Tag Archives: Joy of Sox

Autumny and Raindroppy!

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Today Davey played at the playground, and he told David that it looked very “autumny” outside.  It did cool off quite abit today, and we had rain this afternoon.  That is when he peered out the sliding glass door and commented that it looked very “raindroppy” outside.

He got a haircut today.  So did David.  Here he is modeling the wonderful job they did:

Ok not really.  He’s turning his head the other way to get away from the camera.  I did finally get a face shot.

The pink under his nose is an icing remnant.  He got a cupcake today with Daddy – part of the potty training initiative.

I’ve almost finished the heel flap of sock number 1.   I have settled in on the twining, and while it is tedious, it is not too bad.  For some reason, I am doing something now that results in my yarn not getting quite as twisted.  Not sure what I did, but it makes life easier.

So I should be starting the gusset tonight.  It may require more twining now that I think about it.  hmmm.  Better go check it out.

“Breckin – Bridge!”

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We are headed out exploring today.  Davey is feeling better.  He’s got a bad cold.  The doctor listened to him and looked at him and said he looked good.  We are just not used to hearing him a little  hoarse and with so much congestion!  We’ve got a humidifier going full force now.  It should help all of us.

Anyway, it’s a little over an hour to Breckinridge from here (or Breckin-bridge as Davey calls it).  It will be our first foray into the mountains since we moved here.  David and I went to Breckinridge several (lots of) years ago.  We rode some giant ski lift (David was petrified.  He doesn’t like man made heights.  Mountain heights don’t bother him.  Or driving along and hugging the edge of a gravel switchback road as I sat in the passenger seat and looked in horror at the bottomless drop-off beside me.)  Anyway, we also rode some alpine slide thing where we drove a small cart down some big tall track thing.  He still likes to mention how I backed up traffic for miles behind me.  Small children were yelling at me to “SPEED UP!”  To hear David tell it, I was quite a petrified cautious chicken.  He’d be quite correct I think.

So anyway, we’re going to take Davey out there.  I guess he’s probably not old enough yet to show Momma up on the slide.  Which leads me to another story.  The other day we found another park not too far from here.  There was this big slide which David and Davey loved.  I’d never seen a slide quite like it.  When I sat at the top and got ready to go down, I really had second thoughts.  I am a big chicken.  But as Davey had just flown down it 20 times, I didn’t have much choice.  So down I went.  It was fast!  But I have to try to keep up with the almost 3 year old!

This is a phone pic, so it’s not great.  It really is a neat slide.  You can go down on two different sides.

Jumping to another subject – I worked on my sock last night.  It’s fun.  It makes me think of spring.  Lots of different colors and patterns going on.

I finished the faux rib cuff, and now I am into the chart.  Before I went to bed I was working on the center of the flower.  It’s 2 colors, but  the second color is only used about once every 15 stitches, so I am so thankful to have learned my weave along behind technique.  I think it’s working great.  I just pick up that yarn about every 3 stitches and weave it in.  I need to thank the lady again from ravelry for sharing this technique.  It’s been invaluable.

You can kind of see what I mean here on this round.  Most of the stitches are kind of orangey red, but every 15 stitches or so you see a hot pink stitch.  That’s the center of the flower.

So, so far so good on this sock.  I am definitely a fair isle fan.

Happy Saturday!

Boyfriend Socks: Complete!

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Yay.  I finished these socks last night.

I wore them this morning for awhile.  Not because of cold temperatures.  I just wanted to test their fit.   Surprisingly, they are about the best fitting socks that I have made.  I am looking forward to colder weather so that I can wear them.

It was not easy negotiating with my photography assistant this morning.  (the little davey.)  He wanted no part of photographing my feet and his.  He was watching Mickey Mouse.  So I promoted him to Photography Director.  I quickly learned that the going rate for an almost 3 year old photography director is 1 dum dum lollipop.  After we negotiated the terms, everything went smoothly.

So today – I will get started on the the Breakfast socks.  There are some new things for me to learn with these socks.  Something called twining?  I think I do that in the heel.  Then a “faux rib”.   Going to be fun!

Boyfriend Sock #1: Complete!

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Last night I made the heel.  This afterthought heel is very cool.  It’s very easy and quick once you get the stitches picked up.  I started with this.  See this blue line of stitches is where I will put the heel in:

So then I started pulling out that blue waste yarn and picking up the live stitches left behind.  As usual, I thought this was going to be really difficult and that I would be dropping stitches left and right.  But it was easy.  I just worked my way across slowly.

I didn’t really need to post 2 pictures of this, but I just like this next picture:

Now I’ve picked up all the stitches and have arranged them onto 4 needles.

From here, it’s just knit for  5 rounds and then start decreasing just like a toe.  So easy!

Here’s the finished sock.  When I finish the second one, I will put them on for photos.  But this sock fits great.  I am so happy with the tension.  It slipped right on.

I was also pretty happy with how the inside of the sock looks.  Pretty darn neat and tidy!

There one thing bugging me about the first sock.  There is a seam running up the side where I changed colors of yarn after each round.  It looks ok, but it could be better.  Not all the stitches line up quite perfectly.  I think this will work better if I try to just carry my yarn up as much as I can.  I’d cut the yarn in places where I knew I was going to be carrying it up unused for quite awhile.  I think things may hold together better along the seam if I don’t cut so much this time.  All that yarn starts to drive me nuts though, and finally I just can’t help myself and I find myself just cutting strings to get them out of my way!

Whoa!  That’s enough about one sock!

Still hot.  We had big thunderstorms last night.  I don’t know if we had more than 85 drops of rain (as my dad likes to say), but I got to listen to lots of great thunder.  I guess when it’s this hot, the lightning really gets going.  I was driving down the interstate yesterday, and my car thermometer said 107 for awhile.  I was afraid that my tires were going to melt right into the highway.

Ok Davey just came flying down the hall:  “I tinkled! I tinkled!”  Time to go award a sticker!

Picot! Dancing!

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Time to picot.  I love the look of a picot cuff, but I don’t much like making it – or more I am just not too good at it.   I’ve got both Movie Socks just about to the point where I need to pick up a stitch from the cast on edge and knit it with the regular stitch all the way around so that it will go from looking like this:

To this:

Well kinda like that.  It will hopefully be folded over a little better and have a better defined picot edge.  Now I gotta figure out how best to line up my stitches.

Sure like this cotton yarn though.  Feels so nice to knit with in this horrid humid hot hellacious weather.

So far it’s fun having both socks going at the same time as well.  It will give me some good picot connection practice all at once.

Last night we danced.  Davey has some pretty impressive footwork.  Those little feet just move all over the place.  Then he starts wiggling his ears with his fingers and says that his ears are dancing!

And he danced with Daddy:

Happy to dance!

Rock-a-Bye Baby socks are complete!

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I finished the Rock-a-Bye socks last night!  I was so ready to get them done.  What a great pattern though.   Some of my favorite things about this sock:

I love the 4×4 heel flap.  Taking pictures of my own foot is always fun too.  I still can’t get David too interested in taking pictures of the different parts of the sock.  Heel flap?  Gusset?  What?

I love this diagonal design and how the pattern comes to an end at the toes:

And I like all the greens in the yarn.

My photography assistant was not really in the mood for photos today but he cooperated on the condition that he get to water the flowers.  When he came outside he said, “Mom, the flowers don’t look beautiful.  I will talk to them and they will tell me that they need a nice drinky.”   Unfortunately, once he had control of the hose he wanted to water everything but the flowers.  (although I managed to stay fairly dry.)

So now it is on to pattern #5 “Movie Socks”.  They involve bobbles and lace.  I bought a second set of size 0 needles, and I am going to have both socks going at the same time.  I am knitting with a Knit Picks Comfy Fingering Yarn in Lilac Mist.    We shall see how it goes.  I hope this yarn works out ok.  Someone else on ravelry used it for this pattern, and I talked to her about it.  She really liked how it worked up.  She also mentioned learning to knit backwards to knit the bobbles.  That sounds a little scary too.

Davey and I are heading out for a little picnic in a minute.  He just brought me my drinking cup so he is ready to go I think.  Saturday we cooked hotdogs at “Plan B”.  This is what we now call the place we grilled on the 4th when all the “Plan A” lake spots were taken.    “Mommy, are we going back to Plan B?”

Here he is thoroughly enjoying his plain hotdog bun.

Here we are –

It’s hard to get a straight on smiling shot these days – but then I guess that might be boring anyway!

“Mommy?  Are you done with your blog yet?”

A Cool Refreshin’ Drink of Water

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Davey and I have been outside this morning.  Poor David is outside too, but while Davey and I were watering flowers and taking pictures, David is weed eating and getting ready to mow.   We went outside to take some pictures of some washcloths I finished knitting yesterday.  Or they could be dishcloths or really whatever kind of cloths you wanted (except for maybe scrub the toilet cloths.)

I got the idea to do them with seed stitch.  (k1 p1 k1 p1 k1 p1 over and over.) I didn’t like knitting seed stitch with loose cotton on a size 10 needle much, but I do like how they turned out.  Pretty simple, but I liked the simpleness of it.  (Simpleness seemed more right than simplicity.)

Then Davey wanted to water the flowers.  Our flowers are certainly not going to die from lack of water.  They may drown instead.  As he was watering the flowers, he told them over and over:  “Here is a nice cool refreshin’ drink of water.”

Meanwhile David is weedeating:

And I am taking silly pictures of myself:

(gosh I am getting freckly.)

Unfortunately, these idyllic times often don’t end well.  I cropped some of the sadness out of this pitiful photo.

Luckily Davey never stays upset for long.  He shook the remaining water from the hose onto me as fast as he could. That made him feel a little better, and then he walked inside with me pretty much recovered. I didn’t take a picture, but he was happily back inside watching Sesame Street about 30 seconds later.

My Rock-a-Bye Baby socks are coming along.  I did the heel flap last night and turned the heel.  It’s a neat flap.  I think I have always done a slip stitch heel, and this was was a 4×4 rib to kind of continue the pattern from the sock.  I love how it is looking.

Ok, it’s a little too quiet.  Better go see what Davey is up to.

I never saw a purple cow.

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Knitting away on my Takeout for Two socks.  It’s hard to get a good picture of these in progress.  Hard for me at least.  I can’t try them on because the needles are at the top, and I am not seeing them going over my calves too easily.

It’s an easy knit but very fun.  Last night my highlight was switching from a 2×2 rib to a 4×2 rib.  Anything that makes me purl less is a good thing.  I try not to be anti-purl, but I can’t help but always have a happy feeling when I switch back to knit.  So for that reason alone, I guess purling is a good thing.

The other fun thing is switching colors fairly frequently.  I am not thinking about all the ends I will be weaving in later.  Maybe I should consider doing it as I go along.  Maybe…

We are going to go eat at a restaurant called The Purple Cow today.  So for the rest of the day I will be saying to myself:

“I never saw a purple cow

I never hope to see one.

But I can tell you anyhow,

I’d rather see one than be one.”

Happy Tuesday!

Getting Settled in London and the Two to Tango Socks are done!

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Yesterday I went to the Stitch London blog to see if there was any news about or sightings of my mini-me.   I was happy to see that they had photographs posted of the museum display!  There were 259 Stitched Selves submitted. It took me awhile, but I found my mini Christina.  Here’s a photo of the entire display:

Here is one more focusing in more on my little stitched self:

Thanks David for putting in the helpful circles and arrows for me!  Just think, a little stitched self from Arkansas all the way over in London.  So fun.  I still wish they could send her back to me someday.

And then:  The Two to Tango socks are done!  I blocked them to my feet and I am pretty happy with them.  David helped me get some pictures.  Doing the contortionist thing trying to photograph my own feet was kind of painful.

I like this picture even better:

and this one:

So now it is on to Sock Number 3 in The Joy of Sox : Takeout for Two.  I will post a photo of my progress tomorrow.  I have the foot done (that’s easy to say when you don’t have to knit a toe OR a heel!), and I am working on the ankle.  I am knitting with sportweight yarn so it feels like it is knitting up really fast.

Happy Tuesday!  Davey and I are going to go “stroll”!

Two To Tango: A new Day (sock)

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Cuff number 2 is done.  I did use smaller needles and now have switched to the 3.25 for the fishies section.  My cuff didn’t have ladders.  Turns out that this is what happens when you have an ssk and then a k2tog.  It looks nice and I am kind of dumb for not realizing that this is why that happened.   Knitting a second sock can be anticlimactic, but it does seem to go more quickly, plus this pattern is so fun that I don’t really mind.  Plus I am eager to see how this works out changing needles sizes around.

I looked at sock number one again, and I may have overreacted.  The cuff has dried again and it is not looking so floppy.  (plus the no ladders) The sock is a little hard to get on, but it is very comfortable once I have it on.  It’s not so bad.

Davey has been creating as well!  He drew what we consider his first face.  David had me quickly get a picture of it.  Davey pointed out the ears, eyes, nose and mouth, and he drew each very carefully.  (The face is tilted to the side – to help you get your bearings!)

Finally, Davey helped me shell purple hull peas for the first time yesterday.  I opened up the pod, and he took out the peas.  He enjoyed it and sat with me for quite awhile.  Then he decided to find out if  Timber (our husky) likes raw peas.  He didn’t.  (and this is the dog who will eat just about anything.)