Watch One, Knit Two

You knew that that's what I meant, right?  I've just discovered this technique and I'm in love! How much more satisfying is it to cast off a sock and immediately cast off it's partner! No more "finishing" one only to start from scratch on the second.  And the amazing thing, it's really not that much more complex than the magic loop method for one sock!

Here are a couple of things I found useful as I was learning this technique :

1.  Keep the two socks close together - it helps the 2 yarns stay untangled. I know it seems like an oxymoron but it's true.
2.  Make sure your  pattern is centered on the back (instep) needle - It's more difficult to move stitches from the front to back needle with this technique.

Go ahead, give bi-socksuality a try, you might like or dare I say, LOVE it!

Back to the pointy sticks....

  From Blah

To Ahhhhh


And



From Just Started

  To in the Groove

This aspect of knitting, this constant sense of progress, of moving forward is probably one of my favorite things about playing with pointy sticks :)

Here are links to, the so far, nine immigration stories that I have written.

Bubble Gum

Tom and Jerry

Squirrel

Cappuccino in the Blue

Leaving Misha

Lasting Effects

Profanity

The Letting Go

Lost and Found

Grandma's Shawl has had an uneasy existence. She first arrived in my consciousness when I saw the yarn Claudia Hand Painted Yarns Silk Lace *drool* (on a side note I just realized that the price at the online shop was cheaper than what I payed for it).  As soon as I saw it, I knew that this was the yarn for the job.  The next step was to pick out a pattern which took me some time since I couldn't quite decide on whether to go with an intricate pattern or a simple one. The simple one won out because a complex design would have competed with the yarns innate beauty for attention and I thought the yarn drool-worthy enough on its own. So then I knit, and knit, and knit as one does with lace shawls.  I wasn't too impressed with the shawl when I finished but I knew that often-times blocking brings out the beauty of lace, so I blocked and this is what I got.



Yeah, not that impressive. And even if I do say it myself .... ugly.  I was heartbroken, such a beautiful yarn, so much time knitting it and the end result being so blah.  After pouting about it some time, I put on my big girl panties and frogged the shawl, the yarn was just too beautiful to leave in such a state.  I picked out another simple pattern, only this time I decided to add a slightly intricate border to add to the "fanciness" of the final product. It's coming along nicely now and I feel that it's going to turn out much better.  But now it seems that timing isn't working out very well.  First there was Christmas and all the socks I wanted to knit,  then after all that knitting on small needles I decided to knit a sweater with bulky yarn and now I'm knitting Preemie Caps for charity.  When oh when am I going to finish up this shawl?  Oh and to complicate things just a little bit further I've got a wedding gift shawl that's waiting in the wings .... the wedding's in June *rolleyes*

I think it's time set some limits. I never thought I'd get to such a state with my knitting that I'd need to do that!  At this point, no matter what, I'm knitting at least a couple of rows of Grandma's shawl every day! I'm guessing if I do that I'll be finished by mid February which should give me a good amound of time to work on the wedding gift. *keeping my fingers crossed*

Back to the pointy sticks ....

It's done!  The sleeves didn't turn out quite as matched up as I had hoped but they aren't as bad as I feared so I decided not to frog and re-knit. Overall it was a nice, easy project and I'd do it again but probably with a different yarn.  The Moda Dea Tweedle Dee yarn worked well enough in its bulk,the variety of colors in one colorway and its blockability, however, I'm learning that I really don't like self-striping yarns. I've tried them on socks and now I've tried them on sweaters and both times there was a bit of frustration.  So now I'm going to stay away from such yarns no matter how much they call to me in the store ... well at least I'm going to try ... and obviously all the self striping yarn in my stash still needs to be used up :)

As I said, the pattern was a very easy knit and I liked how simple it was to personalize.  But for as much as I love knitting in the round, the raglan collar drives me batty. Not it knitting but in wearing. Every time I sit down or hunch over, it slides up and sits in the middle of my neck.  Blocking helps somewhat but it's still a little annoying.  I think I'm going to be much more selective about the neckline of my next "in the round" sweater.

In the end, even with all this nit-picky complaining, I like this project and am very happy I did it and hope to be wearing this sweater often :)

Back to the pointy sticks Grandma's Shawl awaits ....

I've been listening to the KnitPicks Podcast for a while now. In general I really like it and pay attention to Kelley's tips however one of her recommendations I've pretty much avoided.  Her claim that one needs to have a bunch of different projects on the needles has never sat well with me. For one, unlike Kelley I'm not a process knitter I get little joy from just making stitches one after another, I'm a project or result knitter - my joy comes from looking at the growing sweater or sock or shawl that's on my needles. On top of being a project knitter I like to stay focused on the one thing I'm working on since when I get sidetracked I tend to forget about the thing that had been consuming my attention.  But recently I've discovered the beauty of having multiple projects on the needles.


As I've mentioned in my last post I've been working fevereshly on my Raglan Sweater and it's been growing quickly.  I was hoping to have it finished this weekend but no matter how I tried it was not going to happen.  One of the things that interfered was my daughter's piano recital.  I knew that there was no way for me to bring that giant bit of knitting into those close quarters.  However as I thought about it, I realized that I had Grandma's Shawl tucked away in my knitting basket. It was in progress but I had put it aside since I was so focused on the sweater.  Since it didn't take much room at all I took it along and worked on it the whole hour.

So now I must admit that there's quite a bit of value to having various projects on the needles especially a small one that is easy to take along no matter where!

Back to the pointy sticks ...

So here's the Raglan that I've been working on and I think it's looking pretty good :)  I love the self- striping yarn but right now I'm a little concerned about the sleeves.  How am I going to be able to match the striping on the sleeves?  I think it'll look really weird if the the color changes don't match on the right and left . *bites nails* 

On a side note - I've not done any knitting on Grandma's Shawl or the Blue sweater. Also I've somehow managed to loose my cloth tape measure and have been using the metallic one that I use for hanging pictures *rolleyes* 

Back to the pointy sticks.....

I'm thinking that I'll use this blog for my knitting stuff since I don't want to bore my f/list at LJ too much with this.

So what's on my needles ...

       1)Blue Sweater .... boy oh boy is that thing giving me the blues :( I was hoping to have it finished by X-mas but that obviously didn't happen.  I've not picked it up for months .... I really don't like making sweaters in pieces, I much prefer knitting them in one piece, in the round ... so much more satisfying to watch it grow and be able to try it on!

        2)Raglan Sweater .... loving this one, it's being knit up in a bulky yarn so it's moving along fast and it's an in the round raglan .... I love everything about this one.  I'm close to making waist decreases  so I've got about 1/3 of it done and that's just in 3 days of knitting! YAY.

        3)Lace Shawl ... this one was for Grandma. I had actually finished it and hated the way it looked so after hemming and hawing I finally decided to frog the monstrosity and started a different pattern.  I'm still not in love with it but I thing it's much, much better than before so I'm not complaining.  I've got about 1/4th of it done and if it wasn't for the Raglan Sweater I'd be moving along faster!


What's in the wings ....

      1)Lace .... I just bought a beautiful mohair/wool blend lace yarn that I'm hoping to knit up into a lace shawl for a friend who's getting married in June in ITALY.  I'm debating between the Swallowtail Shawl or the Seascape Stole .... I think the multicolored yarn would work well for both so I've still got some thinking to do.

       2)Socks ....  Over the holidays I bought a couple of skeins of sock yarn that I'd like to work up into socks. However, I'm off of sock knitting since I did so much of it over the past few months so I think this is going to wait.

        3)Felted Bag ...  Michael's had a great sale on LionBrand Felting Wool recently that I couldn't NOT buy some. I found a beautiful blue/black/purple multicolored yarn that I think will make a lovely felted bag.

         4)Tops .... I've been scanning Ravelry lately and have found some really pretty patterns for tank tops/sweaters/shirts that I'm anxious to dive into a multitude of projects!  Thankfully I don't have the yarn ... otherwise I'd drive myself nuts trying to decide what to knit next! It's tough enough as it is.

Well that's it for now.  I'm sure I'll be posting an update with the Raglan soon since I think it'll be ready for pictures any day now :)

Along with everybody else I've created this space in case LJ implodes.