Pseudo-ambidexterity

Posted on 11 February 2005 by Kris

Last night I missed the SnB for a DOTs gig. Only for those girls, man, only for them. :-P Won’t go into detail here because that belongs in my personal journal, but while the evening had its high points, I think I’d have had more fun just sitting around and chatting and knitting.

Oh well. Since I can’t work on my sock until I get the CP needles from Jess, I’ve been working on Cozy. It’s going kind of slowly, but I’m almost to the point where I can add another ball in.

I decided that I didn’t like turning my work during a project like this. Flipping a long drapey thing around all the time gets annoying. So I took a cue from my sister and have been working left-handed on alternating rows for about half a ball now. I work the right side rows as written, but now instead of turning and purling, I just knit across moving left to right. It’s pretty fun, actually. It turns out my right hand is just incapable of holding the yarn properly (left-handed yarn holding’s way ingrained into my muscle memory), so at first I tried English, but I ditched that idea early on. Now, I guess it’s basically combined knitting I’m doing when I knit left-handed, from the way I wrap the yarn around the needle. It wasn’t particularly easy at first, because I’m quite a bit farther from ambidextrous than my sister is, but I think I’ve pretty much gotten the hang of it now. I’m not as quick at it yet. But that will come with practice.

It always takes crafting stuff to make me realize that my weak hand isn’t so weak after all. Sure, I use a mouse left-handed most of the time, but other than that I tend to forget that my right hand isn’t uite as dominant as I think it is. A couple of years ago, during macrame projects, I taught myself to do certain knots (eg. “backward” overhand knots) with my left hand, and got to the point where I do those better as a lefty than as a righty. I do those unconsciously now. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do the more complicated stitches left-handed, but hopefully someday I’ll be able to knit and purl with the same skill.

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Splintered

Posted on 09 February 2005 by Kris

GAH!!!!!

Just when I thought I got the hang of using my size 1 DPNs, I broke another one. I haven’t even gotten my replacement for the first broken one yet, and now I have to e-mail them for second.

Stupid ex-pianist’s fingers. >_< Yeah, I'm thinking I definitely need a set bamboo DPNs in this size. I love that Brittany sends out free replacements, but I can't keep borrowing needles or pausing projects while I wait for the new needles. And I also don't like that I can't let my fingers work as unconsciously as they're used to... And I'm about halfway through the leg of my second sock, too. Darnit! So much for finishing it it this week.

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Frog socks

Posted on 07 February 2005 by Kris

For some reason, I thought it was a good idea to work on the heel of my sock during a Cal Animage screening. Yeah. Never doing that again.

Haven’t been knitting much for the past week or so, as I’ve been working on touching up my room instead, but I just picked up the needles again today because I want to get this sock done. My feet tend to get really cold in my apartment for some reason, and I’d like to have at least one pair of wool socks to wear during those times. I’m now just past the heel, so I’ll be done later this week.

I bought two 50g balls of the yarn for this pair, and I’m not sure what to do with the leftovers. I started with a new ball for the second sock because I didn’t think I had enough yarn remaining in the first. So soon, I shall have two navy blue socks and two little balls of navy blue sock yarn. Hmm.

I’m not allowed to buy myself any yarn this month. Thankfully I have enough for several projects, so at least I won’t die of boredom. Besides, usually Elann’s newsletters tempt me like no other (which I’m sure is why they’ve been sending them out to those of us who haven’t subscribed to it), but I’m not into knitting with cotton, so I’m safe in that respect. I just need to stay out of yarn stores until March and I’ll be fine.

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Two and one

Posted on 31 January 2005 by Kris

To kick off this journal, I thought I’d post a few things I’ve finished recently, now that I’ve found my camera’s USB cable. It’s not everything I’ve ever made (I haven’t taken pictures of everything I’ve done, though next time I go up to the Bay Area I’ll take pictures of my family’s gifts) but it’s some of the more recent stuff.

(As a note, I’m a knitter on a budget, and generally most of the yarn I use comes from Elann.

My take on Sophie, using smaller needles and not-quite-complete felting to give it a more interesting texture. (Though the camera flash makes the stitches stand out more than they really do in real life). Looks a little brighter here, color-wise, than it does in person. It also had a small knitting project and ball of yarn inside it when this picture was taken, hence the slight bulge in one of its sides. Uses Peruvian Highland Wool.

An iPod cozy, knit in the round and designed as I went along. Not blocked because I’m lazy and it’s not like it’s a shaped garment or anything. I think if I did this a second time, I’d cast on a couple of more stitches; while it fits fine, it needs to stretch just a bit more than I’d like to accommodate the iPod. Also uses Peruvian Highland Wool.

A toe-up sock (my first!), knit using Sock it To Me Essential. Its mate is currently in progress.

Pictures of WIPs to come when I find my camera battery charger (or replace it, depending on how desperate I get :-P).

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Winter (if you could call it that :-P) WIPs

Posted on 25 January 2005 by Kris

I had to frog my first sock to below the heel late last week, because I’d somehow wound up with extra stitches and didn’t notice until I was about three inches past the random increases. I finally found where they were, swore very profusely for not having noticed earlier, started ripping, decided I wanted to fix the big gaping hole between the heel and the instep (which I’d tried to work on as I went along but had sort of failed at), screwed that up, and then ripped some more.

Oh well. Shit happens.

After all that, though, it went pretty smoothly. And as of Saturday afternoon, I now have a new sock! (I’d post a picture, but I still haven’t found my USB cable. Grrarrrr.) I’ll be working on its mate over the next few days.

Man, after working on this, my size 6s seem positively huge in comparison.

I’ve also been working on my Cozy, which I haven’t gotten too far into because I kind of let it go to the wayside in my initial sock excitement. Unfortunately, I majorly screwed up somewhere, and while the few mistakes I’d made previously were easy enough to fix, this last one required unknitting almost an entire pattern repeat. Yeah, that was not fun. But it was either that, or rip all the way down to my lifeline (which was several repeats down at the time).

On the plus side, since I’m working with alpaca yarn this time, I decided I’d try just splicing the ends of two balls together so that I didn’t have to do the whole weaving-in-ends thing (which was not fun the last time I did this pattern). It worked beautifully, but I really should’ve just used half the plies of each strand for that, which I didn’t think about at the time. So I’ve got a slightly thicker strand running through somewhere, but while it’s noticeable to me at least, it doesn’t really bother me all that much. (And no, I didn’t use spit because that grosses me out. Wrapped a damp cloth around the twisted-together strands for maybe half a minute, then unwrapped it and rolled the join between my palms.) I’ll just have to make sure I don’t repeat that mistake when I add the next ball in.

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