I have neglected to post about my knitting-related Christmas presents, mainly because I didn't think to photograph them until after dark, and no light = bad photos. But today, I remembered.
From hubby:
From hubby:
A set of KnitPicks Options needles. I love, love, love them. I later ordered the needles sizes that aren't in the set (13, 15, 17) and then the "standard" (noninterchangeable) 1, 2, and 3 circulars for Magic Loop.
Oh, and hubby told me to order a ball winder as well. He didn't know what kind to buy. So I ordered the ball winder, and of course needed a swift, so I got that as well.
I will need it to wind up my gift from Santa:
That's 8 skeins of Lorna's Laces. Santa had a little helper, who heard about a great deal on this sock yarn, and so it was handed to Santa unopened, who then placed it under the tree. I especially love the Black Watch colorway (the one on top of the pile).
In other news, my last two days have been spent trying to knit socks. Now that I'm feeling the pressure of the Socktopia KAL, I put everything else aside to concentrate on socks. As usual, I jumped right in, to rather diastrous consequences.
First, I decided that I would try 2 socks on 2 circulars, per the Queen Kahuna Crazy Toes and Heels book. I read through the book a couple of times. It made perfect sense, intellectually. I love the idea of a truly well-fitting sock, and something about toe-up appeals to me. And since I have already had Second Mitten Syndrome, I know that I'm a shoo-in for Second Sock Syndrome.
Well, it was not to be. First, I wasn't sure exactly how many stitches to cast on. I was making socks for the Belle, who is 4. Based on the measurements and calculations, I figured that I would need to cast on 7 stitches on each needle, per sock, but in the book, the author says that if it's for a child, use 5. So I cast on 5, and started working. I was supposed to increase to 20 stitches on each needle. It took about 5 rounds before I figured out that I was doing the M1L increase wrong. After I had increased to 16 stitches on each needle per sock, it still looked really small. Not having made a toe-up sock before, I decided to keep on. And with that, I picked up the wrong needle, and knit all of my stitches off the needle onto the other circular. Bad move.
I was faced with either moving the stitches back onto the other circular (and figuring out exactly how to do that so that it still worked), or frogging. I chose to frog.
While I love the idea of 2 socks at once, I don't love wrestling with the 2 yarn balls, untangling, etc. And since this is the second time that I've failed at using 2 circs, I think I will give it up for now.
I didn't have the longer needles for Magic Loop (they are en route from KnitPicks), so I decided to bite the bullet and cast on 1 sock on dpns. Here is the result so far:
Not too bad. I found the shorter dpns easier to work with, at least after the first couple of rounds. I am going to continue on with this sock. I wish I had another set of size 1 dpns, so that I could just cast on the 2nd sock and work on both in bits and pieces. My LYS doesn't have the shorter size dpns. But so far, so good.
