PUFFS!

So, I've already posted pictures that implied I've fallen down the hexapuff rabbit hole.

The Beekeeper's Quilt is kind of genius.  It's simple but awesome. 

(Image used with permission)

 Look at all those little puffs!  They make me a little giddy.

I've heard some people comment that they could figure out how to make a puff from the pictures.  And it's true, I could too.  But I bought the pattern anyway, because the truth is I COULD, but I DIDN'T.  I never would have thought to make teeny puffy hexagons and tie them together (NO SEAMS!) into an awesome blanket.

Lucky for me someone else did.  And she took beautiful pictures of it and then wrote clear instructions and carefully formatted it into a pattern which I can buy for the price of a latte.

(That basket is almost full now).  I love it, and they make me happy, and that's TOTALLY worth paying a tiny amount for, even if I could do it myself.  I am a little amazed at how people will spend tons of money on yarn but when something is an idea, they won't pay even a few dollars for it. 

Here are some other crazy things I've done with hexapuffs:

Insanely small puff

 

oh yeah, that's right.  00000 needles.  Gossamer weight (hand spun) yarn.  Teeny tiny puff.

Also

Giant puff.  I knit a megapuff with sz 11 needles and double stranded worsted wool, then felted it.  I did cast on more stitches, and bound off instead of closing it up, then cut the sides bigger and put in a zipper to make...

PUFF BAG!  Now I have somewhere to store my puff supplies.

2 socks in 2 years

You may have seen these socks over in the side bar, or in my ravatar on Ravelry.  That is because it took me 2 years to finish them, so I want as many people as possible to see them.

They are the pattern in the Sock Summit logo, a pattern called Orion (ravelry link).  I started them the summer of 2009 before going to Sock Summit.

The yarn is some Socks that Rock (Sherbet) that I happened to have bought at Lettuce Knit in Toronto the year before (for WAY too much because the exchange rate was horrible so I spent about $29 US because it was souvenir yarn.)  So it was Tina's yarn bought at Stephanie's yarn store.  And the black yarn is DIC Starry (I think the color is Black Parade).  Starry yarn, how could I not use that in an Orion sock pattern?  Sparkles! And the colors looked great together.  Except that Starry is super expensive too making these the Most Expensive Socks EVAR(TM)!  But whatever, they were going to be awesome. 

The pattern well written and as far as I can tell there's nothing wrong with it, except that it's toe up and I cannot make toe up socks. I knew this about myself 2 years ago, and I probably should have just switched them around to top down, which would have been really easy to do, but I thought I'd try once again in the spirit of adventurous sock knitting.

The problem is I have insanely high insteps.  With top down socks it's super easy to adapt for that, just make the heel flap way longer than you think is reasonable, pick up extra stitches along those extra rows, and then your gusset is longer before you get back to your original stitch count.  Voila! Socks that fit my feet.

(This is the only picture that is actually my feet)

For some reason the backwards calculating that is required to adapt toe up socks to fit me doesn't seem to come out right.  So when I finished sock 1 it was about an inch and a half too long /FAIL.

I even went and started the second sock, figuring I'd fix the first one when the second was done.  I got half way through the gusset increases when I realized I'd forgotten something a few inches back and that was it.  They were very bad socks and needed to sit in a corner and think about what they'd done.

After I registered for SS11, I figured it was time to take them out of time-out and finish them.  I didn't really have any problems with them after their time out and it took me a couple weeks to knit the whole second sock, then cut off the bottom of the first sock, remove 3 stripes, and re-knit the toe.

I love the way the color pooling goes across the feet.  It's subtle because the black breaks it up.   

There was so much yarn left over that when Double Heelix came out this summer I knew what I was making it out of.

These socks are absolutely charming to knit, and I am convinced that Jeny Staiman is a genius.

I was able to pretty easily adapt these to fit my crazy feet by casting on more stitches across the middle and decreasing them out as I went down or up the foot.  And the heel construction is just brilliant.

(BTW these are also not my feet, which is why they're saggy around the ankles, because my daughter's feet are about as long as mine but she has normal insteps)

I repeated the helixes on the toes of mine.  I love both pairs and wear them all the time now that it's getting chilly.

So 2 pairs of socks out of $58 worth of yarn isn't quite as crazy, right?  Especially when they're both so awesome?

It's all up from here... right?

It's been a hell of a week.

For weeks now I've been having headaches, what I thought were sinus headaches.  The weather's been weird, it's fall, I thought a cold, or allergies.  Except that none of my normal sinus remedies were making any kind of dent in it.  And I tried all of them.


Then over the last week or so my upper molar started to hurt.  The insurance at Rob's new job doesn't start until October 1st, so I've been trying to get by without seeing anyone for either of those 2 problems until then.  I started to get the feeling they might be related, or at least making each other worse.  Thursday night the tooth pain started to get to me and by Friday I started looking at where I could go on Monday that took uninsured patients at a reduced fee.  By the middle of the night Friday I was crying in pain and we went Saturday morning to the urgent care dental place where I got... a root canal.

It turns out that my tooth (bottom bicuspid by the way, NOWHERE NEAR MY SINUSES, or where I was feeling the tooth pain) was causing all my headaches.  WAY before I was aware there was anything at all wrong with my teeth.  Referred pain is weird.

I am sooo happy to be headache free now.  The $1300 was totally worth it.  I'm dealing with the post-root canal garbage pretty well, but I get tired easy and the antibiotics are mucking around with my body.

Today I was working on a  document I was supposed to write last week, and in a fit of complete idiocy I closed the window, thinking I was closing a different window.  It even asked me if I wanted to save it and I said no (because I didn't want to save the other window, duh).  It's gone.  4 hours of work, poof, gone, unrecoverable.  I tried.

As soon as another responsible grownup gets here it's time for margaritas.  And more puffs.

Oncoming Storm

Over the summer while I wasn't blogging I released a new Doctor inspired colorway, Oncoming Storm

It's a great stormy blue/black/grey color of a stormy night sky.

And while I'm talking about Doctor Who inspired yarn I have to share this shawl with you all

This is The Doctor Shawl, made from the new Stephen West pattern Earth & Sky.  It's called that because it's made with Gallifrey, Screwdriver, and Oncoming Storm.  It never even occurred to me to put those colors together but they look great!  Awesome job Jeff!

In other news, I can't seem to stop making Hexapuffs

A Tale of Two Sweaters

Earlier this year, around the same time, I started working on 2 sweaters.

The first was a handspun Tappan Zee

I'd wanted to make this sweater since I first saw it (which was before anyone else because it was in the same issue of Knitty as Summit and I got a peek at it when I was proofing my own pattern).  I got the fiber (a merino silk blend) almost immediately after at a fiber festival, but it took me a while to actually get it spun.

The second sweater was Molly's VERY yellow Shalom cardigan, which I turned in to a hoodie and knit at a different gauge than the original.

It wasn't until I started working on these 2 patterns that I realized something

Yeah that's right, they are pretty much the same sweater.  One is sport weight with lace diamonds, and one is super bulky with twisted rib, but they're both top down, short sleeved yoke sweaters with concentric rings of increases and garter stitch edges.

Same. damn. sweater.

It's ok, I love mine and Molly loves hers so it's all good.  

SCHOOL!

I have a lot to catch up on, but school started on Wednesday



  

3rd, 6th, and 8th grade (how did THAT happen???).  Molly mistakenly took her bedtime medicine (melatonin and some vitamins) instead of her morning medicine the first day, so she was a complete zombie in the morning.  The next 2 days have been better. 

I've spent the past 2 days cleaning out and off my desk and organizing files.  Look for more regular (weekly) blog posts from me from now on.