A Day in the Life will be right back after...

a short break for some knitting news.

I have been knitting quite regularly, maybe inspired by all the lovelies at Camp. First of all, I finished the socks I started back in February at Madrona. I've named these Boysenberry Waffles. You've seen them before. Here's the pair:
A close up of the broken rib pattern.
A closer look at the heel. You can see the little gussets I make so that I can work eye-of-partridge st on the heel and make it deeper. I purled the gussets so I didn't have to keep track of them. You just increase till you have the correct number of purled sts and decrease till all of them are gone.
I also made a beaded beret in Rowan Wool/silk in the Bramble colorway. I thought I would knit this at Camp and I swatched for it there but I didn't have enough beads. This is for a class where I'll be teaching two different beading techniques. My usual beading class involves about 10 different techniques but that involves just a sampler. Students wanted a real project so I came up with this. The brim has the beads threaded on and that was why I couldn't start without all the beads on the yarn. I use a Big Eye needle to thread beads as some of you may have seen when I was making my necklace. One can also use a floss threader but I find it too floppy to pick up the beads. This is a close-up of the finished brim with the shadowed diamonds pattern that I designed. The blue diamonds have a green shadow.
On the top, I put the beads on the st via a crochet hook. The crochet hook that fit the hole in the bead was too small to grab the yarn without splitting it. So I struggled with fixing the splits. I remembered that vanessa had mentioned that Oral-B Superfloss could be used for the same purpose. So I went out and bought some and voila! it worked beautifully. The Superfloss is not as fast as the crochet hook when it works well , but much faster than fixing a split st when it doesn't work as well. Yes, the photo is out of focus. But you can see the result. I'll take a better picture next time I pull out the camera.

I'm working on the Wild Apple. It has been slow going because I am increasing after the yoke. That means the rounds are getting longer and longer. I am up to over 500 sts between the front, back and two sleeves. But I am almost done. Once I divide for the underarms, the body is one long mindless knit. I knit really fast when I'm just doing mindless stockinette so it doesn't take as long as it might for others.

I don't win things. Or so I said till I went to Camp last year. I won two raffle items last year, a lot of vintage Rowan yarns and the Natural Knitter by Barbara Albright. This year I won some lovely skeins of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sport Mill-ends in Motherlode. Frequently, folks bring items they've knit with winnings and prizes for show-and-tell. The vintage Rowan is very precious and I want to do something really beautiful and unique with it. However, I have a plan for the Lorna's Laces.

I am debating whether the Lorna's Laces project or a pair of mittens from Latvian Mittens or a ch'ullo inspired by Andean Folk Knitting by Cynthia LeCount is going to be my next project. I am failing miserably at coming up with a color scheme for the chu'llo (more in a future post) but I think I have a good one for a pair of mittens. So one of the first two will be next.

Now we return you to your regularly scheduled programming...