Sigh

My poor neglected blog. I've found it's hard to come up with regular and interesting posts. I just joined the twitter world. It doesn't help that I've had a designing block. Instead of socks, I've been knitting things other than socks and from other designers. I'm in Knitspot's Fall in Full Color club. That has been a lot of fun getting a new pattern from her every month. It's also kept me busy and I haven't finished all of them yet.

I'm still knitting socks, but they're self striping. When sock yarn is this pretty, it doesn't need a cool pattern to go with it.

I took a picture of my sock drawer years ago. Right now, there's a thread in SKA where someone asked about sock drawers. I thought it was time to take another picture.

This photo is from 2008.


This is from 2012.


And this is the other drawer of socks that I haven't worn yet.


And this is my box of sock designs, ideas I've tried, and variations of some of my designs.


That's a lot of socks!! I've been giving them away too. What I thought was cool is that there are some socks in the 2012 picture that are in the 2008. The design funk is over. I do have a new design on the needles right now. It has a few matching things that will go with it too. I just have to do the not so fun part of pattern writing.

Blankets

This is a quilt that I'm working on for my son. His sister just got a quilt from me for her last birthday. I wanted to make something for his bed now that he has his own room. My little guy likes the color orange. I didn't want to go completely crazy with that color and found a really cute set of fabrics at Fabricworm. Most quilting fabric website sell bundles of fabrics from one collection. At Fabricworm, they bundle up coordinating fabrics from many different collections. I combined two of their collections (one mainly blues and grays and one blues and oranges) to make this quilt. I'm almost finished. I just need to add a bit more quilting in some bare spots and then the binding.

While I was organizing my yarns, I noticed that I have A LOT of sock yarn leftovers. I separated out the self-striping ones and figured out that I have enough of those alone to make a good sized throw. Each of these blocks takes a little over 10 gms of yarn. I usually have at least 20 gms leftover when I make a pair of socks. So each of my leftover balls of yarn over there on the left will get me two squares. There will be no sewing in this blanket. Yay!

There's another reason that I started this insanity. There's a bad cold running around our house. First, it took down my husband, then my son, and now my daughter and I. :-( The cough that I have is driving me crazy. I haven't wanted to work on any of my more complicated projects and this blanket has been getting most of my attention.

These are two of my neglected projects. The stole is Long Shadows by Anne Hanson. It is the August pattern from the Knit Spot Fall in Full Color club. The yarn is so pretty and the pattern is very straight forward. My mind just isn't into lace right now. The socks were supposed to be a new design, but I haven't gotten very far.

I'll just stick with the quilt and blanket for now. I hope this cold goes away soon so I can have all of my thinking capacity back for these patterns.

Threaded, 12 Legs, and Scales

I have three new patterns! Two completed test knitting last week and the other one is a completed mystery knit. Threaded and 12 Legs are both cuff down socks. I had a lot of fun with the cables on these socks. Threaded has a cable that threads in and out of other cables. 12 Legs has something that looks like a mutant spider. I think that I'm in a green phase since I managed to pick green for both of these socks. 12 Legs was originally knit as a toe-up sock in red several years ago. I was never happy with the way that pattern that way and switched it around to a cuff down pattern.

Scales is the name of my August 2011 mystery sock for the Solid Socks group on ravelry. This pattern was released as four separate clues during August. Most of the knitters seem to see the hearts instead of scales, but I kept my name. The August theme was water and I tried to go along with that.

Scales is also a cuff down pattern with cables. All of my patterns have detailed descriptions for how to cable without a cable needle. It's not set in stone and I really don't mind if someone uses a cable needle. I just want to have that there just in case anyone would like to try it. I don't have descriptions for how to do the cables with a cable needle because I've never knit them that way. I don't feel confident in putting it in there if I don't actually use that method.

I still have a lot of other projects too. This is a stack of wash clothes for our Operation Christmas Child shoe boxes. I had a lot of fun making them and I got to use up some of my neglected cotton yarn stash.

I'm also sewing again! I miss sewing. I like how a project can be completed in less than a day. I've been sewing hats for our shoe boxes too. I made four and then decided to make one for myself. My hat is the green one with flowers. I've wanted a hat for a while now, but haven't been able to find one that I really like. This green hat was my test run for interfacing and fit.

I have new sewing and knitting projects in the works. I also have a stack of projects that needs to be photographed. Busy, busy!

School!

Our first day of school was yesterday. My kids got a jump start on me and started before I was finished with my coffee. The picture below shows my new "office" and the kids hard at work. They like that little table. This used to be a dining room, but you can see that I've taken over. hahaha! I have my desk where I knit and write patterns. You can see my sewing corner with my swift hanging on the wall. Just last night, I added my weaving loom right next to my desk.


The ironing board is only out when I'm sewing. Right now, I'm sewing tote bags to include in our shoe boxes for Operation Christmas Child. I wanted to sew bags last year, but time got away from me and I ended up buying cheap ones. I wasn't too thrilled with the quality of those and was determined to sew my own this year. The picture shows what I've accomplished in about 1.5 days of sewing. I've made 10 tote bags!

These are just basic tote bags. I didn't interface them or add any pockets because I didn't want the extra bulk taking up shoe box space. I did line all of them. They seem pretty sturdy. I put four of my knitting stitch dictionaries into one bag and it held up just fine. I'll probably make a few more bags and pick out the best ones for the shoe boxes.

I'm still knitting on my Gnarled Oakwoods shawl for Camp Loopy. What didn't help is that I got my first shipment of Knitspot's fall in full color club! I won't post a picture on the blog yet. The pattern is a scarf or stole. I really want to cast-on, but I should probably finish this stole first.

I do have a pair of socks in progress. They're self striping socks for my son. I'm avoiding designing anything new until I get some of my backlogged patterns written and test knitted.

Harvest

It feels like harvest time. We have a constant stream of tomatoes coming into our kitchen from my daughter's garden. She's also brought in green bell peppers, pumpkins, green beans, and okra. Her sunflowers are huge! That ladder is about 8 feet tall.

I finished my Camp Loopy project #2. I knit Miss Sophie's Hands using Studio June's Eight Bells yarn in the Blue Suede Shoes color. I'm still not very happy with the fingers. They feel a tiny bit bagggy and I should have knit those with a smaller needle. I finished two other pair of socks for the cabled sock, mittens, or gloves challenge.

Now, I'm working on project #3. I'm using Bugga yarn in Common Emerald Moth to knit a Gnarled Oakwoods shawl. I've had this pattern for a while, but have been hesitant to knit it because of the grafting. I have no idea why. I've knit other large shawls that required grafting in the center.

For this shawl, I'm knitting both halves at the same time on one circular needle. It's sort of like knitting two socks at once from both ends of one ball of yarn. Since Bugga has a slight variation to it, I'm knitting both halves from both ends of the same ball of yarn. I hope that the slight variation between different balls of yarn will just look like shading that turns out equally on both ends of the shawl.

This is my 12 Legs sock pattern. It was originally knit toe-up a few years ago. I've changed it to cuff down. I want a good variety of cuff-down vs. toe-up patterns. This sock was knit with Dream in Color's Everlasting sock in Bitter. I really like the feel of this yarn.

I just put a call out for test knitters for this sock and for my Threaded pattern on ravelry. Both of these socks were knit with green yarn and both are cuff down. I need to find other colors to knit with. ;-)

I'm enjoying our last day before school starts. I'll be spending it knitting and pattern writing.