Tour de Fleece: Day 1

These are likely to get boring fast. I intend to take similar pictures when I can to show progress.

The next Tour-de-Sock starts in the morning.

Tour de Fleece: Day 0

I have a finished object, but it wants blocking and I don't feel like doing it right now. Instead, here's what I plan to spin through for TdF:

If I can spin it thin enough, I have a plan for the yarn. I've got a set of Tour de France-themed footie patterns. I'll use this and some other handspun to make them. The stuff in the front is my Green Stamp fiber plus samples and leftovers. The braid in the back is what I'll work on if I need more to spin. If I run out of that? There's fiber stash. It isn't as serious as my yarn stash, but there's no worry about running out any time soon.

WIP Wednesday June 26

This is Tiberius, one of the Cookie A patterns for this round of her club:

Tiberius is the T. in James T. Kirk. The other pattern this round is Spock. The yarn is my first Wollmeise. I can see what the fuss is about this popular yarn. The stitch definition is great.

Tour de Fleece starts Saturday. I think it goes for three weeks with a couple of days off here and there. I plan to use my drop spindle for a minimum of and hour a day. I may dust off my wheel for the challenge day. It depends on how challenged I need to be. My goal is to use up some stuff I call my Green Stamps fiber. I'll mix it with some compatible samples left over from some Phat Fiber boxes.

Tour-de-Sock's fourth sock starts Sunday morning. This particular sock may be why I won't want to be excessively challenged on TdF's challenge day. I may be in a fetal position on the floor, covered in beads. This sock uses 500 (250 per sock) beads. There's no pre-stringing. I'm viewing this as an art project and not something I ever plan to wear.

Off to Tami's Amis to see what the other kids are doing.

Mad Geek Tour

Quick, click away if you happen to be in the Tour and don't have your shipment yet.

Okay. I'm fascinated by the colorway (purple/light blue/gray/black). I'm not sure how it will knit up, but am really tempted to drop everything and start in on it.

I like Jessalu's bags. They are well made and use clever prints. However, I'm getting really tired of tiny figures on light blue backgrounds. This may be because I've used a bunch of similar fabric from Spoonflower. I have at least three of her bags that are not distinguishable at first glance.

I'm not doing the next round of the Tour. I'm attempting to use up more yarn than I take in. If that wasn't an issue, I would play again. Also, I'm doing the next two rounds of Yarnbox.

Finished objects!

Yay, some objects are actually finished. The Woodland Mittens collection is complete:
February

March

The latest Tour-de-Sock pattern's called Lebowski and Star Athena designed it based on The Dude's sweater. All the color combinations people are coming up with for this are great.

I was 11th this time. Eventually the moving up won't continue. I'm not being overly negative. There's a sock coming up requiring 500 beads for the pair. I can knit okay with beads. I just can't do it quickly.

Time to go visit Tami's Amis and see what other folks are finishing.

A new sock book

I've got more sock knitting books than I can shake a dpn at, but yet I ordered another one. I got to it via my usual convoluted path. One of the patterns in the book showed up in my Ravelry recommendations. It was by one of my favorite designers, Heatherly Walker. I discovered that it was in the yet-to-be-released book American Sock Knitting. Since I can save a couple of bucks by ordering it before July 15, I did just that.

The pattern I liked is called Jersey Turnpike. It reminds me of an old Simon & Garfunkel song that has lyrics about "countin the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike". Yeah, I'm nearly a geezer and am easily entertained. I wasn't familiar with the other designers in the book, so maybe I'll be getting some more new favorites.

What I need is a new rule: knit at least one pair from at least one book I already have before I go ordering any more books!

FO Fail Friday

The Kelso Hoodie fits pretty well (loose and comfy). I suspected that I'd be unhappy with the color variation from skein to skein and I am. I'm going to do some research and see if I can overdye it. I'm also going to make sure that if I ever buy a sweater's worth of yarn from a small operation that I make sure they know the colors need to be a whole lot closer than this. It does have a hood, but I didn't want to take any more pictures. The upper back and the hood are in yet another shade of blue.

Nothing else done because I was burned out after finishing those Tour-de-Socks and because there was no power during prime knitting time twice this week.

Tour-de-Sock: Sock 2

I finished in under 2 days, which is more of what I expected. I'm 13th for this round. There are a bunch of Finns who knit so fast that I'll never move past them on the leaderboard. No matter, I'm just doing it for the fun of it.

What Next?

Upcoming Projects

• Tour-de-Sock: 5 more pair, with patterns released about every 10 days.
• Tour de Fleece: daily spinning from June 29-July 21
• Animal Crossing: New Leaf. This is a much-anticipated game that should arrive within the next week. Given my obsession with the previous Animal Crossing game, it'll be a fight to get any knitting or spinning done once it arrives.

Things to fill in between Upcoming Projects

• Kelso Hoodie: 5-6 more inches. I'm bored to tears with it and need a project to alternate with this.
• Widow Mayhew sweater: hasn't been started and will be a bigger project.
• Sheep sweater: not that much of it has been done and it's a bigger project.
• Duplicate Stitch sweater: possibility.
• March and April mittens: possibility. Take care not to use needles assigned to Tour-de-Sock socks.
• Wee Tiny Lion sock: possibility.
• Who anniversary project: many of these are socks and you don't want any new sock projects during Tour-de-Sock.
• Bunny Slippers: felt the pieces and assemble them. Also felt the wee tiny pieces. Possibility.

I think I'll alternate between the mittens and the hoodie to start with.

WIP Dark Day

The power was out yesterday for about four hours, so there was no chance of posting anything.

The Temperature Scarf is up to date. I'll post a picture of it in a month when it hits the halfway mark.

The Kelso Hoodie is all done except for the hood! I lit all the candles I could find and slogged away at the back for a couple of hours last night. The pattern's written so you start at the bottom front and end at the bottom back. There's something that bugged me about having the whole back upside down. I did it in the round instead, dividing it for the front and back. This results in a whole bunch of grafting. It goes from the edge of the sleeve all the way to the neckline. That's twice, once for each side. I told myself I really didn't want to do it by candlelight, but I had nothing else to do. I did five stitches and tada! the lights came back on. Ten more inches of hood and it is done.

Bear in a Tin

I like Frankie Brown's designs. When this one popped up in my Ravelry Recommendations, I had to give it a try.

Tour-de-Sock: Sock 1

I am really glad this one's done. It took half again as long as I expected. Size 0/2mm needles? Cast-on from hell? Slowing down in my old age? I don't know.

ETA: I'm 31st out of a possible 503, so that's actually not that bad. It's just not what I'd hoped.

Twisted

When I signed up for Tour-de-Sock, I knew there would be at least one of "those" cast-ons. They have names like Modified Tragikistani Super Stretchy Extra Long Tail cast-on. What I didn't expect is that I would have to face one on the first freaking sock.

My nemesis is the Twisted German Cast-On aka the Old Norwegian Cast-On. My German and Norwegian ancestors are no doubt giggling in their graves at my pathetic attempts to learn this. The source of my problem appears to be that I'm supposed to be knowledgeable in many different kinds of cast-ons. I'm not. Every video and every written instruction I've come across says that this cast-on is just like the whatever cast-on except you do x y and z instead. Here's an example from the Reader's Digest Knitter's Handbook.

The German Twisted cast-on is just like the German cast-on:

except you do it like this instead:

It's not instructional, it's twisted. I think I'll go do something a lot more fun, like cleaning out the cat litter box.