Wendy Knits

It’s all about the socks!

Because I finished my lovely Lang Jawoll socks, the wool for which was given to me by Sabine as part of my birthday month. Thanks Sabine! You can see them on the Mediterranean Sock page. (Because the colors do look like the Mediterranean Sea!) I really loved the Jawoll sock yarn — very soft and nice to knit and I love the way the colors pooled. A true pleasure to knit and I highly recommend it.

Thank you again, Sabine!

And I’ve got a new sock-in-progress, being knitted from the sock yarn given to me by Lindsey-Brooke. The yarn is Dancing Feet, from Joslyn’s Fiber Farm. If you’ve never experienced this wool, buy some. Do yourself a favor! It’s not only drop-dead gorgeous, but it feels wonderful. Heck, I may never wear the socks, I might frame ‘em. The colorway I have is “treebark.”

I notice on their website that they are on vacation until February 10. Not too long to wait for orgasmic sock yarn, eh?

This is thinner than Regia and Opal — I’m knitting it at about 9.5 st/inch. So these socks will take longer to knit. But the wool feels so good, who cares?

Oh, Izzy was a big help photographing this.

More Sock News

I was very pleased and flattered to get email from Matt of Crowing Ram the other day. He has a sock group and wants to use my toe-up sock pattern and my toe-up article from the last issue of Knitty. Cool!

Sock Yarn Stash Enhancement!

Yeah, believe it or not, I bought more sock yarn. This is sport weight, bought to make socks for my dad.

The one on the left is Silja and the color number is 329. I bought it online at The Knitter. The one on the right is Regia 6 in a jacquard pattern — color number 5180. I bought it on eBay.

Three skeins of each cuz my dad has big feet.

Sock Bind-off Questions

In the past couple of days I’ve gotten the same question from two different people. What’s a good bind-off for toe-up socks that’s stretchy enough?

My response:

There’s a couple of things you can do for cast-offs. Here’s a page that has two good ones.

I sometimes use the Elizabeth Zimmerman sewn cast off documented there and have found it to work very well.

Another thing I do when I’m knitting socks with a plain stockinette leg: When I get to the point where I’m ready to do the top ribbing, I increase several stitches evenly around the leg — if I’m working on 64 stitches, I’ll increase to 72, then do knit 3 purl 3 ribbing and cast off loosely.

First of all, look at this adorable button that Marit made and displayed on her blog:

Isn’t that cute? Of course I love it! Thanks Marit!

And I noticed that Teresa, bless her heart, displayed it in her blog yesterday.

More on Conspiracy

Okay you guys. I finally read through all the messages you have sent back and forth about my birthday conspiracy. Wow, what fun that was! Some made me laugh, some made me (almost) cry and some made me go hmmmmmmm. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me to be suspicious when Ian was gleaning information about what knitting periodicals I subscribe to and stuff like that.

So once again, thank you all. I am amazed that you all would go through all this just for little ol’ me. And I am mighty impressed by Kate’s sneakiness and powers of organization. Kate, if you ever get sick of knitting I know I could get you a job with the U.S. government if you ever wanna relocate to DC and become a U.S. citizen.

And of course, if it wasn’t for Amy, none of this would have happened in the first place. So thank you Amy, not only for this, but for giving me a creative outlet in Knitty.

And Caroline, I printed out the database per your instructions — thanks!

It’s hard to know when I figured out what was going on . . . early on someone made reference to “Wendymonth” which made me remember the exchange on Amy’s blog. So I guessed that the whole thing started in Toronto . . . and I was right.

Once again, thank you all. I love you guys. Sniff, sniff.

I’m an Ore-Goner

I’m working on the little trees on the Oregon cardi. I love this. Fair isle is so totally addictive, dude! For the trees you change the foreground color every two or three rows, which keeps things very interesting.

And here, in response to requests, a photo of the wrong side.

To Float or To Weave?

That is the question. I used to weave. But no longer. Now I float, always. Even for long stretches, like ten stitches. As long as I make sure I’ve got my stitches spread out well on the needle while I knit, I have no problem with tension. I find that weaving sometimes shows on the right side. At least it does when I do it. When working with shetland wool, floats adhere to the back side of the work with no problem, so you don’t have a bunch of messy loops like you might think.

What do you all think? Are you floaters or weavers?

Sock Doldrums

Yep, I’m still knitting socks! I’m coming down the home stretch of a pair I’m making from the Lang Jawoll that Sabine sent me. It’s taking a little longer than usual. I only knit on my socks during lunchtime at work and on the train. Lately I’ve been having more problems than usual with motion sickness on the train (blurk!) and therefore am getting less knitting done. (Probably more than you wanted to know, eh?) Sigh. So the socks are progressing more slowly.

Virgin Sweater

Thanks for all your kind comments about said sweater! I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out, myself.

Izzy Sez Meow

And she’s very flattered by all your comments about her photo layout, frolicking with her mouse. But the truth is, she’s a tad embarrassed that you all saw her behaving in such an undignified manner. Here she is being proper.

Why, Izzy is, of course!

Mail Call!

A surprise in the mail! There was a huge mailing tube waiting for me when I got home yesterday, from Alaska. I couldn’t imagine what it was . . .

Inside was a gift from Lori — a couple of large calendars and beautiful prints created by her artist husband, Richard Schanche. I didn’t post photos of them because I believe photographing copyrighted material is a no-no, but here’s a link to a site where you can view his beautiful work.

Lori, I misplaced your email address so I hope you’re reading this — thank you so much!

Oregon

Not a whole lot of progress on the Oregon cardi as I was suffering with a migraine all day yesterday, but here’s an update photo.

Fortunately the headache is subsiding. We’ll see what the commute does to me. . .

Have a great weekend everyone!