Knitting on the Road

Hanging with Rocky at The Yarn Shop in Taos, NM

Knitting on the Road

In Arroyo Seco, NM. They were closed!

Which Swatch?

I'm back from Miami. Our chorus brought down the house on Tuesday night and seemed to be popular. We managed to get off stage mere seconds before the lights went off -- they were pretty strict about the 30-minute time limits for performances. I was glad to get it over with and we had quite a bit of fun for the rest of the week. We also heard some amazing music and ate some darn yummy food.

I didn't knit as much as I thought I would. I got to work on my Mineshaft Socks a little on the plane, but except for a few stolen moments shown in the picture here, I didn't have much time for the fiber arts. I managed to finish the first sock in the airport at 7:00am (they have one of those now?!) while waiting to fly home. I'm happy with it. More pictures when I've finished the pair, which may be a while because I've got a new big project in the works...



I finally gathered all the linen yarn I needed to start the Piano Cushion I want to make. I've got the colors I like, but while making swatches (no really, I did!), I decided to monkey with the colors. I'm trying to decide whether to use the brown (sandalwood) as the border color in the pattern or whether to go with the cream color. I like the sandalwood as a border since it's different from the green-scale of the others in the picture on the left, but I also like the idea of using the lightest color to tie together the darker ones as shown in the picture on the right. Which do you prefer? Comments and opinions welcome!

(As an aside, the picture on the left was knit on size 2 needles. I'm definitely going to be using the size 3 as shown in the photo at right. They're what the pattern called for.)

Mineshaft

Whew! About to slip down!

Yesterday I got assertive and contacted the company with which I had back-ordered the linen yarn I've been waiting on. I told them not to bother sending it and please credit my account. We'll see how that goes. For some reason, I expect it to be a big headache.

To have something on th needles I started -- what else -- a pair of socks. I had this Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in the colorway Mineshaft that I'd bought at The Knitting Nest several weeks ago. When I bought it, all I saw were the dark colors. Now that I'm knitting with it, all I can see is a rosy-greyish color that is dangerously close to (gasp!) pink! Sorry, Janna and Staci, but I'm scared! Tell me it's not too pink.

I'm using a pattern from the six-stitch pattern section in Charlene Schurch's Sensational Knitted Socks called Chain Rib. I thought that an industrial-sounding yarn color should probably go with this industrial-sounding ribbing. It's kind of hard to see the chain shape to me -- mostly because the "links" seem to be lining up with the color striping for the time being. So far, no problem with pooling. I'll keep my fingers crossed. I love working with this yarn.

Jeff and I are headed for Miami on Saturday for a week of music and singing at the 2008 Gala Festival of Choruses. I'm going to take this sock to work on, but somehow I don't think I'll feel like doing much knitting in the semi-tropics. I will have plenty of free time, though. Maybe I could scope out a local yarn shop? Do people even knit in Miami?

Treads

I finished the Treads socks this morning. I'm not sure what I think.

I liked working with the yarn (roughly 45% wool, 45% cotton and 10% chemicals), but I just wasn't jazzed about the construction. I've probably complained about this before. Working double-wrapped heels in top-down construction wasn't bad, but working the toe the same way was weird. I got weird bulges around the sides of my toe knuckles (call me, Oprah -- I can set you up!) and I didn't fancy doing Kitchener stitch over 36 stitches across the soles.

But I did. The kicker is I didn't have to. I could have done a normal toe and I would have been much happier with these socks. But I can be a bit of a slave to the pattern, sometimes. Knitting is all about branching out, right? True, but sometime you have to know when to say, "no." This was one of those occasions.

Still waiting on some back-ordered yarn to get started on the piano bench cushion I want to make. This is taking forever. I went by Gauge yesterday and found that they had just ordered some Euroflax in the color I'm waiting on. They've got my email, and if it gets here before the back-ordered stuff ships, I'm canceling with the back-order lady. Enough is enough. It's been six weeks!

I engaged in a little retail therapy while knitting at The Knitting Nest on Saturday morning. Stacy had just received a shipment of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in the colorway Franklin's Panopticon -- part of their new line of colorways based on famous bloggers.

I consider myself a bit color-challenged. I'm not color blind, but I don't trust my instincts when it comes to matching colors. I like this, though. Some bright colors to take me out of my comfort zone, but mixed with enough soothing beiges and browns to keep my from hyperventilating. See this post at Franklin's blog for some insight into how this colorway came about. Can't wait to see what this looks like all knit up.