Saturday, September 26, 2009



Mel, when you find yourself envying my tomatoes, you can reflect on how much I envy your raised beds, properly constructed with your strong right arm, not cobbled together old-lady-fashion.

Yesterday was a day of achievement.

The Griswold is knit, and Kitchener’d. I can’t enlist it as an FO until it’s blocked. I hope that’ll happen today.


And then I cast on a bed sock, from scraps in the left-over-sock-yarn bag. I had forgotten how wonderful KF sock yarn is – you just cast it on and then sit there. It knits itself.

And one of the pleasures of knitting an odd-ball project in a much-stashed house is the sense of achievement one gets whenever an actual ball of yarn is actually finished, made into something, done. I should pass the first such milestone, bedsock-wise, this very day.

I’ve read through the instructions of both the Oliver and the EZ-Meg shaped arch. Today I’ll compare them side by side. They agree that you just knit Your Standard Sock until you finish the gusset decreases, although they don’t phrase it like that. So I could go ahead and do the upside-down gusset which I think helps fit my husband’s diabetic-swollen feet.

Bed socks don’t require much length in the leg, so I should get the heel turned today. This is exciting!

Odds and ends

The Bluestocking has published an interesting post, deconstructing (I think that’s the mot juste) a television series about polar exploration – “The Last Place on Earth”-- in terms of the sweaters.

I intended to put an end to my mad knitting-spending-spree, but Franklin (or rather, Harry) led me astray and I ordered some Addi Turbo sock needles just now. I think maybe that’s eight separate packages I’m expecting: Herbert Niebling lace from the Schoolhouse press, “Reversible Knitting” and the Melville mother-daughter book and “Custom Knitting” from Amazon, a Japanese package from the Needle Arts bookshop, a Japanese magazine – “Flat-Style of the New Sense” – from Japan, yarn from the Yarn Yard, and now these needles.

And I'm thinking about some more KF sock yarn.

Enough, already.

5 comments:

  1. Anonymous1:16 PM

    I admire you for finding a use for your left over sock yarn. Mine hang out in bags taking up room and complicating my life. Wish I could throw it out. Looking forward to seeing the shawl blocked.
    Ron in Mexico

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  2. Webs had some KF sock yarn on clearance a while ago, I bought some for the same reason, it seems to knit itself. Maybe I'll try Oliver and KF together.

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  3. I have nearly finished a mitred-square blanket as a way to use up the sock yarn leftovers. It is slightly shocking just how much acreage of yarn was just sitting there!

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  4. Donice5:15 PM

    I just received the Niebling book a few days ago - the designs are lovely. It remains to be seen whether or not one will be knit, but many will be admired.

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  5. =Tamar1:59 AM

    I'd never noticed that about the EZ/Meg sock-arch pattern, that it's fairly traditional until you finish the heel decreases. I'll have to take another look at it. I've seen elements of some of EZ's patterns in surviving European knitting. I sometimes wonder whether she saw some museum textiles when she was in Scandinavia and then details arose from the subconscious later, to re-enter our knitting heritage.

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