Monday, December 30, 2013

Stealth Stockings

After the adventure of knitting a lace shawl in two months, I realized that Christmas was only a month away.  And I had plans for knit Christmas gifts! 

The original plan looked something like this:
- Socks for Amy
- Socks for dear friend
- Baby jacket for Goddaughter
- Baby outfit for friend of André's (baby due in January)
- Maybe socks for second sister
- Baby outfit for Aunt of Goddaughter who is expecting in March

Right. 

What actually happened by Christmas:
- Socks for Amy - Check!
- Socks for dear friend for my father.  Yes, singular
- Baby jacket for Goddaughter - pattern and yarn picked. 
- Baby outfit for friend of André's (baby due in January) - pattern picked, yarn I think will need buying.
- Maybe socks for second sister - her birthday is in March... store bought gift for Christmas
- Baby outfit for Aunt of Goddaughter who is expecting in March - um... right. 

So I give you what I got done, and hopefully I can work on the rest of the list over new years. 

First, socks for Amy.  Way back in February I went down to visit my darling sister, and picked up two beautiful yarns which were to be converted into knitwear for her.  The first became wrist warmers.  Just.

The second was a gorgeous sock pair from Turtle Purl in Gothic Plum, destined to be a second pair of wrist warmers.  Which apparently I was going to design from scratch, and because I didn't know how long the yarn would go, I wanted to knit from the fingers down. 



Or Amy could ask for socks while we were visiting her in Toronto a few weeks ago.  So socks it was!





They are in fact Chimaera from Knitty.  Toe up, which was essential - Amy is quite tall, and I wanted to get every inch I could without having to pull back and rip out the leg to have enough for the toes.  Although, having the balls pre-divided was probably the smartest thing I have ever heard of!


Added benefit (and the reason that Turtle Purl is my current knitting HERO) - the balls are dyed to match each other exactly.  Start in the same spot and you get identical socks.  No kidding.  These are my first pair of identical socks from self striping yarn!

I wasn't sure how the slipped stitch pattern would look over the leg and foot in the self striping yarn, but the longer I knit, the more I LOVED it.  Also, the gusset detail?  Amazing!


Super amazingly happy with these, and Amy loves them too. 


These socks went so fast, I thought for sure I would have time to knit another pair.  Especially after talking to my other sister Alison and finding out that apparently socks would be a good gift for my father.  Although I think his wife meant store bought ones, but oh well.

A quick peak in the stash revealed a denim coloured self striping ball perfect for simple ribbed socks for Dad.  

Suffice to say, Christmas Eve came around and here's what I had completed...




Update: by the end of Christmas Eve I had the gusset finished. Christmas morning saw the heal turned.  But by the time it came to go to my Father's for Christmas lunch, there was only one sock wrapped up. 

More on that story later. 

In the mean time, I'm tossing the stash for baby outfit yarns.  One picked, another might warrant a trip out in the cold.  We'll see. 

Merry Christmas dear blog, and we'll see you in the New Year!

Saturday, December 7, 2013

Crazy Pi? Yes Please!

I've been working at a retail job for just over two years.  When university ends, life must go on and that means that bills must be paid.  I got really really lucky with this job, and landed in a place where the work is fun and interesting, and the gang of people around me are some of the best.  Both at their jobs, and as people to hang out with for 8 hours a day.

Every year the store has, what I'm told, are epic Christmas parties.  And up to this year I hadn't gone to any of them.

I'm not much of one for office parties to start with - it's that fine balancing act of hanging out with people from work in a social setting all the while trying desperately to come up with something to talk about that isn't work.  Add to the mix that these Christmas parties are semi-formal-ish - guys in suits and ladies in dresses (or suits), and I'm way out of my comfort level.  Heck, I only own two dresses (and one of them I'm not ever likely to wear again, being my wedding dress and all), and it's only by a miracle that I haven't broken an ankle in the few times I've worn high heals.

So my first year I didn't go.  I'd only been there two months, didn't really know the gang, and wasn't sure how much longer I'd be around (because I still foolishly thought I could get somewhere with my grad degree). The next year, I thought about going, but we had a curling Christmas party the same night, and I really like those guys.

This year though, apparently I had no choice.  One of the guys even bought me a ticket to make sure I went.

Now, the dress that I would be wearing is sleeveless.  And the party is in December.  And since I'm not much of a dancer, I was expecting to get cold.  I do have a pashmina wrap in the perfect colour to match the dress, but I figured that if I was going get kidnapped asked to go to this party, I might as well take this as a chance to do something that I've been meaning to do for a long time.

I was going to knit myself a black lace shawl.

I've wanted one since my high school prom.  So much classier than the typical matching-fabric-wraps that come with most dresses.  And the vintage look is something that I love.

The party was set for December 1st.  I was informed that I was attending October 2nd.  Two months to knit a lace shawl?  No problem!

Do I sound crazy yet?

October 3rd I came home with Dropps lace silk/alpaca blend from Wool Thyme in a beautiful shiny black.  Even Andre got into the game.  I turn around for two minutes and look what happens:


He's too good to me!

After poking around for a while I settled on a tribute to Elizabeth Zimmermann with the EZ 100th Anniversary PI Shawl: Camping.

This pattern was super easy to follow, and fun to knit (once I got a few rounds in and stopped dropping my needles).  And for the first few weeks I thought I was going to make it with piles of time to spare.

Note to self, when a shawl pattern starts with CO9 and and ends with BO867, it's going to slow down each time you double the stitches.  As pretty as it is, I was about ready to strangle myself with the yarn while working through the vines. 

Thankfully, Andre and I had planned a week in Toronto in early November, and while I didn't get much knitting time while we were there, there was still the train ride out and home to put serious length on this thing.

And on November 27th, there it lay on the bed with a couple hundred pins in it, blocking away happily to itself. With two whole days to spare!




I made a few small changes to the pattern.  Firstly I used true lace weight yarn rather than the fingering weight called for.  The biggest difference (other than the damage to my eyesight from trying to see lace knitting in black yarn on a train at night) is that it came out about 4' across rather than the 5' + indicated by the pattern.  Which worked out really nicely because it hangs perfectly to my elbows and stays out of the way when I'm sitting down.

Change #2 - the spiral wheel was written to be entirely done with ssk.  Not my favourite thing to do, especially since it takes longer per stitch than K2tog.  So I reversed the pattern, K2tog-ing happily around and now the spirals twist the opposite direction.

And while I do love the rounded edges in the original pattern, I was a little bit pressed for time, so I left the edging with points rather than scrounging another several hundred pins.  You know what?  I love it.

So two days latter, off I toddled in my high heals, dress, and shawl to the Christmas party, and had fantastic time.  Turns out most of my worries of work place Christmas parties were unfounded.  My department and my store are both packed with awesome fun loving people, and we had a blast.



Now to figure out what to knit to wear next year...