Trash, Meet Garbage

I washed it. The yarn softened and feels quite nice now.

But it shrunk -- yes, shrunk, dammit, as if I needed more problems with stubborn misbehaving sock yarn, shrunk by more than a half-inch in foot length -- and what was a very tight fit at the ankle now won't go onto my foot at all.

Done. (insert foul language of choice here)

Cross this one off the list. Do we need to eulogize it? Jaywalker, we hardly knit ye. Full many a jaywalker was born to blush unseen and waste its sockiness on the garbage pail. Or something like that.*

That's two projects off my UFOctober list. Three and four will follow within mere days after I can finally reveal the two secret knitting projects. Yay! Then that leaves ... er... have to go check, because I've already forgotten what was on my UFOctober list. (If any of you see my brain, please send it back to my skull with a stern warning to stop straying from home.)

* My inner English dork compels me to confess that this is a corruption of a line from a Thomas Gray poem, Elegy in a Country Churchyard. The actual line is, "Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, and waste its sweetness on the desert air." Gray deserves better than to be abused by the likes of me and my socks.

Eleven!

Eleven socks.
Four pairs plus three single socks.
Sixty-one days.
Three socks currently OTN.
If I finish one more sock in the next month, I will have made my SOS07 goal.

This is the infamous jaywalker which I've been pouting over for the last few weeks. I love the way the pattern looks on the leg. I mean, really really love it. Every mating of yarn and pattern should be this perfect, this synergetic.

And as much as I love that, I hate everything else about this sock. I hate the weird way the ribbing puckers where it joins the leg. I hate the rough texture of this yarn. I hate the way the sock fits -- tight in some places and baggy in others. Getting the sock on my foot was a challenge. Once it was on, my skin started burning from the horrid rough wool, and I couldn't get it off fast enough.

So. My plan at this point is to wash this sock and see if the wool improves. If it does, I'll knit the second sock to match, weird fit and all. If the yarn continues to resemble steel wool, then this will be my first official failed sock. I even wear the first pair I ever made -- they're different sizes and full of holes, but they're comfy and I like them. And that ought to tell you how low I set the bar for my socks, and how truly uncomfortable this jaywalker is.

Fulmar

I've been trapped at my desk the last two days, dealing with a seemingly unending series of crises. At least that provided the means to set up the group loop for the Fulmar KAL. Invitations went out this afternoon. If you expected an invitation and didn't get one, please let me know. The mailer daemon bounced back a couple, and one of them might be yours.

I was surprised -- thrilled, really -- at the positive response to the Fulmar KAL. I hoped to get maybe a half dozen knitters involved. This is a challenging knit, after all, and not everyone would want to tackle it. From the small pool of knitters interested in knitting Fulmar, you know some won't have the time or will have other reasons for not joining in. All of which makes perfect sense, and that's why I was hoping for a half-dozen knitters.

I sent out 23 invitations today. :) And the list is still growing. I just can't tell you how thrilling that is to me!

Plus ... it's not socks. I'm really starting to lose my sock momentum here. So the thought of Fulmar is a shot of energy right when I need it most, at the end of a sock KAL that's starting to sputter.

The Hole Truth

I don't know wtf I did this time. I was blissfully knitting along, mostly knitting by feel that second Mountain Colors flathead cherry sock while I watched Clinton and Stacy shred the ego of yet another unsuspecting fashion victim. There's a WNTW marathon today and I'm in a deeply snarky mood. You know what that means? Voila! Instant multitasking! I can slack off for the afternoon in two different ways at once!

Am I good or what.




















Yep. Or what. Because today, knitting by touch equals a big honkin hole in my sock leg. Do you see that? Front and center? That dark loop sticking out is a dropped stitch. Just above it is a nice large hole.

Here's a little mystery. I still have the right number of stitches on the needles. So not only did I manage to drop a stitch, but I also managed to somewhere, somehow, some time add a stitch.

My guess is that I slid the needle between stitches instead of into the stitch. I created a yarn over instead of a stitch, and then dropped the old, still live stitch.
And for an added bonus, I also managed to knit an inch past the dropped stitch before noticing it. Am I good or what? Or what.

Clearly I need to pay more attention to my knitting and less to Clinton and Stacy. Or maybe the knitting goddess is punishing me for knitting when I should be working. Or maybe it was some subliminal freudian thing, me putting a hole in my knitting while Stacy ripped some poor chanteuse for wearing an argyle sweater with holes in it. I felt bad for that little jazz diva. I mean, we all have that beloved comfy sweater we hold onto past its prime, right?

















And sometimes holes in the knitting are a good thing. The turquoise Dale Baby Ull on the right is a zigzaggy lace rib from Charlene Schurch. Very easy pattern. Every other round is regular k2, p2 resting round. Then on alternating pattern rounds, you either yo-k2tog or you ssk-yo on the knit columns, and purl the purls as usual. I've been playing with this pattern as I knit it, alternating the way I wrap the yarn, knitting and purling through the back loops, and basically just messing with it to see what kind of effects I can create. The only difference I see so far is in the size of the holes from the yarn overs. The pattern itself remains intact. That makes sense, but I still have this urge to mess with this as I'm knitting it.

The Baby Ull is knitting into super squooshy, super sproingy fabric, making it the exact opposite of the jaywalker. I turned the heel on the jaywalker and have knit about half an inch of the gusset. For now, I'm sticking to the chevron pattern, but that won't last much longer. The fabric is wickedly inflexible and a regular stockinette would be so much more comfortable on the feet. So I'm thinking I will decrease partway through the gussets in pattern and then switch to regular stockinette when the stitch count seems low enough to make the right size foot tube.

That's the sock report.

In other news, I must sent out a hearty Oh Crap! My Bad! to my SnB crew. I forgot about our alternate meeting last night. And next week I will be in Dallas for that conference, so it will be two weeks before I get to ogle all of your knitting again. ...pout... But hey, maybe by then there will be a finished snake cozy to admire, eh Missus A?

Jaywalking

I'm knitting the heel flap of the first jaywalker. Not sure what I think of the pattern or the result. On the one hand, the chevron looks cool and it's a fun and easy knit. On the other hand, the resulting fabric has some properties that might not make for the most comfy sock. It's dense, tight, and not very flexible. The ribbing and the chevron don't seem to coexist peacefully. And I'm afraid the sock may be too large.

But I'm going to keep knitting. I'm debating whether to stay in pattern for the whole foot, or knit the gussets down to a smaller number of total stitches in a more flexible stockinette fabric. Anyone have any thoughts to share on that? I'm about the last knitter on the planet to knit jaywalkers, so I imagine there's a wealth of insight out there regarding this pattern.














I also cast on these boot socks in Dale Baby Ull. Though it's barely apparent, there will be a simple pattern on these. My initial thought was to do a cable of some sort, but after swatching the yarn, I decided on one of the 4-stitch patterns from the Charlene Schurch book. These ought to be quick and fun.

The only other thing going on right now is the mad scramble leading up to RWA's annual conference. I'm trying to focus on things like clearing off my desk rather than on things like which yarn to pack. I wound off a couple of skeins over the weekend so I have ready yarn to choose from. But with all the real work I need to accomplish this week, worrying about yarn just can't be high on the to-do list. (We'll see how long that resolve sticks.)