Toes toes toes toes toes...

I have been a slack little blogger this month, but I haven't been slack. My current socks were up to here last week

and are now up to here

They are about a quarter done, I think, and are up to 37 rounds past the end of the toe increases. After spending a few minutes on the calculator, I found this last pic to contain 61,664 stitches :) My old Time Trial socks had 21,000 stitches, so I've almost knit the equivalent of 3 pairs. I'm ahead of schedule... or I would be, if I didn't plan to make them longer. And tomorrow I start some other projects for January 'classes' in the House Cup game.

I finished the green hat, which Zac pinched straight away :)

And I made this one into a welted cowl (5 rounds of knit, 5 rounds of purl) until I ran out, so I could use up all the handspun I spun from Shadawyn's "Severus Snape".

I then started this one, being in a welty mood: another Wurm in Madelinetosh vintage. Decided to use a light yellow (Winter Wheat) for the main part, and a dark yellow (Candlewick) for the knit rounds that bend inwards.

It's easier to walk and knit with this than a chain of toes! lol.


Next month I have spinning plans and weaving plans, but I have to make sure to do my socks first. I have this pretty fibre called "Dark Mark" that I'm sure I can fit into this Harry Potter game somewhere!

And lastly, for the end of the year, my knitmeter read

And my tally for the "113 in 2013" group said

Knitting - 55
Weaving - 3
Spinning - 42
Dyeing - 16

= 116

Happy New Year!

Summertime

It's been a soggy sort of start to Summer. I miss the sun, and then I console myself with warm stuff. :)

Pattern: Hedgerow Socks. Yarn: String Theory Bluestocking in "Firecracker"

Pattern: own. Yarn: Madelinetosh Vintage in "Duchess". (The cello is Nathan's, not mine, but I made them to copy the fliptop mitts of  this guy, who is quite the cellist.)

Pattern: Cool Logic. Yarn: Madtosh Vintage in "Moorland". Not quite a whole hat yet :)

I have purple spinning to report

This is the Llama/silk I got from Bendigo this year. Must acquire some more some time!

Texel. Knew it was a bit rough, but I wanted to try some new things.

Apart from that, I've been going ahead with NEWT #4: Seven Simultaneous Stripey Socks on two very long circular 2.5mm needles. Here's where I am up to tonight

It started off awkwardly, to say the least! But now that the toes are done it's a bit easier to keep them straight, and they're big enough to hold their own little yarn balls. I'd had them in little bags, one for each pair, but they were annoying :)

This is all self-striping, hand-dyed yarn. I like watching the color changes... you don't get bored. It does take me about 40 minutes to do half a round, though!

"Unity" (so named because it's stripes of the Hogwarts House colors)... although I've been thinking of it as "One Sock to Rule Them All!" :)

"Mountain". Love how the variegation and stripes of dark brown are turning out. Behind that one is "Shadows" which is a gradient sort of stripe, going from dark to light grey. Shadows will be one of the Jaywalker socks.

"Glow Sticks" on the left and "Curcurbitas" on the right. Both plain vanilla socks, as are "Mountain" and "Unity".

"Rowena" will be a Jaywalker sock, too, and "Sunleaf" is getting a 3x2 ribbing.

These two last are a thinner yarn, and BFL. All the others are merino/nylon sock yarn.The "Shadows" one is thinner, or maybe I should just say that the four which are all "Bendigo Woolen Mills Superfine Sock Yarn" are fatter than your average sock yarn. lol. Anyway, I cast on more stitches for the Jaywalkers (Shadows and Rowena) so that the toes would be finished at the same time, and the Sunleaf rib socks have a few more stitches. The plain ones have 64 each. The Jaywalkers have 76 (the pattern pulls it in a lot) and the ribbed socks have 68.

And now it's quarter to 3am again, so I'd better kick myself off to bed.

NEWT 3

Finished! And with a week to spare :)

So here's a recap of this 4 month project:

Total singles spun: 4978y.
Total yards knit: 3013y.
Weaving: 424y


This was a Potions/Muggle Studies NEWT, where I’d turn a fleece into a hat, legwarmers and a skirt, some lovely yarn into a jumper, and magic some fluff into a shawl.

Fleece - 1.4kg of Finn/Corriedale/English Leicester/BFL (one fleece, four different grandparents)
1281y of yarn/ 1063g. 621y of 2ply and 660y of 3ply. (Singles - 3222y)


Hat - Sitka Spruce - 190y of the 3ply


Shawl - Phi - 648y of the m/s/s handspun
Spinning - merino/suri/silk. 878y of 2ply (1756y of singles)



Jumper - Stilwell - 1960y of Madelinetosh Vintage


Skirt - handwoven - 424y of 2ply (according to weight of finished skirt)


Legwarmers - 215y of the 3ply


And it all fits! But as for it being a good disguise amongst the Muggles… well, I might stand out anyway, since it’s almost Summer here! :)

Cool Logic

A basic hat with a twisty rib. I called it Cool Logic because it came out of a class prompt (in the House Cup game on Ravelry) where you had to work out, with logic, how to get past a Snape-like logic puzzle. Puzzle below :)

Hermione got lots of points for her use of cool logic in the face of fire.

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4.5mm needles
Madelinetose Vintage
Left cable = slip 2 to cable needle, hold in front, k2, k2 from cable needle
Right cable = slip 2 to cable needle, hold in back, k2, k2 from cable needle

Circular cast on 8 and increase (8 every other round) until 112 stitches.

ie.

KF&B x8
K one round
(K1, KF&B) x8
K one round
(K2, KF&B) x8
K one round
(K3, KF&B) x8
K one round

(K4, KF&B) x8
K one round
(K5, KF&B) x8
K one round
(K6, KF&B) x8
K one round
(K7, KF&B) x8
K one round
(K8, KF&B) x8
K one round
(K9, KF&B) x8
K one round
(K10, KF&B) x8
K one round
(K11, KF&B) x8
K one round
(K12, KF&B) x8










(Now you have 8 sections with 14st each = 112st)

Knit 22 rounds.

P2, K4 around (decreasing out 4 evenly) (108)

Round 1 and 2 - (P2, K4) x18
Round 3 - (P2, Left cable) x18
Round 4 and 5 - (P2, K4) x18
Round 6 - (P2, Right cable) x18

Repeat rounds 1-6 two more times (or three, if you like). Immediately after the last round 6, cast off in rib pattern using JSSBO.

Me, testing out the new logic center in my brain... Hey, I figured out the puzzle! lol.

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Puzzle: (pinched from the game, here.)

As you file in from the Troll room, a barrier of purple flame roars up behind you. The only other visible exit is already blocked by a wall of black fire.
“Not to worry, there’s enough potion for everyone this time,” Professor Cillaspins reassures you. “I’m sure you all recall the test Harry Potter and Hermione Granger-“
“Why give Potter credit when Granger did all the work?” Professor Cattiekins mutters, a little acerbically.
“-encountered in this chamber,” Cillaspins continues serenely. “The logic puzzle and the array of bottles are preserved over there.” She indicates a glass case with a framed parchment and a row of assorted potions bottles.
“We all know the answer to that puzzle from our history class.” Professor Drake picks up the narration. “So we’ve provided an alternate puzzle for you here.” She steps aside, revealing a table containing three identical opaque potions bottles. They are labeled “Poison”, “Black Flame Freeze”, and “Purple Flame Freeze”.
“That doesn’t look like much of a riddle,” a seventh-year mutters from the back of the class.
Drake raises a single brow. “No bottle contains the potion listed on the label.” A worried rumble rises, then falls as Cattiekins casts a warning glare around the room. “You may each open a single bottle and sniff the contents. After that, you must tell us which bottle you would drink to move forward, through the black flames. To help you, we have scented each potion with a strong odor. Poison smells of peppermint, Black flame Freeze smells of new hay, and Purple flame freeze smells of roasting chicken. Explain how you would solve this puzzle, and craft something that requires logical thought.”

Grey and yellow

I like grey and yellow as a color combo, but I've had a fair bit of it lately. For some reason, I decided that, with my NEWT, 4 out of 5 knitting projects could be shoved into the last month. So I've been working on the Grey NEWT project fairly exclusively these last few weeks.

I did rebel briefly, to dye some stripey yarn

and I've been working on a red sock

(the only one of the four I was going to knit for my Order of the Phoenix Mission that might actually get finished)

and I may have started spinning this purple Texel

LOL. So exclusively grey.

Anyway, I've finished my woven skirt, and discovered that, not only am I a terrible sewer who knows nothing about fabric, but I can't take a picture of myself in a skirt. hehe.

At least it does fit! Here's the actual color, more or less:

The one that took me the longest, though, was the shawl/scarf called Phi

I haven't worked out the yardage, yet, but it's a lot of garter stitch with fingering weight handspun. It's soft and warm, and the curve and Fibonacci stripes appeal to me. Simple and a bit interesting, which is exactly what I was looking for, and my Slytherin friend Jennifer (KnittingVortex) designed it just in time for it to be in my NEWT :)

And this one, I finished today

a very slouchy Sitka Spruce hat. Original fleece color (pale grey, blocking here on a white balloon). Made the slouchy size but with an extra half of  "Chart A" in length, so it's longish, too. Couldn't get a decent picture of it on myself, so Jasmine eagerly volunteered.

Now, I just have to get some legwarmers done, and I'm finished.

NEWT number 4 is already in Planning. It's pretty simple. I'm going to use hand-dyed stripey sock yarn

to make seven pairs of socks at once. Seven Simultaneous Stripey Socks on two very long circular 2.5mm needles. FUN! Or madness. A combination of the two is usually good for a NEWT. hehe.

Seventy-five

The current NEWT is now up to 75%, just in time to get the points in the House Cup game. I had to finish the Stilwell

and spin up my fleece

PHEW!

The jumper is longer than 'standard', and used about 1.6km (1800y) of yarn. (It weighs a kilo). The fleece turned into just over a kilo of yarn, 621y of 2ply and 660y of 3ply. Total singles spun: 3222y.

The knit meter has passed last year's spin total, and the knit total is looking beatable  :)

hehehehe.


So, to finish my NEWT I have to turn that fleece-yarn into a hat, skirt and legwarmers, and finish off the Phi. I have started the shawl, in fact I've done about half the rows, but that's not halfway, because you start at one point of the triangle and end up on one long side. So the rows are getting longer.

I may have bought a little more yarn ;)

onepinkplum's pic

Got this Madelinetosh worsted MCN from a raveler, seven skeins in the color Ink. Liking blue a lot lately.

Also caught a Wollmeise update, and got some white, black and green Twin. Can't have too many of the basics.

Or maybe you can. I seem to have about a hundred skeins of sock yarn... perhaps I'd better do a Sock NEWT next time, see if I can do 7 pairs in 4 months or something... Or maybe I'll buy a sock-knitting machine :) hehe.

Two old favorites

One of the school mums (her daughter is in prep with my son) recently shaved her head. She's having chemo, and when chunks of hair started to fall out she whipped out the shaver... and a hat.

That's when she found out that store-bought hats are not all that warm on a cold day :)

She told me one day, partly joking, partly asking, that I was welcome to make her a wool hat like the one I was wearing, if I liked. Hehe. So...

This is the third Paper Moon I've made. The first was for a 20's party a while ago; I searched for "cloche" and found this. The second was because I loved the first one; it fit really well, and I wore it all the time. This one, however, is in Malabrigo Rios (colorway is Paris Night) and I'm afraid I'm going to have to make another one in Rios for myself. It's so soft.

The other hat I own that I wear all the time is Wurm. It's a pretty common, simple pattern, but the texture of it really makes it thick and warm. I made this one with the leftover skein from Byron's Zigvest.

I also joined a challenge on Ravelry, where we have to set "cardioknitting" goals and meet them for 12 weeks. This was my walking project, simple pattern, worsted weight yarn, and it's seen a few kilometers :)

Now, I'll have to find something else. I've started "Phi". It's a simple pattern, but the yarn is much finer, so we'll see how we go.

And now I have to go to a school art show, which I have been trying to ignore for the last few months of "reminders" (I must have gotten five copies of the order forms for the dinner menu). I wasn't going to go to Yet Another Fundraiser... but apparently they've been talking about it at school a lot and telling the kids to invite their parents, and now Byron is all excited. He doesn't just want to go, either; because he's heard that I can buy things. Sigh.

More dyeing

Can't seem to help it. Hehe.

This one I called Cucurbitas. The class was about pumpkins :) Here's one repeat of the stripes...

Orange. But with lots of green for balance. Hehe.

This one should be interesting. I made a variegated yarn with 5 colors, as you see at the top, and then turned it into a long skein and dipped it into dark brown.

What I need now is a time-turner, so I can knit all these yarns into socks to see how they work out :)

I finished this yarn, too, which is a 2ply Polwarth. Never spun polwarth before, but it's a lot like merino, soft with shortish fibres.

And now I'd better knuckle down and work on that NEWT, because I have about 2 weeks to finish up to 75%, and then only a month to make lots of things up.

Well, after I finish these two hats, anyway... NEWT soon... :)