(Cross over post from LocoBellaTuna)

SSK is NOT the Same as PSSO (My First Sock)
After a year of knitting scarves and squares (to be sewn into a quilt) I've become tired of knitting the same thing over and over. Tay's aunt Cathy gave him a pair of knitted socks for Christmas and when I saw them, I instantly coveted both the sock and the ability to knit them. A couple of weeks after Christmas I received my own pair of socks from Cathy in the mail. (I already have another pair, a previous Christmas gift from her) but I am, and can admit to it, a sock whore. I instantly sent her an email to let her know that I put them right on and then I expressed to her my desire to knit my own pair. She emailed me back with links to patterns and links to video and that weekend I went to the nearest LewisCraft to buy supplies. After spending about 30 minutes looking at sock yarn and puzzling over patterns, I ended up finding a chunkier (cheaper) yarn with a sock pattern included. I bought the proper needles (DPNs - double pointed needles - a huge step for any beginning knitter I was soon to find out), 3 balls of the yarn and returned home.The next day I sat down at my computer with the knitting video running, the pattern in front of me and began trying to knit with 4 very thin and very short needles. My fingers were all over the place as I tried to control them, and then force them (with yarn attached) into the shape of a triangle so I could start knitting into "the round".Once I got the hang of knitting on the needles and keeping in the triangle, a cuff quickly formed.



When it came time to knit the heel, I very quickly realized why people spend the $5-$10 to buy a pair of socks rather than even ATTEMPTING to knit them. I pulled mass amounts of hair out, swore a lot under my breath and stayed up late both Sunday night and Monday night in front of the computer, trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. Once I figured out that a SSK was NOT the same as a PSSO, the following shape emerged:



The next morning on the bus I began knitting what would become the foot of the sock and what would turn out to be the most tedious. Around and around we went, over and over again, me occasionally muttering to myself when I'd forget about my fourth needle and start knitting with just three. But eventually, I had enough of the foot that I could knit the toe. Like the heel, the toe was also knitted in white yarn, and ended up looking like this:



And finally, once the toe was grafted together and the holes that had tragically appeared along the way were sewn up, it was complete and looked like this:

It's not perfect by any means, and I definitely need a lot more practice, but it's still a sock. It has a cuff, a heel, a foot and a toe. And perhaps what's most impressive of all, is that it actually fits my foot:

I'm not sure about anyone else, but I'm definitely impressed :).

My Knitting Collection

(From Left to Right)
The gaudy green and pink basket is mainly for my odds and ends, which I keep in my office next to my desk. It holds my needles that aren't getting much use, photocopied patterns, leftover yarn. When I'm not using my Stitch N' Bitch book I sometimes stick it in there - I also signed out a Knitting for Dummies book from the library, but haven't referred to it much. In the left basket you'll also see a bunch of knitting notecards that I received from a friend - there's four different cards, featuring a poncho, a tank top, a sweater and a scarf. I'm thinking I might include a handwritten card when I'm giving something I've knitted as a gift - maybe with the care instructions written inside?

In the background is the yellow scarf I made for a friends birthday on Monday - my first time working with a merino wool - I'm recovering from a really bad rash right now, and I'm wondering if it was the wool, so I might be off merino for a while now. To the right of the scarf is the afghan I knitted, that was featured on my other blog, covering my friend's baby who was sleeping on the lounger on my patio.




The middle basket (shown above by itself) I keep stored under a chair in my living room - it's where I've been keeping the extra yarn for projects I'm working on, as well as the squares I am knitting for a quilt. I keep some of my extra needles in there - my other pair of circulars are at the bottom (green) and at that top are my bamboo and clunky blue aluminum. The ball of yarn is Patons Decor - it's the only yarn that I've used that doesn't seem to aggravate my skin so I use it A LOT. It's 75% acrylic and 25% wool, so not the best quality, but it knits up fairly soft and washes well. Also in the basket are my scissors and my jar of Burt's Bees Almond Milk hand cream, which I use while knitting when my hands dry out.




The far right basket (shown above by itself) is where I keep the projects I'm working on - it sits on the floor next to the sofa in the family room, where I seem to do most of my knitting, except when I'm commuting to work, in which case I grab something when I'm running out the door. Right now I'm working on a purple square for my quilt (#24/100) and also a blue scarf for my friend that gave me the knitting cards (I am using Paton Shetland Chunky for it, size 13 needles and it's knitting up FAST). You can barely see the 13s sticking out, but you can see the mauve aluminums, size 15 - the biggest needles I have.

Apparently, I'm Interchangeable

What kind of knitting needles are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

You are interchangeable.Fun, free, and into everything, you've got every eventuality covered and every opportunity just has to be taken. Every fiber is wonderful, and every day is a new beginning. You are good at so many things, it's amazing, but you can easily lose your place and forget to show up. They have row counters for people like you!



I haven't had the chance to try interchangeables but they idea of them is cool - apparently, it's a kit with all your different sizes of needle points and then you have different sizes of plastic cord that attach to the needles. So you can, you know, interchange them :).

A fellow knitter I know bought herself a pair off Ebay and loves them - they're expensive though, I think like $50-$60, but the good thing about them is you can travel on airplanes with them because they're plastic and they clear security. The plastic factor is probably the only reason I'm not coveting a pair - I like big clunky metal or aluminum needles that make a lot of noise - I find that yarn slides so much more easily on metal than plastic. When I'm knitting with plastic it seems like I'm spending more time rubbing my needles with wax then actually knitting. Sneaking knitting onboard an airplane though - that just sounds way too tempting - all that precious knitting time! - I might just have to try my friend's interchangeables and see if I can get around their plasticitity.

Simona's Baby Blanket

I don't know how I felt about the blanket when it was finally completely. I was happy with it because it turned out fairly well, but at the same time, I almost wish that I had used larger needles because a) the blanket could be bigger and b) the stitches were fairly tight.



As a result of the stitches, it's a fairly thick, heavy blanket probably more suitable for a stroller lap blanket, or perhaps a blanket to play on when she gets bigger.



The color in the pictures above are more accurate to the actual color of the blanket, which I quite liked, but in the photo below you can see the pattern more clearly.In addition to the border going around the blanket, there were 5 different square patterns. A 3x3 square, a 4x4 square, a striped square, a stockinette square and then a square with an embedded square (which was my favorite). That was the best thing about knitting this blanket, I taught myself a bunch of patterns.



My absolute favorite part of the blanket, I couldn't be more happier with how the label turned out :).

Gah
So I was doing a lot of knitting yesterday (fixed the afghan, I am a knitting GODDESS) but as in between knitting sessions I am despairing over how severe my eczema has been the past few months. It's so bad, that it's too the point where if I scratch it, it's like scratching a sunburn. A flaring, intense pain that I can't accurately describe.

So then I'm sitting on the sofa, working on a hat that I started for Simona and I'm alternating between knitting and scratching my arms when a dreaded realization started to creep through me.

I drop my knitting and go upstairs to get my prescription that I had gotten shortly after my eczema started flaring up really badly. I wanted to check the date - and was trying to convince myself that my problems started well before I started knitting.

I found the cream and read the date - January 14.

I started knitting on January 1st.

Gah.

At approximately 9pm last night I went cold turkey. Haven't picked up my knitting since. (Sorry Simona, no hat, not tomorrow at least, which was my intention). I'm going to not knit for a couple of days and see if the large angry red patches that have been covering the backs of my shoulders, my elbows, wrists and lower back fade. If they do fade, and my theory proves correct, I don't know what I'll do.

I LOVE knitting.

Knitting will be the DEATH of Me
Last night, while watching WPT, I screwed up one of the rows of my afghan. I sighed and put it aside, thinking that I would unravel and redo the messed up row at the end of WPT.

So that's what happened.

Except.

Somehow, when I picked up my stitches, something went horribly wrong and now, ten or so rows later, I have discovered that my pattern (which is diagonals), which was formerly going right to left is now going left to right.

Rather than try and fix the mistake now, while I am infused with a frustration that is quite possibly some of the most severe frustration I have experienced (at least in my knitting career), I think I will go and run it off and then fix it later.

Either that or I will just burn the damn thing and be done with it.

Knitter's Suicide
I have a habit of ripping out rows and rows of stitches and then using my needle to pick up my stitches and start knitting again. H yells at me all the time when I do this - I think it makes her very anxious and she almost watches with bated breath. "You're brave," she declared once as I unravelled and picked up a row on a hat I was knitting.

On the weekend I made a mistake with my afghan and I stared at the rows with a bit of fear. I'll rip out 30 stitches, even 60 stitches and pick them up fearlessly but my afghan was 102 stitches per row AND on round needles.

I took a deep breath and ripped it. Tay came downstairs and saw me hunched over the dining room table, carefully looping stitches onto a smaller, straight needle. He wanted to know what I was doing knitting at the table (I usually knit in the chair by the window or perched on one of the tall chairs at the kitchen counter).

"I'm committing knitter's suicide," I said, my voice shaking slightly as I picked up another stitch.

But it was fine. I got all 102 stitches onto my straight needle and then transferred them back onto the round and started knitting again. That was about 20 rows or so ago.

After that, unravelling doesn't faze me.

Knit Obsessed
I have been waiting somewhat impatiently for this scarf to make it's way across the Atlantic - I heard from Jody this week that she had finally received it, so I can now post photos of it and not ruin the surprise :).



I used a yarn that I had never used before, it was fairly soft and really nice to work with. The color was Purple Haze, which you can see better in the photo below.



This scarf was my first attempt at doing a stockinette stitch (a combination of purling and knitting). Unfortunately, the pattern meant the scarf would start to curl along the edges, but I quickly took care of that with my iron and some spray starch! :)



As I folded up the scarf to mail, I almost wanted to keep it for myself :).

I don't think my knitting obsession will fade at all - it's been almost 3 months and I'm still going strong. I've completed two other projects since the scarf - a winter hat and a baby blanket for Simona - and I'm currently working on an afghan. A fellow knitter/blogger that I know suggested that I start a knitting blog and I am considering it - at least that way I can blather about yarn and needles and only the people that care about that stuff will be forced to read it :).

And a Scarf To Keep Me Warm



Ironically, the weather is hovering at around -3 so I probably don't NEED a scarf, but I'm going to wear it anyway.

Approximate cost of yarn to knit scarf? $3 and some change (I didn't use all the yarn.)

(Of course, we won't talk about the time that went into knitting the scarf...)

On Knitting
In the first chapter of the book I bought on knitting (Stitch N' Bitch), the author talked about her family history of knitting. Her grandmother, mother and aunts all knit and so it only seemed natural that she would follow in their footsteps. I read the chapter a little wistfully and wished for my own colorful history. As far as I knew, my grandmother never knit, nor does my mother or my aunts. So, feeling slightly alone, I set out on my adventure to teach myself to knit.

Last weekend, during a vist from my father, I proudly pulled out the swatch I was working on to show him the new skill I had taught myself. He admired my handiwork and then told me about the knitters on HIS side on the family. It would seem that my paternal grandmother used to be able to knit and read at the same time and the mittens that my father and his siblings wore were always knitted by my grandmother. She used to knit five rows and then stop and count her stitches (I count my stitches after every row because I'm not very good at fixing dropped stitches. I've also developed a habit of counting my stitches as I knit them). My dad told me about the very last thing his mother knit for him, a red pullover vest that he absolutely loved. My grandmother taught my aunt how to knit as well, my father remembers his sister once knitting a sweater with broomsticks. Even my father learned a little bit about knitting. It was at my dining room table that he taught me how to cast on using just one needle and how to remove stitches one at a time if I made a mistake.

It appears that I come from a family of knitters after all.

Last Tuesday I started working on another square swatch and when it turned out perfect, I couldn't just cast it aside so I kept knitting but referred to my book on how to add on an alternate color. That task proved to be easy, so some time later, I had a pink square attached to the original white square. I kept going, adding alternating squares in pink and white. Tonight I finished the 9th square and am well on my way to knitting a scarf. (It's not as wide as a traditional scarf, but it's not meant to be. My idea is to make a very long, skinny scarf that is more suited to be worn in the fall months with a denim jacket. So far it's 3 feet long, but by the time I finish, it'll be 6 feet :).



I'm beginning to think that I might have a knack for knitting after all.

This is DEFINITELY a Square



Hoorah!