No Pictures (as usual!)

I feel like I'm working on a bunch of things that I either can't photograph, or which don't photograph well... and that, coupled with overall laziness, is enough to eliminate pictures entirely.

Wait, that's not true! There are the anklets I made the week before last, in preparation for socks for Kevin that I expected would take longer more than a week (they did). Of course, the anklets took longer than expected too. (The first part of this story will make sense only to knitters... sorry.)

There's this yarn from Schaefer that I love, Anne, which is a mohair/wool/nylon blend, 560 yards in a 4 ounce skein. I can easily make a pair of socks plus a pair of anklets from one skein--and given that I like slightly shorter cuffs than usual, one skein is probably enough for 2 complete pairs.

I knit pair 10, Embossed Leaves, out of a yarn called Leili. Leili is heavier/thicker than Anne (270 yard to 4 ounces) but has a similar composition, so by the time I'd finished knitting, I'd decided they were the same yarn (and crucially, completely lost track of the differences in yardage). When I finished the socks, I had about 1/3 of a skein of Leili left over. Since 1/3 of a skein of Anne is enough for a pair of anklets, and I'd decided Anne and Leili were identical, I was also sure 1/3 of a skein of Leili was enough for anklets. (Note that 1/3 of 270 is not even slightly equal to 1/3 of 560!)

So I knit cheerfully away, ignoring the alarming rate at which I was using up yarn, through the first anklet. I must have known something was wrong though, because I did finally weigh anklet #1 before binding off, and noticed that I'd used well more than half of the yarn I had left. So I ripped back the cuff (I was knitting toe-up) till the sock only used half of the yarn, knit the second sock to the same point, then knit both cuffs with coordinating scraps.

Then I decided I wanted slightly longer feet, so I snipped a strand of yarn near the toe, separated the toe, unraveled it, knit the foot longer using the reclaimed yarn, and knit a new toe from the same scrap yarn.

See?



I think the colors worked out OK, don't you?

Since then, I've made the socks for Kevin (which took 10 days--not so bad). They'll never be photographed in action because it turns out that while Kevin is comfortable taking pictures of me making a fool of myself modeling knitwear, he's oddly unwilling to model knitwear himself. (Strangely, he also didn't want to try on partially completed socks in public. Is he suggesting that's not a normal thing to do?) Then I made a pair of baby socks, and now I'm working on another pair of socks for me. Which I could photograph. As well as a couple of designs which I can't. And the lace shawl from last month, which just looks like a shiny blue and purple blob.