Vacation

We'll be heading off for a week plus in Turkey soon. We're planning on watching the solar eclipse there as well as doing a lot of sightseeing. We'll also get to see our children for the first time since Christmas. (They all attend university.)

Tubey finished

I finally finished Tubey!! It's a great way to use up extra yarn. (A doorknob is hiding behind one of the sleeves.)
After redoing Tubey (from knitty.com) quite a few times, I finally came up with something I like. I'm still not sure about the neck. I might add some stitches to the bottom of the neckline to make it higher. Instead of knitting 60 sts back and forth for the entire top, I decreased the number of stitches to 30 for the middle of the top with a garter stitch edging to keep it from curling. I'm short; so I decreased the arm length by about an inch before the stripes and an inch after. The body is as in the pattern -- except it was long enough after I finished the last stripe.
I've been making a concerted effort to finish up projects since we close on a house tomorrow. Then the next day (and the day after) we'll get our boxes unloaded to our new house, and I'll get to start unpacking.

March socks

Well, I finally finished my first (and probably only) pair of toe-up socks. The cuff-down socks that I made for January and February for the sock a month KAL were relatively easy. This pair was extremely difficult. First, I had to redo the toe several times to get it the right width and also to be able to pick up stitches from the cast on edge to work the rest of the sock. Then I had to redo the short-row heel several times. Evidently, my high arches don't just mean that it's hard for me to find shoes that fit; they also mean that I have to do some adjusting to get a heel to fit. I had to add a few stitches to the sole half of the sock before starting the heel to be able to get a heel that wasn't stretched out of shape. After redoing the heel quite a few times, it finally looked ok. Then I thought all I had to do was a little bit of ribbing and the cast off. The ribbing was ok, but I ended up doing a very loose crochet bind off in order to be able to be able to get the sock on.
The socks are made with one 50g skein of Moda Dea Sassy Stripes 100% acrylic yarn. Details of how I made this sock was made are at my other knitting blog.
On the plus side, I found out that it was possible to make a pair of socks with one 50g skein of yarn -- 150m. (I knit one sock to a point just past the heel with the outside of the skein, then put the skein inside the sock and knit the other sock with the inside of the skein.) I found out that acrylic is warmer than a wool blend. And I became almost an expert at doing short-row heels and toes.

Skirt

Since there was a discussion on knittyboard about skirts, I thought I'd post a picture of the one and only skirt that I've made. I made it out of some cheap worsted-weight acrylic yarn that was on sale for a very low price. It's really comfortable, doesn't stretch except at the waist and probably a little bit lengthwise, and is really warm to wear around the house. I keep thinking I should make another, but there are always other projects that get in the way. Here's the link to my directions for making the skirt: http://journals.aol.com/carolsch/Myknittingpage/entries/250 . The bottom of the skirt is done in a checkerboard pattern (each square is 4 sts by 6 rows so that they're square) with occasional cable overs.
The main things to remember are to make the waist a little smaller than your waist and to make the hips a little larger.

Sherman sock thoughts

The Sherman sock toe has sort of a moccasin look on the sides (don't know if it's me or the pattern). So, for turning the heel, I decided against using the directions as the heel and decided to use the directions from knitty.com for toe-up patterns -- with the wraps and double wraps.
LATER UPDATE: This still didn't work. So after staring at the sock (and a cuff-down sock) for quite a while, here's what I'm going to try. First of all, I have half the sock stitches on one circular needle and the other half (the sole) on another. Starting 3" before the heel, increase by 2 sts every other round by doing k1, m1, knit to last st, m1, k1 on the sole needle, 4 times. Then use the directions for the short-row heel (haven't decided to go back to the Sherman one or use another one). Then decrease 2 sts every other round by doing k1, k2tog, knit to 2nd to last st, k2tog tbl, k1 on sole needle, 4 times. I hope this works. I'm getting very discouraged with toe-up socks.

sock and Tubey updates

After quite a few false starts, I've finally got the toe done on my Sherman sock. (The pattern is probably in a few different places, but the place I found it is in a Yahoo group:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Socknitters/message/59091

I found that I had to place a short strand of yarn at the end of each row as I made it in order to figure out where to end the next row that direction. It took my full concentration. Plus, I started by using a crochet provisional cast on and then found that the loops were hard to find after removing the crochet yarn. So, I restarted with a single cast on. Then after getting a few rows past the toe, I decided that it was going to be too wide. So, I frogged again and cast on 22 instead of 26 stitches. Finally, I decided to do a Crusoe pattern after that. (I love a good pun. A stranded sock called Crusoe is in that category.) Unfortunately, the sock looked better on the plain side than the stranded side. (It's Moda Dea Sassy Stripes yarn -- which I thought I'd try even though I do like the Magic Stripes yarn I used for my two previous socks.) The yarn has a nice pattern to it. Maybe I'll try the Crusoe sock in unstriped yarn.
More in the "I like to FROG" vein: I've frogged my Tubey sweater quite a few times as well. The first time I frogged, I frogged to the top of the first sleeve so that I could make the sleeve fitted to the elbow. Then after finishing the shrug part and getting about 20 rows down on the tube part, I decided I didn't like the neck. It turned under; it felt tight at the back of my neck; and there was so much knitting that was hidden. So I frogged the tube, one sleeve, and most of the back -- and then made the neck squarer with garter stitch around the sides and back of the neck. The neck is a lot wider now even though I made it so I would cast on fewer stitches for the tube in front.