Thursday, July 13, 2006

To be continued...

I really have too many WIPs. But I am trying to finish them. These coming up are posts that I have more to add to, so I'll show them to you. Thus I feel that "To be continued..." is an appropriate title. Read on for sock info, and rants on not-helpful yarn company websites and swastikas in knitting.

I just moved from bloglines because their window is causing my keyboard to exhibit an extremely weird syndrome of disabling the capability to type various letters in capitals or lowercase. Thus, I am showing you the last few posts because they needed to be continued:

(posted July 13, 2006)
This blog is going to be moved! For some reason, this window for typing blog entries keeps triggering the weird keyboard syndrome...

Yarn Websites...
(Last Updated July 13, 2006)

Gosh darn it!

Where could I find the pattern for the Koigu Painter's Palette Premium Merino T-shirt I have seen advertised in several magazines (which might have been rather old, but *shrugs*)? I'm curious about this pattern. I don't particularly care for their website, either.

Sorry, to be continued...


So...
(Posted June 28, 2006)

Unfortunately, I have no pictures, but I have wonderful news!

I have now finished three pairs of knitted socks and one pair of crocheted socks. I seem to suffer from severe SSS. However, I seem to have recovered somewhat. Forgive me for the out of place capitals, but my keyboard is doing something weird and will not type certain letters such as S, M, K, R, and F, unless I press the Shift key while doing so. Whatever could be wrong? Let me try the Caps Lock. IS THIS BETTER? YES, IT IS BUT IT SEEMS LIKE I'M YELLING! OH DEaR. Great! I can only type lowercase a's and only capital S M K R, and F. What is wrong with my keyboard? Oh, well....

To be continued...

Continued:

Hey, my keys are working correctly again!

Okay, now to explain about those socks. My first pair of socks took from December or so of '04 to April or May of '06 to finish. I did however, finish two other pairs of socks while between sock 1 and sock two. The first pair were a plain vanilla sock pattern given to me in a knitting group at my local library, in Bernat Sox Jazz Hot. The recipient of these has worn them once, I believe (It was not me!). Then came a pair of white socks in Patons Grace, I believe the color was called Snow, mostly out of the same pattern, but with a clover-ish (Actually, I think it's called cloverleaf lace.) lace motif inserted at the top of the foot over the heel. My crocheted pair were made in white acrylic... (Yeah, right, blah! But I had to use the stuff for something. I can agree with whoever it was that explained about large stitches digging into your foot; those socks HURT after a day on your feet wearing them.)

Most recent pair finished were started the week before May 12, 2006, and finished last Thursday during a power outage. Luckily, I was able to see enough to complete the toe decreases and graft the toe. These socks were made in KnitPicks Dancing Swing and with the Elongated Corded Rib on 64 stitches with very slight modification to the pattern from Charlene Schurch's Sensational Knitted Socks. Sorry to this wonderful author for this weird capitalization, but my keyboard is acting up yet again. Luckily her name does not start with a, or I'd have a problem. Embleer Keyboard!

To be continued yet again...

Note: The Weird Keyboard Syndrome (WKS) has been edited out of this post. Also, I would like to add that the white acrylic mentioned is worsted weight Red Heart. I also corrected a few minor spelling errors.

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And now that you've heard all these: Here's today's post:

As for the socks:
Now that the swing socks(64 sts., by the way) are finished, I have 3 more socks in progress. One in the Ribbed Lace Patterns in Parade Daffodil from Knitpicks on U.S. Size 3's (48 sts.), one in Braided Cable with Garter Bead in Ash Essential on U.S. 0's (77 sts.) and one in the one chevron pattern with garter ridges with Sweet-Tarts Simple Stripes on 1's (66 sts.).

Now for a sad(or not so sad) sock story:
I had started a sock in Patons Grace Lavender with the 5 st. Laburnum pattern on 50 sts, size 3's, toe-up, because I was following the directions. Unfortunately, my foot will not fit in 50 sts at about 6 1/2 or so sts. to the inch nearer the heel. This is because I am one of those "Gauge Swatch? Blech.... Embleer Pattern!" sort of people and because I cannot seem to measure my foot. All I know is that a 56 stitch plain vanilla sock in Snow Patons Grace on size 2's fits my foot. When I made my bit of a gauge swatch (or did I? I don't even remember, and it was only March of '06!), I sort of pretended it was 6 sts to the inch. and proceeded. So I frogged the short row heel, which I had done against my better judgment and created a sort of half foot sock with a ruffly edge, a little similar to the front part of one of those slip on slippers with no heel. This, at first, I had no purpose for, but I am going to turn it in to a water bottle holder for carrying on walks with an I-cord strap as soon as I find my French Knitter thing (or at least I think that's what it's called...) I don't like making I-cord with dpns, but once it saved a science project, which you shall hear about later. So I am going to start anew with the other 2 balls of yarn, 2's and the 60 st version. But not yet...

Future Sock Plans:
I also have Pansy sock yarn just waiting to be made into socks. I dyed some of their Color Your Own Sock Yarn with Kool-Aid and it turned out fairly well, though not quite as I intended. This is intended to become socks, but who knows. I am wanting to try some of the Fair Isle and Mosaic sock patterns from Sensational Knitted Socks, so that might be in the future, too.

Yarn Websites:
As I said, I don't particularly like Koigu Wool's website. In fact I don't like many yarn manufaturers' websites. Why? I do not feel they are helpful. I have nothing against them, I jsut wish their website were more, um, extensive. The only website of a yarn manufaturer that I really like is that of Lion Brand, which, I think, does a good job of having patterns, yarn info, etc. And there are others that do a good job of this, that I haven't heard of or either don't visit much because I don't use their yarns.

Site Updates:
I am hoping to put up the (Nearly) Seamless Crochet Slipper Pattern and the Macreme Bag pattern on http://www.geocities.com/celitmarifiatricoter . Also: I posted a really long comment on the Yarn Harlot's question about Which Three Knitters?

Check back in a bit for info on an issue I feel deserves discussion.