Twisted Fibers

Just a stockinette sock.  No cables, color changes, or stitch patterns.  I have not done a plain sock in ages.  It’s always something interesting.  But I decided that a break would be nice.  I mean, look how far I’ve come in the past 3 days!

Socks just fly off the needles when it is just knit knit knit!

My next sock, however, will be colorwork.  Something I have never done on a sock (cause stripes don’t count).

My second cabled pattern finished!  I actually finished the first sock almost four months ago…but got really distracted by my Seaweed Gloves.  I have these favorite needles (Addi’s — they’re amazing) and like to do socks and gloves on them.  So I quick finished up the first sock so I could move on to my gloves.

But I got the second finished over spring break.  Ah, a week of knitting.  That trip to Six Flags Magic Mountain cut a day out of my knitting, but the coasters were so fun that I’ll let it pass. ;]  Seriously, though, Six Flags is hardcore.  I hadn’t been there for about 6 years, and since then they’ve added a ton of crazy roller coasters.  I overdid it and lost my $12.07 fries and shake (lunch).

Ok, ok, back to the topic!  here are my socks, in all their purple glory.

Diamonds Within Pattern on Ravelry (it’s a free download!)

Plans for the next week:

Knit

Knit

Knit

Why, you ask?  It’s Spring Break, of course!  Whereas many of my fellow students will be out partying, I will be sitting and knitting.  After a quarter of studying and tests, it is a nice break to just go zen and knit a sock.  Plus, this sock in particular has been giving me guilt-making stares for awhile now.  You see, I finished the first sock a couple months ago.  But I haven’t been able to get to the second one.  And it is an original pattern, too.  Shame on me!  Hopefully the situation shall be remedied, and the sock shall gain a mate.

(You see what academic stressors do to people?  I’m feeling guilty because I haven’t knit the second sock and the first one is slowly shaking its metaphorical head at me.)

Must sleep, then knit!

Behold, a pair of cabled gloves that I designed!  I am so tickled with myself for finally finishing them.  Two months was how long it took to get these from paper to PDF.  I was able to even post the pattern on Ravelry (click!).  I feel that the pictures do not show the gloves to the best of their ability.  The sun likes to drain out the color and the flash just distorts it.

So, for your viewing pleasure, here they are in front of pretty flowers!

And, look, sky!  Buildings, too, since it is really difficult to take a picture of your hand against the sky.  Seriously, have you ever tried it?

Now, I am taking a little break from knitting.  That means that I will not be knitting every idle moment.  Some idle moments (i.e in front of the tv box) are best left brainless.  No worries, spring break is 2 days away.  I already have a ton of projects lined up to do then.

Gloves, I thought.  I should make gloves.  I had never made gloves before, but that didn’t matter.  How hard could it be?  I browsed through patterns to find the perfect pair.  Not too simple — that would be boring.  But not so fiddly that they would be WIPs until the end of time.

Enter Miss Sophie’s Hands.  They had cables, sure.  But it wouldn’t take too long.  I bought the pattern and excitedly set out to start knitting them.  It was going well, until I hit the bobbles.  A whole row of bobbles.  Ever done that before?  It took forever, which probably was aided by the fact that I was watching random whatever’s-on TV.  Phew, I thought, done with that!

Then, the charts began.

I usually get tired of charts, but this kept me amused because I could anticipate the pattern.  That’s what I thought, anyway, until I realized I had messed up about two inches back — an eternity in Chart Land — and had to rip it out.  All while reknitting what had been frogged I was depressed by how I failed at life.  It was laid out in front of me, but I could not follow a simple chart!  No, I had to go and “figure it out”, thus dooming my future.

This little setback soon was behind me, and I knit like a demon until I finished the first glove.  Ecstatic at my accomplishment, I spent more time than I’d like to admit admiring my now-gloved hand.

I have suffered from Second Sock Syndrome many times before, but this was my first case of Second Glove Syndrome.  Instead of starting the next glove right away, I took a “break”.  How glorious it was!  But, alas, I had a deadline.  A trip to a climate colder than SoCal warranted gloves.  Though it took a little longer, I did manage to finish the pair!

Tonight I took them on a test run to go walk the dogs and they performed nicely.  My fingers stayed toasty warm!