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I am finally past the decrease of the heel flap part. And now it’s just smooth sailing from here.  I even tried the partridge heel…modified.

The color is a bit more colorful in the picture, but it’s pretty accurate, should it be really saturated.

The leg part is pretty long, but I like it better that way for winter socks.  I’ll try to see if I can finish this sock by the end of this month… if not both socks, then at the least, this one sock. :)

The weather is getting pretty warm, and I have been distracted by other hobbies that have been taking my time away from knitting.  I should try to get a handle on continuation of knitting and not let it fall to the way side.

cheer me on!!

I finally returned to taiwan, and find that it’s dark, damp & cold. So what’s a knitter to do in this sort of weather? put on some hand knit socks. For reasons unknown to me, I pulled out my lone socks, and matched them into a pair. That’s what got me thinking that I should knit more socks, because it seems like there are plenty of cold weather left in taiwan.

First steps first. Finding my sock needles. I found them on the WIP of the advent calendar shawl thingy that never saw the finish line. So instead of putting the WIP on a line, and just taking out the needle, I thought why not send this puppy to the frog pond…in actual honest reality, it’s never gonna get finished. I should just end it’s misery, so that the yarn could be recycled into something else.

After I cleared the needles, selected the yarn (the recycled advent yarn), I went on Ravelry to search for a suitable pattern to fit my mood. My criterias were simple, cuff down, something that isn’t too difficult, ie, some k, some p, occasional increase & decreases, easy repeats.

I found the pattern I was looking for, Devil’s Snare.

It’s exactly what I am looking for. Currently I am still on sock 1, but I have made progress onto the heel flap…I am even trying out the slightly modified heel… If I keep at this, I might have another one sock finished by the end of the week.

*one can’t see the pattern all that much, as the stripes overpower the pattern…but I don’t care very much about that.

i love making cupcakes. somewhere on the internet I found this receipe for the magnolia cupcakes. It really is fluffy to make, when you get it right. The real key is, not to over beat.

I haven’t gotten the frostings part down yet, but maybe one day.

the above with the blue frosting is from the first batch…they were not that fluffy. these were my first cupcakes.

these second set of cupcakes were fluffier.

Awhile ago I promised a friend that I’d knit him a scarf. (Sounds familiar no?) I even went as far as asking what color he’d like. I bought the color of yarn on a special trip to the crafting store cuz I didn’t have anymore red yarn. I even picked out a stitch pattern when I was in China, the mistake rib.

and then that yarn just sat there waiting for me to knit.

but wait no more it did. After I had finished Jimmy’s scarf, I cast on immediately for the promised scarf.  A few rows into the mistake rib, and I knew that the pattern and the yarn color just didn’t go together.

The yarn was a two color twist yarn, it was dark red/gray. Although it looks good in the ball, when knit up in this mistake rib, the ribbing sorta gets lost.

I figure that the best way to present this type of yarn was plain garter, would have gone for stockinette stitch but i didn’t want to have to deal with curling of the yarn.

But a whole long 6ft scarf in garter is going to kill me, so I brilliantly thought Baktus. Why? This guy that I promised the scarf to is a bit fashion forward, he has style, he’s not afraid of wearing stylish clothes. Hence I don’t think he’ll be afraid of a little neckerchief, it will just add more to his stylish being.

Here’s what I have so far.

I think it’s coming along well, and well i really hope he likes it.

CO: unknown (don’t remember)
FO: Nov 5, 2011

As usual for my Baktus, I ran out of the yarn, and had to substitute a different color yarn, which you can see at the end, it’s the various shades of purple in STR.

It’s really getting cold, that’s why i’m breaking out the knitting. Although you think I’d be more prepared for this, and knit during the rest of the year, but nope. I’m not smart like that.

I know it’s been awhile… Sorry I’ve neglected you.  I haven’t been knitting much…

well let’s jump right in because after all this is a knitting blog.  

yarn: purchased in Okinawa, in Oct 2010
Needle: US7 Knitpicks
Pattern: Alternating Rib from the 400 stitches dictionary by Potter Crafts

This is a scarf I started for a friend.  He saw this other scarf that I posted, and asked if I would take a scarf order.  I said to him that it’s not that hard to knit, plus it seems like his girlfriend should be the one to knit it for him.  After thinking about it some more, I traded his skills as a computer tech, for a scarf.  I asked if he would sit down and look thru my new computer, and in return i’ll knit him a scarf.

Of course I asked the basic scarf questions.  A. What color do you want? (please don’t say black).  B. how wide do you want it?  C. what sort of pattern are you looking for.

His answers.  A. a dark green.  B. normal, and C. i don’t know anything about scarf patterns.

First I flipped thru the stitches dictionary, and though that these KP stitches are the easiest and suitable for males.  Then I rifled thru my stash looking for something suitable in green, and this olive green was the best I could come up with.

I sent the above picture to him, as that’s just a swatch to see how the pattern looks in that yarn…it’s not as pretty as I like it, I don’t like how it ribs in the middle there, but that might just be how it looks pre-blocking.  I’m more concerned about the color, as he quote, doesn’t know anything about a pattern…so if he doesn’t like the color, then i’ll have to find new yarn… perhaps a nice merino… that way it’s not as scratchy as wool.

Have made little progress on this dimpled sock… it’s a bit tedious.  The repetitive nature of the pattern while looks great does not soothe me really.  In fact I need really more of a challenging pattern to keep me entertained… so I shall then perhaps make this sock a 5” length and just call it a short sock.

I was thinking of going for an afterheel thought, but I think the friend that I’m making the sock for might be better for the heel flap and turn heel situation that I’m accustomed to.

I was just going to try something different that was all, but what’s different good for anyways… let’s go for what we know. 

NO surprises here.

I was looking at my google calendar and realised that I have many May birthday friends, and perhaps this is the time to start making the gifts.  So i got a started on it.  I promised the close friends this year socks.

As usual I went to peruse the ravelry patterns database for a suitable sock pattern, looked at many, queued a few & went home to pick out yarn for each suitable friend.

It was really when I picked out the yarn that I realized that perhaps none of the patterns that I’ve looked at was suitable to the color scheme of the yarn, so in a fit of genius, or non-genius, I decided to look thru my stitch dictionary calendar, and thought what would be a better way then to make a sock out of the stitch of the day of her birthday. 

Surprisingly, the stitch of the day seemed suitable to the yarn color and I thought I’d give it a go.  (With a test swatch per say.) Just cast-on with the normal 64 with the pair of short 16”  2.5mm. (I couldn’t find my regular go to sock needle) The stitch pattern was written flat, but since socks are round, I had to convert it to the round, it wasn’t hard, but the Sl 1 took me for a loop for a bit.  I didn’t know whether to slip it knitwise or slip it purlwise.  After a few tries, I decided to slip it purlwise was the way it was written for the dimpled look.

After getting thru the initial fiddling around, and succeeding the look, and also making sure the pattern fit the color scheme. Which I think it does. I found my regular sock needle, and went to town.

Here’s to socks!!

Sometimes I am known to read a book or two.  Last year I did not make an effort to read as much as I should have, but I am making an effort this year with my new Kindle. The Kindle just makes it soooo easy to read, light weight, no glare, easy on the eye.

The books that I read are no Pulitzer prize winners, but they are what I like, and you can’t argue with that.  I have recently started trying to read books in my Kindle queue, one of those books is the other series by Charlaine Harris.   (She writes the Sookie Stackhouse series, which is what the HBO show, True Blood is based on) The Harper Connelly series.

Harper Connelly, was struck by lightening when she was younger, and due to surviving that event, she acquired the gift of being able to feel ghostly presences.  She uses her gift to help ease the minds of those still living by finding the the lost souls, although more than half the time, those who hire her, do not believe in her, and doubts her findings. 

In the first book, she is commissioned to find a missing girl, and that’s when the trouble begins.  It should have been an easy find, but Harper is haunted by the complicity of the death and she is soon involved in the mystery as well as the town.  More people are starting to die, and Harper, being the outsider is being blamed for it.  There is only one way for Harper to get out of this town alive, and that’s to solve this mystery, so that she can move on and find the person she’s really looking for.

I was so enthralled with the first book, that I immediately purchased 2 more on the Kindle.  I haven’t read them yet, cuz I like to devour my books in one sitting, but they are there, ready for me to discover Harper’s adventures.

one is knitting along a S1, K1 heel, and CRACK! your bamboo needle breaks and the rest of the row that you were knitting is left as loops on the row, while the broken needles has fallen to the floor.

OMG! Disaster!

I suppose I was waiting for this to happen the whole time I was knitting this sock on 2.5mm needles with the noro sock yarn…I don’t know what I was thinking really, ugh.

I think I just pushed the needle a bit too hard. ergh. I wonder if I can get a replacement needle for free from Knitpicks even though it was my fault? Le sigh.

I also slightly panicked because I didn’t think I had any 2.5mm around, but as it turns out, I have a pair of metal clovers that I bought from taiwan, they are not needles I use on a daily basis, nor ever, BUT in a pinch, which is what this is, it will do.  I will use those to try to finish the rest of the sock, or else this second sock might go back in hibernation until I can get a replacement needle, and that my friend might be another 2 years in the making before my dear dear brother will get his promised socks.