Category: knitting

  • a special gig

    Thanks for all the great comments on the stripey knee socks! I’ll be working on writing them up for various foot/calf size combinations in the next little while.

    Last Wednesday I had a special gig – a talk at the Downtown Knit Collective, one of Toronto’s knitting guilds (the biggest?). The always fabulous Patrick asked me if I’d be interested in doing a talk/presentation at the guild way back before I left for my trip, and it really came up fast.

    It was a little daunting arriving early and seeing the podium and microphone…

    skeery

    Along with the soon-to-be-not-so-empty seats!

    empty seats

    Of course, after I took these I suffered from a bout of camnesia. Oh well. The talk went well, I think! I spent the weekend previous writing up a whole speech, but didn’t really read from it – as it should be. The writing really helped me order my thoughts, considering I’d never done anything like this before, and now I have something to fall back on should I need to!

    I spoke a bit about how I learned to knit and got involved in design and such, a bit about my design process (with accompanying slideshow!) and a bit about the experience of writing Teach Yourself Visually Sock Knitting. The time (which was quite short, thank goodness!) really flew by.

    Everyone was very nice, welcoming, friendly, and there were lots of great questions too.

    audience!

    Susanne even showed off her Simple Yet Effective Shawl during the show & tell at the beginning of the meeting. Gorgeous!

    Susanne in her noro SYES

    I had lots of fun, gave away a couple of books in the raffle, and brought all the socks from the book as well as some of my sweater designs for everyone to look at in person. It was a little nerve-wracking at first, but I think we all had a good time.

    Thanks to everyone who came out!

  • FO: delicious stripey knee socks!

    Okay, so these have been a LONG time in the making – I started them way back in September in London and Paris when I went with ysolda. If I recall correctly, I do think I finished one in a pretty timely manner…but the second one took FOREVER.

    I guess the important thing is, now they’re done! And with temperatures still in the single digits (in Celsius, of course) there’s still plenty of time to wear them.

    delicious stripey knee socks, finally done!

    Stripey Knee Socks
    Pattern: my own, custom to fit my enormous calves (seriously people, I’ve got an 8″ differential between my ankle and calf)
    Yarn: Indigo Moon fingering weight in Chocolate and Raspberry
    Needles: US 0

    stripey knee socks, back

    These were knit toe up, with a turkish cast on and short-row heel. The yarn comes in 100g balls, so I divided them up by weight first. Then because I wanted the brown to have slightly wider stripes, I decided to do the toe, heel, and top ribbing in the pink only. I’ll probably weave a little bit of thread covered elastic into the bottom half of the ribbing (which is folded over in these photos) to help them say up.

    To cover the jog and just look pretty, I made a faux seam by slipping a stitch every other round up the back of the leg. I did lots of increases for the calf, then a few decreases as well to help them stay up!

    delicious stripey knee socks!

    I love them!

    P.S. I’ve moved the comments button to the bottom of each post, just in case you’d like to find it :)

  • a quick favour?

    If you’re a resident of Canada, can you go Vote for my cousin’s Doritos commerical?

    It’s a contest to name and pitch an ad campaign for a new Doritos flavour, and I think it’s great! My cousin David is hoping to get into the top 5 and have a shot at winning!

    Thanks all!