Created By Artsygal

When choosing something to knit my biggest criteria seems not to be the finished item, but rather how interesting it will be to knit. I find myself getting bored easily and so I tend to choose patterns that have some sort of elements that will hold my attention for the entire time it takes to knit them.

Yesterday however I knit this.

A simple square of 25 stitches and 50 rows, in garter. It's a swatch for the Mermaid Jacket which caught my eye the very first time I saw it. The jacket itself has all kinds of interesting shaping and striping going on, but it's knit entirely in garter stitch.

Knitting this swatch reminded me of the last time I was knitting garter stitch squares. Believe it or not, that was back in 1986! I had just moved to London, England and my school actually had a knitting class! Once a week all 14 of us 5th graders headed into the school dining room where we knit squares up to sew together into blankets to donate to a homeless shelter. It was my favorite class of all. Just like knitting groups I've been to as an adult, we'd sit in little groups, chatting as we knitted and helped each other out when weird things happened like suddenly having too many or too few stitches. My grandmother had taught me to knit a couple of years earlier but it was here, with a group of friends that I became a Knitter.

I bought my first knitting book that year, paid for with a bag full of change I'd saved up from my 50 pence a day allowance (which I still have somewhere in a box!) and taught myself to rib, cable and do some very basic lacey patterns. Without anyone to tell me that these techniques were supposed to be difficult, I just jumped right into them, and even did a bit of self designed fair isle! I cast on my first sweater later that year, which I never finished but I've had something or the other on the needles ever since. Sometimes I wonder if without that class I would have become as obsessed a Knitter as I am today, or if I would have been one of those millions of people out there who just sorta knows how to knit and used to do that once upon a time.

Myself and 4 of the girls of my very first knitting group at my 11th birthday party. Don't you just LOVE the big yellow dress that my grandmother dressed me in? Oh man I HATED that dress! I refused to ever wear it again. I wonder if any of those girls still knit?

These have to be my fastest knit ever. I cast on the first sock just after lunch on the Friday of labor day weekend and was done by Sunday night I think. Sock number 2 was cast on a couple of weeks ago, and then got pushed aside until this friday when I started putting some serious time into it. Once the heel was turned and the gusset done, the rest of the foot flew! I was done before lunch time this morning!

I knit 2 repeats of the cuff before turning the heel. Once the gusset was turned I noticed that the spiraling had stopped and I was getting the purple/blues on the top of the foot and the yellow/blue at the bottom. That wouldn't do! Simply decreasing the stockinette foot area of it by 2 stitches got the colours spiraling again. An easy fix for when colours start to pool in a way that I don't like when using a handpainted yarn.

My favorite parts of these socks though, are the very beginning and the very end.

There is something so very satisfying about a pair of perfectly kitchenered toes. Especially since I'm left handed and all the directions out there are written for right handed kitchenering. Talk about awkward. One of these days I need to figure out how to kitchener from left to right using my left hand instead.

The cuffs were done with my favorite cast on - Italian tubular. It uses no waste yarn, and unlike every other cast on I've seen does not pull in at all when done on the same size needle as the pattern calls for. Perfect for a sock cuff as it's nice and stretchy too!

I'm resisting the urge to keep these socks for myself - they fit me so perfectly! But they were knit for my roommate Randy, and she's been watching me work on them from the very beginning.. so I guess it wouldn't be nice to change my mind now would it?

Pattern:Pomatomus Socks by Cookie A.
Source: Knitty.com (the pattern is free!)
Yarn:Artsygal 100% Merino (really, were you expecting anything else?)
Needles:US 2
Started: August 29th 2008
Finished:September 28th 2008

Yup, it happened again - I took pretty pictures of yarn, planned on blogging on Friday, and the day just got away from me. Where does the time go? In my defense though, I was busy dyeing up lots of yarn and roving in preparation for next Friday's shop update. In fact, the pictures I took were of some yarn that are going to be included.

Last week I introduced a new yarn base to my shop - my 3 ply merino that up till now only sock club members have seen. Next week I have some more of that yarn, but in a completly new product! Can you tell what it is?

Here's a little hint Yup, it's finally here! There won't be that many of them though - they're fairly labor intensive to make so I'll be doing them in very small batches here and there. Plus, I'm tempted to keep every single skein of it. Each skein is unique and I want so much to knit it up and see how it turns out! But I'll be good and share... probably.

It's Friday! And since I'm in a blogging mood, that means it's YPF, right? Today I bring you a brand new yarn. It's so new that I just added it to my site this morning as a matter of fact!

Yarn: Artsygal 3Ply Merino in Raspberry Truffles
Fiber: 100% Superwash Merino
Yardage: 470 (!) yarns
Weight: 3.5 oz (100 grams)

Yes, it really is as squishy as it looks. And that yardage is crazy! I knit a pair of socks out of it for myself, deciding to go toe up and keep knitting until I ran out. They sit right below my knees, believe it or not! I love how this yarn soaks up the colours and am having lots of fun dying it up in all sorts of different ways. Want to see a couple more colours?

See even more colours in the shop: http://shop.artsygal.net - there are also lots of new colours in all the other base yarns too! And sock club has some openings too! Lots of them as a matter of fact since I'm expanding the number of memberships each month!

Oh.. and in a totally unrelated to yarn photo...

Precious would like her belly rubbed now please. She's my roommate's cat (who is not allowed anywhere near the rooms that the yarn is in!) who has decided that I'm not dangerous and she no longer has to run away each time I enter the room. Nope.. instead she just plops herself down by my chair and demands a belly rub. And even though I insist I'm not much of a cat person, I find myself scratching that belly for her. Go figure.

A few weeks before my move to California, I was planning out my road trip knitting. I had decided that one of my projects that I took on the road with me was to be something for either Jon or Randy, my friends who were helping me haul all my belongings cross country. I left it up to them to decide who I was going to knit for, and it turns out Randy won. So I pointed her to my stash, err I mean shop to choose a skein that she liked. This is one of the advantages of running a dyeing business - there's always a good selection of yarns for a friend to choose from when you want to knit them something. Armed with yarn and several pages of pattern printouts, I set out on my cross country trip. Here's how far I got.

Yup.. that's a partial cuff, no longer on the needles. I learned an important lesson here - don't just assume that because I always use 2.25 mm needles with this yarn, that I don't need to check the pattern for needle size. Twisted stitches pull in a LOT, and this cuff was entirely too small. Did I have larger needles on me? Of course not.

The sock got frogged in Parachute, Colorado where we were stuck for a couple of hours while waiting for the Uhaul version of AAA. Apparently one of the tires on our trailer was starting to come apart - and we sure as heck weren't going to continue driving cross country that way! At that point in a mission to get Randy to cross over to the dark side, I offered her the yarn and some needles.

Yup.. she's knitting. Notice the completly disgusted look on Jon's face in the background?

Oh yeah.. back to Pomatomus - once I got settled in here, I found larger needles and cast on again. Took them with me when we went up to the bay area over the labor day weekend and managed to knock out a whole sock in about three and a half days! That has to be some sort of record for me. (Don't look too closely at the toes though - that's just a temporary grafting. I haven't found any needles to properly kitchner the toes closed yet. If they don't surface soon, I may have to give in and go buy more.)

Sock number 2 is in the works right now, though it's not going nearly as fast as the first. I'm sure it will be done in time for cooler weather though!

Yes.. I do still knit! In fact in the last month I've managed to finish 3 things - 2 pairs of socks and a lace shawl. But I still don't have pictures of those yet, so they'll come later. For once I figure I'll mention something I'm working on before I finish it!

I've had my copy of Victorian Lace Today for many many months and had yet to knit anything from it. In the process of moving cross country I pulled out all my yarn and was amazed at how many skeins of handspun I'd managed to stash away all over my apartment. So I'm now on a mission to knit up as much of my handspun as I can. And since I spin a fair amount of laceweight, what better place to start than VLT?

I picked a skein of a heavy laceweight spun from 4 oz of Optim that I bought when we went to Rosies Yarn Cellar during PKF last year. The 4 oz resulted in 691 yards, and here's what I've gotten out of it so far.

Lovely isn't it? I'm loving the soft bands of colour that are forming as I knit it up. It's been so long since I spun the yarn that I don't remember if I did that intentionally using the fractal stripe method, or if its just something that's happening.

I can't wait till this shawl/scarf is done. Optim is so soft against the skin that I'm sure this will see lots of use! And on that note, I'm off to knit!

Oh.. one more thing.. keep an eye out for new stock in the shop SOON! Early next week would be my best guess. I have a lovely new base yarn that everyone who has test knitted it absolutely loves - I even knit myself a pair of knee socks with it! Pictures of those coming soon, I promise.