Breathing

We’re breathing now. The whirlwind of cake and whipping cream and talking to people has ended. Now we’re cleaning up the house after a week’s neglect and scrubbing out the last crumbs from the cake pans. I still need to work through our photos of the cakes and type up the recipes for those who donated from afar.

In the meantime, a little blue eye-candy for you. I finished two sets of socks before the end of October, both of them tying into the Project Spectrum blue theme.

Three for Wee
Three baby socks so that if one is lost it is not a tragedy.

Yarn: Regia Canadian Colours, Vancouver

Pattern: Newborn Hat and Sock Set

Knee Socks

Yarn: SuperGarne Aktiv, 01504 green/turquoise

Pattern: Shaping Knee Socks

This month I finished a started pair, started and finished two pair (it seems awkward to call the baby set a pair, but hey!) and I’m nearly done a fourth pair – just a few inches and the toes. This has definitely been my most productive Socktober yet. It was a nice break to have nothing but socks on the go. Simple, mostly stockinette, undemanding knitting that just went along with what life had to offer me this month.

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A Quote and a Question

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With the most primitive means the artist creates something which the most ingenious and efficient technology will never be able to create.
Kasimir Malevich

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How do we make time for, make a priority of, the beautiful inefficiencies?

Socktoberfest Progress

The October brown lunch bag of my own yarn, aka Personal Yarn Club, socks for Rainer are finished:

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I completely did not expect that yarn to stripe. On the ball it looked like it would knit up to be speckled. Surprises are so delightful, aren’t they?

Knee Sock Update: Anywhere but on my legs, these look ridiculously large. On my legs, however, they’re fitting my curves perfectly. The knee sock tutorial is working out really well. I’m about 9″ into each – just about the place where I usually begin a pair of socks.

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How’s that looking close up? Gorgeous.

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Transitioning

Most unusually, snow came before frost this year, allowing for some incredible juxtapositions.

wind :: delicacy
clouds :: colour
petals :: snow
grey :: growth

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I dallied in bringing in the flowers that were still blooming in the garden, so taken with the vibrant colours lasting so far into this season of fading. Last night I hurried out into the dark and grabbed a good handful of flowers to bring inside and place at the kitchen window.

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As we celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend, I’ll be sure to feel wonderful feelings of gratitude for transitions. That nothing stays as it was, that shifts and fluctuations are always with us, that what ends brings new beginnings. Transitions are at the heart of adventure, after all, whether they be great and epic or small and savoured.

Swatchtoberfest

The date: 1/10/09, aka the first of Socktoberfest.

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I begin this month-long celebration of those L-shaped wonders that keep feet warm all through winter with two goals:

1. Finish the pair of socks I have on the go for Rainer

2. Knit my first pair of knee socks

I don’t usually swatch for socks, but I don’t want – horror – saggy knee socks.  So swatching is happening.  I am loving the yarn and its handspun-like colour transitions.

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Amazing what light you can find even on a dark and rainy day if you are willing to carry a tiny bit of knitting all over the house.

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“Though no one can go back and make a new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new end.”
Carl Bard

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Where have you pointed your path? What wind fills your sails?

It’s a Colourful World

Finally, after a cold, sullen summer, we have a burst of fiery heat in September, just in time to push the delphiniums’ second flowering into gorgeous splendour. The wet, cool summer means that for the first time the grass is green everywhere you look – not just on certain suburban yards with sprinkler systems.

It’s been 26-30 degrees C for 3 weeks now. Sun, sun, sun. The world is feeling like summer and fall all mixed together. Bright green grass and lots of flowers but the leaves are starting to turn golden and crunch underfoot.

The sky is glorious. The CSA vegetables are pouring in. The family is smiling. Everywhere I go there is a feeling of relaxation – not the crisp bustle of a typical autumn.

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Leap-Frog with Socks

Do socks have feelings? Nope. Not at all. I know this. But I’ve discovered an interesting method of making socks that plays with the part of my brain that likes to tell stories.

The trick is to knit two socks at once on DPNs. Not on the same DPNs, mind you. I cast on one sock, do the ribbing, then switch sets of needles and cast on the second and do the ribbing. Then it’s back to the first sock for the leg. Switch again.

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Pattern: Slipped Stitch Rib from Sensational Knitted Socks
Yarn: Patons Kroy Socks 4 Ply, Winter Eclipse

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It’s a playful, leap-frogging kind of thing that makes me really motivated to work on the socks: I’m either eager to get ahead on sock one, or feeling bad for sock two that it’s lagging. Silly, but that’s where my brain’s at these days.

I think, in all seriousness, that the strong attraction of this method is the real sense of purpose I have each time I pick up the needles. I’m not ‘just knitting’. I’m either setting out into a new stage of the sock or I’m making sure the second one catches up.  That translates into a greater motivation to pick up the project more often. Between the mental rewards of ticking items off a Sock Sections list and the increased time I spend knitting, I’ve a much greater sense of progress with this method. That just feeds back into the whole loop and kicks it into a higher gear.

Could also be that it’s playing to my personality with the sense of duty and purpose. Motivated to manage the whole world? Me?

A Quote and a Question

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Simple is as simple doesn’t.
Sue Patton Thoele

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What have you chosen to include?

Blue Frenzy

I’ve admitted that I’m ill.  Nothing nasty, but enough to keep me quiet and productively knitting for a few days.  I threw caution to the wind and whipped out a tea cozy.  To heck with sombre plans!  That pot needed a sweater.  And I needed to giggle silently in the back of my brain.  I mean, a tea pot cozy?  Silliness.

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May the tea remain hot!

Adapted the Jacob’s Ladder cable from “Stitchionary” to be narrower for the mug cozy. The lace rib on the pot is the Cloverleaf  Eyelet  Cable from “Sensational Knitted Socks”.

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Winter needs two things: levity and warmth. Mission accomplished.

It was supposed to turn out more stocking cap and less pixie, but Barbara Walker’s Knitting “From the Top Down” merely said that a stocking cap was ‘worked like an endless sock’ and to space the increaces out. No help there, but the point was to make a warm and silly hat and it worked.