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).

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!

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 wove up the rest of the yarn from “I Want Candy” into a longer, thicker, and all together better scarf. It is much more even, and about 5.5 feet, so long enough.

“Candyland”

“Jellybean” Woven from a colorway of the same name of Lion Brand Magic Stripes

This scarf is almost 9 feet long.  When I warped it, I just eyed it, so that is why it is so long.  While weaving, I was all “Why is this scarf taking so long?“  When I finally unwound it, I realized that it was insanely long.  Like almost Doctor Who length *geek reference*.

My next plan is to weave something for my wall, which is very boring (but purple!)