Another pair!!!

I FINALLY finished my second pair of socks--and let me tell you--it was not an easy road with these babies. I commenced knitting them almost immediately after I finished my first pair. That was roughly April of last year, mind you. The first sock went off without a hitch. Then I stared the NYC Fellows program. Let me tell you--driving to work everyday seriously cuts into your knitting time. I didn't start to turn the heel until Brad and I went to visit my uncles in Florida at the very end of last summer. And then, in the airport on our way back to NYC, disaster struck. I screwed up god-only-knows-what, and I frogged the whole heel. Then I knit it again. AND I FROGGED IT AGAIN. Do you see a developing pattern here? By the time we got back to NYC, I gave up. There was no point. I started teaching in another week and that--let me tell you--has consumed my life for the past 4 months! Oh I've picked them up, knit a row or two, and then went right back on my tirade of how my students can't seem to construct proper sentences, lesson planning, paper-grading mania of the last semester. Over Christmas break, the socks and I recommitted. I was told that I had been neglecting my yarn and that the yarn fairies were determined to play tricks with me until I paid them their homage, finished the socks, and started knitting like I used to--that is--constantly. I will humbily oblige, oh yarn fairies. I never want to invoke your wrath again.



Sawyer appreciates the socks!


And just so you know, I hate this colorway and will never knit it again. Though my husband picked it out and the socks are for him, I deserve a medal for knitting day-glow socks.

Busy and Sick

I've been sort of out of it the past few days with this weird spring-time cold (love the heavy-head feeling and general exhaustion--just makes waking up such a pleasure). Between my cold and work--which is flat-out insane (so insane that I've been taking crap home with me every single night because I can't bear to be in the office late and can just work from home when necessary)--I haven't been blogging or knitting. The second sock is in progress, and though the gauge is slightly different from the first sock, I think it'll be fine and Hubby will still be happy with his first pair of hand-knit socks. I'm not at all happy about the difference in the patterning of the sock though--the first one has this big ole spiral thing going on while the second is looking very stripey. I wish they were both stripey, but there really isn't anything I can do about changing that, so it is what it is.

I finished my very first felted project and it looks bloody awesome if I do say so myself. I'll post pics of it after I get confirmation that the recipent has received said present.

That's the news for now. Not very exciting, but I never claimed to be an exciting person.

One down...

I finished one sock (I'll post pics tonight or tomorrow), and I am going to attempt to get the same gauge as the first without knitting into the back of all my stitches by going down a needle size or two. I knit the first sock on 3.25's (#3), so hopefully if I go down to 2.5 or 2.0 it'll work, otherwise I'll have to knit a whole new pair and the one I already have will become a Christmas stocking for the kitties.
On the bright side, my new koigu should get here today.

I met the Knitting Yoda...

And boy-o-boy did I get spanked. Holy crap. I felt like Luke Skywalker after Yoda tells him "Do or do not, there is no try." Man. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Okay, so what the hell happened? Well since I've been on a sock craze for the past couple of weeks, all I can think about is buying more sock yarn. Saturday Brad and I had a gazillion things to do--including going to the dentist (yet again--I don't think I'll ever be finished. I'm tempted to tell him to just rip everything out and give me implants, but I know I'd regret that) and running out to the island to go to Trader Joe's to get good cat food (since this whole pet food recall, I'm even more grateful that Brad and I only feed our kitties the Trader Joe's Holistic Cat Food). So since I know we have a ton of errands to run (including ending up at Mommy-in-Law's house), I figured that since we'd be out there anyway, it was a good day to stop by Knitwits in Bayside. I'd heard good things about it on a couple of people's blogs I've been lurking on, and specifically remember it being mentioned as as stop on one of the yarn crawls coming from Long Island and Queens for the Harlot's Represent event a couple weeks ago (I can't believe it's been that long) so I figured it was worth a stop.

So I get to Knitwits' with Hubby, we ooohh and aaaahh over the yarn, I gleefully discover that they have steel DPN's (I think I like those better--I feel like the points of my bamboo ones aren't consistently pointy if that makes any sense), and hand over my purchases to Joan, the Knitting Yoda. I ask her if the yarn I'm purchasing two skeins of will be enough to make a pair of socks. She says, "It depends on your pattern." So of course I whip out my sock of which I am so proud which was near completion and tell her that I'm either going to do this pattern again or change it slightly because this is my first pair of socks.

And then she tells me I'm twisting all my stitches. Holy f*$!ing F*$!-nuts. All this time, I've been knitting incorrectly--or as she told me, not wrong, just making my life much more complicated. She asked how I learned and I told her out of a book (which she then pooh-poohed because she said she "didn't think much of it" and the author) and she then showed me how to not knit into the back of the stitches. I sat there on my knees knitting at her feet like a good little padawan-learner while she ruled over three other knitters telling one, "This is wrong; rip it out"; another "Undo the stupid stitches--why did you do that?"; another "I don't know what you did, but you're going to have to do it again." It was tough love. The knitters submitted to her critiques determined to please her--I was equally determined. While all this was going on, Brad stood in the corner trying not to laugh at me too much--he knows how I hate not being perfect at things, and the other knitters heckled him: "It's a good thing she already has a ring or we'd tell her to keep the socks for herself!" "Don't you laugh, or you'll never get anything hand-knit again!"

After I had successfully knitted and purled several rows correctly, she allowed me to purchase my needles, but wouldn't sell me more yarn because--get this--she wants me to come back and show her my progress to make sure that I'm not totally screwing up my socks. She let me leave with these final words--"You're a good knitter, but you've got to perfect your technique. There's no point in knitting if you're going to knit incorrectly." How do you argue with that? You don't. I'm a perfectionist, so I totally agree.

So what the hell am I going to do about the socks? Well, after Hubby patiently let me have a minor nervous breakdown in the car, (because of course I had to find this out just as I'm getting to the damned toe of the sock) I've decided to finish the sock in question--using the correct stitches of course--and go back to School Products, get another skein, and then really make the damned socks. That settled, he lead me to DSW for some shoe therapy.

In spite of being extremely humbled from this whole experience, I'm actually glad that it happened. It totally sucks that I'm going to have to make two more socks instead of just one more sock, but overall, it's much better that I know how to do things the correct way because it'll make me a better knitter. And I have to be honest--the fact that she told me I was a good knitter has carried me through all of this--not to mention Brad giving me knitting pep talks all along the way (he's such a good hubby--I don't know who else would put up with my knitting nervous breakdowns).

The knitting Yoda cut me down to size, and in the long run, I needed it.

May the force be with you (and your needles).

Sock Progress and Yarn Porn

So here's the progress of the sock--I think I'll actually be able to finish it by the end of this weekend (I hope, I hope, I hope). Now if I can only be assured that the second sock will go as quickly (probably more so since I have more of a clue this time around)...



The sock is actually a little longer already. This was before I did another 15 or so rounds last night.

Hubby was a victim of yarn porn yesterday. I sent him a link to the koigu at Purl and after much e-mailing back and forth, he decided to get me some yarn so I could make a pair of socks for myself (something for me! Oh my!). I think that it is really cute and sweet that he gets excited on my behalf about yarn--when we went on our mini yarn crawl last weekend, he was amazed at all the textures and colors. Now I send him pictures and he buys me yarn. How awesome is that? Riding the subway into Manhattan this morning, he asked me not to send him any more yarn porn because he'd have to buy more. Yeah, like that's going to happen ;-)

My new Koigu:

My first heel turn

Thanks to the comments I got on my blog and all the responses on the NYC Sn'B group, I got home last night--after two unsuccessful attempts on the subway which proceeded in lots of ripping, followed by storming into the house and complaining to my husband that I must be the stupidest person on the planet (with lots of four-letter words thrown in)--I went into my office, looked at all the comments and e-mails again, pulled up KnittingHelp.com, and I freaking did it! I did it!!! I swear, I felt like the smartest person in the world. My husband definitely looked at me crooked after my "how ya like me now" happy dance followed by much air punching and general giddyness. I owe it all to the awesomeness of the knitters who helped me out during my knitting crisis. Thanks everyone!!
Check out my wonderful, beautiful, not-perfect-but-darn-close-enough sock:

This is what I started with...


Check out my heel!!!

Sock Dilemma

I'm sort of freaking out about my socks for several reasons--first and formost is I really, really don't want to screw these up and I'm terrified that I'm going to. I know, I know--no one has ever been killed over knitting (that we know of at least), but still. In the grand scheme of my stuff, this is pretty big. I need to figure these socks out!!! Not to mention that I only brought the socks along with me today and if I don't figure out what to do about them, I'm going to have to bust a mission to Knitty City before I head home to buy some new yarn (and needles, since I don't have any except the dpn's I'm working on) so I have something to knit on my way home--and since it's an hour commute, I need a knit fix. Help!!

Here's the deal--I'm using a pattern I got from Spunmag.com and honestly, all was going well until I started scratching my head about turning the heel. I've already done this part:

This portion is worked flat in plain stocking stitch.

Knit first 27 stitches. Put remaining 33 stitches onto a holder.

>> Starting with a purl row, work 21 rows of stocking stitch,
slipping the first stitch of every row. The right side is facing for
next row

This is where I get confused:
>>RS: Knit 18 stitches, SKP, turn

If I have 27 stitches on the needle, and the pattern calles for me
to knit 18, SKP, and turn, what happens to the rest of the stitches
on the needle? Do you think I'm supposed to keep going w/ knitting
after the SKP?

This is the next step:
>>WS: Slip 1, purl 9 stitches, p2tog, turn
Same thing here--do I continue on purling after the p2tog? and then
turn? If I'm supposed to end up with 11 stitches on the needle from
decreasing, I think this is what is supposed to happen, but I'm not
sure.

Here's the rest of this part of the pattern:
>>RS: Slip 1, knit 9 stitches, SKP, turn
>>Repeat last two rows until all stitches have been worked. Ensure
right side is facing for next row. 11 stitches remain on the needle.

If anyone wants to see the full pattern, it's available here:
http://spunmag.com/article/060421socks

In lighter, non-obsessing knitting related stuff, how cute does Sawyer and Helena look all smushed into one basket??

Sock it to me!

In preparation of the Yarn Harlot's decent upon the City (as us native NYers call it), I decided it was time to get my butt in gear and make my own pair of traveling socks since everyone else at the Represent event this Thursday is going to have traveling socks. It means absolutely nothing that I taught myself to knit only this past October--and that it took until just before Christmas for me to produce a scarf (in fun fur, thank you very much--I gave it to my mom). The Harlot was coming, so I busted out that beautiful Koigu I made the smallest swatch in the world with and got busy.

I searched high and low and finally found a pattern that doesn't look like it'll make me pull out what little is left of my eyebrows, and I attempted my very first dpn cast on. So far so good. Counted the right number, moved 40 of the 60 stitches to the two other dpn's, started the ribbing (it calls for K3, P1* for 6 inches which is a godsend since I dislike K1, P1 ribbing, though if I did that I could at least do it "until I was sick of it" a la Zimmerman--I'm not sure which is the lesser evil to tell you the truth) and since I totally forgot that my math skills are so horrid that even counting is a challenge, I had to frog it three times before I got it right. Except I didn't really get it right so I wound up frogging it again this morning and then casting on whilst riding the subway on my way to work. I got some funny looks let me tell you. It probably didn't help that I was talking to myself. And counting outloud. And muttering curses every so often, because damnit, I had no idea that knitting on dpn's was going to be this complicated. It's seriously tricky--not that I don't assume that other knitters who might be reading this are chuckling to themselves thinking, "Awww, how cute! A newbie's first time out on dpn's! I can remember back before I had my entire hand-knit sock wardrobe and was all awkward..." Well let me just say it loud and proud--ya gotta start somewhere. I'm pretty impressed that I was even capable of figuring out the pattern enough to get it started. So what, if all I have is 8 rows? I'm not counting! Well, okay, I am, but that's not the point. I'm just glad that I got it started without putting my eyes out.

Here's my beautiful Koigu and my first 8 rows on dpn's:

Knitting shish-ke-bab

So I've been knitting for around two months now--I've done swatches and scarves and I'm sort of over them. I wanted something new; I wanted a challenge. My mom-in-law gave me the book Knitting Help by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee...and I gotta tell you, she makes you believe you can do anything. So after hours of browsing patterns--both in my ever-growing knitting library and on the internet--I decided that I wanted to knit socks. Socks! The perfect knitted garment--offering almost every technique I wanted to learn: increases, decreases, ribbing, graphing, even cables if I wanted to.

I found the perfect (though tiny) yarn at School Products--the oldest yarn store in NYC and the tiniest needles I've ever worked on--a nifty new set of bamboo DPNs (3.00 mm)--and got to work on my swatch (only after finally unraveling the damned yarn; could someone please explain how to roll twisted skeins of yarn into balls without getting the whole thing all tangled? Please? It's killing me). I cast on. Thirty stitches and three rows later and I began to wonder--am I going to really be able to knit with these DPNs? It felt like I was knitting shish-ke-bab; the needles are so damned light. They really feel like those bamboo skewer thingys you use to make shish-ke-babs! I'm just not used to it. I'll plow through the swatch, but I think I have to look for heavier and more sturdy needles. Otherwise I think I might accidentally sit on one and and a) break them or b) puncture something.

My pretty, pretty yarn (I know you're jealous):