Today there was carpentry and tiling going on and a meeting with the builder, not to mention a neighbour who decided we’d all like to hear his radio, so I reverted to my inner office worker, slacking off while renovations made work difficult uncomfortable impossible. What did I do?

I spent the day spreadsheeting all the finished objects I’ve made since I rediscovered knitting in 2003, hunting down what photos I could find and resizing them, culled what was too embarassing to make public, and started uploading images to Flickr ready for when I get my Ravelry invite in (what I estimate will be) October.

What else was I going to do with a spare day? Filing? Pffft!

On Friday I finished this:

Hmm. I’m going to have to find a good place to photograph my pot hangers.

This design was easy enough. It’s called “Mini” (and no, I didn’t choose it because of the car reference) and was one of two small scale beginner projects. To answer Peeve, there are no shiny wooden beads in this one, because I’m saving the few that I have for a more advanced project. I suspect they were salvaged from my old pot hanger.

It’s wierd, isn’t it, how something can be forgotten and unmentioned for years, then suddenly there are references to it everywhere. If I take the purchase of some yute as a starting date, then I’ve had the itch to do a bit of macrame since early in the year. Then Wendy of Knit and Tonic mentioned it a few months back. Then in the latest issue of Inside Out, which I read just after I finished the pot holder, one of articles had the writer wondering how long it would be before she could bring out the macrame wall hanging she’d kept for years.

Macrame’s back, I tell you. Soon they’ll be selling it in Bunnings and Harvey Norman. Just you watch.

I finished re-heeling my Dad’s socks:

Thank goodness that’s over.

There was no knitting over the weekend. We went from a christening to a child’s birthday party to the airport to a friend’s 42nd birthday party in Adelaide to another friend’s house for the remaining hours of the morning, to some beachy suburb for lunch to the airport and home again. It was fun but exhausting.

It seems to be the year of the crazy too-quick interstate visit for us.

The party theme was Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. This was part of my costume:

No photos of me modelling it, because the rest of the costume… well, it involved the most disgusting fleshy pink trakkie dacks and top in existance. (Weren’t hard to find – we just asked ourself where the most skanky clothes in the eastern suburbs were likely to be, and headed to Dimmeys at Ringwood Market. Five minutes and $11 later I had exactly what the costume needed.)

I pulled a neck muscle badly this morning, so it was only with liberal applications of Tiger Balm and a heat bag that it loosened up enough for me to take pics of the Twirly Tam.

Trouble, is, I’m not sure how to wear it.

Top resting on one side?

Or the other?

Pushed to the back?

Or maybe to the front? Hmm, maybe not.

This was the best photo. Since it’s taken from slightly above, I’m guessing that tams suit short people and that I’ll either have to walk around on my knees or keep my chin on my chest whenever I wear it.

But I do like it. It’s very arty-farty. Like me.

The most likely reason I pulled a muscle was this:

My Dad’s socks. Once again, a whole lot of picking up stitches, knitting new sections and then grafting together again. The sock on the left is done, the one on the right shows how they started – it’s now almost done because I sat up late making my back sore in the hopes of finishing last night. I put an afterthought heel in, thinking that it would be easier to replace next time. But I’m afraid there won’t be a next time. Sorry Dad. Just throw them away and I’ll make new ones. It’s more fun.

Lastly, this might also have contributed to the muscle-pulling.

Yep, that’s a half-finished macrame pot hanger. You should have seen the look of horror on the beau’s face when he saw what I was making.

I finished my tam last night. I used the Handy Book of Knitting Patterns guidelines, choosing a spiral pattern for the top decreases. Maybe I should call this my Twirly Tam. Here it is blocking. Our Tupperware cake container lid is the perfect sized blocker.

I have an itch to make a few other interesting hat designs. Maybe I should add a Quirky Hat Projects list to the sidebar.

I ordered from the Bendigo Woollen Mills website for the first time a few days ago, and the spoils arrived today.

First there were two cones of 3 play Classic in ‘raffia’ and ‘mulga’. They’re both to be used as weft yarn. The raffia will go with the arty green yarn that came in the adopted stash, to make a blanket:

The mulga will go with the cream handspun I made during the weaving course last year, the chocolate I did at home and the light brown that came with the wheel. I’ve got a three toned wrappy jackety garment in mind, made of squares and rectangles.

Lastly, a ball of Harmony in ‘ocean’ to test knit some socks out of. The pattern is Flame Wave Socks from Favourite Socks, and these will be my ‘non-wool’ socks (which is stretching the definition a bit, because Harmony does have some wool in it, but I’ve wanted to see if this would make good sock yarn for a while now).

I realised a few days ago that the number and range of items I’ve knit so far this year almost matches what I knit during 2006. I’ve knit more hats and gloves so far. But I haven’t knit a shawl this year (and probably won’t). Knit From Your Stash must be part of the reason, I suspect. Making progress in reducing the stash was a good motivator. Or maybe it had an anti-dithering effect, forcing me to make up my mind what I wanted to make out of the yarn I had.

Here’s the first Mosaic Sock:

The toe-up toe uses the figure 8 cast on method. It’s unusual in that it starts with 36 stitches, which makes it a rather short flat-edged toe. I quite like it.

The heel is an afterthought heel, and knit with decreases at each side just like a top-down toe.

Yes, you can see skin through those stitches. The pattern specifies 2.75mm dpns, which is larger than I usually knit socks with and makes for a rather gappy fabric. Maybe the yarn specified for these socks is a lot thicker than the usual sock yarn. Maybe larger needles are meant to counteract the pull that happens when stranding yarn across the back of colourwork. But if I knit this pattern again, I’d choose smaller needles.

Overall, it’s an easy pattern once you get into it. And the sock sure is pretty!

Here’s the first Ripple Weave Sock. The knit-through-the-back knit stitches are giving me flash backs to Pomatomus.

I can tell this colour yarn is going to be a little challenging to photograph.

Finally, last night I had a sudden burst of startitis. I began another crochet headscarf, but frogged it after it became clear the hook I’d chosen was just too small for the stitch pattern I’d chosen. And a good thing, too. This morning I had to wonder at myself for picking the most lurid shade of aqua. Maybe it looked different under electric light.

I’ve had an itch to knit a beret or tam lately. Do I like berets and tams? Not particularly. Do I look good in berets and tams? Not really. But I seemed to have reached a certain stage of the knitting obsession:

I’m knitting one just because I haven’t before, and the construction is so interesting.

And I have to say, this Alpaca Classique is really nice.

Pattern: Simple Ribbed Socks:

From: Knitting Vintage Socks
Yarn: Lisa Souza ‘Mahogany’
Needles: 2.25 mm bamboo dpns
Type: Top-down
New experiences: Dutch/Horseshoe Heel and Pointed Toe
Comments: Good fit, though the heel is a bit narrow for my foot. Interesting toe.

The second sock has more light and coloured patches than the first. It’s not immediately noticable, though.

I’d like to knit more socks from this book. Since this sock was the right size for my feet without adjusting gives me hope that more of the patterns will suit them.

Now that I’ve finished these, I’ve started the Ripple Weave Socks from Vogue.

Early last year I knit these Ribble Socks using the stitch pattern from Socks Socks Socks:

When I first washed them by hand I foolishly tossed them into the washing machine for a quick spin with some other handwashing and discovered that the dye wasn’t particularly well fixed when I took out a favourite hand sewn white shirt and discovered what looked like wine stains all over it.

They’re made from Koigu, which isn’t superwash and, as I’ve mentioned before, I just don’t wear them because of that. A while back I put them into my pile of things to be fixed and altered, with the idea that I could turn them into mittens. After all, the size was right and the shaping of socks wasn’t that different from mittens.

On Friday night I made a start. The first thing I did was cut the legs of the socks off. Then I rediscovered how hard it is to unpick ribbing from the bottom up. Urgh. Once I had all the stitches on the needles, I did a sewn cast off, adding a bead every second stitch.

I’m rather chuffed at how they turned out.

Next I attacked the foot of each sock. I went through similar pains cutting off the toe, but by then I’d worked out that if getting the bottom edge of ribbing to unpick was so hard it was obviously not going to unravel. I did have to do a sewn cast off on what had been the sole of the foot, as it was stocking stitch.

Then I turned the socks around and frogged back to a little way down the instep increases. Now, the only difference between socks and mittens at this point is that the increases on socks go on either side of the sock, while on mittens both increases fall on one side, forming a ‘V’. This meant a bit of creative unravelling and reknitting. I dropped the stitches from one side of the palm to where the middle of the ‘V’ would be, then reknit them with the increases moved to their new position.

Once that was done it was just a matter of doing the usual fingerless mitten shaping – separating the thumb stitches, adding extra stitches across the thumb gap, and finishing both the hand and thumb off with some 1×1 ribbing.

Converting the socks to mittens and wristwarmers wasn’t quick – probably took five or six hours overall – but it was a heck of a lot faster than knitting them from scratch. Especially when you take into account the ribble stitch pattern.

At first when I was struggling with unpicking ribbing I asked myself if it was worth the trouble, and even considered throwing the socks in the bin. But I’m so glad I kept going. I love the mittens, and that beaded edge on the wristwarmers makes the girly girl in me go ‘squeee!’.

Yesterday I added to the storage units in my workroom, which led inevitably to sorting and tidying and endeavouring to get stuff off the floor and into said storage units. The downside of this was that that little accumulation of things I’ve managed to not look at too closely in the corner of the stash got hauled out into the harsh light of day.

And I had to admit that not only did I have UFOs, but I had more than one of them:

To the left at the back are two knitted pillowcases that ‘just need zippers’. Now, I’m not overly fond of sewing, and I’m particularly not overly fond of sewing when it involves zippers. How long have I been putting off sewing in these zippers? I don’t know, but definitely since before I started this blog. I’ve even had the cotton and needles stored with them all this time. I suspect I’m just not enamoured enough of the pillows to be bothered. Maybe I should just sew them up with a bit of ‘waste’ yarn that can be removed if I ever need to wash them.

To the right at the back is my Red Blanket. Though I started this project not long after I started this blog, it was a slow project and I don’t mind that I only recently took the last strip off the loom. Trouble is, I suspect ‘recently’ is now more than a few months. What’s got me in avoidance mode? Yep – sewing. And the need for a large free space to lay them out on and decide what order to place them.

To the left at the front are a pair of socks my Dad wore through at the heels. I promised to reknit them from the ankle down some time ago, converting them to re-soleable socks at the same time. This isn’t sewing, and would probably only take an evening or two. I’m a bit mystified as to why I have put this one off so long. Maybe because, though Dad loves his handmade socks, Mum has a strange grudge against them and has asked me to stop making him socks.

To the right at the front is my pair of Ribble socks. These are the only non-machine washable socks I’ve made – out of Koigu. I never wear them because it takes me weeks – sometimes months – to get around to hand washing them. And though I’ve only worn and washed them a couple of times, they’re already going a bit felty. Why are they in my UFO pile? Because I want to turn them into fingerless mitts or wristwarmers. Why haven’t I? Maybe because it means cutting up otherwise perfectly good socks that took some time to knit.

There you have it. My UFOs of shame. Clearly hiding them away and wiping them from my memory isn’t getting them done. It’s time to set up a few motivators. Like a new list in my sidebar. And keeping them in an annoying place in full view.

I’ve been a bit under the weather the last few days. After a nasty reaction to some cough mixture the local pharmacist recommended, I wound up with a rather spectacular sinus infection. I’m feeling much better today, with the skull expanding headache only lingering in the background now.

There was sock knitting. Oh yes. I finished the first Simple Ribbed Socks sock:

(No, I haven’t sewed the ends in yet.)

The Pointed Toe is very long compared to the toes I normally knit, and does an interesting spirally thing…

The Dutch or Horseshoe heel is very square and narrow. I’m not sure this is going to suit my feet, but I won’t be judging the socks until the second is finished and I wear them for a day.

Last night I turned the heel of the second sock.

At the same time there has been steady progress with the Mosaic Socks.

These are a slower knit, since every rows is worked twice. The mosaic style of knitting is interesting, but I reckon fair isle would be faster because you only work the row once for both colours. The heel will be added later, so there’s a row of waste yarn where it will go.

Once I finish the Simple Ribbed Socks I’ll start a new sock. To ensure I can get started as soon as possible I’ve wound the Jitterbug into a cake…

… ready and waiting to do these…

Ripple Weave Socks in Vogue Fall 2006.