tension - never a good thing

I am having so many problems with my knitting tension. I'm usually a tight knitter, and this is apparently not such a good thing for dpn knitting, and my tendency to have a death grip on my working yarn when changing needles in order to prevent ladders is actually causing ladders. Go figure. The really frustrating thing for me at the moment is that I can look at the few rows I knitted yesterday and they were 100% ladder free - apparently I was doing something that I can't seem to replicate now. The knitting I did before yesterday and what I've done today all have clear ladders running down the sole of the sock, and today for the first time, I have ladders on the top of the foot too.

Guess I need to relax, and let the tension flooooow.

And hope that blocking cures all ills.

sock progress

I've been a slow knitter lately. I blame it on boredom and a lack of things to watch - I like watching tv or dvds while I knit so I have more to think about than "knit three purl one" over and over endlessly. I got a huge amount of knitting (almost a full scarf's worth) done while watching season 4 of Supernatural, after I saved up all the episodes to watch just before the finale. Since then, I've been lacking. I finally got to the heel turn of my first sock, though!



I'm just hoping that when it's done it'll fit Matt's feet. If not, I'm pretty sure it will fit mine. This project has also been a good lesson in fixing twisted stitches and other mistakes.

Admittedly, most of the work took place yesterday, when I knit about two inches of the six inch cuff/leg, and then moved on to the heel. I found that my hands really started to hurt, much more than they do when I just knit a scarf or something. I'm not sure if it's the metal dpns, since I usually use Harmony wood for everything, or just the small circumference and tight knitting.

Sock it to me!

I love horrible puns. (Cue everyone's response of "DUH".)

Anyway, last night I finally decided to start working on my first pair of real socks. I bought the yarn with my last Knit Picks order to make some socks for Matt, who needs a pair of tan socks to go with some brown pants that he has.



So far so good - the top inch of rib is done and I'm working on the seed stitch rib pattern now. The pattern I'm using is Thuja from Knitty, with some modifications. That pattern calls for worsted yarn, but since I had fingering, I cast on 64 stitches on size 3 dpns. It looks like the cuff is big enough, but if not I'll just chalk this up to a learning experience. So far it's been easy, I'm just dreading the hard part when I get to the heel. Maybe I should practice doing a small heel with some scrap yarn so I don't mess up the actual sock (which would make me throw a tantrum).

Also, these metal dpns are butts. Stitches falling off all over the place. I knew I should have gone for the more grabby Harmony set.

Hello world!

I am a notoriously bad blogger because I rarely feel like I have anything to say, and end up using twitter to post itty snippets all the time instead. But! I've found myself in need of a project journal or somesuch thing, instead of just clogging up my Ravelry projects page with my notes.

Blog title courtesy of Matt, who thought it was the best knitting pun he'd ever heard and was shocked that google returned zero results for the phrase. He's really taken with knitting and super supportive of it, which I appreciate. He indulged my desire for yarn yesterday by driving out to Uniquities after we hit the mall (and I stocked up on Lush, mmm) and we found some self striping yarn to make an iPod cozy and some socks for him:



And some lovely hot pink alpaca and silk for me, which might end up as socks, or something much nicer. I can't stop nuzzling it against my face.



Right now I have My So Called Scarf on the needles, using some purple/blue/yellow Silk Garden that loves nothing more than slipping right off my Harmony needles when I try to pass the slipped stitch over.



Knitting it for a long time makes my right arm hurt, which is part of the reason that I usually use circulars instead of straights, but the slippiness makes me want to hurt things when I try to knit it on circs. Guess this will just be a slow to finish project. Fine by me, it'll be nice to have a mindless stitch pattern on the needles for back up when I feel like taking a break from harder things.

Oh, and thanks to a four hour ride to Matt's parents place, I discovered that knitting makes me just as car sick as reading. Boo.