/(p[eu]rls of wisdom)?/

Well, sock number 2 is on hold right now. Remember the blue baby blanket I was doing? Well, I discovered that the increased size I had done it from the original design was not such a good idea. One of the larger stitches snagged, creating a huge loop, pulling the other stitches in the row tighter. Hmm. Baby blanket. Huge loop. Good idea? Not so much. That, and I also discovered I’d also managed to drop a stitch and had a nice long run, meant that I decided to rip it, and do another design for the baby. Said baby being due in about a week.

I settled on the Garter and Rib Pattern from the Afghan, using the light and dark blue yarns together and size 13 needles, and a garter stitch border round it.

I love the principles that this pattern shows. You’ve got twisted ribbing (right-side ribs are knitted and purled in back of stitch), and garter stitch. And you see those long ribs that snake from the top all the way to the bottom, between the sections of ribbing and garter? Those stitches are all the same number of stitches in. There are no increases or decreases in the pattern; that line of stitches is pulled out of alignment because the ribbing pulls together (especially with the twists), and the garter happily stretches out. It’s a fine example of how different types of stitch produce different gauges.

The new blanket using this pattern is knitting up pretty quickly. I did a lot as I watched about 4 hours of documentaries and supplemental materials from my The Lord of the Rings – The Return of the King (Extended Edition) DVD.

My wife and I have noticed that if ever we are looking for something important, frequently, we are unable to find it. However, in those situations, inevitably we will find something else that we had previously looked for, in exactly the same place that we had looked, and been unable to find.

However, if you deliberately look for something else, in order to trick the universe into letting you find the thing that you really want to find, the universe laughs at your attempt, and you still don’t find it.

Anyone else get that?

Now, you may have noticed at the top of my blog, it mentions I’m a boardgamer. Yes, I have more hobbies than just knitting! Shocking, I know!

On Thursday, Karyn and I went to Rob’s place, to meet with him and several others to play some games. We played TransAmerica first. This is a train themed game. Each player is randomly and secretly assigned one city from each of the coloured regions. Once you’ve seen where your cities are, you place your start marker, then each turn you can add track to any track that connects to your marker. If you connect to track someone else built, then you can connect track later to any of that connected track, and they can connect to yours. Eventually, everyone’s track will connect up. Once someone conencts all five of their cities, that round is over, and everyone scores the number of track pieces it would take to connect up any remaining cities they’ve not yet connected. Repeat that for a couple of times, and the player with the lowest score wins. I think Mark won that game.

Then we played Cloud 9. You’re in the basket of a hot air balloon. The pilot rolls special dice (each with 2 blanks, and one each of red, yellow, green, and purple balloons on each side). Do you think that the pilot has cards in their hand enough to match the dice? If so, stay in the balloon, in the hope of moving up to the next level to score more points. If not, jump out, and score the current level. If they pilot can play the right cards, they do, and you move on up. If not, the balloon crashes, goes back to the start, and the players still in the balloon score nothing, and everyone gets another card. Then the next player is the pilot. However, the higher up you are, the more dice you have to throw, and the harder it is to make it. I forget who won the first time, though I came painfully last. The second time, I’m pretty sure Rob won.

Lastly we played Metro. Set in the Paris Metro, you have to connect track up to make the longest possible line for your train to get to a destination station, playing tiles to achieve this aim. While you do that, you also want to try and prevent others from getting long lines, possibly by completing their lines for them. Karyn won this by a long way.

Oh, and if you’re in the Saint Louis area, and you like playing board games, feel free to join us at the Saint Louis Board Game Meetup. Don’t worry if you don’t know the games, we’ll be happy to help you learn!

Thanks for the ideas for baby blankets. In the end, we looked at the Harmony Guide I have, and Karyn chose a fabric pattern there, which is also replicated on knitting.about.com. The pattern she chose is Embossed Diamonds. She then knit up a swatch of two pattern repeats to get a gauge (using two strands, one each of white and pale green, of worsted weight yarn). From that we made up a pattern – 93 stitches, 5 rows garter, 5 sts of garter, 8*10+3 of pattern, 5 sts garter. Work that until it’s “big enough”, then 5 rows of garter to finish off. The baby is due in May so she has plenty of time… though there are other babies she needs to knit some things for too :)

Because my previous photo didn’t really show the problem, I’ve taken another picture. If you click on the pic, you’ll see a larger image, along with a description of what seems to be the problem. I’ve also included the three LT methods that I know. It’s really frustrating me. Suggestions on how to solve this very welcome.

Someone directed me to this game and I just wasted an hour playing. It’s addictive. Try it :D

I’ve got a completed sock! But let’s see the progress first.

Here I’ve turned the heel of the sock. Picking up the stitches wasn’t so hard. But with that in mind, I’m intrigued by the pattern that Jacquelynn is using, where you put in a row of waste yarn where the heel will go, knit to the toe, then go back remove the yarn and knit the heel in.

Toe shaped, ready for the Kitchener stitching to close up (using the lovely instructions on knitty.com).

And here it is! Here’s the first completed sock. It really wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be.

I even got my wife to model the sock, and it certainly looks sockish!

I’ve produced a new page with all my Sockapalooza stuff on it to make it easy to find. Well, almost all. I still have a few resource links to add.

I’ve completed another Afghan square. This one is Twisted Lattice. I’ve had some difficulty with this. While my right twists are nice and tight and even, my left twists aren’t. I’ve tried three different methods to get the left twists to work and I just can’t seem to get them nice and even. Any suggestions?

Dear Sockapalooza Pal,

I’m writing this here, as I’m not able to send you an email, as I don’t know who you are! You could, of course, set up a free email account on Yahoo or Hotmail. I’ve looked through all the beginner Sockapalooza blogs, and I have no idea who you are. I think I’ve managed to rule out a few people (or at least, I hope I have, or I’ll getting some socks that won’t really suit me!).

It’s pretty cold here today, so I’m thinking of nice warm socks – but having said that, it will be hot in the summer, so then I think light socks would be nice. I do quite a bit of walking, in particular Geocaching, which is lots of fun, so on balance, thicker socks for walking would be nice.

I’ve got a number of projects going on right now – One sock for my pal is complete, I’m nearly done with a baby blanket, I just finished another scarf that I was asked to make, I’m thinking of knitting some hats that match other scarves I’ve made, and my ongoing Afghan project is going well. I do have some updates on these to post, which I will soon. Promise.

What else would you like to know about me? Do get in touch and let me know you are out there!

Well, I’ve been looking at other sockapaloozer blogs to see how everyone else is doing. Some of them are great, some of them haven’t started yet (but they still have a couple of months to get done).

I’ll admit it, I’ve been looking to see if any of the socks are ones I might like, in the hope that the ones I like best are being made by my Paloozer Pal.

I’m now halfway done. First sock complete. Pictures soon.

I have a heel! Now to work on the gussets…