Between myself and the kids I have spent a good bit of time waiting for various doctor’s appointments this fall, during which time I was able to create a new look for my blog… I’m really happy with it, after bouncing around through several designs over the past two yearsthat weren’t quite “it” for me, one finally came together and gives my blog a fresher and more cheerful look than it has ever had before – but I’m sure it will continue to change and evolve

With a new look for my blog comes a new promise that I will try to update at least every other week. I was going to say weekly, but I know that may be asking a bit much… every other week is probably way too much! Other than schoolwork, I’ve been very busy making socks all summer, since I opened up and started offering custom sock spots on Hyenacart last spring. I enjoy making these, but I’ve found that I majorly overestimated my abilities and took on more work at the end of the summer than I was really capable of finishing quickly (I am still working on some of them), so while I will continue to offer custom socks spots, from this point forward those will available on a much much more limited basis and a slower schedule – probably only 8-12 spots per month, and less if I know that my schedule will be busier than normal (like right now), which basically means I won’t stock any time I am running behind.

In addition to some visual changes here on my blog, I also just finished working on a redesign of Tiny Lady Cooperative’s Hyenacart, and it’s set to go live at the end of this week, and I am super excited about it. As our congo has changed and evolved (and has grown much larger than the original group of 3!), the original cart design had become a bit dated. To unveil our new look, we are planning two big stockings for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. I am hoping to get some sock puppets finished in time – they are cute, and fun to make, and I know they’d be perfect for holiday gift giving

That is all for now, I expect a bigger update in a few days as I finish up more of my current sock orders (and yes, if you are waiting, I am getting them done, it’s just been very slow, and for that I really do apologize).

They’re a little loose right off the machine, as shown above, but once washed the cotton fulls nicely and the lycra activates, drawing in the knitting a considerable amount.  I estimate they shrank about 15% when I washed and dried them.  I didn’t actually expect them to shrink so much, so the foot is almost too short on these.

Then I tried some 8/2 Cotlin (50/50 Cotton and Linen) also with very nice results.  This stuff shrank more than the 100% cotton, so even though I added extra rows to the feet, the finished size is about the same (though I did knit the leg shorter on these).  I didn’t take a picture before washing, but these socks looked looser and more gauze-like right off the machine, but they too washed up very nicely.  You can see how stretchy they are comparing the unblocked sock to the one on the blocker (my second blocker went MIA sometime yesterday.. I still have no idea where it is – thanks, kids)

Since I have a LOT of 8/2 yarn in my stash from my abandoned attempts at learning to weave, I forsee a lot of these socks in my future – the knitted fabric is slightly thicker than I’d prefer compared to storebought socks (for me anyways.. they’re thinner than the socks my DH wears and thinner than wool socks), but the toes on these are seamless, which more than makes up for being heavier, since my #1 gripe about almost any sock is the seam over the toe – it’s uncomfortable, and too bulky even on the thinnest socks since to save money/time the toes on commercial socks are usually serged rather than linked or grafted.

I have a little bit leftover that is the rest of the brown to blue transition.

I also finished some more yarn last week… this is sort of sport-ish weight, and I’m not sure what I’ll do with it quite yet since it’s too heavy to go through the sock machine.

Then I Navajo-plied an entire bobbin I had spun some time back… it’s hand combed marsh romney and I’m rather happy with this batch compared to the rest of this wool I had carded and spun into a 2-ply yarn.  No idea what I’m doing with this yet, but it will likely become part of a weaving project in the not too distant future

And I’m nearly done with my  Kelso Cardigan!  All I really have left to do is graft the unerarms and weave in all the ends.

In the past month I knit myself a sweater (Rogue from The Girl from Auntie)

I was a bit overwhelmed looking at the pattern, since it is 19 pages, but it’s all very clearly written out and detailed – which is wonderful when you’re knitting complex cables (especially for the first time – I’ve done cables before but nothing like these).  The charts look confusing at first, but if you follow along it all just makes sense when it needs to.  I thoroughly enjoyed knitting every bit of the sweater (well, except for maybe the last half of the second sleeve – I was ready to be finished by then!) and I can’t wait to get started on Eris, another pattern she has written.  I actually bought the Eris pattern back in June, and was promptly discouraged as I flipped through all 40 pages of the pattern… but now I realize that it’s not really that the pattern is that difficult, it’s just that Jenna is so great at making each step exceptionally clear.

I finished what may be the last pair of longies I ever knit for my kids.. since we’re not cloth diapering anymore and they’re pretty much only for the “cute” factor, I think I will be saving the rest of my “longies” stash for sweaters, hats, and other cool weather woolens.  The yarn is my own, dyed in the Red Mountain colorway – I absolutely love how they colorway knit up, and I have more than enough yarn left for a hat to match… or maybe just for a hat for me

I made my daughter a simple dress to wear on Christmas (and have plans to make many more with my fabric stash), it’s really simple, sort of an adaptation of my twirly skirt with a pheasant top bodice (similar to this tutorial but I cut my peices only about 7″ long to match the 6″ teirs of the skirt)

I’ve been working a lot on my sock machine too, I made about a dozen pairs of socks in December alone for gifts and as some custom orders, which for the most part went fairly well.  I didn’t photograph all of them since I was usually in a rush to get them sent off.  I have even set up the 1923 Gearhart I added to my collection in August up and have it knitting finally (I needed needles for it), and I even tracked down a 50 slot dial to match my 100 slot cylinder (which is not shown, that’s the 40 slot in the image with the 100 slot cylinder in the machine).  It’s in remarkable condition considering it was an ebay bargain, and while it has a few quirks, mechanically it’s in very good shape as well.  It makes the weirest sound while knitting though – a solid clicking due to the way the uplift cams are spring loaded, which is mildly amusing.

So far I’m still working out some kinks with the ribber timing and I’d like to find a solution to keeping count of my rows more easily, but I hope to soon be able to make some really fine gauge socks on it.

My two year blogaversary is coming up soon – I might just give away a pair of custom socks and possibly some yarn, so watch for that in the next week or two

Shelly and I both have a lot of ideas on how to make things go a little smoother next year (or for any CSM demo, really).

sock knitter

Originally uploaded by yi
Yeah, that’s me – I was putting tags on socks!

I got a new camera as a late birthday present, so I’ve been off taking pictures, not crafting. My son went back to school, my daughter also started preschool, and my youngest is trying his hardest to walk.

After my futile attempt at knitting 17 pairs of socks for the Ravelympics (I only logged 6 of the 7 I know I finished) I finally got the Legare out again Monday, and knit up a couple of pairs.. first a pair from this month’s Yarn Pirate Booty Club

and then some from some Panda Silk I wanted to try out.. I really REALLY like how it works up on the CSM, when it all goes right.  There was supposed to be another pair in another colorway for my sister, but um, we had issues and I’m not gonna go there.

I sat down today and made a pair of hairclips.. I’ve been wanting to do this for a while, I just didn’t get myself in gear to go get the goodies I needed. I love how they came out, and I’ll definitely be making more

I was having all sorts of issues the other night with my ribber, which is what resulted in that failed pair that I need to frog and re-knit.  I’m not sure what happened, but it did inspire me to figure out how to adjust the yarn carrier from Rox and get that working so I didn’t have to break the yarn every time I wanted to start over on a sock.  I did that, then I decided to paint it, and my ribber/ribber arm

I went with purple.  Why?  I don’t know.. it seemed like a fun, happy color.  And the aqua that I liked only came in a satin finish, which I didn’t think I wanted.  Looking at the “gloss” grape color though, it’s not all that shiny either though.. oh well   I think I will be repainting the cam shell a darker purple at some point, and likely leave the base, gear ring, and crank alone.  The ribber and ribber arm were the most beat up peices, so I felt like I needed to do something with them.  I had wanted to powdercoat them, but I figured for now this will do fine, it’s cute, and it’s really not any extra work to strip this paint off too considering the original paint would need to go as well if I eventually powdercoat the thing.

Pictures of all the finished socks so far to come in a little while.. must go close toes

I am of course, already behind.  The Olympics started yesterday.  All I’ve managed to accomplish (and only today, a day after the opening ceremony) is winding balls… 23 of them (and I’m actually missing one).  Somehow an extra skein got in there and I failed to grab another that is already slated to be a pair of socks (pair #11)… hopefully tomorrow I’ll actually get around to making some socks

When you get it all right, it sings   You can crank out an entire ribbed sock with no trouble at all… amazing!

It arrived today!

Since everything looked like, well, really REALLY good, I decided that instead of taking it apart right away, I’d throw some needles in, and see what it could do.

Wow. That can’t be… it’s casting on perfectly.

Not only that, iIt isn’t dropping a SINGLE stitch. I’m almost disappointed – I wanted a challenge, right? I wanted a machine that needed a bit of work (and not just some minor cleaning). This isn’t challenging if it knits perfectly!

I swapped out the yarn carrier for a slotted one from Roxanne (which I’m not sure about quite yet – I need to get a washer or something to use as a spacer, if I leave it as is, it will hit the tension dial when knitting heels and toes), and just kept cranking away. I’d be tempted to say that this machine knits better than my NZAK… it’s very smooth.

The only problem with it? A tiny chip off the 72 cylinder… which happened during shipping (it was packed very well though, so I’m not sure how it happened, other than USPS having it for 13 days, doing who knows what to the box it was in).

So there it is.. my new to me, beautiful Legare 400. All I have to do is clean it, but it appears to be complete, it knits like a dream, and I’m quite pleased with my “gamble” on eBay. I’ve yet to try the ribber, but it seems to be fine as well.

Amazing

Blog Tweaks

I don’t know how many readers there are out there that might have noticed, but my progress bars have been MIA a few times over the past few days as I have been tweaking the code for them (a lot). I’ve generally made a grand mess of things and I need to sit down and clean up my both my CSS and my code (I have bits commented out all over the place, and I’m doing with three files what I think *could* be done with just one), but I got a few things working that have been bothering me for a while.

Changes:

• Added day of the month to the started/finished dates (originally ravelry had no day field)
• Added finished date to FO’s (since this was recently added to the JSON, along with a few other fields)
• Added a “recent FO’s” section to my sidebar – since a lot of my projects don’t actually end up being “in-progress” at all, I thought this was a nice addition
• Added happiness info (thanks to code provided by pocketsize on Ravelry) to my sidebar and on the FO’s gallery page
• Overlayed happiness/comments/favorited info on my project thumbnail on the sidebar images.  That’s something I’d been wanting to get working for a while, I just abandoned it a while back not wanting to deal with the CSS (it really wasn’t that hard though, I’m just lazy).  I even made super tiny icons to go with that, but I’m not completely happy with the smileys… I wish they were clearer, but I haven’t yet found any the size I want, and attempts to make my own have ended in failure.
• Added titles to the comments and favorites, so you get a ‘tooltip’ with more information

Things I want to do:

• Show the medium flickr image when you rollover the thumbnails.  Not sure how I want to do that exactly, or where to even start with the code, but since I added the little rollovers to the comments and favorites, it had me thinking about those thumbnails. Solved this by using lightbox, and tweaking my code to include a link to flickr in the image caption to abide by their TOS.  Pretty happy with this, though I’d like to include more project information in the caption, but I’ll work on that later.
• I’ve been trying to decide if I want to do anything with my notes info as well.  I don’t reliably utilize this on ravelry now – sometimes I include useful information, and sometimes I don’t, and sometimes what I put is a little bit cryptic. Decided I don’t need to do anything here
  
• I would also like to get some math working to display the amount of time it took to complete a project.  So if something was a one-day project for me, I think it would be nice if my FO page reflected that… and likewise, if something took a while, I think that can be helpful to see as well. Done!  I’d like to make it a little better (display weeks and days for projects that take a while – say more than 30 days) but for now it’s a good start – most projects only take me a few days anyways. Ok, I’m really DONE now!
  
• I want to break hibernating projects out and reformat them.  Currently they are marked as hibernating by a small addition of code, but I’d like to be able to apply specific CSS to them that would be different than the “active” progress bars.  Currently the recent FO’s and the active bars use essentially the same CSS, and I’m fine with that – the FO’s of course just don’t include the progress bar itself. Done!
  

I’m quite happy with them, and it was WAY easier than I expected! Maybe tomorrow I’ll try a pair with a ribbed foot too

The yarn is the new Imagination sock yarn from KnitPicks – it’s really nice, very soft, and the colors are pretty neat too!

Well worth the trip, I’d say.

I had a relatively productive sock day today too… I made three socks.

(see that green yarn? that’s scrap.. hence what the box of yarn for $5 is handy for)

Why three, you ask? Well, because I didn’t like the first one (a little snug, a little short) and I just didn’t frog it before making a pair. I did something stupid though, and after completing the *heel* on the second sock, put on waste yarn and cranked it off the machine. Yeah. Ooops. It’s okay though, becuase I got familiar real quick with how to re-hang my knitting, and I just kept working on the foot. Aside from some yarn tails on the inside, you’d never know I did that.

It looks much scarier than it was, really

And just because, a close-up of sock #1 and it’s beautiful heel!

I think those are for my mom. I haven’t decided yet.

I also made some more KK Sippy Kozies to stock in my HC store… I’ll be working on 18oz and 27oz versions soon I really like how the campfire one came out.. such perfect spiraling stripes!

I also got some large hook needles to play with.. I hope these will make knitting with handspun a bit easier

And finally, some cute blue size tags! I can’t wait to make something that I’ll need to use these on

I am totally thrilled with them, and I think I am deeming them my first official successful CSM socks – they fit great (they look a little slouchy in the photos, but I hadn’t yet washed them), and there’s no major issues with them (aka nothing horrible happened while knitting). I think I’m getting better – I’m certainly getting faster. I’d say they took me about an hour and a half, with interruptions.

Made from the remnants of a failed CSM sock, I took what was left after being partially frogged, shoved some elastic through the hung hem, and hand finished the bottom.. I love how it came out.

I wrote up the pattern here – http://www.sarahspins.com/patterns/klean-kanteen-sippy-kozy/ or you can download the PDF version

And it’s also listed on Ravelry now (also with the same PDF download, if you’d like to store it in your library or add it to your queue)