At the risk of jinxing myself and causing something horrible to happen, not only am I on-track with my holiday knitting, but I may even be ahead. I’m knitting four items or pairs of items for Christmas–two of them are completely done (ends woven in, buttons sewn on, done). A third could be done this week, as could the fourth. The blanket of doom that I’ve been working on for two years could be done this evening if I forego knitting and just plop myself down in front of the tv with my crochet hook.
This is partly “processing out loud,” double-checking my list and making sure I am right in thinking that I’m as far as I am, and partly just stunned wonder.
In addition to accomplishing Christmas knitting miracles, I attended a Holiday Handmade craftfair over the weekend. The craft fair itself was amazing and awesome and I have a stack of business/Etsy cards about an inch thick, but the real joy was in discovering Fancy Tiger Clothing and Crafts. Since they were the initial organizers of the Holiday Handmade fair, my knitting friends and I thought it was only right and proper that we visit the store as well. BIG MISTAKE. Huge. Catastrophic.
That is, if you’re my wallet. If you’re not my wallet, well, then, it was the best idea EVER. I managed to not break the bank, but I did come away with the Fancy Tiger’s own wool wash blend, some pieces of fabric, and what I thought was the perfect yarn for the Bandelier Socks I’ve been wanting to make.
I bought 8 skeins of Brown Sheep Nature Spun Sport Weight yarn in varying shades of purple (and one charcoal), because ever since I started thinking about knitting these socks, I imagined them in a sort of monochrome palette. I don’t know why, but I was just going to go with it.
Turns out, the pattern only calls for 7 yarns, in Brown Sheep Nature Spun Fingering. In my excitement at finally finding the Nature Spun in the colors I wanted in a store, I sort of overlooked that bit of information. However, it’s not that big of a problem! I did a little bit of selfish knitting yesterday morning and worked up the beginning of a swatch.
The sport weight yarn works up nicely on the US 1s that the pattern calls for, but it creates a thick fabric that is just barely a bit too snug to pull over my heel. I can do it, and I did it twice in the process of knitting up that swatch, but I don’t want to fight with my socks–I have enough that cause problems already.
In the process of knitting up the swatch, I decided that I wasn’t in love with the color variations that I had originally planned. So I started playing around with color-change order.
On top is the color-change order that I originally used; the bottom photo shows my new plan that I will put into effect at some point, when the Christmas knitting is over and the birthday gift knitting (which hasn’t even begun but will soon) is concluded.
Added bonus: these socks will likely force me to knit in a two-handed stranded method, which means I may actually get to the point that I’m good at tensioning my knitting with my left hand, which means I could, potentially, switch over to Continental knitting exclusively and then I WILL CONQUER THE KNITTING WORLD WITH MY SPEEDINESS. Or something.
Dude, is that the knitting you did the other morning instead of putting on makeup? You make me a little bit sick. I think I could manage garter, or stockinette in the round, or really basic lace in the morning. But colorwork? No way! :-p
Oh no no no. That swatch was my Sunday morning “It’s snowing outside and I don’t want to change out of my PJs so I’m going to watch a disc of Stargate Atlantis and work on something for me for a while.” That other knitting was invariably one of my Christmas knitting projects, though I don’t remember which one. 🙂
[…] one of my more optimistic moments, which happen from time to time, I decided I would make gifts for my family this year for the holidays. I typically don’t. […]