Terrace Knitting

By rumour, today is Mother’s Day. We had absolutely nothing scheduled. Once the basic errands were finished (getting some groceries in the house) the rest of the day was mine to sit and play. The cheese cake was baked by the eldest just for me. The dog just decided to stay with me in case I was willing to share my food [not].

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Sockapalooza4

If you think these socks are for you – you might be right. But then again, with so many of us involved, the odds are not high. I don’t know if my “victim” has ever been here to look. Not posting would take a lot of fun out of the process.

After working out as much as I wanted with my sample yarn – I discovered the following: using 2,0 mm needles made too stiff a fabric with a gauge around 4 sitches per cm. Plus if I want to stay with this gauge, I will have to expand the number of stitches. Hitting the stash, I found a skein of J-Knits in colorway Newbury Port. which I had purchased from theYarnGrove.. The best I can describe it is as a semi-solid falling between rose and lilac. I have been to my pal’s blog. She has pink, she has purple, she has red socks on the pages. I think this color is going to work out better than my previous choice.

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Starting on 2,25 mm needles, I went with a long tail cast on and knit a cuff in twisted rib that I think is long enough. It measures 4 cm. Which led me to a bit of research and a curiosity – how long a cuff is long enough? Is it a standard length, which seems to be common for most German patterns, or is it more reasonable to be proprotional either to the length or the pattern? I have noticed that I seem to knit about the same length cuff, and it is related to how much cuff is needed to hold up the sock. And that means that it may very with the receipient. What do you think?
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After 13 rounds the patterns are coming clear. I am quite pleased with how well the colour, stitch definition and pattern combination came together. The front and the back. I can see right now that this is not mindless knitting. The side panel repeats are only four rows long, but the back pattern is 13 and the front is 15 for the center and 8 for the side. Once I am completely done, I should properly write out this pattern in case anyone else is interested. Working from xeroxed sheets cut and taped together is fun [I have some shore front property in the desert].

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Knitting

The second grasshopper is progressing. It is my break knitting when my eyes are too crossed from the Trautenfels Tulip. Going toe up again (my consession to the pattern) I even decided to do the mesh stitch. We will not talk about the one stitch that jumped off the needle and made a break for freedom down four rows before I could blink. Rather than reknit, I picked it up as best I could and kept on going. Since the other sock became a stitch sampler, one irregular hole in the mesh is not going to bother me.

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Audio, Visual, etc

The winner of the Eurovsion was Marija from Serbia. And if you have any interest in listening – all the songs can be heard over the internet by following the links to each of the participants pages and hitting audio or video.

-Holly
going back to her knitting.

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About Holly

fiber person - knitter, spinner, weaver who spent 33 years being a military officer to fund the above. And home. And family. Sewing and quilting projects are also in the stash. After living again in Heidelberg after retiring (finally) from the U.S. Army May 2011, we moved to the US ~ Dec 2015. Something about being over 65 and access to health care. It also might have had to do with finding a buyer for our house. Allegedly this will provide me a home base in the same country as our four adult children, all of whom I adore, so that I can drive them totally insane. Considerations of time to knit down the stash…(right, and if you believe that…) and spin and .... There is now actually enough time to do a bit of consulting, editing. Even more amazing - we have only one household again. As long as everyone understands that I still, 40 years into our marriage, don't do kitchens or bathrooms. For that matter, not being a golden retriever, I don't do slippers or newspapers either. I don’t miss either the military or full-time clinical practice. Limiting my public health/travel med/consulting and lecturing to “when I feel like it” has let me happily spend my pension cruising, stash enhancing (oops), arguing with the DH about where we are going to travel next and book buying. Life is good!
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6 Responses to Terrace Knitting

  1. Marit says:

    Hi! The pattern for those pinkish socks looks intriguing!
    Beautiful dog!

  2. Bronte says:

    What a gorgeous pattern. It looks very intricate. And the colour is lovely. 🙂

    I worry that my pal will find her socks via the Pligg, too, but they won’t know 100% for sure til they get the package. So there’s still the element of surprise!

  3. Liz says:

    Hi,

    I’m loving your sockapalooza sock! The twisted stitch pattern is fabulous and the color is lovely.

    Liz

  4. Carrie says:

    Wow, those socks look lovely. They make me ashamed of complaining about how many cables there are on my socks. I think that the amount of ribbing sounds about right–it’s probably just the right amount to keep the socks up without being too tight!

  5. colin says:

    are we going to see the finished pink ones? I love twisted sttiches.

  6. YaelB says:

    Oohs of appreciation for handsome sockliness and enticing cheesecake-liness.
    We’ll be at the in-laws for Shavuot, thus no cheesecake baking at Chez MomMyth this time around.

    I’m hooked on Merino Tencel, because of you! Received some handpainted MeriTen niceness from localneedle.com, more from spinningbunny.com (near Ithaca!), and am anticipating skeins from The Sweet Sheep.

    Do you have any insights as to where to seek comfortable sock knitting length (would that be 5″/12 cm ?) dpns in sizes 1mm, 1.5mm, 1.75 mm? I’m a verra loose gauge knitter, and usually have to go down several increments to get gauge.

    DH is a big Eurovision fan. We watch the videos as soon as they come out, and show them to the littles. All the kids liked Lordi and Severina (Moja Stickla) last year. Actually, they had quite a few faves last year. This year was less impressive, from a musical point of view.
    We like TipX – they’re popular here in Israel – and we like “Push the Button”. The music is definitely an aquired local taste. We still don’t get how the blatantly sexual objectification messages in some of the other entries are more acceptable than the content of “Push the Button”…

    Serbia was good. Weird staging.

    Happy 40th Jerusalem ReUnification Day!

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