Sunday, May 22, 2011

All Things Considered

And not that for a second I thought the world was ending yesterday, but I'm pretty glad it didn't, as there's tons of stuff I want to finish (and start, for that matter), and if you can't take your shoes when you get raptured, I'm thinking beads, yarn and fibre are all probably verboten.

I'm almost halfway through the second sock, and even though this one isn't perfect, I'm still pretty pleased with it.
[This may be redundant if we've ever met but] I'm a big fan of modular knitting, in part because you don't have to commit for a while, you can just happily knit and then decide whether it'll be a cardigan or pullover, round neck or vee. Also because there's no need for a gauge swatch (usually) though with socks I don't need to swatch because I tend to use fairly consistently similar yarns.

Still, love the modular.

Turns out that with the triangles, I need about 12% more stitches than just straight up -and-down. Told you I don't swatch with modular knitting!

Anyway, I had a very grand plan for weird heel shaping which turns out not to actually conform to human anatomy, but I still ended up with something somewhat non-standard.

On a third of the stitches, I worked a longish garter stitch strip to cover the back of the heel. Then I picked up stitches on each side, and short-rowed to form triangles, picked up stitches along the remaining two-thirds of the leg circumference, and effectively worked a mitred rectangle (more or less a double-mitred square) but decreasing very quickly (every row) so that the long edges weren't parallel but curved towards each other in the middle. The rest of the foot was worked straight; perfectly normally with my usual garter stitch toe.

The heel as pictured is slightly too big because I wanted to stick with the same number of stitches and rows as for the modular triangles. The row count should have corresponded to my usual stitch count (so 12% fewer rows), with the decreases spaced accordingly, as the rows in the double-mitred shape were correct.

Overall though, I count this as a success.

I also spent some time making a kit sample.
Actually, just a short piece, as I wasn't in the mood to stitch an entire necklace, because what I really wanted to do was to make another one of these pendants (which as you can see I did).

As far as I'm concerned, this is not [yet] an obsession: I'm just refining the design, and unless I manage to find more of these long oval beads, it'll never get there (to Obsession Country), as I have only one more colour, and the bead store has one more after that (which I don't like all that much), and then it's the interwebs which so far have proven not terribly obliging.

PS It's my birthday tomorrow. If you buy something from my Etsy shop, put "BIRTHDAY" in the "Notes to Seller" and I'll give you 10% off.

2 comments:

marsspyder said...

Happy Birthday! Could you use fabric beads or polymer clay beads in place of your ovals?

Charlene said...

Thanks!

You know I could, I suppose.

In all honesty I'm not a fan of the fabric beads - I generally don't care for mixing beading and fibre. I've never seen a felted anything embellished with beads that didn't make me want to clean my eyes.

Polymer clay on the other hand, now that's a thought, especially if the narrow ends (we're talking rather slim oval) could be reinforced, as I'd be nervous of the thread putting too much tension there (thread comes out and makes a sharp right angle).

Food for thought though - thanks!