Back On Track-ish

I've been working hard on my dad's sweater, making sure I at least knit the minimum amount to have it done in time. Not so much effort has been given to Mom's socks, but socks seem fast (sometimes deceptively so). The main reason I've been working on projects that are not for holidays is that I'm finding the two socks worked together fiddly, and the large ares of black knitting uninspiring. That changes once I get to the secondary color. So, at least that'll pick up now.

I'm also happy because Dad just found my lost tape measure. I had toss it in my purse for my brother's wedding with whatever project I had taken with me. So, it was hiding since about mid-October. Glad to have it back though.

Bright Blessings!

Taking a Little Break

I have been working hard on my parents' presents, but every so often I just have to work on something else. While digging in the garage I found an old scrap yarn project that I had no idea how to continue without frogging and starting over. And, well... I may have pulled out some yarn and a hook to play with. So, yeah, we'll see if I can keep this from the same fate.

Bright Blessings!

What?

I honestly don't know what's going on with my gauge. So I'm working on a sweater for my dad for Christmas and I'm suppose to have 20 stitches to 4 inches. On sz 8 needles I had 19 stitches to 4 inches. So, I went down a size to 7s, now i have 18 sts to 4 inches. How did I even do that? Yeah, I'll have to see if I can find what I need to do this. But I don't see how I'm looser on smaller needles. Any thoughts?

Bright Blessings!

Collaboration

So, for the longest time I've thought it would be a nice idea to buy a yarn blank and have my artistic father have fun on it then knit it up into a pair of socks for Mom. It looks like she'll be getting them for Christmas. Just looking at it makes me ridiculously happy. I'll need to make sure Dad or I have a good picture to give with the socks. Not to mention i need to go get needles long enough to do two socks at once before I start. Unfortunately, I did tell his mother about this idea, and she'll probably want son/granddaughter collab socks too. Meh, I have a full time job now and buying the yarn should be that much of a burden.

Bright Blessings!

Bah

I had this whole nice post written out and typed up on my phone, complete with picture but one, the app on my phone doesn't like finding the picture, then crashes when I try to delete it. And two, I can't see the post from my computer afterwards. Whatever, pretty much everything I was going to say doesn't apply anymore.

So, this was the picture that I was going to show you. But Dad's Father's day socks aren't going to look like that tomorrow when I get around talking to you about them. You see, I've had an attack from the inner knitter again, or I guess you could say that I suck at measuring gauge. See, I thought I was working in a gauge of 8.5 sts per inch. Um, yeah, no, it's 7.5 sts per inch... I didn't really stop to ask if it looked too big until today. Yay. Beats waiting until the week before. But that does mean that I'll have less stitches to worry about. Then again, I'm gonna have to rework my math on how much I should work a day so that I can finish somewhat on time. So, yay me. I think some of what got me to look at it like that was that I seemed to be running out of yarn faster than I thought I should be. So, yeah, gotta rip all that and start over. I guess things could be worse, but having a deadline and all makes starting over kinda a bummer.

Bright Blessings!

So, About Mom

This is one of the slippers that I made her for Christmas. My main problem with these (and I likely would have corrected if I hadn't been running short on time) is that the way I made them, the back is just a straight seem from the top to the heel. That leaves some wasted fabric just under the heel as it's generally a little more rounded. So, when I started this new pair, I put on one of my mom's slippers (I'm the model here, lucky mom and I have similarish sized feet) and pinched off the excess fabric at the bottom and counted the number of stitches I was holding on one side. (Okay, so I was also working out some gauge and needle size issues too. Apparently I've either tightened up or the yarn I picked out this time is fatter than the yarn I used last time.) So what I did was I subtracted those stitches that were just kinda useless from the original cast on and then slowly added them back a bit at a time, as you can see below, the heels of the two slippers look pretty different. Unfortunately, until I can get a helper or get to the point where I work in the round for the toe, I don't think I can get it to sit nicely on my foot for a photo. (And, yes, I don't need to use three needles yet, but it pleases me to do it that way.)

There was one thing my mom's mentioned that she'd like changed about the slippers. Cushion/support. My thoughts are that since I tend to by extra yarn just in case I might run out (which was a good thing because I needed a little extra on the last pair that I would use the gobs I have left to knit another sole and sew it on the bottom. Mom thought that it would also be wise to add something like a shoe insert for extra cushion/support whatever. Not to mention I still need to get the little suede gripper things. Or I could try some other way to prevent Mom from slipping and sliding around the house. (Though it might be fun to watch her slide all over the place...)

Bright Blessings!

Well

Dad's sock

I've been silent. That's mainly because I haven't been knitting all that much. Maybe a row here and there as I'm waiting to clock in at work, but nothing of great progress. Partly because most of my knitting  is put away when I'm not working on it because one idiot finds he can't resist eating it.

That's going to change for a bit here, I hope. I have two knitted gift deadlines looming. My Dad's birthday in the first week of May, and Mother's day the following Sunday. Not to mention that I'll likely make another pair of socks for my dad on Father's day too.

So, yeah, Dad's getting more socks. It was either that or buy him gravel for his fish tank. Mom is getting another pair of slippers. She said something after Christmas that she might need another pair, as I had commented she was wearing them all the time. There are also several improvements both she and I would like to add to them. I'l do a post detailing that later as I'm trying to keep these as much of a surprise as possible. It's a little difficult when I'm currently living back with them. We'll see how well I do.

Bright Blessings!

Hey, Look! Something New!

Progress on the Rainbow Carp top continues apace. (No, I'm a dirty rotten lair. I'm pretty sure I haven't touched the thing since I took a picture of it for yesterday's post.) But honestly, I'm running out of things to talk about with it. (See also, dirty rotten liar.) So instead of painfully pulling teeth about something to say about something that really isn't giving me all that much trouble right now I figured I'd tell you about a different project. This is the sock I referenced when I was mentioning that I could have done something completely wrong on the top yesterday with the underarms because I can be a bit slow sometimes. (The bit that mystified me? A standard abbreviation for marker, and M1 marked as just M on the chart, and switching from reading charts and written instructions in quick session.)

What you see is the sole of the sock an just barely the start of the toe shaping. As I think I said, I found the pattern for this in one of the older issues of Interweave Knits (okay, I did my due diligence and found the issue in Ravelry. I could remember the cover but not when it appeared.) that I have. Granted, I have to fudge with the pattern every so often. I have small but wide feet, it seems. (I blame my mom, we have about the same foot measurements, though we wear different shoe sizes. Yeah, I've given up on trying to figure that one out.) To accommodate my "weird" feet, I cast on as for the smallest size, then followed the instructions, with some fudging of the numbers, for the middle size. So, I'm basically following the instructions except when it comes to telling me specific numbers, then I math and fudge it. I may futz around with the heel and toe pieces and see how big they are and then figure out the rest of the numbers on my own. But I do find it an interesting way to make a sock. Maybe not the way I'll always make them, but certainly a way to break up the monotony of knitting socks. I sometimes tire of seeing the strips lining up the way that they always way do. This doesn't completely stop that, but it does shake things up a bit.

Bright Blessings!

Progress

Well, I've been getting work done. You can see the purple folded bit? That's the underarm bit that I was working on last time. So I made some progress. I'm still not quiet sure that I got it right. But I'm going to go with what I've done, because I'm no sure how else one would do it.

Then again I've been working on a new sock style that was in one of my Interweave Knits magazine from a while back, and it took me reading one line of instructions several times before I understood what it was trying to tell me. So, it could just be that I'm being slow. Not out of the realm of possibility.

I want to complain about the weather, but I'm not sure how far I'd get since I think it's too warm for this time of year.

Bright Blessings!

I have been knitting

I swear I have, but probably not as much as I'd like for blogging. Mainly it's just laziness. I'm more playing games and most of the games I own and have access to at this point don't have very much down time. That and it's easier to set aside a controller and knit instead of taking my hands off the keyboard to knit. Distance and all that stuff. I've been trying to watch more videos and such, but there's so much I need to do, and things I want to do. So at times knitting takes a back seat to everything else. Life is happening and I'll probably have less time to work on all the irons I have in the fire. There's this blog, typing up my knitting patterns and set up a way to be able to sell them, and possibly getting into doing let's plays on YouTube (which at some point might lead to something, who knows). But that's not why you come here.

So this is the rainbow carp top that I've been working on since forever ago, it seems. I'm finally to the first arm hole whatchamacallit. Yeah, sure it looks like it lays nice with all the rest of the piece, but it's only attached on one side. I wanted to have it done and started on the next one. That may or may not show how I think the whole thing kinda goes together. Partly because my head can't make sense of what the words are saying, but I think I get what the picture is telling me. So I should be able to get it done. I still need to figure out where I'm gonna get the other size needles I need to do the sleeve caps. But that's still a good ways away, so I'm not too worried about it yet.

Bright Blessings!

I'm horrible at this

And I do kinda have an excuse for lately, moving settling into a new place, in theory learning new skills, and just a whole bunch of other things that shake up one's life and may or may not be conducive to blogging. Yet, I'm always thinking of starting up again. I don't know quite what convinced me to come back, to write anew, and even now the misplacement of a recently started project threatens to derail the whole thing again. That is going to bug me. I started it just last night before I went to bed and now I can't find it.

Seriously, it's no where on the bed or nightstand. (Yes, I keep knitting on my bed at night. No, I don't try to sleep and knit.) It's not stuffed between the bed and wall, bed and nightstand, or nightstand and the wall. It's not on the floor under or around the bed. I've even looked in the pillow cases to see if I some how stuffed it in there while I was sleeping.

Okay, in all honestly, I've been typing madly between trying to find that dang knitting. It appears I shoved it between the comforter and the blanket. Don't ask me, I thought I put it up by the pillows. And then my camera's dead. Probably not surprising given that I don't remember when the last time I turned it on was. I'll get pictures at some point, and possibly get some of the Christmas knitting, which I actually finished on time.

So, now I'm curious, do you leave knitting on your bed? Why or why not?