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Welcome to my knitting--no, fiber arts--no, artisan blog.
Other knitting blogs inspired me to start a knitting blog. But I also crochet, weave, and make jewelry, and I'm just learning
to make cheese. So I guess that makes this an artisan blog.
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Thursday, September 29, 2005
Quick Update
I've been knitting away on the Dublin Bay socks while I read, and I'm reading most of the time I'm awake,
so the socks are growing quickly. One just needs a toe, and the other is about halfway:
And here they are with Anabaena, who owns all the socks in the universe, including yours:
That's Esmeralda on the left.
And on Monday night, jewelry class started again. The first project is another bezel-set stone, but this one is an odd shape.
After that we learn tube setting, which is kind of like bezel setting but for faceted stones (and that's all I know about
it). We have some 3-mm CZs to practice with and two each of amethyst, garnet, and peridot. So that's pretty exciting. Then
we're going to learn prong setting, beginning with onyx cabochons. After that, we do more-complicated prong setting. This
class meets from 8 to 10, so by the time I got home I was too tired to blog about it. But next week I should have something
to photograph.
link
Sunday, September 25, 2005
Dublin Bay
I think I'm the last person in the knitting universe to do the Dublin Bay socks. When Lynn saved me the
trouble of trying to figure out what to do with pea-green yarn, I figured I couldn't knit plain pea-green socks, so I'm doing
the Dublin Bay thing. The Dublin Bay pattern goes like this:
Round 1: (k2tog, yo) 3x
Round 2: knit
Round 3: k1, (k2tog, yo) 2x, k1
Round 4: knit
You work that on the sides of the sock, and I'm doing these socks on 64 stitches, which means I do the Dublin Bay pattern,
knit 26, and repeat. Here's the first half of the first sock:
And here it is posed with a dog, the way Tracey does:
link
Friday, September 23, 2005
Sock It to Me
My Sockapal2za socks arrived today -- from Carol in Australia
Along with a package of cookies (or packet of biscuits, as the case may be) and a bar of delicious-smelling coconut soap.
Aren't they beautiful? You can't tell from looking, but they're very soft. These are my new favorite socks.
One great thing about these socks is they're hand knitted. (Yeah, duh, I know.) That's significant because I have a whole
drawer full of hand-knitted socks, and I knitted them all. This is the first pair of socks anyone has ever knitted for me.
In other sock news, our niece Lynn is willing to have a pair of socks. When her sister Elizabeth lived with us, I knitted
her several pairs, including a pair with one red toe. I'd run out of yarn and finished the sock with something else, obviously,
although I don't actually remember it. Anyway, Lynn always mentions the socks with one red toe. Also, her favorite color is
pea green. She has a whole rationale for this choice, which ends with the rhetorical question "How can anyone not love pea
green?" So the next pair of walking and reading socks, which I'll start tonight, will be pea green (Patons calls it grass
green) with one red toe.
link
Monday, September 19, 2005
Sockapal2za Socks
In the beginning I had several ideas for socks for the sock pal. At first I thought I'd do something
specifically American for a non-American sock pal and something specifically non-American for an American sock pal. My sock
pal lives in South Carolina, so that meant non-American socks. The non-American candidates were all German, strangely enough.
One was the Opal sideways socks; the other two were from German sock books. I have in fact knitted (and blogged about) these
socks.
But while I was knitting away at the German socks, it occurred to me that my sock pal, Judy, has a dragonfly theme going, so I thought some dragonflies on the socks would be cool. At first I thought I'd do the head
in beads and the body and wings in jacquard. But then I started to fret that jacquard fabric isn't very stretchy and that
could pose a problem. So I regrouped and did the dragonflies entirely in beads.
I also wasn't sure about the colors. I ordered some Lorna's Laces in Valentine and Wisteria, but the Valentine, which I think
is gorgeous, has a red that in some light looks a little rusty, and Judy hates brown. So in the end I went with the Wisteria.
It came out stripey, and naturally the stripe pattern varied with the number of stitches. Judy wanted a larger sock top and
smaller foot circumference, and I worked the top on 72 stitches and the foot on 64. Here are the socks:
Here's a close-up of the dragonflies:
And here's a close-up of the hem, which I've shown before (but the beads weren't very visible):
So the socks are totally different from what I'd imagined; they're even completely American.
link
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