FO: Ironman's Christmas socks

Pattern: Spiraling Coriolis by Cat Bordhi
Yarn: Trekking XXL colorway #76, 1 skein
Needles: US 1/2.25 Harmony double points
Gauge: 9 sts/12 row per inch
Comments: I did the same pattern that I did for my July SAM socks, but widened the spiraling band to include a cable. I worked the cable over 7 stitches (p1, k2, p1, k2, p1), crossing every 8 rows. I crossed the cables towards the top of the sock, so they go in opposite directions on the two socks.

Again, lovely colors from the folks at Zitron. They looked a lot redder in the skein then in the finished socks, but the striping is pretty subtle (always a good thing with items for Himself).

I always get a smaller gauge with Trekking XXL then with other sock yarns - it's definitely on the thinner side - but it makes a nice fabric that wears well. I made a pair of entrelac socks for Ironman out of the same yarn a couple of years ago that are going strong (must write up that pattern sometime).

So this concludes this year's Sock a Month extravaganza. I think I only missed one month, and one month was a total cheater. I'm hoping to keep up the streak in 2009, but may have to resort to either knitting socks just for myself or for people with smallish feet - there's been a lot of very small stitches this year!

FO: Rose Garden Mitts

So named because the colors of the yarn could have been inspired by nothing else.

Pattern: Mahayana Flying gloves
Yarn: Artyarns Supermerino, 104 yds/50 g - I used maybe a skein and a half
Needles: US 6/4.0 mm
Start/finish: 12/19-12/23 (I didn't quite finish these in the allotted 24 hr time frame (shock and horror, I know), but they were done very quickly. The second mitt took about 3 hrs start to finish)
Comments/modifications: These were a lovely quick pattern, and the gorgeous yarn made it all the better. The stitch pattern (which looks waaaay more complicated then it actually is) breaks up variegated yarns amazingly well (as evidenced by these examples) and it was great fun to see how the colors would stack up. I knit the pattern pretty much as given, although I had to increase the number of stitches - I used 37 stitches for the repeat instead of 31. To compensate for the larger size, I also worked the palm stockinette section over 15 stitches instead of 12, which necessitated starting in the middle of the stitch repeat after the palm. It wasn't too complicated once I got going.

I also worked 4 rows on the thumb and then 5 rows of ribbing - it comes up basically to the base of my thumbnail.

So, in summary: gorgeous yarn + great quick pattern = toasty warm hands. And these worked up so quickly that I suspect I will be knitting more of them for last minute presents. Not that I would ever have any reason to need a last minute present mind you.

Ahhhh...

It's the last friday before Christmas, and I am sitting in the living room of my parents house with a cup of tea and my knitting. The snow is coming down, and Boston is predicted to get anywhere from 8-12 inches. The girls are wired beyond belief, and my goal is to turn this

into a pair of these before we head up to Vermont tomorrow afternoon to go skiing. Life is good.

Mama, I hon-ghee

Sometime in the last couple of weeks, a revolution has taken place in Boo's head, and the gentleman in the areas of Broca and Wernicke have come out of their developmental stupor and started to play well with other neurons.

In other words, now she is talking. Really talking. Not always intelligably, but the Mommy-translator is usually up to par and I can figure out what she's trying to say most of the time. When I can't, she says "No" very definitively, and repeats the word with strong vocal emphasis. Sometimes that helps, sometimes not.

As someone who spent several years of post-graduate life learning about language and cognition and other such crap stuff, it's fascinating to me to observe language development in my kids. Devil was never a big babbler - she listened and watched and finally decided that she was going to talk. Boo, on the other hand, very happily treats us to long involved monologues that are completely uncomprehensible to the rest of us, except for occasional words. In the last couple of weeks, she's started in with sentences (such as the title of this post, which is usually pronounced in the car on the way home in the evening, followed by a long sigh). And questions. And "I did it!" uttered with absolute glee when she does something spectactular, like getting off the couch or picking up a toy off the floor or finding her stuffed animal.

It is a joy to watch her figuring out how to interact with her world. You can almost hear the synapses being made. Ping! There goes another one.

Hopefully I'll have some fibery blogging next week. My Christmas knitting plans have been thrown somewhat up in the air by the appearance of Winter Knitty and my sudden absolutely life-threatening need to make 42 pairs of these.

Fiber Friday: The first Porpoise-dyed from Yarn School

It is still Friday, right? I'm really falling behind here - this yarn has been spun up and done for almost two months, but I'm only getting around to blogging about it now. Pathetic!

Superwash merino, handdyed by yours truly, with Jacquard acid dyes in black, brown, brilliant blue and pumpkin orange I believe.
Spun/plied at 10:1 on ST Lendrum
Stats: ~185 yds, 14 wpi, 4 oz. This is some seriously dense yarn. I was planning on giving this to someone for a Christmas present, but I'm not sure how big her feet are - this is not going to be enough for a pair of socks. Sigh. Which means the other 4 oz I was going to save for myself will have to be spun up for her as well. Too bad...I guess I can always dye more.

I was really surprised by how this yarn turned out. Given the large white stretches in the top, I was expecting it to be a lot lighter.

It's a lot more uniform in color then I thought it would be. The 2-ply barberpole, in this instance, had similar enough tonal values that the whole skein ended up somewhere in the middle of the range instead of going from one extreme to the other.

This is only the second superwash fiber I've worked with - the first was superwash Corriedale, and I'm a lot happier with this one. I think I overspun the singles for the Corrie - the finished yarn felt somewhat wirey - but this merino basically spun itself. Literally. I sat in front of the wheel and just let the fiber run out into the single with hardly any effort. The 4 oz took two nights to spin (+/- 3 hrs), which is fast for me. Plying was another evening. So if I have to give up the other four ounces, at least I know it won't take forever to get through*!

* As soon as my new tension knob arrives - there was a small Lendrum-child collision this morning apparently (I think I was in the shower) that did not end up well for the Lendrum. Very sad, but given the amount of Christmas knitting left to be done, probably just as well.