25 posts tagged “green”
On holiday last year, Kauket got me hooked on the PS2 game We love Katamari. Long before I had ever played it, I'd spent a lot of time watching other people playing, and shouting things like "get the elephant!". A Katamari, you see, is a magic sticky ball which picks up anything you roll it over that is smaller than its current size, so you start off rolling up paperclips, and end with rolling up continents, passing through elephants (and tigers, and giant squid, and dinosaurs - I don't know why the most appealing things to pick up are all animals) on the way.
I had previously come across this crochet pattern for a Katamari with magnets, but since I didn't know how to crochet, had filed it under 'cool but impractical' and mostly forgotten about it. I'm not much of a computer gamer (can't knit at the same time), so didn't play Katamari for a while, until I introduced my parents to the game last autumn, and then bought them a copy, and a PS2 to play it on, for Christmas. Since they're even less gamers than I am, it seemed only polite to unlock all of the levels for them, so I spent the first few days of my Christmas holiday playing a lot of Katamari (in the name of giving, you understand).
Coming with surprising haste after Christmas, as it always does, was female-R's birthday, and I remembered the crocheted Katamari. One evening was enough for me to teach myself basic crochet, and another was enough to make the base ball-shape. With the arrogance of an newbie, I modified the pattern to make the ball in one piece instead of two, and then ordered some magnets from the interweb, and waited for them for days when unexpectedly heavy snow stopped all of our post.
Today, The Princess Bride and the push-me-pull-you socks have been vying for my attention. I've had to pause in my knitting during particularly interesting bits of book, and pause in my reading during particularly interesting bits of sock. The socks are now finished; the book has about a third to go.
1. Joined at the ribbing, just before casting off.
2. Just after casting off, looking like what would happen if Georgia O'Keefe was a knitter.
3. Immediately post-separation. Outer sock still inside-out on the left; inner sock on the right, right-way-out as it has been all along (my first real sight of the right-side!)
4. Both socks right-way-out.
5. On my feet, with the stripes lining up! (With bad colour matching - the other photos are a better match.)
These are very close to being finished. Double knitting the ribbing is a bit fiddly, but it's a joy to be able to read my knitting again after acres of reverse stocking stitch, even though since it's ribbing I rarely actually need to read it. I have misknit several stitches on the inside sock, knit instead of purl or vice versa, but nothing two minutes with a crochet hook won't solve.
Second pic is the red-toed sock just after turning the heel (the other sock is tucked inside, as it is while I'm knitting).
Third pic, the variegated-toed sock, ditto.
Fourth pic, both socks conjoined, just after the heel turn, with the ends still straggling and the hole at the join still very visible.
Fifth pic, same thing a few rows on and with the round beginning moved to centre back instead of the side. Ends all woven in, and holes closed up reasonably well (how good this looks on the right side is yet another thing I don't get to see until they're finished!)
The second is a last-minute Christmas gift for R, which I partly wove in front of him on Christmas Eve, figuring (correctly, it turns out) that he pays no attention to what I'm making unless I talk to him about it. There are stripes in the weft - plain dark grey Jaeger merino and black tweed YSL - but they're much less obvious in the flesh than in the photo.
Next up (pictures three and four) is the finally-finished Clessidra. I don't think I'll use the riverbed sockitecture again, because I don't like how it fits me, but I love the socks and am going to wear them to a crafting date tomorrow :-)
Picture five is R's blue socks with a reknitted heel after he wore a massive hole in one of them. I think I've still got some of the blue, but I'm not sure where, and he didn't mind them being mended in black.
The last pic is my new sock project, double knit socks which I'm knitting wrong side out, so I don't have to move the yarn backwards and forwards (near side is English-style purl, far side is continental-style knit, so one strand in each hand, which is fun). The downside of knitting them this way around is that I can't read my knitting on the wrong side, so whether I'm increasing or not on any given row is a bit random but because I'm knitting them at the same time they'll match anyway so it doesn't matter, and I'm planning a short-row heel so there's no other increases or decreases to keep track of. I wanted to use different yarn to make it easier to keep track of which stitch belongs to which sock, so these will end up non-matching stripes - once I've finished the toe I'll break the yarn and swap them over, and keep swapping them at random intervals throughout (must remember to break yarn to do this, so I don't end up knitting the two together).
My old camera died, so I'm way behind in taking photos of things, but today I bought a new one, which I chose on its ability to take closeups. So here's the last week or so's crafting...
Spinning! The alpaca (first two photos) isn't new spinning, but I took the photos to test the closeups - the second is without flash, because super macro doesn't work with forced flash, but it still shows that the picture is clear even this close up. The third picture is the plied result of the shetland-merino-silk-mohair mix, and the fourth is to be a gift for a friend. It's the hand-painted purple wool I bought at the Knitting and Stitching show, but it was so matted it wouldn't spin easily without carding it first, so it's much less variegated as yarn than it was when I bought it. I've got two more lots of fibre from the same supplier, but carding really would mess up the colours in those, so I'll have to carefully pre-draft before spinning it.
Knitting! We bought teapots on holiday in Cumbria, and now I've made a teacosy from the three-ply wisteria yarn that matches the navajo ply in my dissertation socks. It took me a day, and the top is Cat Bordhi's whirlpool toe! And I'm still knitting along on Clessidra - over halfway through both socks now.
I've just got back from a week in Norfolk playing in a four-day roleplaying mini-campaign during which I occupied my hands (in between dice rolling) with knitting socks for the GM. If this was in the hope of receiving extra shinies, the hope was foiled so it's probably best if I say it was merely for love of him* that I was knitting him socks :-) Technically, as you will see from the previous entry, I began the sock before leaving, but as this photo demonstrates, I also began the second sock before coming home again**, so it's a whole sock from four*** days of roleplaying, not just most of one.
