Friday, June 22, 2007

Now I just need one cold day....

As of Wednesday I have completed my second pair of socks. They are adorable and near perfect (a few mistakes are to be expected). It took almost 4 weeks to complete the pair and well worth it. I'm sure I would have been done them much sooner if I hadn't been pre-occupied with working out my school timetable for next term, the last term of my BA... yay!!! I want to wear my new socks but it just happens to be summer and summer in the 'Peg is known to be hot and humid, not exactly sock wearing weather. I also don't exactly have any shoes that will show off my socks:You can't really see it in this picture but there are little eyelits in the ribbing. You can also see a bump on my left ankle, that would be my anklet which i was too lazy to remove before taking the picture. Aren't they adorable? I'm quite proud of them.

I had another exciting moment this week having to do with knitting. When I was a little girl I used to sit in my grandparents den with my grandma while she was knitting. She would have piles of patterns and knitting books, she also got a Mary Maxim catalogue every season. This catalogue had sweater kits and yarns and I used to spend hours leafing through the catalogues. My grandma also made me a few things out of those catalogues. One item makes an appearance every Christmas, a christmas stocking with santa on the front and it used to have a light up nose until the light burnt out. Anyways, a few months ago I was just browsing knitting websites and Mary Maxim came up... needless to say I was extrememly excited so I quickly signed up for the free catalogue. I had registered for it so long ago I had almost forgot about it so imagine my surprise when the mail came one morning and this was there:I feel like a real knitter now with this catalogue sitting on top of my knitting bag in the living room.
Sweater Update: Well the sweater is progressing. I've got a couple more inches done, a few more and I'll be able to start the shaping for the arm. Once I've got a little more done I'll post an picture.
New Project: Back in May when I got my "SNB" book almost immediatly I made a mental note of a certain project: A PDA cover. I got a Palm for Christmas and I've been looking for something to protect it but PDA covers are extremely expensive, so imagine my surprise when i finally had a pattern to knit one up myself. I'm knitting it in Bernat Handicrafter Cotton and size 4 mm needles in a really nice pink verigated colour. I'm quite liking how the colour is knitting up:

I need to knit that piece pretty long, about 10 1/2 inches, then a bit of shaping for the flap a little sewing here and there and voila, a nice home for my Palm.

That is all folks, no more knitting news. Perhaps by next time I will have another project hop onto my needles but perhaps not. Happy Summer and Happy Knitting!!

Monday, June 11, 2007

A sock addiction??? perhaps.

Well it is above 30 C here in the 'Peg today and a perfect day to sit in the nice cold basement and update the world on my knitting adventures. With the miserable and unpredictable weather the past few weeks I have had plenty of time to knit and completed a sock! I fear I may have fallen victim to the sock knitting bug. On Wednesday, after two weeks of work, I completed the sock I was making out of Bernat Baby yarn and a pattern I found in "One Skein Wonders" and after finally figuring out the kitchener stitch the toe grafting looks nearly seamless!! Here making it's world debut is my adorable little pink sock:Isn't it adorable?!?!? The next day I made sure to cast on the second one and as of this morning I was a about half done the leg:Socks give you such a feeling of accomplishment. You cast on and before you know it you have something beautiful to wear. I'm hoping that once i'm finished the second one we will have just one cool day so I can wear them without overheating. I've read many articles and even got some advice on the knitlist message boards that acrylic yarns are horrible for socks because they don't allow your feet to breathe. However, I feel as my first attempt at a pair of socks on small needles and with fingering weight yarn the choice to settle for the cheaper acrylic yarn was a good decision. I am quite eager to get some actual sock yarn for my next pair. I was researching on my LYS website and they have some sock yarn that is extremely reasonable, so hopefully sometime this summer I'll get a chance to get down there, but in the meantime I'm perfectly content with making small projects with yarn I can get at the craft store, besides I am currently in the middle of a new major project:What is that?? Why I think it may be the back panel of my very first sweater. In my last post I was still torn between a sweater and an afghan, but after bringing up my confusion at a family dinner a few nights later I finally decided on the sweater. As well, after I made my decision the Michaels flier came on Saturday morning and as if it were fate the yarn I needed was on sale! Yay! As you can see I chose a nice blue, it looks great when you hold it up next to denim and I can not wait to wear it with my favourite jeans and with any luck by the time I am done it will look something like this:

My goal by my next entry is to complete the second sock, or at least be finished working the heel and gusset. With any luck I'll also have more accomplished on my sweater. Perhaps I will even have another project on the go, I kind of feel like knitting up a dishcloth so maybe some of my cotton yarn will be lucky and find itself wiping a counter before the end of the week.