1st Double Bed Machine Knit Sock!

Hurray! I finally did it! I bought this wonderful double bed knitting machine by White a couple of years ago and I hate to admit it, but it intimidated me alot and I have only been able to bring myself to make swatches on it. That is until this afternoon. The manual had the pattern for this little sock so I bit the bullet and just did it and it worked! I am soooo happy!

The baby fingering yarn I used had a little trouble with the short rows and the toe decreases though. The yarn snapped in a couple of places and I didn't know it until after I was done. I'm not sure if I need to make my tension looser or just what the issue was for that, I'll have to jump on one of the machine knit groups and tap into some of the incredible experience out there and see if they can help. All in all, it's a very positive experience and I can see myself knitting the ribbing on the machine, switch to hand knit for the heel, put back on the machine for the foot and then finish the toe by hand. That would knock alot of the time out of it now wouldn't it? And talk about the best of both worlds! This is true luxury, crank out in a hurry when necessary and the zen feeling of hand knitting.

Slippers

My cousin, Jan, is in the hospital with Meningitis. It's horrible, she's been there for 3 weeks now, and I've been promising her a pair of these bootie type slippers for awhile. I hope they cheer her up. They are incredibly warm and soft. The yarn I used was from the store I hate to love, it's a chenille feeling kind of eyelash kind of super soft yarn called No Boundaries, a 100% Polyamide. The pattern is one that I memorized from High School when I took home economics. Knitting was one of the courses, along with sewing and cooking. I guess they wanted us young ladies to grow up to be good housewives. ROFLMAO!!!!! I have made about a gazillion pairs of these over the years and they are still requested by all who have had them.

OTN

I started these awhile back and decided it was time to finish up my UFOs. This is an adaptation of Lynn Hershberger's Mom's Fast Florida Footies. I used my standard cast on and anklet ribbed sock but took the no purl heel and the purled sole from her pattern. Since this is Regia and her pattern uses Cascade Fixation which has lycra and is more stretchy, my guage was way different. That's why I kind of made up a pattern with some "borrowed" ideas :) I'm going to try the pattern the way it is written too. I like the no cuff aspect of her pattern. OH, her pattern is at http://lynnh.com/patterns/florida.htm in case you don't already have it saved.

Ummm... wasn't my next pair of socks going to be a lace pattern for my mother? I must be procrastinating again :)

Fingerless Gloves From Sock Beginnings

They're almost done, just finish up the tipless fingers. I'm alot disappointed though, I tried very hard to make these identical twins and failed anyway. I pulled out from 2 different skeins, they were matching dye lots, and as you can see, I pulled out enough yarn, side by side, matching color for color and after 8 color changes thought I had found my repeat. Wrong. They match up until the middle of the palm, then the repeat changes. It seems that somehow when I was pulling out yarn and finding where they picked up the same I reversed the direction of the yarn from the skein. I'm not sure I'm making sense but if you turn the gloves around side by side....
you can see that the colors are changing in reverse. Oh well, another learning experience :) The other thing I learned is that I don't knit a very even 1x1 rib. No wonder I always prefer a 2x2 or bigger rib pattern. The next set I make will have stockinette knit fingers with just a little bit of rib at the tip. Oh, and I think I will choose a yarn with less of a contrast in colors next time, I think it looks ugly they way the fingers go, but E.J. likes them, so I guess that's all that matters since he's the one wearing them. and he says you can hardly tell that they don't really match. Bless his heart :)

Oh Dear! A New Craft?

Even though I've been knitting for years, I just recently started getting involved in hand knitting e-groups and I've just had to click on every link in every post on the sock knitters list. Wow, there is no end to the extra special talent in cyber space and the generosity of people to share their ideas and insights is beyond amazing. After my DH made his glove request, I realized that I would have to dig out some stitch markers and having seen some of the beautiful "Knitting Jewelry" available on the net, my regular old plastic rings/garbage bag twist ties wraped around a pen to form cirlces/tiny rubber bands, just would not do! I am not a jewelry maker or a bead crafter, but thank you Carol Duvall and the endless episodes that have been stored in my brain because I just new I could make those too. I'm not a very patient person and I wanted them now, not weeks later after an internet order, so I decided to run over to the "store I hate to love", looked over the beading shelf and picked up some stuff that I thought might work and VIOLA! My very own stitch markers. The very odd looking charm is actually a side view of a dragonfly. This was soo much fun, I'm going to have to buy some fancy charms to make some more. Then I can express my every mood, how many stitch markers does a knitter really need? I'll never know because I want lots! :)

The funny thing was after I figured out how to make my own, I got curious about what was on the net for jewelry making and I stumbled on a web page that someone had put up that described the exact same method to make their stitch markers as I had used to make mine. I should have known that I didn't need to recreate the wheel and looked it up online before I started :)

OTN

Well, I started the cuff on another pair of socks using Fortissima Mexiko last night, my darling husband (tongue in check) proclaims that this yarn "would make great fingerless gloves." I guess I should be grateful that he made his wishes known at this stage, I do believe I've got a wrist cuff instead of a leg cuff on the needles now :)