whitknits

Y’all will just have to take my word for it that this wee gansey was totally finished before the end of le Tour, because I had no access to a camera or internet those last two days (but fortunately, we were able to have the Tour recorded for us, and were able to watch the last two stages after we’d moved into our house…I am just so, so impressed with Contador, and Leipheimer, and the whole Discovery squad. And I love that all of the jersey winners were youngins, bringing in a new era of hopefully cleaner cycling!).

I learned so much from this project, and I’m so glad to have had the Tour de France Knitalong to inspire me to take it on. Just off the top of my head, here are some of the new things I learned:

• How to do the Channel-Island Cast-On
• How to make a split, overlapping garter welt
• How to make fake purl “seams”
• How to do directional increases
• How to knit an underarm gusset
• How to do a two-stitch “true cable” without a cable needle
• How to pick up stitches from the tops to knit-in a shoulder strap
• How to knit a neck-gusset
• And so much more about general traditional gansey construction!

I highly recommend knitting the Sampler Gansey from Beth Brown-Reinsel’s book to anyone who’s interested in learning about gansey construction. It only takes a few hours (really, I mean that…I only split it up over the course of the Tour so that I could have something Tour-oriented to be working on the entire time), and you learn so much. I feel ready to tackle a me-sized gansey, and I will someday. Maybe not right away, but I have all the skills I need to knit it whenever I decide I want to.

You might remember that I promised a special surprise at the end, right? Well, since I actually finished the gansey a few days before the end of the Tour, and was just so excited about gansey knitting that I didn’t want to be done, I decided to do something cool:

It’s a Gansey-Mitten! I made it up from scratch, using the techniques I’d learned from the Sampler Gansey. It’s got a split, overlapped garter welt with ribbing above it, purled side “seams”, a thumb-gusset, and a definition ridge with a patterned area above it. I knit it using the same Bartlett yarn as the wee gansey, a heavy-worsted weight yarn, but on size 3 dpns, aka “bulletproof gauge”. This little mitten is sturdy. It even stands up on its own:

Here’s a picture of it on my hand:

It’s totally reverseable, and I intend to knit a second one so that I can use them over liner gloves when it comes time to shovel snow this weekend, because they are sturdy, wind-and-waterproof, and warm. I might wait a bit to knit the second one, though, because knitting this yarn at that gauge is a wee bit hard on my hands (and is it just me, or does this particular yellow Bartlett yarn remind anyone else of corn, what with the slight variations in color and everything?). I may post a pattern (which would only make sense if you already own the book, as I would not want to infringe on Ms. Brown-Reinsel’s intellectual property) after I’ve knit the second one, if anyone would be interested in seeing such a thing.

Thanks so much to everyone who has followed along on this little Tour! And thanks especially to the organizers of the knitalong (which I won a random prize drawing for this morning, how thrilling!), without whom I probably would not have been inspired to take on this project.  And with that, I close my coverage of le Tour de Gansey 2007.  That’s all, folks!

No project photos today…those are all packed away at this point, anyhow. In a few hours we close on our house. Our house. We’ll be homeowners. This is exciting and scary and all sorts of things at once. I’m a bit too tired for it all, but c’est la vie. I spent most of yesterday packing things up, and feel like someone ran over me with a truck, because I’m really not healthy enough to be doing this stuff. But we’ll have help tonight and tomorrow. We’re only moving 4 blocks away, but moving is moving, and moving sucks. And of course, of course, the forecast calls for thunderstorms tonight and tomorrow. Can’t have a move without craptacular weather!

I’ve been doing a terrible job of keeping up with replying to comments and posting on everyone’s blogs. I’ll be better once we’ve moved, I promise. To the two of you who so kindly volunteered to knit Red Scarves with my leftover yarn from last year: I still haven’t put it in the mail. It’s just been too crazy this week, and now it has managed to get itself packed in with my other yarn, so I can’t get to it easily. As soon as we’re settled in, I will send it off (and will email to let you know when to be on the lookout), and I’ll put some extra goodies in, too. In the meantime, check out Norma’s post about the Red Scarf Project for instructions and inspiration (her place is the place to go for all of the latest Red Scarf news).

Well, that’s all for now. I’ll put up my final Tour de Gansey post as soon as we’re moved in. See y’all on the other side!

I’m going ahead and posting this fairly early, even though it’s the second-to-last stage, because the next few days are going to be so crazy busy with moving that I may well not have a chance to post again before Monday. Having a hard time keeping the spirits up…I’m so unbelievably tired. Just so tired, I don’t even have words for it. And now I’m sad about the stuff that’s been going on with the actual Tour, especially with Rasmussen, who I’ve always had a lot of respect for. And I know, probably, if he’s been misleading his team about his whereabouts, he’s most likely been up to no good…but I also know, from back when I was very immersed in competitive running (not that I was turning in races that warranted drug screening, mind you, I was just a solid “age-grouper”), the elite athletes basically have no privacy whatsoever; they’ve got to report, often right down to the hour, where they’re going to be, so that they can be tested out-of-competition. And I can see how that would get really old, even if you’ve got nothing to hide. But anyway, it’s just a real downer. And then there’s the sadness, always there, about what’s going on here in the US, with the current administration doing its best to lie, abuse their power, subvert the Constitution, and otherwise destroy this country from within. It just feels like everything has gotten so ugly recently.  But enough moping. On with our coverage of le Tour de Gansey, part of the Tour de France Knitalong, presenting:

Stage Eight: Finishing the Neckline

We begin Stage Eight back at the top of the wee gansey, where we have stitches being held for the front and back, as well as the provisionally cast-on stitches from the tops of the shoulder straps:

We pick all these stitches up and knit around and around. At the same time, on either side of the neck, we do paired decreases to create a “neck gusset” to shape what would otherwise be a very boxy neckline:

(Sorry for the blurriness…it’s just been awfully dreary here lately). We close each gusset with a double-decrease, and end the neck finishing with a few rounds in garter-stitch before binding off:

And with that, we’re almost done…just the ends to weave in, and perhaps a bath to let the stitches bloom. But for that, you’ll have to come back…I can’t promise I’ll have my final post up on the final day of the actual Tour because of moving, but at the very least, I’ll have it the day after!

Back again, with certifiably scandal-free coverage of le Tour de Gansey, part of the Tour de France Knitalong, presenting:

Stage Seven: The Sleeves

We begin this stage where we left of in Stage 6, picking up stitches around the opening left when we split the front and back of the body of the sweater. During this stage, we focus on two challenges simultaneously: “closing” the underarm gusset, and maintaining the stitch patterning on the sleeve, with a central cable that continues onward from the shoulder strap we knit in Stage 6. For the completion of the underarm gusset, we basically turn the original directions on their head, and do directional decreases on the insides of the purl “seams”, until we have created a diamond-shaped space of extra fabric under the arm:

The patterning on the arm mirrors the body patterning perfectly: the same motifs in the top half, with a garter-stitch definition ridge above the plain area of the bottom of the sleeve. The sleeve is completed with 4 rounds of ribbing. Here you can see all of these features: the cable that continues into the shoulder strap, the purl motifs from the body, the garter ridge, the plain area, and the ribbing:

Then we repeat everything over again for the second sleeve, and at the end of Stage Seven, we have this:

All that’s left is Stage Eight: Finishing the Neckline, plus a final stage, our own version of the romp ’round the Champs Élyéees, in which ends are woven and the finished gansey is given a bath to allow the yarn to bloom beautifully. And stay tuned…because there might be an extra surprise at the end, too!

Before we get into more coverage of the Tour de Gansey, some actual Tour-talk: How awesome is Rasmussen? Amazingly awesome, yes indeed. I was getting so irritated the other day, listening to all of the commentators talking as though it were a given that he’d be losing the yellow jersey after the time trial, and I just knew he was going to prove them wrong! Way to go, Michael! And then today, he and Contador were just so impressive in the Pyrenees…it was so fun, watching the man in yellow and the man in white, reaching the top together ahead of the rest. I hope they both keep their jerseys the rest of the way…I’ve got a soft spot for climbers, I think. They just really impress me.

Ok, that’s enough Tour-talk, so let’s go back again to the coverage of le Tour de Gansey, part of the Tour de France knitalong, presenting:

Stage Six: Shoulder Straps and Joins

Having completed the body of the gansey, we move onto the next stage: creating the “shoulder extensions”, which connect the front and back of the gansey on each side of the neck, and continues down the center of each sleeve. We begin by casting on and knitting a row or two in a contrasting yarn (the orange-ish yarn that you see in the picture) before beginning to knit again in the gansey yarn. The contrast yarn will be picked out later, so that stitches can be picked up for the neck in the final stage. Through a very clever combination of slipped stitches and directional decreases, the stitches from the tops of the front and back pieces (which were being held on dpns at the end of the last stage) are joined to the sides of the shoulder strap as it is knit:

Once all of the front and back stitches on one side of the neck are knit in with the strap, it’s time to repeat the process on the other side. After that, we’re ready to pick up stitches and start on Stage Seven: The Sleeves. Stay tuned for it sometime next week!

In other news, I’m still sick. I’m not absorbing fats properly, among other things, though what’s causing that is still unknown. I’m tireder than I even have words for. I’m still losing weight, and am now under 100 pounds (I’m 5′3 and have a pretty sturdy, athletic build, so I absolutely should not be this skinny…my big ribcage looks pretty scary now). I’ve been having a lot of pain. I’m not sure if it’s just a matter of having lost so much weight that I don’t have padding, or if there’s something more, but it is really, truly hard to cope when you’re so achy and tender that even getting a hug from your husband hurts. Hugs shouldn’t hurt. Thankfully, we have lots of friends here who are going to be helping us move, so I won’t have to do much of anything for that…which is good, because I honestly can’t do much of anything.

Thanks so much for the congrats on the house to everyone who has sent them. I’m very excited about this. When my husband finally got his job here in Rochester, we kept right on living as if we only had my grad stipend, with the hopes of saving up enough to improve our housing situation. When we saw this house, we knew we just had to go for it. I think we’re going to be very, very happy here.

We’re back with more coverage of le Tour de Gansey, part of the Tour de France Knitalong, with coverage of

Stage Five: The Underarm Gusset

While the actual Tour riders are suffering through a cold, wet time trial as I write this (those poor boys!), I’m toasty warm here at home, on a fairly easy stage. If you were paying attention during the last stage, you’d know that I actually already completed stage five as part of stage four, before the split between front and back occurred, because of the overlapping nature of the two stages, something not possible in the actual Tour. The underarm gussets are what allow there to be extra room for the arms to move in the finished gansey, and grow out of the two-stitch purl “seam”, established in the early stages, by performing an increase between the two purl stitches. Subsequent increases take place on the inside of each of the purl stitches, so that a stockinette area grows between the “walls” produced by the individual purl “seam” stitches. Here’s what it looks like:

Along the way, a new (to me) technique is learned. Can you believe I’ve been knitting this long and didn’t know how to do directional increases? Directional decreases, sure, but I’d always just sort of done my increases however seemed right at the time. How sloppy of me! But look how nice the directional increases look in the gusset, slanting the right direction every time:

One last picture before we end our coverage of this stage, a photo of the gansey-so-far standing upside-down, so that way the gusset grows out of the “seam” can be easily seen:

And that’s all for today! I may try to knit a few stages at once, while I watch today’s time trial in the actual Tour, so that I can get several Tour posts prepared ahead of time, because next week: we move! (oops, that’s the secret happy news I’d meant to share with y’all awhile ago…we bought a house! A nice little house, not far from our apartment, with completely new interiors and room for a garden and just generally perfect for us. Exciting, no? But a wee bit stressful when one is already sickly). In any case, stay tuned for Stage Six!

Look what I finished today:

The Giotto-With-The-Flow socks are now a complete pair! I’m utterly thrilled with them, too. So pretty! And the yarn feels fabulous on my feet. Before I show off some more pictures, here are the stats:

Pattern(s): Anna Bell’s “Giotto” socks (for cuff), Evelyn Clark’s “Go With the Flow” socks from the Summer 2005 IK (for rest)
Yarn: sKNITches Kettle-Drum semi-solid sock yarn in “Aegean”
Needles: size 1 Clover bamboo dpns
Mods: Well, obviously, I took the Giotto cuff and simply tacked on the Go With the Flow pattern in place of the main stitch pattern from Giotto, which I suppose constitutes a pretty big modification! I also stopped my gusset decreases at 64 stitches instead of 60, as directed in the pattern, since I have very wide feet.

I love love love these socks. I love how delicate and feminine they look. I love how the eyelets of the Giotto cuff look with the eyelets from the Go With The Flow pattern. I love that I was able to knit these without the pain that following the original Giotto pattern was causing! I love the yarn I knit them with, too. It feels fantastic on my feet. I’m slightly worried about how it will wear (the twist is not as firm as on other sock yarns I’ve used), but hopefully the nylon part of the wool/bamboo/nylon blend will keep it sturdy. It was great to knit with, and flowed through my fingers like silk (probably due to the bamboo content). The dye job on this yarn is absolutely wonderful, too. A gorgeous blend of blues and greens, which didn’t stripe or pool or anything like that.

And now more pictures! First, the obligatory “foot-to-different-sized-foot” shot:

In the middle of my little “photo-shoot”, my cat Stimpy decided he needed to join in the fun. If you poke through my flickr stream, you’ll find a lot more pictures of him and my socks, but here’s my favorite, just because it’s funny (cats move fast!):

Here’s a close-up of the pretty pretty sock in my cute Target shoes:

And one last picture, a close-up of the pretty Giotto cuff:

These are my favoritest socks ever! Thanks to Jen for pointing out the Go With the Flow pattern when I was worried about the hurty Giotto pattern, and thanks to everyone else who’s given me compliments on these! Now onto all those other things I’ve got on the needles…

We’re back with more coverage of le Tour de Gansey, part of the Tour de France Knitalong, presenting

Stage Four: Pattern Motifs

Like the real Tour, we’re into the mountains (at least metaphorically speaking)! New techniques are all over the place in these next few stages. In the current stage, we use a chart to knit a combination of knit-purl and cable patterns into the upper body section of the gansey. The stage starts in the round, but quickly splits into a front and back section, knit separately and flat, so as to allow room for the arms (which will appear in a later stage) without resorting to steeking. Along the way, we learn a new technique for forming a two-stitch “true cable” without the use of a cable needle (and without even using the trick of sliding stitches off the needle and reordering them!). Here’s a close-up of one of the cables formed using this technique:

(Sorry for the blurriness…it’s dreary around these parts lately). And here’s what things look like at the conclusion of the stage:

Here you can see the seed-stitch diamond motif, the horizontal “ribbing”, and of course, those lovely little cables, which together make up the patterning for the upper body. And if you’re paying attention, you can even see a preview of Stage Five: The Underarm Gusset, due to the overlapping nature of that stage and the current one (something that’s not quite possible in the actual Tour!)

That’s all for today, folks! Come back for more coverage of le Tour de Gansey later in the week!

The Tour de France is having a rest day today, and so am I (though they’re doing hardcore training rides, while I’m sitting around being sick and miserable and not doing much of anything…I’ll just claim I’m trying to remain truer to the meaning of “rest” than they are!). My man Rasmussen won yesterday’s stage in impressive fashion, taking the yellow jersey in addition to the polka-dotted one! It was pretty darn exciting…I’ve always been impressed with him, how he’s so skinny and yet so, so powerful on the climbs…and he seems like a great guy in interviews, too, so I was definitely rooting for him. But that’s enough Tour-talk. No updates on le Tour de Gansey today, folks. They’ll come. Besides, there are fewer stages in my version of le Tour than in the actual Tour, so if I posted them every day I’d run out way before the end. And we wouldn’t want that, would we?

So, onto other things. We’ll get the bad thing out of the way first: Do you know what I noticed yesterday, just as I was about to bind off the right front section of Tailored Scallops (the progress on which has been sadly neglected on the blog)? I’d been knitting it wrong all along. See how, in the book picture, there’s a column of garter stitch running up the inside edge of the cardigan, that turns into the folded collar?

See how that column of stitches is nowhere to be found in my own version, due to complete inattention on my part?

Yep, several hours of knitting, down the drain, capping off a day in which nothing seemed to go right (except for Rasmussen’s win, of course!), and in which I felt even worse than I’ve been feeling recently, which is saying a lot. It’s fine, I’ll rip it out, and I’ll be glad I fixed it, but still, when you’re feeling as awful as I am lately, little things like that just make you want to have a good cry. So I did. But I’m better now.

So onto the good things! Sock progress is being made, slowly but surely. The first of the “Waiting Room Socks” got finished, appropriately enough, in a waiting room the other day. So here’s that:

(sorry for the yucky pictures, there’s no good lighting today since it’s quite rainy)

And Giotto With The Flow #2 is coming along quite nicely as well…I’ve just got to finish the gussets and knit the foot, which really shouldn’t take long:

Also, I noticed when I was showing my husband the “blog stats” WordPress gives me that my last post was actually my 100th post. Ooops, I totally let that one slip by without making note of it…but it’s a little weird anyway, because when I started this blog, I ported over a few posts from an old journal I kept where I occasionally talked about knitting, so the post-count over here isn’t quite accurate anyway. I’d hoped to do some sort of contest to celebrate post #100, but I suppose I’ll have to save that for the official blogiversary (coming up at the end of August, judging by the date of my “hello world” post). We’ll see.

But, on the subject of contests/giveaway-type-things, how about I have non-contest giveaway anyway? See, I’ve been thinking about the Red Scarf Project. And how much I want to contribute another scarf or two because it’s a cause that just really resonates with me. And how I have enough yarn left over from last year for at least two more scarves (I used two skeins for last year’s, but it was just on the edge of being too short, so I think it’d be better to use three). But then I realize how much I already have on my plate, both knitting-wise and other-wise, and how sick and exhausted I still am, and I just don’t think it’s going to happen. So, here’s the non-contest: The first two people to comment and tell me that they promise, if I send them the yarn to do it, that they will knit it into a scarf for the Red Scarf Project, get 3 skeins each with which to do so (and probably a few little goodies, too, because I like people who knit Red Scarves). If I can’t knit them myself, I can at least provide the yarn, right?

(come and get it!) (it’s all been claimed, thanks for taking up my slack, you two!)

Well, that’s all for now. Expect an update on le Tour de Gansey soon, and of course, another edition of “Nordic Wednesdays”.

Our coverage of le Tour de Gansey, part of the Tour de France Knitalong, continues tonight, with

Stage Three: The Plain Area, Seam Stitches, and Definition Ridge.

Today’s stage in le Tour de Gansey is an easy one (unlike today’s stage in the actual Tour de France, which is their first venture into the real mountains), which is good, because I feel like utter hell. Yes, I’m still sick, and no, we still don’t know why, though I did learn yesterday that the test they performed on a certain sort of sample I had to leave for them (I’ll leave just what sort of sample that might’ve been to your imaginations!) showed that I’m not absorbing fats properly (which probably explains the weight loss, exhaustion, and several other things), so now we need to figure out why. ANYway, back to le Tour: We start where we left off in Stage 2, and simply knit around and around for the “Plain Area”, maintaining the two-stitch purl “seams” on either side of the body:

I chose not to take the option, given in the book, of knitting in an initial on the lower right front, simply because I couldn’t pick a letter! Silly, I know, but I’m such a perfectionist that I just couldn’t choose a letter unless I knew it was “right”, and nothing jumped out at me. So I simply continued up to the definition ridge, where knit and purl rounds are alternated to create a garter “definition ridge” splitting off the plain area of the lower body from the upcoming patterned area. Here’s where things stand at the end of Stage 3 (complete with my own hand, for scale!):

We now enter a very technical series of stages in le Tour de Gansey. Stay tuned for Stage 4: Pattern Motifs.

Our coverage of Stage Two of le Tour de Gansey, part of the Tour de France Knitalong, picks up where Stage One left off. Literally. From the cast-on completed in Stage One, a 9-row garter welt is knit:

Then the efforts of Stage One are duplicated, followed by another 9 rows of garter stitch to make a second welt. Next, the preparations for the newest challenge begin, with the two welts side by side, ready to be joined into a “split and overlapped garter welt”:

Then, via a clever technique in which stitches are purled together, forming the beginning of the 2-stitch purl “seam” that will run up the body of the gansey, the two welts are joined:

The same maneuver is executed across the other side of the welt, creating a joined piece of circular knitting:

The conclusion of the stage is a fast, easy cycle around the newly created round, maintaining the 2-stitch “seam” established via the overlap procedure:

And with that, Stage Two is completed! Stay tuned for our coverage of Stage Three: The Plain Area, Seam Stitches, and Definition Ridge.

When we moved up to MN from NC when I was 8 years old, everyone I met up there guessed I was Scandinavian. Not a bad guess, when presented with a pale girl with blond braids in the Scandinavian-laden land of MN, but I’ve not got an ounce of it in me. I’m really that oh-so-common blend of German, Scottish, and Irish. But even if I’m not actually Scandinavian, I’ve always been drawn to all things Nordic, and I’ve decided to indulge my inner Scandinavian with a couple of Norwegian patterns. And I’ve decided to make Wednesdays my day for sharing these projects with y’all.

The first of these projects, my Norwegian Stockings, are in the same state as they were the last time I mentioned them on the blog, so there’s nothing new to report. What can I say? As far as socks are concerned, Giotto With The Flow currently have my heart, and that’s not likely to change until I finish the second sock of the pair. But worry not, I really really want to have a pair of Norwegian knee-highs, so I’ll get right on to working on them soon enough.

The second project is Ingeborg, my big entry for Project Spectrum (yeah, I’m a little behind, and there’s no way at all that I will finish it before the new set of colors come into effect, but c’est la vie). The two balls of red Naturespun I needed for the hems came in the mail the other day, and I cast on right away. But ouch! So many stitches, on wee little needles, and they had to go and put some more of that twisty business that led me to give up on making pure Giottos into the hem. But since there were only two rows of it (but with 262 stitches apiece!), I toughed it out, and I’m glad I did, because I like the way the extra bit of texture in the hem looks. I went ahead and knit the cast-on edge in with the last row to eliminate some of the finishing work, and here’s where it stood after my first day of knitting:

The color is not quite true in that picture; it’s a very deep, almost berry-red, which Brown Sheep calls “Scarlett”. Yesterday I started the black and white bit, but didn’t make it terribly far before I decided I felt like taking a reading break. Here’s where Ingeborg stands so far:

Here’s hoping that by next Nordic Wednesday, I’ll actually have completed a pattern repeat!

Oh, and what a perfect tie-in for the Tour de France Knitalong: as I was writing up this post, my favorite sprinter, Thor Hushovd (a Norwegian, if you couldn’t guess by his name!), took the stage in a great sprint finish! Hooray for the “Big Norwegian”! C’mon, how can you not love a guy named Thor? (Actually, come to think of it, there was a boy at my high school named Thor who was a bit of a jerk…but Hushovd always seems like a sweet guy when he’s interviewed, so I don’t think that’s a concern with him). I’m really loving having the Tour to keep me company while I read and study and knit here at home (since I’m still not feeling up to going in for a full day on campus).

Next up, Stage Two of le Tour de Gansey: Ribbing and Welts!

So, as might be obvious from the title of this post, I decided to go ahead and join the Tour de France Knitalong. My entry: a yellow jersey sampler gansey, following the course laid out by Beth Brown-Reinsel. She has laid out a series of ten chapters stages outlining each new technique to be conquered, and today I present:

Stage One: The Cast-On

Today’s stage is fairly short and easy. After all, it’s just casting on. But there’s still something new to be learned: the “Channel Island Cast-On”. I chose to approach this stage using the “Continental Method” described (very well) in the book, since I (kindasorta) knit Continental-style (my knitting technique would be better described by saying I knit like a violinist, but then again, that probably wouldn’t mean much to non-violinists). This cast-on is quite clever, utilizing a double strand of yarn and an extra wrap to create a lovely knotted edge (with an upshot that each “stitch” you make while casting on is actually two stitches, so it goes twice as fast!). I prepared my size 6 bamboo straights and my lovely yellow Bartlett Yarn, and after a few tries to get my tension right, I was off to a roaring start:

Here’s a shot without my hand in the way, so that you can see what a nice knotted edge this cast-on creates:

Oh, and right as I finished, I was treated to a fantastic finish in the current stage of the real Tour de France, with the yellow jersey claiming the stage in a great sprint finish…how thrilling! Now I’m all charged up for the next stage of le Tour de Gansey: Ribbing and Welts.

If you’ve been reading along on this blog, you know I have quite a number of projects on the needles other than this new Sampler Gansey. Instead of making occasional giant posts with updates on everything, I’m going to experiment with having more frequent “themed” posts, focused on only one or two projects at a time. So if you don’t see your favorite project for awhile, worry not! It’s being worked on in the background, I promise. Up next: Norwegian Wednesday, an update on my Norwegian-themed WIPs (ahem, did you notice the “s” at the end of that? Something came in the mail yesterday, hint hint!).

That’s right, I finished the first Giotto-With-The-Flow sock last night! But y’all don’t want to just see it rolled up like that, I’m sure, so how about a picture of the sock, looking more like a sock:

It fits! And I love it. The lighting is absolutely awful today (it’s never great, but right now there’s no natural light at all to redeem it because it’s been so stormy here), so I will spare you any of the other pictures I attempted to take of the finished sock, though they’re in my flickr stream, if you really want to see some more (very blurry) pictures.

After finishing it last night, I briefly entertained the notion of trying to finish the first of each of the remaining three socks on the needles before moving on to GWTF #2. But when I mentioned this oh-so-brilliant idea to my husband, he disagreed, and said that I should go right on with this sock’s partner, because, as he put it, “look how happy it makes you!”. So, I believe I shall do that, because he is right. I love this sock, my very first lacy sock, and it does make me happy.

As for things other than this lovely sock: I’ve also ordered the necessary couple skeins of red Naturespun Sport to begin on Ingeborg, so once that reaches me, it will join the socks as one of my current works in progress (but since I’m knitting from cones, it will have to be an “at-home” project, as opposed to my “knit-anywhere” socks). I’m going to try, in the next week or two, to get as close as I can to finishing Tailored Scallops (which would leave me with two almost-finished wool sweaters, as Demi still needs blocked and finished as well). At some point I will knit the sleeves for Not-So-Aprikot, as I don’t want that sweater to be abandoned. The Chevron Scarf lives in my desk drawer (convenient for keeping my kitty from chewing on it), and after several weeks of knitting a few rows here and there while I wait for data to load or whatever, it’s nearly 3 feet long already. The Mitered Square Blanket is currently on hiatus, because while I thought that it would be great to have small things like that to knit, it turns out that socks serve that purpose even better for me, and that knitting with 100% cotton is a bit hard on my hands right now. It’ll get knit, eventually, but for now it remains just a box of colors to tempt me. And such is the state of my current collection of WIPs.

One last thought before I close my post. I’d like to join the Tour De France Knitalong, seeing as I rather enjoy the Tour (though I’m definitely no cyclist…but as a (now former) marathoner, I do relate to the general “endurance athlete” aspect of it). Except…nothing I’m planning to knit in the near future is at all “french-y”. Or “cycle-y”. Or…you know, in any way relevant to the Tour. After mulling it over for awhile, though, I realized that I had a project in mind that would actually be pretty perfect, despite its lack of “frenchiness”. It’s a small project, and shouldn’t take up terribly much time, but one that I’ve been wanting to knit for quite awhile, because it will give me the experience with some new techniques that I want to have before I knit a full-scale version for myself someday. The project? A Sampler Gansey, from Beth Brown-Reinsel’s “Knitting Ganseys”. What makes it so perfect for this knitalong? Well, this is the yarn I’m planning to use, Bartlett Yarn’s Fisherman in a very nice yellow. Get it, a yellow gansey? Like a yellow jersey, except, you know, not? Ok, well I think it’s cool. I’m thinking I should probably enter the knitalong in the “Yellow Jersey” category (the categories are described in the first post on the knitalong), though since Ganseys are totally new to me, perhaps I ought to enter in the “Polka Dot Jersey” category. What do y’all think?

I’m back from our quick little weekend trip to Columbus. While there, I managed to acquire a sinus infection, just to add to the craptacular health stuff of late. Aren’t I just the luckiest gal? So, I’m not feeling too hot, especially after yesterday’s car ride, but I wanted to show off the knitting I did while in Columbus. I’m so in love with my Giotto-With-The-Flow sock that it’s the only thing I knit during the handful of quiet moments I had (I didn’t wind up knitting the car, as I’d hoped, because dramamine+already really exhausted person = completely zombified person). I’ve made it through the gusset decreases, stopping the decreases a bit early (at 64 stitches, rather than 60 as called for, since I have rather wide feet). Here’s what it looks like so far:

And look, they fit:

I am just so delighted with this sock. It’s my first “lacy” sock, and I adore it. I’ll keep working on my other socks, of course, but y’all may well be seeing this sock finished pretty shortly, as I seem to be a bit obsessed with it. It happens.

Our trip to Columbus was pleasant enough, though I can’t say I was very comfortable, health-wise. I’ve been so achy and tired, and car trips, uncomfortable beds, and a 6-hour long walk through a very large zoo (which was great fun despite the pain, and for anyone who loves critters as much as I do, I’ve made a flickr set of our pictures from the Columbus Zoo) only made it worse. So now I’m going to go back to being a sinus-infected zombie while I knit on my pretty, pretty socks.