Project Progress Report

Here is yesterday afternoon's progress report on the pink and blue socks.  Despite alternating colours for the starting point, they look pretty much the same in my opinion.  The colours are well balanced and the pink and blue seem fairly evenly distrubuted regardless of where I chose to start.  They are pretty vibrant socks.   I was about to update the blog, when a whole slew of activities and chores happened and by then it was the hockey game. 

We don't have cable or satellite t.v. reception.  Cable isn't available here and no satellite is because of a lifestyle choice we made.  We do have an ancient, old antenna which brings in between 1 and 3 stations, depending on the day.  We are happy with that.  However, hockey games are another deal all together.   While we can't watch most of them, we can listen to them on the radio, via the internet.  The problem is that our slow connection, albeit faster than a phone modem, still bogs down if I try to multi-task the computer.  We can listen to the game or do something else, not both at the same time!   

By the time the hockey game was over, my photo was no longer up to date.  I finished the second sock and they are ready to block!  Okay, I don't actually block socks, but if I were to, they would be ready.  They are very pretty! 

I messed up the toe grafting on the first sock.  I had to rip it out because I'd managed to run the needle through several bits of yarn instead of the loops.  It did make a mess of things.  After ripping it out and starting again, I went to Knitty which is a really nice online magazine with really good articles, articles to recheck my preferred grafting instructions.   By accident,  I hopped to the wrong article and while it was on grafting, it wasn't the how to.  Rather, it was presenting a rather interesting reason on why not to graft sock toes and an alternate method.  I figured it was worth a try because I've ripped out lots of toes in efforts to get the length and grafting correctly done. 

 This method leaves a tiny gathered hole, like on the top of a mitten or a star closure.  I'll have to wear them a bit to see if it's acceptable to my foot.  The whole idea of it has made me rethink sock toes.  I'm hoping to get the energy to knit up a few pairs of socks, using different toe closures in order to compare and find which one I like best.  I haven't yet made a pair with a 3 needle bind off, so that it at least one different one to try.

The weaving is a tad slow going.  I think that perhaps I should have used a bit of warp sizing.  There have been a couple of broken warp threads and a bit of fuzziness of the yarns, which is making weaving a bit slower.  Because of the fuzziness, I am having to advance the warp quite frequently, which I should probably do anyway.   It's coming along though and taking longer because the frustratingly slow pace has me taking more breaks.   It sure feels like I'm winding a lot of bobbins though, only because the handspun yarn is thicker than I normally like to weave with.
   I am seriously considering cutting the warp in front of the heddles and tying on another warp in order to use the same threading pattern.    However, if I find a 5 dent reed, I'll probably abandon that idea in favour of a double weave project. It's been mulling in the back of my mind and the suitable reed is the only block for that project right now.