On the knitlist, someone asked about Lion Brand Microspun. I made the hubby a hat of it, and it came out quite nice and soft, but did tend to split, so I had to look at what I was doing while knitting. I am pretty excited that I am doing well enough that I can usually not look and not mess things up too much, but for this yarn, ya need to look.
I actually bought a whole bunch of it to make an crocheted afgan (this was in Sept, before I learned to knit) and as I was making the swatch I kinda went “what the hell was she thinking”; she being Lily Chin, who authored this particular pattern. I had borrowed the book from the library and thought it looked really nice. I hated this yarn for crochet, so it went under the bed but I think I will use it for a sweater for myself some time, and will knit it instead. Since then, I have learned of the cult of lily.
In the Lion Brand catalog, there’s a kiddie sweater in red, orange and yellow that I would totally love to have in a grown-up size. Maybe once I finish the Thing I will have the skills to attempt it! I like my Land’s End cardi and will maybe use it as a model.
Can I mention one other thing? Of course I can. I can look out my window and see the Jo-Ann etc. a block across the street. They are open on Sunday, or Wednesday night, or whenever the need for something new stikes me. My nearest LYS is not. It’s a great shop, and I do go there once in a while, but not whenever the mood strikes me like I can with the really close Jo-Anne etc. (Although, there is a Wart-Mall even closer than Jo-Anne, I won’t step foot in there.) So that’s why I sometimes buy the Lion Brand stuff. Plus it’s good for experimenting, without blowing a lot of money. And Velona is too tempting, good thing it’s a trek to go there.

Back in October when I started all this, I decided that I was going to be adventurous, and try just about anything, and if it sucked I could frog it and move on. I started on a pair of socks, with dpn and I think I did ok! I like them, they fit, and as Connie says, they are jeans-friendly. Here they are:

So now, a few more sets of needles later, I have been mostly buying circulars because why not? They are just long dpn, with a place for stuff to hang out when it gets heavy. The only thing I don’t like about them is that they are kinda difficult to store, right now they are in a bucket from some peppermint patty-esque things that were sitting on Amy’s desk at work. Good reuse, yes, but a big tangled mess. I have a vision of some sort of contraption made of index cards that are folded and stacked and can hang on the wall by my bed where I do most of my knitting. I tend to buy my circulars in twos, so I can go all the way around something if needed.

I am working on a Baby Albert sweater #1 in Cotton-Ease from LB. This yarn is nicer than I thought it would be, and I love the colors, Blue Candy and Blueberry. I am making 2 sweaters for the twins because I hated the shawl that I was going to make for their mom. Not sure about the sizing though, it’s supposed to be for 0-3 (that is months, yeah? I don’t have any kids to ask) but it looks a lot bigger than that. I am a bit off gauge though, 21sts over 4 inches instead of 20/4, but the directions said get close. I didn’t think it would be that much larger. But that’s fine, most kids get bigger over time, not smaller. : /

Here’s the first one:

The second will be in the opposite colors. They are fraternal, so their gifts can be too. Kinda like my socks.

I decided to try the “You’re Putting Me On” socks, and somehow got all turned around and had a big mistake that I couldn’t figure out. Well, it turns out I didn’t quite make the transition from dpn to circulars, and ended up moving stitches to the wrong needle when it came time to start the heel extension.
I liked the idea of being able to not only try the socks on, but also to be able to work in a pattern from a chart and have it show up right-side up. I am not sure about the toes though, I wonder how hard it would be for me to unknit the toes and re-do them going down? I wonder if the change in direction will be noticeable while I am wearing them. Well, I might just try it after I do the cuffs, now that I got the heels all straightened out.

Yeah, I know it’s 2003, but who complains about free? Well, me, today. It doesn’t recognize my sound card, so I don’t know if I should go back to Windows 98 or buy a new sound card? Probably can’t to the latter, as this is one of those PCs that have the funky split-up motherboard and combines devices into each other, (sound card and modem in one). I have to think on this a bit more.

I have been working on my sock, a bit at a time, and got some graphics up of the things I made for Christmas gifts this year. Pretty good for someone who has only been knitting 3.5 months, I think.

I have all these ideas of what I want to work on next… I bought some yarn called LUCE from Fortissima di Colori (is that right?) and have only 10 balls, I am not sure it’s enough for a top, I am thinking the shapely tee from whiteliesdesigns.com maybe. I wonder if using another color with it would look good or just stripey? I may have to buy something and make a swatch to see how it looks mixed. Maybe some egyptian cotton in black, or a similar shade of pink will look nice.

I hated it, it was all wavy and not round at all. So I frogged the shawl and cast on some socks to console myself. I am not sure if I am going to find another pattern, just wing it, or what. I wound the used yarn into a big kinky center pull ball, and then realized that I don’t like that end and I will have to rewind it before actually trying to use it. And I don’t have a ballwinder, so ugh.

I have been working on a shawl that I intend to give as a gift as a nursing shawl for a colleague who had twins very prematurely. They reached 4 pounds just in time for the new year, and at 4.5 pounds, they get to leave the hospital. I hope to have it finished in time for a shower we will be having at work for her and the boys.
It’s amazing seeing how fast they are growing, considering how small they were. I am sure it’s awful hard for the parents who don’t see the progress hour by hour as they stand by watching over the babies, but for we who only see a picture every few weeks, it’s just amazing. Even full term newborns grow incredibly fast, but these little guys are getting so much stronger starting from so much further back.
So, I have to hurry because they will soon be big enough to breastfeed and I want to give her the shawl/blanket in time. I am using the EZ round shawl from the almanac, but in a dk weight acrylic so if the babies go bleahk on the thing, it can go right in the wash with the rest of the baby things. I hope she will like it.

D and I went out for lunch and then came back to my place for her first knitting lesson.

I taught her to knit and purl, then bind off and cast on again. She made a nice little swatch and then took off, with one skein of Red Heart and some size 8 straights (the ones I learned on) and a photocopy of that how-to page from FCEK.

We spent some time looking at some of the knitting rags that I have accumulated these past few months, and saw some stuff she would like to knit.

We’ll see.

The first is: The Sweater Workshop: Knit Creative, Seam-Free Sweaters on Your Own With Any Yarn by Jacqueline Fee which I thought was pretty cool when I borrowed it from the library. This is a new edition and I am going to make the thing.

The second is: 365 Knitting Stitches a Year Perpetual Calendar by Ed Martingale. I got this one because I don’t have any stitch dictionary yet, so why not start with a small one?
I will post reviews of them when I read them, especially the sweater workshop since I am planning to make the thing.

Over on the socknitters yahoo group, folks were in quite a tizzy over a discussion about reproducing some socks that are patterned in a book which include Arabic writing that spells out Allah. Naturally, Muslims would find this offensive, like Jews, there are rules governing the writing of the name of God. Placing it on the bottom of ones foot to be trodden upon all day would fall into the list of things ya just don’t do. This makes complete sense to me, and when the subject came up, I thought to myself that a recreation could be made without offense by replacing Allah with some vertical stripes or even another word. Someone mentioned the word salaam which would still look nice, without offending. I really like this idea.

The thing that upset me about this thread was that it degenerated into an argument over Jews not spelling out God’s name. Considering that the name of his son is plastered on the back of car bumpers and windows, hanging from keychains and on everything from T-shirts to coffee mugs and questions such as WWJD (that’s Do or Drive, now) it doesn’t surprise me at all that people don’t know about this custom. But jeez, I’m not Jewish and I knew about it How sad that there are people who never interact with anyone different from themselves all their life! Or even worse, that they could know about someone else’s customs, but decide that their own are better and that they should disregard everything that they were taught because someone on the internet knows what God feels.

Not that our ::cough:: Leader ::cough:: is setting any better an example.
And the worst part? I am on digest, so it was all over before I even got a chance to rant on the list. The listmom had a mailbox full of complaints so the list went moderated. Going an telling mommy? I mean, aren’t we all (mostly) adults?