midsummer night’s dream

BMFA is having a color naming contest for their “midsummer” line of colors! the winner recieves a skein of their namesake color in the mail after members of the rockin’ sock club vote on the fave monikers. i admit it. i haven’t read midsummer night’s dream. {gasp}. yes, i know. how did i happen to get through private school and college without reading it? dunno. maybe this lack of education also explains my punctuation and grammar deficits. regardless, i read the sparknotes (today’s version of cliffnotes?)…and submitted this:

From: crankygrrrrrl
Date: Jul 30, 2006 2:19 PM
Subject: Rockin’ Sock Club Contest #2 – Color Name Submission
To: sockclub@bluemoonfiberarts.com

I’m submitting my color name for #3: Love-In-Idleness

And the imperial votaress passed on, In maiden meditation, fancy-free. Yet mark’d I where the bolt of Cupid fell: It fell upon a little western flower, Before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound, And maidens call it love-in-idleness. -A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Act ii. Sc. 1.

Keeping my fingers crossed,

.: tani :.

i thought it was the most soothing of the colors (and i need soothing these days). for those of you without the shade card, the picture showed shades of green in mint, lime, grass & forest and also those of lilac, violet and a heathery purple grey…the name of the flower immediately came to mind since i had just poured over the complete, unabridged text (cough! liar! cough!) of the play. in my imagination the flower looked rather innocent, just like love can sometimes be…but my research on the internet showed a bright and eye-catching baby pansy:

grrrrr, baby!

speaking of liars…i made a liar out of myself this weekend. it was my intention to post the prizes for my secret contest…i was very busy this weekend, then i work two nights in a row (which just kills me)…so i’m sorry to dave, who gets first choice!

okay, back to sleep…

too good to be true…

admit it. who doesn’t like a good magazine subscription. i have had dozens of magazines delivered into my grubby little hands. mags aout food, world news, beauty, business, technology, nursing….the list goes on and on. each month i would fling open the mailbox door in anticipation of my next “fix”….and then, i found ebay.

admittedly, the number of magazine subscriptions has dwindled in my household. i’m not planning a wedding (though i should be) and i’m too lazy i don’t aspire for rock hard abs (though i should). but have you seen the deals? a neighbor bought a three year subscription to a fly-fishing magazine for a little over the cost of a tall frappuccino at starbucks. seriously. i know, i know, who in the world wants a fly-fishing magazine (apparently his father-in-law).

anyway, i bit. i decided it was time i started to read some nursing journals. well, the magazines came as promised…but, in the span of one week i recieved 4 back issues. what a rip-off. eh. oh well, lesson learned.

on the flip side, df did renew a subscription of a skateboarding magazine…and there hasn’t been a blip in service.

i was very bummed to see that there was only one knitting magazine up for sale. i consoled myself to a 5-issue subscription to interweave knits. see, this story isn’t all bad.

for those unenlightened…here’s what came in the mail last week:

and…(the pattern didn’t photograph too well, but here is the link to my redbirdknits july sock.)

 

have a good friday!

ps- have you checked out my “about” page yet?

two color knitting or… mamluke socks

{scroll down for sock-related content}

i am a natural continental knitter. (back when i re-started knitting could never understand having to pick up your hand off of the needles…what if the project fell off?!? and won’t it slow you down? of course, at the time i only thought metal needles existed, and i frequently had to pick up dropped stitches resultant to the needles deciding to slide out on a whim…(yes, it was the needles’s fault). so, i asked myself, how would i do two-color knitting? i was not much in a rush to learn how to knit fair isle anything, as that style reminded me of the matching sweaters that my family wore when we sang christmas carols in the neighborhood. they were pretty tacky, even for the 1980′s.

first i tried to knit english style. didn’t work so well. my hand did not want to let go of the needles. i thought for sure that i was doing something wrong. at the time, i didn’t have any knitting buddies as i retaught myself using the internet and some books (my mother taught me how to knit and purl when i was eight but one barbie scarf later, i was done….). but then i discovered www.knittinghelp.com and i found the tv show knitty gritty (incidentally, i haven’t found a project that i would knit from that show…but i was nice for me to see other people knitting). but it wan’t until i learned how to knit backwards that my hands could understand what to do. (perfect for entrelac and intarsia and any i hate to purl project). here’s an interesting tutorial, if you are interested.

finally, what pushed me over the edge to try it: i think i was the last person on earth to pick up teva durham’s loop-d-loop. but i fell in love with a couple fair isle patterns (you’ve seen them, so i won’t clog bandwidth with large photos):

i want!!! (and i don’t like large projects, for the most part)

so i immediately cast on for these socks…as my warm up project for the above. my original intention was that these would be started on my ebonies, but instead, i opted for aluminum because i was bummed about not having a full set of 5 ebony dpn’s at the time, never mind the fact that i also only had 4 aluminum needles.

 

mamluke socks from folk socks by nancy bush
dalegarn baby ull in black and cream (2 balls each)
50 gm/ 165 m; 100% machine washable wool
started: july 17, 2006
needles: 4 – #2 susan bates aluminum dpn’s

they seem huge! and i’m having trouble with the floats. okay, okay, i’m getting a little better. near the top of the cuff you can see that i didn’t give enough slack. towards the end i seem to be more consistent…i’m not sure that i love these socks, but it sure is neat having to wrangle with two colors.

i have found that the best way for me to handle this is to hold the main color in my left hand and the contrasting color in my right. yes, i am throwing with my right and knitting continental with my left. it’s a nice change of pace, and i’m finding i can’t put my sock down. of course, i’m knitting much more slowly…but oh well.

yesterday i found that i can still knit with my normally tight tension as long as i leave enough slack for the floats. i’m liking the resulting fabric much better than what you see above. admittedly, i’m too lazy to frog the whole thing. i think i’ll just frame the one sock and hold it as an example of bad fair aisle knitting.

still, despite the uneven tension, i’m darn proud of my accomplishment. and, i’d like to add that i taught myself!

edited to add:

incidentally, does anyone know of a good internet resource for this type of knitting? i’d like to learn more about catching long floats…

woe is me

first let me preface my story with an email….

Date: Jul 3, 2006 10:52 AM
Subject: broken ebony dpn
To: mail@lanternmoon.com

To whom it may concern:

I recently purchased a set of your #2 US ebony dpns from YarnMarket.com. They are beautiful needles, but was very dissappointed as one of the needles snapped the first time that I used them. Is this common for your ebony needles? I was contacting you to see what steps I need to take to have this needle replaced. I was hoping to purchase #1′s in the future if this was not a common problem. Thank you in advance for your quick response.

Regards,

me

here was the response:

Hello –

Sorry for the delay in responding to you. Thank you for purchasing a Lantern Moon needle. Rest assured we stand behind our product and will provide you with replacement needles.

Thanks for including your address – we’ll get a replacement out – pronto!

Happy knitting -

Annette Pronk
Lantern Moon

i was elated!! i had heard on some message boards that the company was very responsive to their customers, but i never dreamed that they would be that good!! naturally, i’ve been stalking my mailperson since I got the email.

of course, there is a twist to this story. (inevitably, there always is). today, i arrived home from my weekly knitting at a local shop to find that the doormat was covering something. more often than not it is a package that my df had ordered: a {insert geeky object du jour here}. no, today was MY lucky day. it was a packaged shippped from oregon from none other than lantern moon!

but something was amiss…the cardboard tube was bent.

exhibit #1:

hm. “well,” i thought to myself, “these packages are tough, surely there is nothing wrong with my needle.”

exhibit #2:

“oh my. was the delivery guy looking at my package??!” (pretend the tape was mostly intact)

exhibit #3:

“whew. got the needles. wait. needles? they sent me two replacements!!! but, what’s this….?”

exhibit #4:

“oh, the horror.”

exhibit #5:

what’s a girl to do? i really can’t complain to lantern moon because they went above and beyond. but hey, there is a little injustice going on here. should i contact ups? lantern moon? or both?

{sigh}

at least i have a full set of beautiful ebony dpns.

{please ignore the fact that i am lusting over the ebonies that were featured in aija’s blog}

basket case socks…finished!

hooray! they are finished!! may I present to you, my red bird knits SOTEOM socks:

basket case from red bird knits SOTEOM club (march)
lana grossa meilenweit colortweed #1008 from http://www.redbirdknits.com
100 gm/ 420 m; 80% wool/20% polyamide
needles: 3 to 5 1.25 mm birch dpns
modifications: short row heels and toes
started: march 2006
completed: july 1, 2006

and for safe measure, i have also included a couple of pics of my other projects from these past few months (i’ll try to add posts in the future of other past projects)…

friday harbor from knitting on the road by nancy bush
blue moon fiber arts socks that rock mediumweight in fairgrounds
100% superwash merino; approximately 380 yds / 5.65 oz
needles: lantern moon ebony dpn’s us 2
modifications: 5.5 repeats to end pattern higher on instep
started: July 2, 2006
completed: July 14, 2006