Twisted Fibers

Here it is!  When realizing that there was a severe lack of Dinosaur hats for adult-sized noggins, I decided to fill that void.

Click for the PDF

I am getting the urge to knit socks again.  This is mostly because I don’t have a mindless project on the needles right now.  I discovered that I only had some Knitpicks Bare sock yarn that would work.  So, because I don’t want white socks, I dyed it.

With my last pair of socks, I realized that striped is much more fun to knit than variegated.  So I wanted to dye my yarn to be self-striping.  I measured how long the stripes were in Felici and pushed two chairs into position to form a loop that size.  Let me tell you, winding 100grams of yarn takes a while.  It was a sort of Yarn Aerobics because I had to take four steps forward, then eight back for every loop.  After about twenty loops, I started to get a little too into it, I think…  I was listening to music, so it sort of became a strange dance.

I steamed the yarn in two plastic bags so that the colors would stay separate.  Plastic bags work really well for this.  They are hardier than plastic wrap.  The only reason I thought to use plastic bags was because we are out of plastic wrap, actually.

I wish it was summer!  Yarn dries so much quicker when I can put it outside in the 90 degree weather.  It’s currently hanging in my shower to dry because it is colder outside.

I decided to try socks again.  I had been drooling over the lovely colorways of Felici from Knit Picks.  So with another order, I bought two skeins of sock yarn in the colorway of ‘Alexandrite’.  They took me a little over 2.5 weeks to do, which was much quicker than the first pair.

I knit them using Stephanie Pearl-McPhee’s Sock Recipe.  My only problem was a mistake with the toes.  I didn’t decrease as much as called for, so I ended up grafting 32 stitches instead of 16.  This was when I was sick.  That’s my excuse. *nod*  I wore them for a day, and they worked out wonderfully!  My feet stayed nice and warm.

Now I’m wondering if I should try to knit some knee socks…

I wanted to knit something for my DBF, so after hours of looking, I found the perfect thing!  The pattern is Elephante (pattern) from Ravelry.  I have not really made toys before, except for the stray cupcake.  This had a lot of pieces to be knit, so it seemed to take forever.  I tried to do jogless stripes, but misread the instructions so ended up with not-so-jogless stripes.  Oops.  It looks good anyway, so I am happy.  DBF also liked it, which was nice.  For V-Day, he also knit me a toy.  It was a kitty.  I <3 dating a knitter!  He apprecatiates the time and energy that goes into knit projects.

Losing things is never fun.  But when those things are your first pair (I stress the word “pair”.  They were actually my third and fourth socks, but the first two weren’t a pair and one was freakishly large–even for my feet) of handknit socks?  It’s terrible.

I didn’t know that they were missing for a long time.  That’s because I knit them during the first few weeks of summer.  No one in their right mind would wear wool socks when it’s so hot that they might cause a heat stroke.  So I did what any self-respecting knitter would do–and threw them onto a pile of stuff.

About a month ago, I remembered these socks.  I also vaguely remembered which pile I threw them on.  But even after moving the pile around a few times in search of them, I still couldn’t find them.  I thought of them as sort of an offering to the Sock God.  Maybe, I thought, these lovingly handknit socks would stop His Mighty Sockiness from wanting more offerings from me.

There was a gift card on a pile next to The Pile, but it went missing just when I needed it.  So there I was, on my knees with my arm between the two, when I touched on something dusty.  Lo and behold, my sock returned to me.  Convinced that the other one would be nearby, I continued to search.  Soon after I was sitting, lovingly picking off dust bunnies that were large enough to eat a bunny.  My pair–the first, ever so special, pair–were reunited with me.

Now I sit wearing them, even though they’re still quite dusty.  I wasn’t able to find that gift card, but these are much better.  Never will I just throw them onto a pile.  Well–unless it’s summer.