Continuing on. No setbacks!

I began to feel I would falter at this new blogging thing. I was bogged down by the pressure to knit so I would have something to blog, the pressure to blog so that I would not have failed at a new thing (like the drop spindle spinning I tried yesterday), the pressure of the pure charm and knitting prowess of some of the blogs I read; the pressure to knit so that I could take more yarn off my stash list and abide by my stashing proclamation, and so on. I felt just like this poor little lamby seemingly abandoned at the Brooklyn Zoo Sheep Festival yesterday. No ewephoric exclamations here!

But I knit on and blog on and, life is good!

These are the specifically-correct-yet-uncomfortably named "Cable with Faggoting Center and Rib Socks" from Sensational Knitted Socks. The pictures were taken last Sunday and then this weekend--where I showed the sock from whence it came (well, sort of.) You can't really see the um, center of note, but when I finish these (by next weekend, dang it) and put them on, you'll see what faggoting means to knitting patterns.

This is a detail from the Donna sweater in the Jo Sharp Silk Road DK Tweed in the color cedar. This is the most ambiguous color ever. I meant to buy a kind of heathery greenish yarn to make the Cinxia sweater. Well, then this yarn came in the mail, and it seemed almost black. Dang. Then I knit it and it seemed the green I had been searching for. But in this picture it looks gray. whatever. The yarn feels so soft that I'm glad to be knitting it into a sweater that will touch all over the top of me (ahem, for the most part) instead of a cardigan. This project is also my 'brainless' knitting project to be the foil to my next project which I believe will be some sort of lace insanity.

So a yarn has come off the stash list. Woo hoo! Let the yarn-coveting with credit card in hand begin!

Blast from the (blogless) past!

Just a mere eight days ago, I was blissfully "blogless Penelope," knitting like crazy, speaking only to myself in amusing, pithy complete sentences, and even photographing my work as a record of the knitting I've done. I didn't keep a journal or notebook or anything, I (or Poem-man) just WORE the dang things I knit, or I let the little works of love go off into giftland.

I even joked with Allena about starting a blog and then posting a new finished object every day like I was some sort of Barry Bondsed knitter, but that seemed like a heartless, devious way to present myself to the knitting folk, so instead I opt for:

BLASTS from the PAST!
(insert your own appropriate song here--Today, I heard Separate Ways by Journey and flashed back to an earlier, limier green, Esprit-wearing time...but I digress in not a good way.)

I'll start with my most recent blogless effort and work kinda backwards until I run out of stuff.

Recipient/wearer: Poem-man

Pattern: Beaded Rib from Sensational Knitted Socks

Yarn: The pair was knit from one skein (only 293 yds!) of Colinette Jitterbug in #55 "Toscana" Yarn enabler: Stitch Therapy
Time I spent knitting them when I could should have been working out: About 10 days

These were a pretty straight-forward knit as they were designed to be knit toe-up (my FAVorite way), but the pattern is only a two-row repeat and almost mind-numbingly boring. My poem-man has only size 9-1/2 size feet, but I kept calling them clown feet because they seemed to take forEVer to knit. Poem-man loves them very much, and I would say that the yarn is lovely to handle.

Stashing declaration

I deCLARE!

1. I will maintain a stash of no more than 10 yarns.
2. Those yarns of which my stash is composed shall thus be listed on my blog for all to monitor, praise, and mock.
3. I may have up to two (2) works-in-progress and the yarns in said WIPs will not count as the 10 yarns in my stash. A yarn must be cast-on (and not just swatched!) in order to be considered a WIP.
4. I will not purchase any yarns that will put my stash over the 10-yarn limit. 4a) I am allowed to ogle yarns online or in LYS or in other people's stashes for possible future purchase as much as my little heart desires. 4b) It does not matter if the yarn is 97% off or cashmere drops out of the sky--if it violates this declaration, it cannot come home with me. (Hila has already offered to be my gift recipient of any precipitating cashmere.) 4c. There are no allowances for gifts. 4d) All kinds of yarn count---sock yarn COUNTS!

5. I will not respond in any credit-card-fueled way should any persons try to get me to break my vow.

I, mzkwooz, have thus stated my yarn stash oath and testament. I have said it; so be it.

SO THERE!

Woe be the Loose Knitter.

I was all excited to see everyone's lovely (if grinningly smug) reception of my blog. Then I was so motivated to get started right on another project, so I could take a yarn off my stash list (because I found some other yarn I forgot to add, but they're on the list now) and have something to blog about.

Toe-up I went on the lovely Brigit sock from Socktopia in the Brooklyn Handspun from my stash. A simplistically beautiful cable and rib pattern in a pretty yarn to show off the details. But look...
You can't see a cable or a rib or anything because (deep breath)...

I'M A LOOSE KNITTER! I mean, jeez, I'm knitting on Addi Turbo Size ZERO needles and I still can't get the pattern to emerge.

So, fine, just fine. I'm think I'll use a twisted rib and cable pattern from Sensational Knitted Socks and see if that's any better. Brigit goes on my list of things I want to knit, but I'm still taking the Brooklyn Handspun out of the stash!

I'll never mock a tightly-wound knitter again. Well, maybe not never, and not only for being tightly wound.

Less anyone worry about all the socks I am brashly parading on my 2-day old blog, I've already finished my secret feet socks, she says in her own smug way.

Leap of (sock) faith!

All right, all right! I'm blogging already...

So, I've begun this tangential hobby (um, blogging) at the instigation of the wonderful new friends I've made in the Sit n' Knit. I've refused to start spinning, dyeing, weaving, even crocheting in order to concentrate on knitting. Then of course, there's the time-taken-away-from-knitting spent reading others people's blogs (lurking), listening to knitting podcasts (which I do to distract myself from the exercising I am forcing myself to do), and shopping online for yarn, patterns, books (a self-denying practice since I am trying to not become a stasher).

But, now I've capitulated to blogging in order to 1) have an on-going journal of my knitting; 2) to stop fishing for admiring comments from my loving, but much put upon husband and instead fish from a larger if less-intimately-known group of people who actually knit; 3) alleviate the mocking of the aforementioned Sit n' Knit bloggers (you know who you are...) 4) occupy myself on the unexpected day-off due to rain from my work today! Woo hoo!

So here goes nothing!

Pattern: Canal du Midi socks from Knitting on the Road,by Nancy Bush

Yarn: The pair was knit from two skeins of Lana Grossa Meilenweit (80% wool, 20% nylon) in color #1104

Yarn enabler: Simply Socks Yarn Co.

Time I spent knitting them when I could be renovating the bathroom: April 8th-April 16th.

New technique I learned: A stretchy cast-off for my rather voluptuous calves.

The two things that I love about these socks is that the top half of the calf is ribbed which makes them stay up really well on my shapely leg and that the pattern is intuitive and easy to memorize. I worked them toe-up using the heel from the Widdershin socks, which is my favorite heel both for technique and fit.

Thanks for reading my inaugural post!