Sweetpea’s Garden

When it comes to knitting, I have a little problem — I always, always want to use my newest yarn first. When I buy for more than one project (which is usually the case) this means I end up starting several different things at once. Since I mostly knit socks, this is less of an issue than it could be — it’s not as if I have a huge pile of half-finished sweaters or blankets gathering dust. Socks, though, present their own challenge: there needs to be two of them, and only first socks are fun. Second Sock Syndrome is a well-known knitting ailment, the outcome of which is a stack of non-matching, useless footwear. I’ve managed to avoid this so far and have four complete pairs to show for my diligence. (The most recent pair, in a lovely rainbow colorway of Koigu KPPPM, are above.)

It is starting to wear on me, though. Between the Stitch DC Stash Club , the Homespun Yarn Party in March, and the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival yesterday, I have a ton of incredibly beautiful sock yarn and I want to be knitting it all right now. I’ve come up with a plan that I think will get me using as much of the new yarn as possible, without ending up with a pile of mate-less socks: I am going to knit only first socks for the rest of the spring (May and June) and then switch to second socks for the summer (July and August). My hope is that by waiting two months, the yarn and patterns will seem new again.

I’ve already started down this path, so I hope it doesn’t turn out to be an incredibly bad idea. The sock in the paragraph above is actually a do-over, because I didn’t like the way the yarn (Brightwood, from Neighborhood Fiber Company) looked as a plain sock. I like it much better in this pattern, Monkey, which I have done before — though this is a shorter version in the hope that I don’t run out of yarn. I’m also just about to finish the first sock made from my January stash club yarn — Jaywalkers in the Connemara Valley colorway from Three Irish Girls.

Now that the first Jaywalker is done but for having the toe grafted shut, I have only one sock on the needles right now, using Storm Moon Knits “Smells Like Teen Spirit” colorway. I’m trying to McGyver the men’s sock pattern Thuja, from Knitty, to fit me by changing the needle size, but so far this has resulted in my not being able to get the heel over my foot, so I have frogged it back to the ankle and have gone back up a needle size. I hope I can make it work, because I think the pattern really works with this yarn. Tonight I have to go home and assess the sock stash and see what else I want to cast on, since I like to have a couple going at a time for variety.

With luck and some perseverance, I should have a drawer full of homemade socks by fall. And let me know if you have super-tiny feet. I have a feeling that I don’t have enough yarn left to get those Brightwood socks to fit me.

I’m going to replace my typical three beautiful things list with a recap of what turned out to be a pretty busy weekend. Given that last week was, overall, fairly uneventful, my beautiful things (Post-marathon pancakes at Eastern Market! Free baseball tickets! Homespun yarn party!) were all from the weekend anyway.

I started out my Saturday a lot earlier than usual in order to go cheer on the National Marathon. (I woke up about the same time, actually, I just got moving a lot sooner — my Saturdays generally tend to involve very little activity before mid-day.) I met up with Julia and Michael around 8:30 and we wandered over to Lincoln Park to wait for our friend Phillip, who was running his first marathon, to run by, which he did around 9:15.

I didn’t get my camera up in to commemorate the moment until he was already past us, but here is his on his way toward the 15-mile mark. Phillip would be the one on the left with the gray and blue shirt, and the, um, fanny pack. He apparently wore his tourist costume for the race.

Continue reading ‘It’s No Wonder I’m Tired Today’

The weather forecast isn’t calling for a day below 50° for the next 10 days (at least if you look only at the high temps, which I, optimistically, do), so it figures that I would have finished my sweater just in time for it to be too warm to need one.

I’ve been wearing it anyway, trying to get some use out of it before sweater weather ends completely. The temperature is already at the point where I can wear it instead of a coat, which is actually pretty great.

Overall, I am happy with the way it came out. I still have quite a bit to learn about shaping and such, but it definitely fits well enough. I’m especially excited that making it myself allowed me to add an extra inch or so to the arms, making this quite possibly the only sweater I have ever owned where the sleeves are not too short. I checked with a couple of people at work to make sure it looked normal and not too “homemade” and got positive reviews. Bossman (who also took the picture above) said it looked like the kind of sweater that you get at a high-end store where they go to a lot of effort to pretend it’s hand knit. I think that was a compliment.

Continue reading ‘Finished, at Last’