Saturday, February 17, 2007

FO and knitting I just don't feel like doing

I finally finished up my grandpa's birthday socks this past weekend and delivered them to him only two days late. That has to be some sort of record for me. In the past, it's sometimes been literally years before I get my gift projects all finished up. At least for grown-ups. Anyhow, here they are.
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No matter how I took the picture, it kept coming out looking more or the black and white side than in color. I'm curious to see how the colors appear online. Here's my attempt at getting a close up of the pattern...although clearly my attempt was not that great.
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These socks took me a surprisingly long time to knit up. I used a thick alpaca blend (Chunky Al by Elsebeth Lavold) and size 5 needles doing a twin rib pattern. I used to be able to knit a big sock like this up in a day. I'd like to think that these took longer because I was knitting them for a big man's foot, but in reality I think I'm just getting slower. Oh well. They came out well and I think he was quite impressed with them. I rate the project as highly successful.
Now that the socks are done with, I have bigger fish to fry.....or knit. One of my nephews girlfriends is due to give birth in early March. Way, way early March, like the 1st or 2nd. When they were down for my dad's funeral I found out all the details as far as baby sex (that sounds really dirty when I think that sentence in my head, even though it's obvious what I'm referring to) and room colors. I ran right out to get yarn and a new pattern, excitedly digging in once I got back home. I knit away at that thing for quite some time, then left it because, Hey!, I had plenty of time. This was in November. I think once between then and now I've actually picked the thing up, maybe knitting a total of 3 rows on it. Now not only is the pressure on, but I'm finding all the little errors I've made. Not so much errors in knitting, per say, bit errors in knitting judgement. For instance, I decided to cast on for the larger or the given blanket sizes even though I'm using 2 strands of worsted weight held together on 13's rather than a dk or something on a size 8. It's now more that apparent that I could have gotten away with a much, much smaller size. Also, I'm getting peeved at the thought of how long I'm going to have to make this sucker. I think this was one of the main factors in my putting it down to begin with. I kept thinking I had made huge progress but then I'd spread it out and see the true width of it and that made any length gain seem negligible. Not too much I can do about it now. I've knit way too far into it to fuss with ripping anything out. I'll take a picture of it when I get a chance.
In closing, here are the dogs celebrating the fact that it snowed. They were very pleased that I got to stay home and watch them frolic. They also found it really amusing to stand at my porch door and watch me screaming obscenities and throwing things like snow shovels and empty containers of ice melt for hours on end while I slaved to try and get my f*cker car shoveled out of the road. After 3 days of working now, it's still stuck on an ice shelf at the bottom of my driveway and I don't foresee it going anywhere soon.
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1 comment:

Nittany Knits said...

And that is the reason I ALWAYS crochet baby blankets. I know, chrochet is a bad word. However, get yourself a Q hook and three strands of worsted weight yarn, and that puppy is DONE!!!!! There is a reason that Lily Chin is the fastest crocheter, not knitter.