Thursday, December 9, 2010

The Colorwork Challenge

While posting in and perusing the Sock Knitters Anonymous group that I've been participating in, one of the members mentioned that she wanted to learn to do colorwork.  I agreed with her and told her that I wanted to learn it as well.  I told her that we should challenge each other, come the beginning of the new year, to learn colorwork.  She accepted my challenge and suggested that we start a group on Ravelry.  I took it upon myself today to get a group set up.  It's called "The Colorwork Challenge".  I set it up, thinking that it would be me, her, and maybe a few other people.  Well, here I am at the end of the day looking at the group and it's got 42 members already! Wow, that was quick!

It looks like this is going to be a bigger experience than I initially anticipated.  But, I'm excited about that.  The more the merrier!  I'm really looking forward to learning a new aspect of knitting.  Some good ideas have already been offered up for projects to start out with.  And, we've been collecting a list of resources (website links, video links, books, etc) for our members to have access to.  I think this is going to be a lot of fun and hopefully a tremendous learning experience.  Not to mention, I'll be meeting people from all over the world.  There's already at least a half a dozen countries from around the world represented with the member of this group.  How awesome is that?!

Of course, as this thing progresses, there will be pictures to post, updates on progress and just random sharing of whatever comes to mind.  Time to get some sleep now.  Let's see what tomorrow brings.

As The Heel Turns

Last night I stayed up until 3AM working on my MIL's socks.  Well, one of them, to be exact.  I stayed up late because I was trying to get the heel flap done.  It knits up pretty fast.  I planned on stopping there, but the turning of the heel tempted me to continue on.  I don't know what it is about turning the heel on socks, but I love it!  It fascinates me how it turns out when you do it correctly.  And it's not difficult to do either, so long as you're paying attention for the gaps on either end so you know when to SSK or K2tog.

I've got the heel turned on the first sock now.  I compared it to the other sock which is still not ripped back yet.  It's still knit in the needle size that the leg of the sock was knit with.  When comparing them side by side, I see that going for the smaller needle size on the foot is definitely the right choice for these socks.  Big difference!

I'm going to set a goal to have that first sock complete, or most of the way complete by the end of this weekend.  Christmas is looming and I need to get it done.  I may not get it complete by this weekend, but hey, it doesn't hurt to have goals!

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

MIL Sock Update

Well, I got both socks past the turning of the heel and one of them I worked the gusset part out completely.  It was no easy task for this beginner though.  I was having a tough time working both of them on one circular needle.  I decided, for the sake of hopefully finishing before Christmas, to take one of the socks off and work them one at a time.  I'll try my hand at TAAT ML again with a different pair of socks.

After getting the gusset complete on one of the socks, I decided that the actual foot portion of the sock was going to be a little too big and baggy for my mother-in-law.  I also remembered reading in the pattern that the foot part of the sock should be worked with a smaller needle.  I made the tough decision to rip the sock back to just before the heel flap.  I'm now working the heel flap on that sock again.  This makes the third time.  The first time, I started working the heel flap with a sl 1, purl row followed by a sl 1, knit row.  I wasn't paying attention to the fact that the second row is supposed to be *sl 1, knit* repeated across the entire row.  So that's why they had that surrounded by * *.  Ahh so, Danielson! It makes sense now.  Lesson learned.

Let's hope that the third time is the charm with this one.  I've had good practice with working the heel flap, turning the heel and working the gusset, so I shouldn't have any problems this time.  Murphy, your law is not welcome here!  No more issues please. Although, they have been learning experiences so I guess it's not all for not.

We're heading to my mother-in-law's house on the 17th.  That means that I don't have much time to get this show rockin' and rollin'!  There doesn't seem to be much time in the evenings after eating dinner, playing with the 4 month old and 2 1/2 year old, bathing them and getting them to bed.  I just need to be diligent about using that time wisely once they are finally asleep for the evening.  Maybe I need to get up early to work on these as well.  I just hope that it doesn't take me too much longer. I guess worst case scenario, I can work on them at my MIL's house during that week that we're there.  I don't want to have to do that, but it's not an unreasonable last resort.  I'll just have to isolate myself so that she doesn't see what they look like.

Did I mention that I also started a pair for my wife as well?  I had to, to gimme a short break from my MIL's pair.  Plus, my attention span can be short some times, so I always feel the need to do more than one thing at a time.  I was hoping to get those done by Christmas as well, but I know that won't be happening.

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Here's the progress on my wife's socks.  I started out with two at a time, but didn't pay attention to the pattern (see a pattern here?...hahaha...pun intended) when it stated that the cabling had to be mirrored from the left sock to the right sock.  Ooops.  Yep, ripped one back and will be starting over on it.  I wanted to get the first one going first to see if I was going to like it.  I do like it.  I need to get the second sock cast on so I can try to work them TAAT.