Lost

I made this beautiful sock. It my favorite sock. I loved it.

It was my first Better than Black sock yarn. It was sooo soft, wool and silk. It was a really cool Cat Bordhi pattern (Coriolis). It was knit on size 0 needles. It fit perfectly.

Then I made a second one, and when I got to the toe of the second one I went to find the first one to make them the same length and it is gone.

It's gone. I can't find it anywhere. I've trashed my house dumping things out, looking under furniture, looking through baskets of yarn and WIPS. It's not there.

I made several humiliating phone calls to movie theaters and Target stores asking if anyone found a lost sock. Nope.

I can't believe how upset I am about this sock. I was so excited to wear them. We still have no furnace and I was putting all my furnace energy into making my feet warm with those socks and now I'm left with 90% of a useless sock.

The only silver lining I can find is that Sean can always make me laugh. In all of his infinite, 5-year-old wisdom, he suggested "Mommy- you should go on knitting dot com, and type 'Mommy lost her sock' " Apparently that's what you do when you lose something.

So, well this isn't knitting.com. But -

Mommy lost her sock.

Obsessions

So I know I took basically the whole month of September off. Mostly it was because I didn't think anyone was that interested in reading me whining on and on about our (gas) furnace, and how it exlodes a little bit when it's on (at least, it did last spring before we freaked out and turned it off), and how it's getting cold now and I'm freaking out about the furnace, and specifically the lack of funds in our bank accounts to pay for a new one. Anyone who knows me in real life knows that is pretty much all I talk about now. I'm sure it's starting to get pretty annoying, actually.

And there's my other obsession with dyeing yarn



and my obsession with making new colors and and how I can turn every conversation into a conversation about colors I have made or want to make.


And really this is all related to my trying to make enough money to pay for the furnace. (See it all comes back to the furnace). But also it's really easy to become obssessed with colors of yarn, I found out.



This is all my way of saying that Sheepy Time Yarns are now available in the store.

I've had a great deal of fun learning about dyes and colors and how to get the effect that I want. I've been dyeing for myself and for custom orders for years, but now my obsession has really gone over the edge.

More information about Sheepy Time yarns can be found here.

I hope you like them as much as I do.







Step Off

Some questions have come up on one of my forums about how to get rid of that ugly little step you get when you bind off after knitting in the round.

There's a really simple solution that takes just a few seconds. It's hard to explain in words but in pictures it's pretty easy.

Here you are at the end of binding off, with 1 stitch left on the needle. Since knitting in the round is really making a spiral, you're left with 1 side a row higher than the other.
Instead of breaking the yarn and then pulling the tail of the yarn through the loop of the last stitch (an extra step that adds more yarn for no reason), simply lift the needle and pull the tail of the yarn out, so it's really only half a stitch.


Now you're left with this ugly step.







Thread the tail of your yarn onto a needle, and then pass the needle under the v that is formed from the *first* stitch in the bind off.











Close up picture after the yarn is pulled through.



Now put your needle back down into the center of the *last* stitch of the bind off. This is the same stitch you pulled the yarn out of above. Now you've made that into a whole stitch again, but it also goes under the first stitch.
So now it makes a pretty, continuous chain. You can't even tell where the round ends.







And, no more step. Voila!