Many Socks

I was at a conference last week, and got all kinds of knitting done (and I got to shop at Artfibers, with other archivist-knitters... but I'll save my purchases for another post).

Most excitingly, I finished the shawl I've been working on forever.



(There are a million more pictures on flickr, if you click on that photo... I may have gone a little overboard when I took pictures on Monday).

I'm going to write up the pattern to sell, I think, although the actual yarn I used has been discontinued (I think almost any laceweight yarn would work fine). The yarn I used is called Ariel, from the Natural Dye Studio--100% silk, 250 yards to 35 grams. I used almost all of 2 skeins--there was a fair bit of mathing to be sure I used as much of the yarn as possible, without going over and needing to rip back. The lace pattern is adapted from the Kimono Shawl in Folk Shawls (I took out a row to make it fit the shaping), and I added beads along the lower edge.

In my picture-taking excitement, I also got caught up on sock pictures (although I can't show my most recent pair here, as they're a present), and took pictures of a design I'm submitting for publication. Which of course I can't show either.

But here are the socks I can show:



This is pair 12 (they've been done for a couple of weeks). They're for Kevin, made from Anne. Even though his feet are bigger than mine, I still have enough of the skein left over to make socks (or at least anklets) for me, since the skeins are gigantic.

And pair 13:



Charlie's Wiggle Socks from New Pathways for Socks Knitters (finally, a pair whose fit I haven't complained about!) for new baby E. Since she was actually born, I've gone crazy making pink things, but these should help balance that out.

Finally, pair 14:



Last seen as a sock and a toe-warmer, now 2 socks.

I meant to take a break from socks while I was conferencing, but I had a little crisis on the plane there, and ended up making socks after all.

I'd started the shawl using a hand-me-down plastic circular needle from my grandma. Somewhere between Cincinnati and San Francisco, I was playing with the non-working end and it snapped! Of course the stitches slid off the break, and I worried that they'd start unraveling. But I remained calm (it helped that I didn't want my seat-mates to think I'd lost my mind... not after they'd just commented on how peaceful I seemed with my knitting... little do they know!).

I knit the stitches that had remained on the broken-off tip, then I used spare socks needles to carefully pick up the loose stitches. They'd only unraveled one row, so I reknit that section of that row, then knit the row I was on, then knit the stitches that hadn't fallen off from the broken tip to the intact one. Then I put the shawl away, and worked on socks.

The needle crisis meant that the first thing I did in San Francisco was drag Kevin to ArtFibers for a new needle. They only had bamboo, and I was worried it would be too sticky and the tip too blunt for lace--but they let me knit a bit with a similar needle before buying (great, huh?), and it turned out fine.

Speaking of Kevin, he did a crazy swimming and running thing last weekend (while I was calmly knitting at home, and trying not to think about sharks or currents!). He went to San Francisco early, to swim from Alcatraz (to Golden Gate Park, I believe) then run across the Golden Gate Bridge (and back). Look how tired he is! But he says it was fun. (That was at the end of the swim.)