Monthly Archives: March 2013

1:44 pm - March 30, 2013 - AngelaH

Seafoam socks

Et, voila! After four months on the needles, my Seafoam socks are finished.

The colours are a little washed out here (sorry), but the yarn is shades of blue, green, and purple. I really like how, although it’s random, the colours managed to stripe without pooling.

Really, these are just boring 3×1 ribbed socks and there is no good excuse for them having taken so long, but there are a few reasons I would like to put forward:
1. I started these right after finishing my Spruce Jaywalkers and, honestly, I just wanted them to be Jaywalkers too. Why then, didn’t I cast on for Jaywalkers? I don’t know. I guess I didn’t want to knit the same pair of socks twice in a row or something, which is dumb, since I spent the entire first sock (knit the first week in November) wishing I was knitting something else.
2. Christmas came along and since I wasn’t sure I liked these socks anyway, it was very easy to set them aside and knit other things, including, as it turned out, two other pairs of socks for myself, as well as many gifts.
3. I have no great love for ribbing. I don’t find it difficult or anything, just tedious. Ribbed socks are practical and I will wear them a lot, but I don’t know, next time I feel the urge to knit ribbed socks I’ll kick it up a notch and knit Stepping-Stones, which are like ribbing, but more interesting.
4. I wasn’t sure I liked the colour. This seems crazy to me now, because I love this yarn, but at first the colours seemed very, very vibrant, and I was worried the socks might look a little Care Bears Ahoy! when they were finished. I should have had more faith.

For all these reasons (and likely more) these socks sat around unfinished for a while, which is why I decided to bring them on holiday. They’re easy and plain, which makes for good social knitting, and I really did want them finished and on my feet, so it seemed win-win. I hadn’t actually realized how well they’d match the colours of everything around us, though. I had the first sock done and literally nothing but the cast-on for the second sock, but I started it after finishing my mum’s socks and finished in time for a photo shoot on the water the last evening we were there. I wore them on the plane coming home and, silly as it sounds, felt like I was bringing some of the island’s vibrancy home with me.

I do wish I'd not been so lazy with the first pair and knit a 1x1 rib for the cuff, but oh well.

I do wish I’d not been so lazy with the first pair and knit a 1×1 rib for the cuff, but oh well.

Pattern-wise I just improvised these (they’re Ravelled here). They’re knit in Fleece Artist BFL Sock, in the Seafoam colourway. I don’t know why I chose to knit them on 2.75mm needles (I guess I wanted them to be quick – hah!) but the result is socks that are a little less dense than usual and thus, perfect for spring. And, since my gauge was still 8.5 stitches to the inch, they should wear pretty well despite the lighter fabric. I also have about 100 yards left, so I might whip up a pair of bright baby booties with the leftovers.

Finishing two pairs of sock in a week left me on kind of a sock kick, and when I got home I cast on another pair (Hummingbird, from the Knitter’s Book of Socks) and they are flying! (So many unintended puns in there, sorry.) I’m going to be good, though, and buckle down on my Woodstove Season cardigan this weekend. I keep putting it down for smaller projects, but I really want it finished and it’s getting to be the perfect time of year for sweaters to be jackets, which would show it off nicely. So, expect a progress report next week.

Are you knitting anything fun this Easter weekend?

Categories: finished, Knitting Tags: Eleuthra, socks

9:38 pm - March 26, 2013 - AngelaH

I’d go back in a heartbeat

The view from the veranda.

There’s nothing like looking at vacation photos a few days after returning home to make you sigh wistfully. For me, holidays feel like time outside normal linear life-time, as if they happen adjacent to everything else. When I get back, it’s like I’ve never been gone, but also just had an amazing dream I can’t fully describe to people. Luckily, though, unlike dreams, vacations have photographic evidence. (Also, none of these photos have been edited or colour corrected, so yes, the water really is that colour. I couldn’t believe it either.)

Since we’ve been back it has snowed (and then melted) and I’ve been sick (and gotten mostly better), L has been hard at work on his thesis, we’ve had (and still have) house guests, and Ganymede has been her most cuddly self ever. It’s nice to be back, but man, if you told me I could go back to Eleuthra tomorrow, I would be at the airport in no time (my speed would be helped by the fact that I’ve only half-unpacked).

Rainbow Bay Beach. You can see our house just up the shore (it has the gazebo).

Our time in Eleuthra (an island in the Bahamas) overlapped partly with one aunt and uncle (my dad’s middle brother and his wife) and partly with the other aunt and uncle (my dad’s youngest brother and his wife) and entirely with my grandparents, with whom we stayed. My grandparents have been going to Eleuthra in March for the last several years and I can absolutely see why. It’s pretty far north as far as the Caribbean goes (it’s about 60 miles off the Florida coast) so it’s more temperate than the islands farther south (I’d say the temperature ranged from 15 to 30C, and it was only 15 one evening when there was a breeze). Being in the north also means the flight is pretty short, which is a major bonus.

The beach outside Tippy's, which had the best pina colada and mojito I've ever tasted. Ever.

The beach outside Tippy’s, a beach-side bar had the best pina colada and mojito I’ve ever tasted. Ever.

The thing that really won us over, though, was that there were no resorts on the island. There’s a fair bit of tourism (it’s their main industry), but it’s tucked away in small hotels and guest houses and in rental homes, like the one we stayed in. We went out for drinks and lunch some days, but we made most of our meals in the house. We drove around to lots of beaches (Eleuthra has some amazing beaches), but we also swam off the boat slip in front of the house, or at the beach just down the shore. We went for walks and read and knit (well, I knit) and L kayaked and in general, the six of us hung out did our thing.

Ben Bay Beach (at the northern tip of the island) was an amazing beach. It was a little tricky to get to, but, well, look at it! How could that not be worth it?

My dad’s family all lives in out East, so I don’t get to see them very often, and L hasn’t seen them in years, so in addition to being a thoroughly enjoyable holiday in its own right, the family time was invaluable.

I’m avoiding family photos, since I didn’t ask first, so instead I give you dolphins! These look like they’re in a pool, but they’re 100% wild and we saw them when leaving Spanish Wells, the old, colonial town/island off Eleuthra’s northwest side.

Truly, I would go back in heartbeat. And, if you go (or want to), let me know so that I can a) travel vicariously, and b) tell you about all my favourite places that didn’t make it into this post.

It tended to cloud over at night, so there weren’t many great sunsets, but boy, when the sunset was visible, it was stunning.

Category: Out and about Tags: Bahamas, beaches, Eleuthra, family, photos, travel

8:58 am - March 22, 2013 - AngelaH

Snow on re-entry

Time flies when you’re in the sun. We got back to Toronto last night, and it was snowing. Snowing! When we left Eleuthra yesterday morning it was still cool (we left the house before the sun was up) but it was still probably 17 or 18C, and then we landed in snow. Boo.

Nevertheless, we had a fantastic holiday. I will do a proper post about it in a day or two, but before then I have to go through the many photos and unpack, and deal with all the things that didn’t get dealt with while we were away, and also cuddle Ganymede, who spent the week in an empty apartment (don’t worry, though, a friend of ours visited regularly to check on her).

So, in the absence of real holiday pictures, lets talk socks – apparently I need to start wearing them again.

Finished Stepping-Stones.

I finished the Stepping-Stone Socks last Friday, the day after we arrived. I had the cuff finished before we left, and the leg finished by the time we landed in Nassau and the heel turned by the time we boarded our teeny plane for Eleuthra (it sat 18, including the pilots, and I didn’t knit on it). Even with swimming and walking and reading and eating and drinking, it was a breeze to finish the foot on Friday, and L obliged me with some lovely photos.

This one is less lovely, but he thought a behind-the-scenes shot would be hilarious, so…

Certainly one of the reasons these socks were so quick to knit was because they are knit in worsted weight. Man, what a difference that makes! Besides the heavier yarn, though, these socks have a delightfully fluid and quick stitch pattern that only takes two rows to memorize. Honestly, I will knit these socks again and again, and because it’s a six-stitch repeat, it’s an easy pattern to adjust for size and yarn weight. All that being said, I found the subtle change from leg to instep pattern weirdly hard to adjust to; it just didn’t flow as well for me. The instep is just a little less intuitive (it also involved more counting) and while I like how it looks, I think the next time I make these I’ll continue the leg pattern down the foot and see how it looks.

I knit these socks over two weeks, but actual knitting time was only about four days, so these would make an excellent last-minute gift. My mum requested that the socks be a little taller than the ones I knit for myself, so I knit the legs to 7 inches. She also has slightly longer feet than I do. Those two factors meant I needed just a bit more than 100g to knit these, but you could easily make them from one 100g skein. I now have 82g of red yarn leftover, but I might just whip that up into another Puerperium Cardigan (our friends had a baby girl last night!), so I’m not annoyed in the least that I needed that little bit of extra.

Details
Pattern: Stepping-Stones by Clara Parkes (from The Knitter’s Books of Socks, but also available for free on Ravelry!)
Yarn: Malabrigo Rios in Ravelry Red
Needles: 3.5mm
Modifications: First of all, I changed the needle size. I thought the large size would be too big for my mum, so I just adjusted the small. They knit up perfectly to fit a size-10 foot (9-ish inches in circumference). I also changed the heel. Since I went up a needle size I was worried that the one in the pattern would be too thick/bulky for a comfortable fit, so I just went with my normal slip-stitch heel (also saving me extra ends to weave in). Other than that, I knit it exactly as written. (My socks are Ravelled here, if you’re curious.)

I also finished another pair of socks while away, but I’ll save them for another post.

Categories: finished, Knitting, Out and about Tags: Bahamas, Eleuthra, Malabrigo, socks

9:16 am - March 13, 2013 - AngelaH

Beach holiday

Surprise! Although going down south for a week is rather out of character, tomorrow L and I are doing just that. Every year for the last few years my grandparents have gone to the Bahamas for three weeks in March. They rent a house and spend their time reading and walking on the beach and being warm, and every year they invite family down to stay with them. This year, L and I are going, and even though it’s not the sort of holiday we usually take, I honestly cannot wait.

Our trip is actually a bit of a muddle, though, since I’ve been busy trying to get work stuff sorted out before we go (did I mention that I’d switched jobs and am now editing full-time at the Financial Post? I still do EweKnit‘s website, but I don’t work in the shop anymore) and run errands and organize stuff. And L, well, he’s also writing his PhD thesis (due in May) and this is not an ideal time to be taking a week-long vacation to a place with spotty Internet access. I think excitement will win out, but there has been some anxiety. I truly feel that this is all anticipation nerves, and that once we’re there and in a routine, it will be fine. We’ll be in a house, and not on some adventure trip, so he’ll be able to work, and I’ll be able to relax, and we’ll both get to spend some awesome quality time with my grandparents, which I am really, really looking forward to.

I am also looking forward to being consistently warm, to swimming, to wearing my summer clothes, and to spending days away from the computer. I am bringing books (plural) and knitting (also plural), and I plan to split my non-swimming time pretty evenly between the two. My beach books will be Tamas Dobozy’s Siege 13 (the most recent CanLit Knit pick), which I’m almost finished, and Some Great Idea a new book about Toronto by local journalist Edward Keenan. I may throw in a third book at the last minute though, since those aren’t very long.

On the knitting side, I still have some deciding to do. I’m going to bring the Stepping-Stones socks I’m knitting for my mum, because she will be heading down to the Bahamas with my dad a few days after we leave, and I want to leave them there for her (she bought the yarn when she was here last month). I have one sock finished and the other one started and since they’re in worsted weight, I half suspect I’ll be finished them by Friday.

My mum asked for red socks, and now I have a knitting project that refuses to be well photographed. Sigh. They’re almost this vibrant in person.

I’m also going to bring Shaelyn, the shawl I’m knitting (doesn’t it sound like I’m talking about a country singer?) This is a top down shawl, so even though it feels like it’s knitting up quickly, I know that feeling will subside. Still. I think I might throw in a ball of yarn for another pair of socks as back up. Or, I could just bring my languishing Seafoam socks and finish them up. Tricky. Summer clothes do take up less space than winter clothes, though, so maybe I’ll just bring it all and see what happens.

I have barely knit on this thing and it’s growing like crazy. I have two skeins of this yarn, so I haven’t decided yet how big to knit it (I’m thinking medium to large).

What do you think? I still have a few hours to decide.

Since I’m already bringing back-up yarn for both the shawl and my mum’s socks, adding another one isn’t that much more. (Also, yes, that is the same skein that I’ve been bringing as back-up yarn for almost a year now. What’s up with that? I consistently want to knit this yarn and then consistently don’t. Am I jinxing myself by bringing it?)

Also, this means I probably won’t be blogging until the end of next week. I promise a vicarious vacation when I get back, though!

Categories: in progress, Knitting, Out and about Tags: Bahamas, planning, travel

10:02 am - March 11, 2013 - AngelaH

A hat too late

This weekend, it was spring. I don’t know if it’s going to stick around (being from Nova Scotia, I’m programed to expect a big storm in March), but for now, it feels great. I spent a good chunk of Saturday just walking around the city and enjoying being perfectly dressed for the first time in months. It was gorgeous.

Finished just in time to not need it! This is how people who don’t wear hats plan hat knitting I guess.

It stands to reason, then, that I would finish my winter hat just a week before this warm weather rolled into town. I haven’t blogged about the hat because, even though a month passed between when I cast on and when I cast off, I really never felt like I was knitting it. I am not, generally speaking, a hat person. I am that idiot on a cold day who’s turtled deep into a scarf and bareheaded. I don’t know why, but hats never occur to me. This was a cold winter, though, and when February rolled around and it became clear it wasn’t going to warm up, I decided to cast on. (I do, I should say, have a hat, a nice hat even, but I’ve never knit one for myself and I decided it was time.)

I guess there was too much halo for the cables. I still think this yarn will make a toasty hat.

I chose Scrollwork, by Irina Dmitrieva (from Brooklyn Tweed’s Wool People 4) and, very responsibly, paired it with some stash yarn. I got to the first bit of cabling and realized I’d made a bad choice. The yarn I was working with (this yarn, a wool/alpaca blend that would have made for a soft and lovely hat) was just not going to show off those cables to their advantage. And after the work I was about to put in, that would suck. So, I ripped back and started over with some of the Shelter I bought in New York.

Let me preface this by saying I didn’t swatch. This may be the first hat I’ve knit for myself, but it isn’t the first hat I’ve ever knit, and I know that 112 stitches on a 4.5mm needle will fit my head just fine. So I cast on and went with it. This is a demanding hat. The cables twist and turn and don’t think about trying to watch anything while knitting them because, well, you’ll be hitting pause a lot. I loved the knitting. For the few hours at a time that I spent with the hat, I enjoyed every stitch (well, almost every stitch – I also worry my post-cable purls are too loose) and there’s nothing like working complex cables to make you feel smart.

Right around here I started to wonder if maybe it wasn’t looking a little short.

What will quickly make you feel less smart, however, is after finishing your fancy hat and realizing it’s small. In the photos, there is quite a generous slouch, which is partly why I wasn’t worried about fit. I ought to have been. I don’t know if my hat just didn’t grow as much, or if my cables were tighter or what, but not only does my hat not have that slouch, but it is almost too small. I can wear it, but it doesn’t quite cover my earlobes, and a cold day, that’s dumb.

This is a very good representation of the colour. Photo taken before it was spring.

On the upside, I enjoyed knitting it so much I might just knit another one! I am also probably going to have a go at the cowl too, since that would both be fun and give me a winter set. But maybe next year, since it’s spring now.

Details
Pattern: Scrollwork, by Irina Dmitrieva
Yarn: Brooklyn Tweed Shelter in Plume
Needles: 3.75mm for the ribbing, 4.5mm for the rest
Modifications: I knit this exactly as written, except I switched to the larger needle in my last row of ribbing, which made the increase row a little easier to work. Also, of course, I started twice.

Categories: finished, Knitting Tags: Brooklyn Tweed, cables, hat

10:10 am - March 6, 2013 - AngelaH

Serious startitis, shawl edition

For weeks now, I have been panning through Ravelry looking at shawls. Almost all my recent favourites have been shawls and I have been looking at my stash strategizing which patterns to match with which yarns. Why didn’t I just cast on? Well, I don’t know. I was knitting that baby sweater (which I still haven’t mailed! dammit) and then I wanted to get those socks done so I could cast on a pair for my mom, and, really, I don’t know.

This weekend, though, I broke down. I finished the socks. I finished a hat (details to come). I knit on my sweater. I even cast on for my mom’s socks and knit to the heel of the first one. I had earned a new shawl! (Since when did knitting become about earning new projects? What is going on in my head?) I went back to Ravelry and went through my favourites, and then added more, and finally settled on Shaelyn as the perfect shawl.

Two repeats in and I’m smitten.

Perfect how? Well, it has a nice rhythm to it, with its bands of lace and bands of stockinette. I also had the perfect yarn in my stash – Handmaiden Casbah in Lupins, which I bought in Nova Scotia and have two skeins of, meaning I can make this shawl as big as I want.

I’m not actually sure which of these skeins I started with, but I think it might be the one on the left.

The colour is a little more variegated than I would normally choose for lace, but because of the stockinette portions, I think it works. And this yarn is so soft (who knew 9% cashmere would make such a difference).

I mean, it looks crappy right now, but when it’s blocked it should be okay I think.

All in all, I think this is solving my shawl restlessness for now, although I’m not sure one shawl will do it, so be prepared for a lot of shawls over the next few months. Lace, it seems, is making a comeback. Is it just me? Is it spring? Tell me you’re feeling the startitis bug too!

Categories: in progress, Knitting Tags: Handmaiden, Shaelyn, shawl, stash knitting

10:10 am - March 4, 2013 - AngelaH

Opposite socks

These socks knit up so fast that I didn’t even have time to blog about them. I bought the yarn a couple of weeks ago after reshelving skein upon skein of this yarn in the shop. I thought I could resist – goodness knows, I didn’t need more yarn – but after squishing so many skeins, and seeing all the colours, my resolve wore down. I actually thought the yarn was just going to be a variegated blue/green/grey, but after winding it an seeing the colours line up neatly into concentric circles, I got too excited about the striping possibilities not to cast on pretty much right away.

Zitron Unisono sport weight in colourway 1220. Weirdly, those parts that photographed as purple were definitely not purple when knit up. It’s kind of a shame, really.

Well, it sure striped. The funny thing is, they striped in almost exactly the opposite order. I spent most of the first sock wondering when the heck I was going to get to the fun bright colours, which mostly ended up on the foot, and then the second sock started out fun and got progressively darker. But! The very end of the skein was bright colours again, so even if I had knit the first sock from the inside of the skein out, and the second from the outside in, they still wouldn’t have matched!

L was away this weekend, so these will have to do. You can kind of see the opposite-ness, though.

I think it’s okay, though, since they’re clearly a pair. Part of that comes from the surprise toes, which I realized I was going to need when I weighed the ball part-way through the first foot and saw I was dangerously close to half my yardage already. By that point, I was already entirely smitten with this yarn, so I had (against my better judgement) purchased two more solid skeins for another pair of (more regularly) striped socks. I knit the first sock until I had about 53 grams of the yarn left, and then switched to the dark grey. I wrote down the measurement of the foot at that point and then copied it for the second sock (even though, at that point, I had just enough yarn to finish the whole sock). There’s something about matching toes that makes these look more like a pair, I think. (Details about what I did, etc. are ravelled here.)

The pair took less than two weeks to knit, and I swear they pretty much knit themselves. The yarn, Zitron Unisono, is 100% merino and infused with aloe and jojoba and feels amazing on your hands. It is so tightly twisted that it’s downright sproingy, and it knits up into a firm but soft fabric that is warm and stretchy. For speedy socks, this might be my new go-to yarn (as long as I have some extra for the toes) and although I have to be good and knit some other things beforehand, I am pretty excited to cast on my next pair.

With these socks finished, as well as a hat done and blocking, my weekend was pretty productive. How was yours? Any signs of spring where you are? (It remains cold here, so I could use some vicarious spring if you’ve got it.)

Categories: finished, Knitting Tags: socks, unisono