Still Life, With Cats

Because I finished the last pair of socks so quickly (and after I let my hands recover from that) I realized I had lots of time to do at least one more pair before the next pattern was posted. I thought, briefly, about casting on something new but then I remembered that there were two pairs lurking in bags that needed to be completed, so I sighed and dragged one out and slipped it back onto the needles.

I don’t remember when I first cast on for this pair, and I’d already finished the first one and gotten about halfway through the second leg before setting them aside. But I have been avoiding finishing these socks for a very, very long time. Even now, knowing that if I just sat down and focused it would only take me another couple hours, I still procrastinated, willing to knit just about anything else but these socks. On the plus side, this means I managed to whip out several lace pieces for the upcoming Lacy Knitters Guild newsletter, but on the minus side, it wasn’t until this morning that I sat down and finally finished off the toe, and that was only because the next pattern drops this evening and I need the needles free and I just couldn’t bear the thought of putting these things back onto a holder to lurk in a bag again. Better to just finish them off and get them out of my hair completely.

I am pretty sure the yarn is Knitpicks Felici, but I can’t swear to it because I lost the ball bands a long time ago. The pattern is something a friend was doing for her own pair of socks, and I liked it much more than whatever it was I’d started to do with this yarn, so I copied it (mostly – I reduced the number of stitches per pattern repeat in order to fit my gauge).

The feeling upon completing these socks is mostly relief. Am not sure if it was the pattern, or the colors, or a combination of both, but I’m just glad they’re done and I never have to knit another stitch on them again.

Summer of Socks count: 7

Unlike the first pattern for Tour de Sock, I loved every single thing about the second one – Kanteletar. Colorwork! A new-to-me heel idea that takes the whole ‘your ankle is bigger than you think’ concept into account! Latvian braids!

(Please note bonus Rupert paw in top left of picture. After all, I couldn’t possibly ever manage to get anything photographed in this house without at least *one* cat involved.)

These were an absolute delight to knit. Turned cuffs and Latvian braids are annoyingly time-consuming (which I’m sure was part of the reason why they were included in this pattern, since this *is* supposed to be a race, after all), but they do look lovely when done right, so I don’t mind slogging through them because I know the results will be worth it. And doing the stranded colorwork on these reminded me that I have been wanting to do more stranded colorwork in general, and socks are the perfect vehicle for this (small, portable, naturally done in the round so you don’t have to worry about steeking or any other annoyances, and far less overall commitment than an entire sweater, so if you give up and chuck them in the time-out bin, it’s not a huge loss).

The heel on these is done as sort of a little cup, with increases that flare out at the back of the sock, and then the turning happens at the base, with some short rows as well as decreases. At first I thought maybe this heel wasn’t so effective – when I tried on the first sock, it felt very baggy. But when a friend with larger feet than mine tried it on, she loved it and said it was really comfortable…which thus led me to the conclusion that maybe it just felt baggy on me because I accidentally knit the feet too long, so wasn’t able to accurately judge how they fit.

So since this *is* the Summer of Socks, and there is still plenty of time before pattern #3 is releases, I decided to do up another pair, using that new-to-me heel. I also used the slip-stitch motif from Kanteletar because 1) I really like how the heel centers around it, 2) sometimes you want something slightly less boring than just plain stockinette, and also 3) it makes it a lot easier to get two socks to be identical in length when you can count pattern repeats and not just hold them up side by side and take some wild guesses.

Verdict: I was right – the cup heel was only baggy before because the foot was too big. I’m quite pleased with how these turned out, so much so that I might even be tempted to use this heel again.

As for the too-big pair of socks I completed for the challenge, well, no worries there – I’m in no danger of running out of socks (I’ve made dozens and dozens over the years – my sock drawer is overloaded) so those have been sent off to someone else who will hopefully love them as much as I do.

Summer of Socks count: 5

Hooray, the last day of Thingadailies 2017, which means the last snowflake (for the year).

Naturally it is chock full of picots and long skinny points and all the things I like the least.

There are, by the way, 99 total snowflakes in this book, so it is entirely possible I might be doing this one more year. WHO KNOWS!

Making a snowflake a day for Thingadailies.

This evening, while we were sitting at our computers, we heard skittering and thundering of little paws, and the distinctive cry of a cat who has caught some prey and is very, very proud of it.

I figured it was just Sherman doing his usual ‘time to burn off the crazy’ dash around the house, but when Richard went into the kitchen later, he started laughing.

Turns out the ‘prey’ Sherman had caught was a ball of yarn – a light fluffy mohair blend that apparently was extremely appealing to cats – and he was having SO much fun with it, throwing it into the air, batting it into a paper bag and then pouncing on it, smacking it across the floor.

I took the yarn away, and tucked it into my knitting bag while Sherman was otherwise distracted in a different room. Alas, that wasn’t enough to hide it because roughly ten minutes later, oh hey, is that skittering and sliding of paper and ‘I caught something I’m not supposed to have!’ vocalizations we hear again?

This time I hid the yarn better, so he couldn’t get to it. I was so tempted to let him keep it, because he was so happy playing with it, but I really have no desire to repeat the ‘extra tail’ experience of 2014, so he’ll just have to make do with the packing paper that’s still lying on the floor, and the collection of empty boxes, and the bazillion other, safer cat toys scattered all around the house.

*****

I could swear I have made a snowflake very similar to this one, but who knows. At this point they’re all starting to swim together.

Making a snowflake a day for Thingadailies.

The downside to getting up at o-dark-thirty in the morning and driving down to spend all day in a brain-intensive class, followed by socializing with fellow knitters, combined with the fact that I always have a really hard time sleeping in unfamiliar places, is that today only happened through large amounts of caffeine and sheer will power.

Today’s class was only half the day, and was all about how to take better pictures (which I realize might not seem applicable to a fiber festival, but a lot of designers and yarn dyers and spinners have to do all their own photography, plus some of us just want our Ravelry pictures to maybe not suck quite so bad). The class was taught by the Shibaguyz, who were extremely energetic and witty for it being the morning of the last day of a four-day event (a fact that we all appreciated very, very much).

The awesome thing about this class is that it was specifically geared to everyone – from people with their fancy cameras with all those weird dials and gadgets, to people (like me) with their ‘point and shoot dummy’ cameras and mobile phones. It’s helpful that mobile phone cameras are way smarter we give them credit for, and have all kinds of useful settings that let people like me take better pictures than we have any right to, but now I know some extra tips that make me feel like I might actually have half a clue what I’m doing. Huzzah. Plus I came out of the class determined to build myself a light box (which means sorry cats, I may have to abscond with one of your boxes), and also make use of the Ott light that I keep forgetting I bought years ago specifically for lace knitting (the thinner the yarn, the higher the eyestrain).

Will my photography magically improve? Possibly not when it comes to the cats, but when it comes to things that don’t move on their own and can be posed and moved to get the right light, I’m feeling pretty confident.

*****

Speaking of better photography, you probably would expect today’s snowflake picture to be better, but here is where I confess that I did a bit of front-loading last week and finished out all the snowflakes for the rest of the month (because I knew I’d have very little time). So sorry – you’re stuck with crappy pictures for the next couple days.

And speaking of crappy pictures, here is what is quite likely the most boring snowflake in the book. Whee.

Making a snowflake a day for Thingadailies.

I realized I haven’t actually talked about this at all, either here, or anywhere else I’m online, so…hey. I do a new thing now (that is yarn-related, because of *course* it is).

Last year, the Lacy Knitters Guild was looking for a new editor for the quarterly newsletter, which is half articles and half patterns. I started to ponder it but while the pattern section sounded like it’d be a whole lot of fun, the thought of having to come up with enough text for the front section was extremely intimidating. So I checked in with my friend, who was feeling the same way, except that it was the articles she thought would be fun, and the pattern section she thought wouldn’t. Long story short, we decided what the heck, we’ll give it a go, so basically ever since then, in between work and rehearsals and test knits and all the other stuff I’ve got going on, three of us (my friend, me, and our webmaster) have been making plans and having the occasional planning conference call and firing stuff back and forth to each other for editing and discussion. And I’ve been doing a *lot* of work on the lace itself – either charting out patterns (which has been interesting because terminology has changed a LOT since some of these were written, plus some need to be translated to English), or knitting them, or figuring out how to photograph them quickly, before the cats move in and turn it all into another lounging area and cat hair collection spot (last part is sometimes more difficult than you might imagine).

We’ve now put out three newsletters (with only a couple minor hiccups, but it’s all part of the learning curve!) and so far I’ve been having just as much fun with it as I expected. I’ve gotten pretty good at Stichmastery, and it helps that I’m a pretty fast knitter to begin with, because the turn-around time for some of this has been a bit quick, but the pile of lace work based on vintage patterns is growing, and it’s possible that I may or may not have used this as an excuse to invest in a large quantity of laceweight cotton yarn, but hey, it was on sale and you get free shipping if you hit a certain amount in your shopping cart and yarn purchased for ‘work’ doesn’t technically violate the unofficial yarn diet I’ve been on for a while, cough, cough.

*****

Anyway. Enough about knitting. Look, it’s another snowflake!

Making a snowflake a day for Thingadailies.

I like today’s snowflake. I like that it’s not exactly the same all the way around (there’s bigger points and lesser points). I like it even though it’s chock full of picots.

I do not like so much that as I was doing the inner section, I didn’t discover that I’d skipped some stitches until I was nearly done with the outer section and then had to rip it out completely and start over again.

Fun times.

Making a snowflake a day for Thingadailies.