Category: Knit Page 65 of 88

I started these socks on Saturday night, while I was sitting in the rain for 7+ hours. Why? I needed something to do while I was sitting out in the rain. Oh, why was I sitting out in the rain? I was at The Bridge School’s annual benefit concert. What a great concert. Not only was it a great line up. All the artists really cared about the kids. Leon Mobley from Ben Harper’s band took his conga drum over to the kids and gave them all a chance to drum away; Tony Bennett crooned to the kids; Sir Paul went and shook the hands with all the kids. And the smiles on those faces were worth the 7+ hours in the rain, on the muddy lawn.

Anyway, back to the socks. These are Socks v2. Version 2, because I didn’t like the way the first version turned out. I casted on 64 stitches, and knitted away. When I looked at what I did yesterday, in the cold light of day, the (lack) of striping just didn’t do it for me. The turquoise that drew me to this yarn was completely lost. It looked a lot like the yarn ball on the left. But when I knitted the sock with 60 sts, the colors started to stack, ever so slightly. Now, there are 2 rows of each similar colors that emphasized the turquoise more.

So, the moral of the story? If you don’t like the way a handpaint or self-striping yarn is turning out, play with the stitch count a bit and see if you can change it. Lucky for me, 60 sts is a better fitting sock for me with this yarn anyway. My gauge is 15 st over 2″ on 2.5mm needles.

OKRs

The past 6 weeks have been an absolute nightmare for Martin and myself (and Grace) on the personal front. I won’t bore you with it, but suffice to say that I haven’t had much time to do any fiber activities. It was pure survival. But, I did make a mental goal of trying to finish more projects than I start. I didn’t announce it on the blog because, well, it was a personal goal. And I didn’t want it out there, just in case I didn’t meet the goal. There is nothing on the line.

Well, that’s where the OKRs come in. What the heck is an OKR, you ask? At work, we have to set quarterly Objectives and Key Results. And we have to post them on the intranet for all to see. And you are rated each quarter on your OKRs. And your quarterly bonuses are dependent on your OKRs, with the emphasis on the Key Results portion. Of course, if you don’t stretch yourself in your OKR (as in, you play it safe), you get downgraded.

So, at 33% way through the quarter, I’m going to put myself out there to set these OKRs for the remainder of the quarter:

• I will finish more projects than I start,
• I will finish a sweater (either one already started or a new one), and
• I will finish a lace shawl (either the pi shawl or another one).

Finishing the pi shawl is actually more of a challenge than one might think. I’m only about 1.5 diamond repeats from starting the edging. (So close!) But I ran out of yarn. In order to finish it, I have to find the alpaca and merino roving in the storage unit, spin up more yarn, before I can start knitting it again. Unfortunately, I can’t remember if I saw the alpaca one or 3 moves ago…

I finally took some pix of Kate. Here is the detail of the inside. As I might have mentioned, I knit the whole thing in one seamless piece. The neckline is short-rowed. I used 84 stitches for the neckline, 30(front)+15(L sleeve)+24(back)+15(R sleeve). Why does the front have 6 more stitches than the back? Because I stair-stepped the front neckline in 3 short row segments on each side (2*3 rows) which means the front has 3 fewer sets of double decreases than the back. Is this clear as mud? It just worked like magic. It was much clearer to me than the French instructions I downloaded.

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