A Strange Sock Affair

Now that I have the big commissioned scarf out of the way, I will finally have time to work on my big batch of commissioned socks for my Aunt as well as the time to finish up the Christmas Socks for my fiancé.

I have been working on the toe of my fiancé's sock for a while now because he has long elegant three-inch toes that are nicely slanted. Unlike mine, which are about two inches and are mostly all of the same size. This means that I've been working on a new type of toe and I had to do math to add in the extra inch of plain knitting that I had to do. I could have just knit for an extra inch and then knit a regular two inch rounded toe, but I decided that the extra fabric that toe would have made might have rubbed his toe funny and made it uncomfortable to have in shoes.

I only have a few rounds left until I can finally finish the entire sock. The round toe isn't any harder than the regular wedge toe that I normally make, but I have to keep track of the pattern so it is going a little slower.

The other sock is just a simple grey sock, but that is stalled on the needles until I finish the first sock of my fiancé's socks because of the cute little nine inch circular needle. The cable is too short to comfortably knit a complete heel flap and there are going to be too many stitches on the needle for the extra gusset stitches, so I have to move it over to double pointed needles. I do like that little needle to knit the sock legs with. It would be perfect to make little sock swatches with or to test out a pattern to see if it would look good on a sock before actually knitting the sock.

-MegWesley

New Week, New Skills

Every week in Hogwarts at Ravelry there is a new challenge that you can attempt to do. This week, the Headmistress declared all of the rememberalls contraband which left us with two options:

1. Knit something that is so easy to us that we don't even have to reference a pattern anymore; or

2. Knit something that requires so much concentration that we have to continually reference a pattern or a set of directions to finish the project.

Naturally, being sorted into the prestigious and ambitious Slythern house, I decided to go with the second option and decided that the guidelines meant that it was time to learn a new stitch pattern: the brioche stitch. For some reason, this week I had the brioche stitch on the brain. I had read about how it was supposed to be this fantastic stitch for scarves because it was reversible and you could do awesome things with two colors, but it was supposed to be super difficult. That was when I did decide to do the smart thing and start off learning the stitch with just one color.

The brioche stitch is nothing but slipping a stitch, doing a yarn over, and then knitting a stitch together with a yarn over. It sounds super easy and it is actually pretty easy, but I had to concentrate to make sure that I knitted the two stitches together and actually remembered to do the yarn over. I made a simple washcloth out of regular dishcloth cotton, expecting it to be normal and about as dense as garter stitch. It turned out to be super squishy which made it feel really thick. I love how it turned out and it feels so nice to wash your face with because it is so plush feeling!

I am glad that I decided to learn a new stitch and that this challenge inspired me to do so. I really want to make a blanket with this stitch now because it will be so delightfully squishy to cuddle.

As a side note, I finally got a background on my blog now. I know it probably doesn't look like much, but it is actually coming along quite nicely with my vision of having an Alice in Wonderland inspired knitting blog. More updates to the aesthetics to the blog will be coming this month, so there will be some more changes coming. Thank you for your patience!

-MegWesley

The Shiny Sylveon Scarf: A Knitting Montage in Pictures

-MegWesley

Hogwarts at Ravelry

What do you get when you mix up the Harry Potter fandom, a crazy group of competitive knitters, and the awesome social media and pattern searching website that is Ravelry? You get Hogwarts at Ravelry.

Hogwarts at Ravelry is a super awesome group of knitters that are involved in a Harry Potter based friendly knitting competition. Everybody who joins the group has to apply for the Sorting process at the beginning of each rotation. From there, we are sorted into one of the four Hogwarts houses and then we can compete in the classes and other special threads of the rotation. Each of the assignments you complete can earn House Points for your house. The house with the most points at the end of the year wins and gets bragging rights. You can also earn special Chocolate Frog Cards and badges for completing fun challenges in different threads. Confused yet?

Don't worry, it is surprisingly simple once you get the hang of it. And if you pretend that you are in Hogwarts, it makes much more sense. This group has been around for a while. Long enough for them to go through one full rotation of the Harry Potter series, so I have been aware of it. I just remembered about them when they were still in the third rotation of the first year. So, I jumped in on it and registered to be sorted.

I was lucky enough to be sorted into the noble house of Slytherin to join all of my cunning and ambitious brothers and sisters. From there, my knitting commissions just took off and I have been able to fit them into the classes so far.

I finished my second set of four teeny-tiny chickens for Suzanne. They are now living quite happily with her and I was able to turn in three of the chickens into Defense against the Dark Arts class and the last chicken into the Weekly Challenge. One of the assignment challenges was to use the Verdimillious or green sparks spell to find something that was hidden using the Dark Arts. Of course, I decided that while practicing this spell, I revealed a carton of eggs and, when I opened it, tiny chickens sprung out of it! The weekly challenge dealt with the school song and one of my favorite songs when I was little was the chicken song.

The group is really fun and I find that it helps me motivate myself to knit on and finish my knitting commissions and other knitting that I want to do. Of course, the group isn't only knitters and crocheters, weavers, and spinners are encouraged to join if you think you'll have fun. And I will be talking about the classes and challenges more as time goes on, so if you are reading along you will get the flow of the group's challenges.

-MegWesley

Five Things I Love about Knitting

Because I love the cheeriness and love of Valentine's Day, I decided to write a special post on the ways that I am absolutely in love with knitting.

1. Knitting never yells at you when you do something stupid.

Instead, knitting just sits there and let you finish. Then it will let you know that you goofed up by not fitting properly. But it never judges you or make you do something silly like excess paperwork that doesn't mean anything or an extra reading assignment when other people were the ones who didn't do the work in the first place.

2. Knitting is as easy or as hard as you make it.

There are some days when you just don't have much of a brain left at the end of the day. You don't want to sit down to an overly complicated lace pattern in cobweb weight yarn, but a simple ribbed sock will suit you just fine. Or an endless garter stitch scarf. Then there are some days when you want the overly complicated cabled scarf with different colored cables over a different color boarder that you have to do with the intarsia technique. And you love the fiddly complicatedness of it.

3. Knitting looks good in bright colors or in neutral colors.

It is pretty hard to make a bad looking project with wild colors if you let the colors shine and stand out by themselves. You can also make awesome and intricate patterns with neutrals that don't let those colors be boring. I guess, the thing is that color makes people happy and knit fabric looks good in any color.

4. Cables are awesome.

Knitting cables is still super impressive to me because it is so simple, but it looks so complicated. It is the best knitting illusion ever. You knit two or more stitches out of order every six to seven rows and it ends up looking like a rope. Dead simple and they look amazing all of the time.

5. Knitting is rhythmic and soothing.

Sometimes when I am upset or just can't relax, I grab my knitting. The movement of endless knits and purls is just so soothing to me. You just knit one stitch at a time and then when you are done knitting for the day you either have a practical item to wear, a fun item to display, or have made good progress on whatever you are making that day. But the feel of the yarn running through your fingers as you wrap it around your needles is a comforting feeling similar to hugging a teddy bear or cuddling up with a nice warm blanket. Or at least it is for me.

Happy Valentine's Day

-MegWesley

Surprise, Surprise!

I've actually been knitting with surprising speed over the last few days. Astonishing, since it feels like I am taking forever to finish the toe on my fiancé's sock. But I have picked up quite a few commissions recently and it is bringing back my knitting mojo.

The first bunch of commissions are teeny tiny little chickens for Carol, also known as the nicest boss ever. I brought in my teeny tiny chicken to make a Thursday a little bit brighter last week and she sweetly asked me if I could make her a little flock because one of her good friends raised chickens and would find them charming and adorable. Of course, I didn't mind that at all and she did even offer to pay me on her own, without any prodding from me. And these chickens only took a few days. The only yarn I had to borrow was the yellow yarn for the beaks. The rest I had in my stash already, so it was really no problem at all. I just forgot how small they were to make. You would think that the smaller the project is, the quicker you would be able to make them. Well, these chickens took me well over six hours to get them all assembled. Of course, I was doing them in stages so it did take time to knit all of the bodies before knitting anything else.

The next commission I'm working on is for my Aunt Kathy. I had made my Grandpa a pair of socks and they had shrunk just enough that Aunt Kathy started wearing them regularly. She loved them so much that she called me up and asked me if I could make her enough pairs of socks to last a week and that she would even pay for both the yarn and my time making them. 

Since I knew that good yarn is expensive, I did agree on lower terms than I would normally accept, but I do like my Aunt and she is totally knit-worthy. Plus, I get to knit out some simple patterns I have had floating around in my head and have wanted to try out. 

For instance, on this first pair of socks I learned that once I have the right gauge for socks, a simple ribbing pattern does work nicely as long as there is enough difference between the ribbing for the body and the ribbing for the cuff. As you can see in this sock, the 3x1 rib for the body contrasts nicely with the 1x1 rib for the cuff instead of the normal 2x2 ribbing I like to do for socks. I'm going to try to figure out a similar pattern for the 2x2 ribbing so that they can be a nice matched set.

The last commission I am working on is just a simple garter stitch scarf based off of the shiny version of the fairy-type Sylveon. The scarf is going to look like a long ribbon with the two shades of pink at the end followed by the bright blue at either end and a very long piece of white in the middle. I calculated it out that I am going to have to knit 20 sets of 10 garter ridges of white in before I start the other end of the scarf in order for it to be long enough.

I am proud of myself on this one to stay with the garter stitch instead of trying to do the shaping for the ribbon end in ribbing. I mean, it is doable, but there is a certain elegance and obvious hand knitted style that garter stitch has compared to ribbing or a smoother stitch that you can find in the store. And I managed to weave in the ends of the yarn while I was working it up, so except for the two ends at the ribbon end, there will be only four ends of yarn to weave in when I am done. And because it is garter stitch, it makes for a really good movie watching knitting project.

-MegWesley

The Crisis of a Blog

For the past few weeks I have been having a major blogging crisis. I've been trying to keep a version of a knitting blog ever since high school and every time I get started good, I feel like I have to start a brand new and better blog. Normally, this would be just fine and I would be off blogging for a year or so about knitting or about knitting and different topics like fashion or food or fitness. But, since I know more about knitting than anything else, I always feel like I can't do a fashion related blog justice. And as much as I like talking about food, I just can't create recipes off the top of my head and then share them with the world. I really admire the people who can, but I just can't do that.

This time is a little bit different because I realize that if I want to keep blogging, I should really just focus down and just talk about knitting. There is so much to talk about in the world of knitting and I don't have anybody to talk about the specific things that I want to talk to them about. Even though my mom does knit (and she is the only other family member that does), she doesn't really care what it takes to get the perfect fit on the toe of a sock. Or figuring out how to do different stitch patterns and then translate that to different projects. Or even to compare yarn stashes or different types of sock yarn. None of my friends knit at all and my super-patient fiancé just doesn't get my fascination and satisfaction with yarn and knitting (but he does appreciate the socks I knit for him).

That is all fine and dandy. In fact, I was having some suspicions over that myself when I realized that over 90% of my posts were about knitting instead of the other topics I was trying to write about. But the biggest problem right now is that I have one post about my best friend's wedding that I don't want to lose. I would love to move that over on this blog, but since it is almost a year old (and will be their one year anniversary in May), I'm not quite sure how to move it over and still have it make sense.

I know that if any of you stumble across this little blog that you would probably expect talk about knitting and this is not about knitting. The reason why I am writing this is to get it out in the open and hopefully clear up some things for me. If it ends up helping someone else by showing them that we are all human behind our computer screens then that is wonderful. If not, thank you for giving me a little time to vent and clear the air while I decide what to do with this little blog.

-MegWesley