Bloggin' 'bout Clogs

I finished Jeff's clogs today. That's six days from start to finish. How I did this is kind of beyond me, but I think it had a lot to do with the long holiday weekend and getting to knit while chatting with visiting relatives. In between all the eating, of course.

Man, did we eat. At my sister's house -- at Jeff's sister's house -- at our house. Delicious, delicious food from our pasts -- and new things, too. My sister hosted 15 people Thanksgiving Day at her house. My brother-in-law brined and roasted an awesome bird, and we had all the things that make Thanksgiving tasty, including my mom's recipe for dressing -- made with cornbread, of course.

This weekend involved several family birthdays, too. Jeff and I made a Black Velvet Cake for Jeff's mother, using a recipe from Paula Deen -- so you know there was a wee bit of butter in it. It's life-changing, if I say so myself, and by that I mean one bite will instantly make you diabetic.

But the best part was enjoying the rare opportunity to get together with my family. I couldn't ask for a better brother, sister, or in-laws. And getting together with them and my nieces and nephews is a rare and wonderful treat. Jeff and I are pretty lucky in that respect, and we have a lot to be thankful for.

Getting back to the clogs, I finished knitting them last night and took them to The Knitting Nest to take advantage of their top-loading washer. Felting went smoothly, for the most part. Toward the end, I noticed that the seam long the bottom of one of the soles had come open. I pulled the clog out of the wash and grabbed some dark yarn to whip it closed again, which worked fairly well. I stuff the clogs with plastic bags while I knitted and socialized, and when I brought them home, they seemed to fit. Even through I knit these following the men's narrow foot instructions, they're still a little wide. But they look great and once they're dry, they should keep Jeff's feet toasty warm.

Cinderfella

I'm making much faster progress on this pair of felted clogs than I did on the previous pair I made. I remember thinking while making the previous pair that the instructions were awfully hard to follow, but I'm not having any difficulties this time. It's one of those patterns in which, rather than instructing the knitter to "knit to the marker..." or something like that, the exact numbers of stitches for each size are dictate, line by line. I suppose this is the most efficient way to write this pattern out and make it understandable, but it still bugs me a bit. But not as much as last time.

Here is the obligatory foot-in-the-prefelted-clog shot that seem to always accompany the making of these clogs, modeled by Jeff. I think he's going to like them, and they're going to be ready way before his birthday next month.

I only started these on Sunday, and, as of this sunshiny Thanksgiving morning, I have all but the second sole on the second clog to finish -- and then it's into the wash. Last night I completed 75% of the second clog, while watching a little TV and chatting with the in-laws, while my memories of my first go-round with this pattern involved lots of quiet alone time with the pattern and several moments of intense frustration.

Hope everyone is enjoying their Thanksgiving Day and can find plenty to be thankful for. In a few moments, we'll be heading over to my sister's house for a huge meal with her family, some of her in-laws, my in-laws, and my brother's family. I can't wait for some delicious food and some serious niece/nephew time.

Hanky Panky

Thursday morning, I met Hank.

Yes, he's just as cute as he looks in this picture. If not more so. I think Jeff and I woke him up from a nap when we got to the store. He was moving kind of slow and letting out some squeaky little yawns. But he was soon in full puppy form, chewing on shoe-laces, sniffing shoes and putting up with a lot of luvin'. Personality plus, we'd say. I'm really looking forward to watching him grow up in the store. Right before we left, Stephanie showed up to pick up where we left off. I imagine he's not going to be lacking attention for quite some time!

Oh, and since we were in the shop, I picked up some more Cascade 220 to make a pair of clogs for Jeff. I'm going to use the same navy color for the cuff and the sole as I used on my pair, but the top color is going to be a gray-ish blue.

And the Kohle Socks are moving right along. Most patterns I have call for doing the decreases for the gussets one stitch over from the end of the row. I think for aesthetic (and possibly structural) reasons, it's not a good idea to decrease on first or last stitch on the needle. However, following the instructions, I found that this gave me a 3-knit-stitch rib on the outer edges of the instep, instead of a 2-knit-stitch rib, like all the others. So the instep ended up looking like:

k3, p2, k2, p2.....p2, k2, p2, k3

Then, I had a revelation. Since I was doing this using magic loop, and not on dpns, I could move the decrease over one stitch. I was in the middle of a needle, so it didn't matter. And this would give me 2x2 ribbing all the way across the instep. Duh! So, at the point of almost having finished the gusset decreases, I decided to rip back. Mayhem ensued. Stitches were dropped. Curse words were muttered. I ended up having to rip back to the cuff and re-doing the heel flap, the turn AND the gusset. Sigh.

I like the big wide stripes. The heel and turn almost totally took up a brown and a black section, except for a half a round that came across the instep. You can see this in the picture. Rats. But the Eye-of-Partridge heel worked out pretty well. Kind of hard to see, but I know it's there.

Felt So Good

The felted clogs are finished. I realized earlier in the week that I was really moving along on the second clog, so I made it a goal to finish this week. See, if I got it done by Saturday morning, I could felt my clogs in the top-loader at my LYS whilst meeting with my knitting group. My plan worked flawlessly.

The reason I wanted to felt these at the shop (perhaps previously mentioned) was that they have a top-loader which is supposed to work better for felting. I'm a little less afraid now, so I might have the nerve to try it at home. The only other thing I'd every felted was a Kitty Pi cat bad, and I wasn't really overly concerned with fit that go-round ('Allo, Cliff and 'Allo!)

When I got to knitting this morning, all I had left to do was seaming up the centers of the inner and outer soles...

(Oops -- just remembered that I skipped a step! -- the two soles didn't get loosely sewn together before felting. Crud. Can't tell which one it was now, though, so no harm done, I suppose.)

..and then I was ready for felting.

To the right is a picture of the clogs pre-felting. They are freakishly huge. Click on the picture to see the version over at Flickr with a note showing where my toes are. I never thought that these would shrink down from Shaquille O'Neal-sized, but boy did they.

With the help of Abbe and Stacy, it worked like a charm. We (meaning Stacy) threw in a little lemony dish soap, added some hot water from the tap dumped into the washer to make sure everything was good and hot, put the clogs in a bag, and then we sat back and waited. Actually, I paced around like an expectant father in a 50s sitcom, but in no time things looked done. Then it was just rinse and spin, and voilà!

I tried them on afterwards and Melissa took some picture of me modeling in the shop. I noticed that when these were fresh out of the washer, I could still see the stitch definition, but that seems to have faded as they've dried. I still see a little bit on the toes.

I'm quite pleased. What would I do differently? I might still have to wash these one more time. They're still a little big circumference-wise. The pattern called for these to be a size 11, but I wear a size 10. I wouldn't want them to get any shorter, but I would like them a little narrower. I did make the wide size, because I've always considered my feet to be wide. But I think the pattern must refer to freakishly-wide snowshoe feet. Mine are more Flintstone-ish. But I'm very happy.

This could become a Christmas thing. I hope family aren't reading this...

Felted Clogs & Classic Socks

I was in a weird non-knitting limbo for a short time this week. Nothing on the needles...couldn't breathe...everything was getting dark...

But then I cast on for some stuff and revived.

First on the list is the Felted Clogs which everyone and their felted dogs have been knitting. Now it's my turn. I bought the pattern for these at the Yarn Barn over spring break, and the yarn last weekend when Kristina was in town. Abbe tells me that knitting this takes concentration, and boy, she ain't kidding. Every single freakin' row of this thing has a different set of directions. No "do this for 4 inches" or "work in such-and-such for so many rows." Every single stitch is dictated. So easy to loose one's place. I only had to restart once (so far), so things are looking up. This thing is enormous. Consider that the balls of yarn in the picture above are each the size of one of my fists.

I did knit a test swatch, and sort of got gauge, but I wasn't able to test-felt the swatch, because a) I have a front-load washer and b) I can't find my zippered pillow case that I bought for a previous felting project. I'm not willing to risk clogging up the drain of my washer and the subsequent divorce. I figured, what-the-heck, it's felting -- it doesn't have to be that accurate. So the swatch remains unfelted.

I also cast on for another pair of socks, because that seems to be what I do. I'm using a pattern called Classic Socks from The Knitting Man(ual), which I tried once before with some KnitPicks yarn, but wasn't happy with the results. This time I'm using some beautiful green hand-dyed yarn from J. Knits that I got at the Bluebonnet Yarn Shoppe last summer. I'm using the magic loop method, which I've never used with socks before -- although it came in handy working on the sleeves of the last sweater I knit for Jeff. For some reason the green in this picture is very gray and sagey, while in real-life it's made of much richer green hues.

And the yard continues to bloom and grow. Right now the Knockout Roses in front of our house are, well, you know -- and the freaky looking Jerusalem Sages are starting to blossom. I'm madly taking pictures now so that I can look at them and relive the good old days during our scorched-earth August.

Knit Visit

Kristina, the knitter whose St. Brigid pullover was my inspiration for jumping into knitting cables when I was still a wet-behind-the-ears knitter, was in town for a conference this week, and we found time this morning to get together and knit.

I met Kristina in 2005 when Jeff and I were up in Pennsylvania visiting our friends Sharon and Janelle. Along with several others, we all headed down to the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival. Mind you, this was a mere three months after I'd begun intertwining yarn with sticks, so the whole thing was pretty overwhelming. We had an awesome time. I remember the weather being just like it is here today. Unfortunately, my college's academic calendar, the festival's schedule and the stars only line up just so every once in a while, and this year is not one of them. Kristina gets to go. I am, of course, jealous. Just imagine the damage I could do at a wool festival these days...

I picked Kristina up from her hotel and we ran by my house so I could show her the British Check Sweater in person -- oh, and so she could meet our dog, Silas. He was totally in love -- wish I'd taken a picture. Then we ran by the Knitting Nest and met up with several of my fellow knitters -- friends, knitting, coffee and breakfast tacos. What could be better? I worked on the Bomb Pop Socks (almost done -- I promise). Kristina had just finished the beautiful socks in the picture above while here in town and had already cast on for another pair.

She also helped me pick out some yarn for some felted clogs from the Fiber Trends pattern. As you can see, I didn't exactly choose the brightest colors on the shelf, but I like these. I'm going to use the darker navy color for the sole and the cuff, and the lighter color for the rest. Thanks, Kristina, for steering me away from the gray! Too soon, it was time to head to the airport.

This afternoon, Jeff and I went for a hike in the Barton Creek Greenbelt. The weather was fabulous and the belt was definitely green. Spring has sprung in Austin.