KNEE SOCKS

I realized that I also had some knee socks that needed new photos.





These are the Dale of Norway Lillehammer socks knit in Nature Spun sport weight. I am still kicking myself for not knitting the cool Norwegian deities on the feet. I've worn them exactly once - for cross-country skiing back when we lived in Colorado.





These asymmetrical knee socks were knit with some naturally colored wool handspun yarn I bought on Ebay. I had just heard Elizabeth Zimmermann had died so I used charts I found in one of her books.

DH has worn these for cross-country skiing although I'm not sure they are the right size. I guess I have to make some more!

I hope to get a chance this week to photograph all my hand knit sweaters. The previous photos weren't that great and I hope to improve on them and get some more shots of special details.

On the other hand, perhaps I shouldn't bother as evidenced by these less-than-wonderful photographs of you-know-who.

Here's where I knit outside. I don't do it often because we have too little shade but today it wasn't too hot. I'm finishing up the second Navajo-inspired glove while drinking some herb tea. DH made these Adirondack chairs although he keeps giving them away. As you can see I don't let DH remove weeds because I love eating dandelion leaves in my salads. Plus there is the rabbit who especially enjoys the flowers.

Here is my latest glove-in-progress. (Yes, I'm aware that I can't seem to stop knitting gloves.) I used the design on a friend's Navajo rug for the chart inspiration and 6 colors of Palette. I think I'm going to add fringe on one side of the gauntlet cuff and possibly a duplicate stitch design on the back of the hand to add to the western theme.

BTW, if you look hard you can see Peaches the rabbit snoozing in her pet bed under the green table.

I spent the weekend giving up on things.

1. I gave up on the Fendi knock-off gloves I was knitting (on the left). Other than the cuff they just bored me silly and I couldn't figure out how to add more colorwork to keep my interest. I guess I need more color as well. So I've given up. I may use the chart again for another project.

2. The wonderful Selbustrikk cover mittens. The problem is that I can't find a single man who will wear these. They are going to be larger than the hands of the one guy I hoped they'd fit and I can't find another guy who would wear these mittens. I'll continue to see if I can find someone else to give them to.

3. My new Pony Pearls 5.75" metal reinforced dpns in sizes 2.25 and 2.75 mm. I bought these because the Inox/Prym glove needles I usually buy don't come in every size. Unfortunately these particular plastic-coated dpns have the worst tips ever - they are rough and coarse and constantly catch on or split the yarn. I will stick to using 7" dpns in that size no matter how clumsy they are for glove fingers. (I break bamboo and wood dpns in that size.) I may try to sand the tips to make them work better.

I finally finished the second Peace Glove knit in Palette and 2.5 and 2.25 mm dpns. I made them to match the denim jacket I embroidered. I plan to make gloves to wear with each of my coats and jackets so I have two more pairs planned. Sorry about the photos but I had to use the flash as it has been gray and rainy here this week.




Today I sent $204.83 from booklet and pattern sales to the Colorado House Rabbit Society. Also, the lime green and purple socks are on hold because I can't find the right color of purple. This was hard for me to believe because I have a whole container of purple yarns. Instead I started another pair of gloves.

I should finish the second Peace glove tonight during the Red Sox/Tigers game. Then I have two more glove designs I want to start along with some socks in purple and lime green.

Here are some photos from a walk we took this weekend on a horse trail in the Sandias.



Solar-powered outhouses.



Words of Wisdom



Detail of alligator juniper



Cholla cactus - these have gorgeous hot pink blooms.

So far you've seen a container with my Shetland yarns, a container with some vintage Nylamb baby/sock yarn, my sport weight collection (mainly Nature Spun) and one container with all the colors of Knitpicks' Palette.

Here are my sock yarns. I'm particularly excited by some almost fluorescent colors of Kroy I bought on sale a while ago - I plan to do some psychedelic colorwork socks soon. At right in the bag are a few skeins of Knitpicks' Gloss. The stitch definition on that yarn is terrific so I have a few textured patterns I will use with it, especially the lovely Step Dance socks featured on this page.



Here's my DK selection, mainly Heilo, old Patons Country Garden DK, and Knitpick's Merino Style DK (which is a bit thicker than other DK weights). I often consider giving these yarns away because I rarely use them but I do have a big pile of Dale of Norway patterns which use DK weight.



I figured out I have enough containers to rearrange my worsted weight yarns by color. I have Wool of the Andes, Peruvian Highland Wool, Cascade 220, and a bit of Nature Spun.



Organizing by colors is really helpful so I can figure out what colors I need or don't need. The red bag holds the Great American Aran Afghan squares and yarn which has been sadly neglected.



At the bottom of the red container you see some chunks of Irish Spring soap which I used for moth prevention. The smell is driving me nuts though so I may make my own herbal sachets instead.

We had an adventure-filled weekend.


Peaches took over poor Jack's bed on the futon.



I tried two new terrific recipes.


Vegetable and Tofu Lettuce Wraps w/Miso Sambal from Cooking Light (made into a salad)


Herb Salad Spring Rolls from Gourmet (with my own sauces)

And it even snowed a little bit.



Tomorrow I'll finish up the tour of my stash.

Here's the Selbu mitten in progress - sorry about the photo but I'm too lazy to take a better one today. I also should get a photo of Peaches - she has been sleeping on the futon all day. After 3 years of living with us I guess she has finally decided it was safe to go on the furniture.

Forget everything I said about an update to Stranded Color Knitting. Unfortunately I didn't save a lot of the photos (or the two hats) from 4 years ago. I did do an update but it was minimal with a few photos switching from B&W to color. Plus I added the photos from HERE and I added these links to the resource section:

Knitty’s Techniques with Theresa in Winter 2006 has an excellent discussion of stranded color knitting at http://knitty.com/ISSUEwinter06/FEATwin06TT.html . Techniques with Theresa also has an informative article on working in yarn tails here: http://knitty.com/ISSUEfall04/FEATfall04TT.html

Philosopher’s Wool has a short video of their Two-Handed Color Knitting Method: http://www.philosopherswool.com/Pages/Streamingvideo.htm

KnittingHelp.com also has a short video on stranded color knitting: http://www.knittinghelp.com/knitting/advanced_techniques/

Youtube Video showing stranded color knitting:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lthgPvmkbkQ

Most importantly I re-charted the Norwegian star chart for the 2nd hat. The one in the booklet was inexplicably missing some of the grid lines in the bottom right. Please print this out and add to your booklets. I'm sorry about that. I do know one person managed to knit the hat even with the former chart.



Tomorrow I'll have a progress photo of the Selbustrikk mitten. It is a pattern designed for men and probably will be a bit large for any of the women on my Christmas knitting list. Fortunately I have a friend Brad who works at the Durango Mountain ski resort (formerly Purgatory) and wears anything wool I make, mittens or gloves, for skiing. I was quite surprised when he asked for these Nordic mittens when I was knitting them. DH wouldn't wear these in a million years.

I'm currently updating Stranded Color Knitting to add some color photos. When I first published it in 2003 there was no option for publishing booklets in color. Then I figured it would be too expensive but I think Lulu must have lowered their prices for color printing because the glove booklet was less than I estimated.

I'll be offline until mid-next week. Until then I'm leaving my two ferocious assistants in charge to guard the blog. You don't want to mess with them.

These gloves are surprisingly fast to knit. I'm already planning a third pair in black. The hand colorwork will be black and one of the two multicolored skeins of yarn I own (something from Knitpicks' on sale) and then I'll try to match the colors with yarn from the stash for the cuff colorwork.

I'm running out of red so I've made an executive decision to knit the second glove and let the much slower Selbustrikk mittens wait until more red arrives. I also need to get back to work on some socks and I want to knit the hat on the cover of Stranded Color Knitting in better colors.

A long time ago I saw this quilter on tv. I can't recall her name but they went to her house and it was an explosion of color, a la Kaffe Fassett. Anyway, she said that she considered red a neutral color. She said that you could choose a group of colors that went together and add red and it would work.

I tried this concept with the Peace gloves. I chose a bunch of pastels and added red. The scanner isn't getting the red right - it is much darker in real life and there is a little more contrast in the colorwork on the cuff. I initially did the fingers in each of the pastels but it looked awful so I'm redoing them in red. I'll get better photos when I'm finished. I think these gloves will match my embroidered denim jacket quite well.