2 posts tagged “socks”

1) I finished off the knitting needle case from last year - mostly; I lost the smaller piece of felt that was supposed to make decorative flowers, but the case is fine without it.

It came out bigger than I expected - I don't know why I thought it would come out about the same size as my crochet hook case, given that knitting needles are twice as long as crochet hooks. Silly me. But it's nice and case-y and I managed to stitch the pockets without the seam showing on the outside, so it's good.

2) I got one piece of cross-stitch framed. My "stitching buddies" had an outing to our LNS last month, and it turned out they were having a sale on framing, so I figured I'd get an estimate... The one time I'd gotten professional framing before, I was kind of disappointed with the results; Michael's takes a kind of hard-sell approach, and I ended up with a very nice frame with a piece of needlework in it. This experience was completely different: instead of setting up a stack of triple-mats and expensive molding and assuring me that it wouldn't look as nice unless I got that mat cut 5" wide all around - the clerk asked "So do you want a mat on it?" Yes, I did. I ended up with exactly the mat, glass, and molding I wanted, all in budget...I'll be going back to the LNS for more framing as the budget allows; I've got a couple more that I don't want to do myself. (And, yay, this puts me 1/3 of the way to one of my goals for the year...)

3) I've almost completed Daughter's socks - I'm past the gusset on the second sock, and for some reason socks always seem to go so much faster once I get past the heel - doesn't matter what kind of pattern I'm using, or whether I'm going toe-up or cuff-down. She's tried on the first one, and pronounced it "cool" and "comfy". (Meanwhile the socks I made last year for my niece the Sock Nazi have become her favorites - I think she likes that there aren't any seams and the length is just perfectly right.)

Jericho really likes Panda Cotton. I've gotten to practice my nostepinde skills on the leftovers from the first sock more than once. If I think of it in those terms the yarn-thievin' cat gets to live...

4) I've spun some more. I had quite a bit of fiber left from the class I took last fall - there was one length of a light-brown fiber with other colors in it that was used to demonstrate twist (you could see how the red fiber twisted against the brown, for example), and some light blue Romney (?). I spun the multi-colored one as an experiment, just wanting to see how it came out, and it was pretty - but kind of thick (DKish?) so I'm not going to ply it. For a single it's kind of overspun, but there's got to be something cute I could make with an overspun DKish single. :) I'm working my way through the blue now - I'm spinning it pretty fine, so there's turning out to be a lot of  yardage even though I'm sure there's not more than an ounce or two of fiber there.

My biggest problem with spinning? Consistency. I can tell by looking at my spindle that the blue stuff has gotten finer as I've gotten farther along.

I would show you pictures of all the pretties - but the camera is hiding. Boo, camera.