But first, a little post-mortem on my bigfoot socks…
It took 3 weeks of concentrated (aka monogamous) knitting but I finally finished the Ribbed Bigfoot Socks for my daughter’s boyfriend.
Final stats: 3 full skeins of Paton’s Kroy FX minus 10 yards. Now that’s what I call cutting it close. When I got to the toe decreases on the second sock, I knit with a fear that I was going to run out with < 10 rows left. Have you ever noticed that when you think you are going to run out of yarn, you knit faster and faster like you will out-run the skein? Reminded me of driving fast to a gas station before you run out of gas 🙂 In the end, though, I had literally 10 yards of yarn left. The foot length is 12.5" and the leg is 8". The circumference is 90 stitches. These are one big damn pair of socks!
I took a break from all that sock knitting to spin up some lovely Merino yesterday. My wheel had been quite neglected over the last 2 months with knitting, jewelry shows and general busy-ness taking over my Sundays. It was a lovely braid from Hiwassee Farms called “The Great Outdoors”. Three and one-half ounces spun looks to be enough for a soft cowl. I admit though, as much as I loved the braid, when it spun up it was a little muddy with bright green scattered throughout. I am hoping that it knits up prettier than skein looks right now.
My plan, upon finishing the monster socks, was to return to my 13 in 2013 list and pick out something. I have the beautiful Faroese shawl in the wings with its gradient skeins of yarn and it was next on my list of ‘to-dos’. I ran into a snag however. When I went to The Unique Sheep website to work on figuring out the gradient, I found MATH. Not just any math, algebraic-looking math. In fact, to knit a triangular shawl with the gradients you are supposed to figure out SQUARE ROOTS. Are you kidding me?? I will have to download a special calculator just to work the numbers of how to switch skeins out.
Okay, so I really want this shawl and math notwithstanding I am going to have this shawl. Needles. That was my next step. I grabbed my big ziploc bag of circulars because I needed a US8 32″. Hmmmm. Seemed like a good time to organize the needles. Got a handful of sandwich sized ziplocs and numbered them 0-10.5 Every needle size will have it’s own bag and all the bags will fit back into the gallon bag. You know where this is going don’t you? I pulled out the needle gauge and the needles. [side note: don’t you HATE that circulars are rarely labeled with their size?] I have a few US4, 1 US5, 1 US6, a couple of US7, a 12″ US8. Really? 12″? What in the hell did I buy THAT for? Well, shoot, that’s not going to work. Let’s just finish organizing and I’ll find a different project to start on. US9=zero, US10, US10.5, US13 — check, check and check. The next project I really want to start is the King of Confidence Cardigan. Yeah, that would be a good one and I could have it by the time I leave for MSW in May. I have the black yarn for the body. I have the “Wicked” I bought at the Middle Tennessee Fiber Festival spun and skein, now all I need is…wait for it…US 9 circular needles. Let me look it the bag…CRAP! How in the world can I not have US9 needles??
I will not be defeated! I look further down my 13 in 2013 list and see the One Skein Wonders book as a goal. Finally, something on straight needles (US5), a ball of Dream in Color Smooshy that’s been lanquishing in my stash for more than 2 years and a pattern for Horseshoe Lace Scarf. I cast on, and get 2 of 56 pattern repeats done…ahhhh….that’s the ticket….progress.
I think the key component here is my lack of organization. I have a stash room (aka home office) but it is in such disarray that I can’t find my hand in front of my face when I walk in there. I need to give up on some of my UFOs and just frog them so I can reclaim my needles. I’m not sure when I went from a newly organized room to Collier’s Mansion but it’s definitely scary in there right now.
In the meantime, I think I’ll hit up my LYS for some US8 and US9 circs.
Old Dog, New Tricks 