yarns that are tightly plied or made with a tight twist, I think?  Since I'm not familiar with spinning I'm not quite sure how to describe them, but I think a lot of people familiar with yarn might know what I'm trying to say.  They don't split easily and you don't really see the individual strands of fiber, but still seem to have quite a bit of squish to them.

Colinette Jitterbug

So far the socks made with this type of yarn seem to hold up better -- they've held their color well and don't get as much of a fuzzy halo.  And while I thought they might make socks feel more stiff or thick, they've become squishy and comfy when worn.

Now I'm looking forward to trying some Wollmeise yarn, which looks like it has an entirely different texture.  It looks very tightly twisted, too, but seems to have thinner individual strands?  And it's tightly twisted into very firm skeins, so it's hard to tell how squishy the yarn might feel when knit up.

Wollmeise 80/20 Twin

Oh so many yarns to experiment with, so much time swallowed up by a day job!

Remembering Toasty Socks

Day Six: Revisit a past F/O -- Bring the fortune and life of a past finished project up to the present. 

I had only been knitting for a couple of months and finished a handful of projects when I offered to knit some socks for my husband.  I wasn't using him as a guinea pig for sock knitting -- I had already made a pair of socks for myself using a semi-solid yarn and the Socks of Kindness recipe/pattern, then made another pair for myself with busier yarn in plain stockinette using the same basic construction.  But when Sariebeth gave me some sport weight yarn in blue jean colors I thought it would be perfect for more manly socks.

Now I'm fairly sure he didn't really want socks, but didn't want to say no.  I knew that with the thicker yarn he wasn't likely to wear them in shoes anyway, so they would just be there to keep his feet warm around the house.  Again, I followed the basic construction I learned for the first pair, but with ribbing on the cuff to help keep them from slouching.  They fit him pretty snugly, but they fit!

And miraculously, I even had enough yarn.  At the time I didn't have a good gauge for how much a pair of socks would take, but I managed to knit him a complete pair from 225 yards of sport weight.  Whew!

So where are they now?  On his feet!  Well, not right this instant, but they're in his usual rotation and even after well over a year they still look great!  No holes, no felting, not even any visibly worn spots.  They're never worn in shoes, so I'm sure that accounts for part of the great wear, but even being worn around the house on carpets and bare floors hasn't really caused any visible fuzzing.  (They're also in the dirty laundry so I don't have a current photo to share.)

As far as I'm concerned that's some impressive longevity for an early pair of socks, and a great durability review for Claudia Hand Painted Yarns Sport Weight.  And I'll happily claim beginner's luck.

The Typical Knit Spot

Day Five: Location, Location, Location -- Where do you like to indulge in your craft?


Oddly enough, it's never really occurred to me to photograph my typical knitting location before.  It's just my end of the couch, near the side table (which is now perpetually littered with patterns and small project bags) and my OttLite lamp.  Since there's also a regular lamp on the nearby table I rarely use my OttLite for knitting, but it has come in useful for some very dark/black projects.

I do have space set aside for a dedicated craft room, but it isn't decorated or organized into a craft room yet, so at this point it's mostly just a storage room.  But even when it's finished it's not likely to be my primary knitting location.  I enjoy knitting while catching up on recorded shows and I'm not planning on adding or relocating a TV to a future craft room.  In my mind the craft room will be for tidy storage and other hobbies like sewing that require a table to spread things out on.

Unlike many knitters I don't ride for my commute to work; I drive and I am generally the driver.  So I don't have daily knitting that follows me to work and most of my knitting time is after work or on the weekends at home.  But I have been known to knit on airplanes or as a passenger in the car for vacation travel, and my knitting often follows me to lengthy family functions or when we're watching football games on TV.  I don't hide my knitting, but I do have to look what I'm doing so I don't take it with me unless it's a situation that I don't have to be totally focused on.  Maybe with practice I won't have to watch my knitting so closely, but I think there might be part of my personality that wants to watch what I'm doing and not let it slip into something my hands just do to keep busy.

The Continental Finger

Day Four: A New Skill -- Is there a skill related to your hobby that you hope to learn one day?

I already touched on this a couple of days ago, but I would like to learn how to knit continental style, at least to the point of being able to do so with a secondary color for colorwork projects.

When I chose my first project with colorwork I went in search of a tutorial and printed this one.  It was well illustrated and simple and enough to help me finish my convertible mittens, although I did have to devise a way of holding the yarn in my left hand on my own.  I didn't really settle on a comfortable way to work with my left hand, but I figured I would just need practice. 

Then, with one really emphatic swing of a hammer a few months after finishing the convertible mittens, I made a seemingly permanent change to the way I hold my needles.  It's now just a couple of days shy of a year from when I clobbered my finger tip and although there isn't much of a visible injury there anymore, I still have a lump in that fingertip that can be uncomfortable when I apply pressure to it.  So even now I hold my left needle without using my left index finger.  But since most continental knitters seem to use that finger to guide the yarn, having mine programmed to stay up and out of the way of the needles might be convenient.

I'm not sure what the next step is -- Continental knitting tutorials, videos, a class -- or when I'll make a dedicated effort to improve my version of it.  I'm sure the lazy side of me will continue to hope that random practice with small projects will lead to a sudden epiphany that resolves the difference in tension between right and left hands.  Or the ambitious side might kick in eventually.  What?  It could happen.


(Where's all of that laughing coming from?)

So Many Knitters

Day Three : Write about a knitter whose work (whether because of project choice, photography, styling, scale of projects, stash, etc) you enjoy.

Even though my gut reaction is that it's a cop-out to answer that I don't have one favorite knitter, maybe being a relatively new knitter partially excuses it.  Either way, I do have a favorite knitting web site: Ravelry!  I love how easy Ravelry makes it to see so many different patterns and projects and so many different knitters' takes on the same project. 

Sometimes it's a knitter who clearly has a different style and favorite palette of colors than I do that is the one that makes my favorite version of a pattern, and without something like Ravelry to bring all of the project details together in one place I would likely never even know about their project.  After all, I'm not likely to stumble onto every random knitting blog.

It was Ravelry that introduced me to the famous sock designs by Cookie A. and then later to the totally different sock construction style of Yarnissima.  And I suspect it was probably Ravelry that led a certain Mooncalf to take a peek here, which prompted me to take a peek at her blog as well.  Now I follow her blog regularly and give her kudos for posting much more often than I/we do here.

In the end I browse Ravelry more than I search out and follow knitting blogs, so I think I'm just exposed more to projects and stash from a lot of different people rather than following the work of one specific knitter.  Ah, aggregation!