Mm Noro

The beautiful mystery of Noro color. . .this time on a tea pot cozy.
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Happy Happy

I trust you all had a spectacular holiday!

We just had the last of our family escape our premises so it's just us and the kids again. Tra la la.

I didn't actually FINISH knitting for Xmas so much as made plans TO KNIT for next year. This way I was able to let folks pick their yarn (STR) and pattern (socks or glittens) which I ultimately thought was a better idea. It was. I would NEVER have chosen the sock yarn colors that were selected--not that they were bad (far from) but I'm a lousy judge of color. So this was much MUCH better.

Now we're just spending the holiday weeks with our kids in tow. We have exactly zero plans, except that I'd like nothing more than to knit for the next two weeks.

Yeah, right...

The weaving is paused right now while we have a bunny in the house (I gave it my weaving area...it's got feelings and the loom mostly doesn't). The knitting is on a new Cat Bordhi kick, so I'm finishing the second pair of baby booties. I think I can say without fear of being contradicted that she's a genius. I wish I had half the creativity that woman has. Woof!

Craftlit continues and I'm planning a few interviews for the rest of Frankenstein. So exciting!

But now, I'm going to go back and work more on that New Year's letter (might become the Valentines Day letter at this rate...) and see if I can sneak some knitting in...

Toodles!

Sock Darning, 102a

NOTICE: Desperately seeking Bouton D'Or Flash in a vaguely gold colorway--I think the color number is 075 but I'm not sure (I'm looking at the ball band, but who knows...)

Contact me at MamaOKNits [at] gmail [dot] com if you are a goddess who is in possession of such stuff...

PLEASE!

So

I'm a fanatic for sock darning now that I've been knitting the darn things.Here's my step by step for you, so you can join me in my new nuttiness. Understand though, that this isn't probably the most detailed tutorial. I do expect that you have a basic idea of what you're about to undertake, but I also figured you'd not be knitting socks if you didn't:

First, create a vertical scaffold for your darning. It'll help keep you in line and give you some useful strings to hang on when you need them.

(yeah, it's blurry, but it's close-in and you can see the white vertical stripes)

In fact, the more regular you can be about the placement of said scaffolds the happier you'll be.

 If you can put them on the insides or outsides of stitches all the way across, so that you KNOW what your threads are doing, you'll be in good shape. If you have no idea what I'm talking

 about, don't worry. It won't kill you (and you may figure it out by the end).

Start a few rows below where you need to be. You're going to either create stit

ches in that void using the thread guides, or you're going to pull stitches down from the top and darn them together with stitches at the bottom of your hole...or a little of both. Which is what I did.

So here you can see a couple of rows completed in duplicate stitch. If you've never done this before check out this tutorial (and this video...scroll down to "joining a new color yarn"... oh, and this tutorial too...). It's MUCH easier than you think, though I found working on the purl side even easier when I first started. But this is pretty easy too.

See where the needle comes in and out? That's actually connecting the top loops of the stitches on either side of that needle. Like linking elbows in a long chain. That's it. That's the whole secret of knitting right there.

Easy.
This is the next pic in line. Notice in the pic above this, the yarn tail is coming down from the top? Now it's coming up from the bottom. 

AH

And the top is where it'll end up at the end of this stitch. You'll also see (even through the haze of the flash) that there's VERY LITTLE that I'm able to grab onto with the needle. In fact, most of what I'm stitching through is ground-down fluff from the original sock yarn.

C'est la guerre.

Regardless, this is where those little white threads come in handy. I can hook those as well as whatever fluff I can manage. From this point on, I'll be using those guide threads until I can get close enough to the top row of the hole to start snagging those loops...until then...it's a high wire act.

And in this pic you can see just how far I've had to reach UP to get at anything...even a tiny little snag that I know would pull out with a gentle tug. That's fine though, because I'm going to continue my rows above that, so I'll be "linking arms" with those stitches. I just can't pull it hard NOW.

And that's pretty much it. Go AT LEAST two rows past where your hole was...

And now, I'm off to darn another!

Re-Warping chenille

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Plying

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Gosh Darn Life!

Once again, life swipes at us...holidays, holiday gift making, kids, illnesses, work, (not necessarily in that order). You know the drill.

But here's something nice. In the middle of all the chaos, a weaving/spinning/knitting friend of mine who is a RNP, has begun to work for a company called "Take Care" which runs store front clinics inside Walgreens stores here in Tucson. Spectacular. Cheap, attentive, gentle medical care. Nothing urgent (like broken bones) but things annoying and impossible to get emergency visits for...like croup.

Thing 2 needed to be checked today since he got sent home from school with a (ridiculously) minimal fever. He's fine--I'm getting something nasty though--and he'll be even better after a nap, but it was so nice to have access to this easy (and did I say cheap?) health care option.

A good thing in this sickly season.

Tra la la

Off to ply...pics to come...

Our son. . .

The two-stripe yellow belt
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It progresses...

Back and . . .

And front...and no, my dressform has no legs. Poor thing...