On and Off the Needles

Well there's been some knitting in the last couple days. I was hoping to finish Tubey this weekend, but I had a little more knitting to do than I thought. This is what it looked like yesterday afternoon when I put it on some waste yarn to try it on...

(Don't mind the pooch...)

Notice anything funny?

Yeah, notice those big things sticking out at the armpits? I guess I made the back a little too long. Oh well. It's looking ok though, and fits a lot better than I thought it would as my first sweater and not using the yarn called for. I definitely need to knit a few more inches though. I want it to be on the longer side. I put it back on the needles and have been knitting on it some more, but still have about 5 inches or so to go according to my measurements.

I also frogged the Snicket Socks. I know that 4 out of the 5 people who took my poll said to try to rework the heel again, but the yarn wasn't standing up to frogging very well.. and I didn't think it would be good to frog the heel another 2 times (4 times total). I'll cast on again for them with another 2 repeats maybe. I'm going to wait until Summer of Socks starts up though.

Lastly, I went to a local flea market today and found some good deals. I got all of this for only 2.50 euro (the 3 50 g balls of sock yarn were 1 euro, and the krug was 1.50 euro)!

It's a nice red color yarn.. and it came with the little reinforcing stuff for the heels! I'm not sure what brand or anything.. Roedel I guess?... but who can pass up 150 g of sock yarn for 1 euro? Not me, that's for sure. Haha.

Big Feet and more

Well, I got a lot accomplished on the C-socks in the last few days. It went so quickly that I amazingly didn't have second-sock syndrome!

C-socks with the Snicket socks for size comparison

I would be a lot further... but I decided that I shouldn't neglect Tubey so I finished the ball of yarn I was knitting off of.

I've knit about 9.5" of the body so far. I want it to be a fairly long sweater, so am expecting it to end up at 19-20" (I'm short..).

As for the Snicket socks... they're still where I left them. So far the majority of the poll is saying to redo the heel and finish the sock. I'll probably end up doing that, I just really don't feel like it at the moment. Which is really too bad because I really enjoyed the pattern.

I'll leave you with a little teaser. I knit up a swatch out of the sample skein of Wollmeise I received with my package of sock yarn. I have an interesting idea that involves buying more of her sample skeins....

A swim in the near future?

Hi again.

Well the Bergkirchweih is over and Erlangen is returning to normal. Here are a few last photos from the festival before I get into the knitting content.

A sign telling you about the ox on the spit (this one is named Max VII) and me with our last meal at the Berg (ox roast, kloss, apfelrotkohl, and of course a giant pretzel)

The Berg the last night and the ferris wheel coming down the next day.

Now on to knitting. I've been working on various projects since my last post. Mostly on the Snicket Socks.

I had some issues with doing the heel as written (including losing a needle full of stitches with yarn overs about 4 times) and had to frog it twice.

This side of the heel turned out nice (correct)

This side of the heel turned out weird. It was the purl side... maybe I was doing the yarn overs wrong.

But that is not the big problem. The big problem came when I tried them on (well, attempted to). They were WAY too small. They had looked kind of skinny all along, but the stretched a lot and I could get it over my foot, so I figured it'd be ok. But it wasn't. Sigh. I must have some bad sock-size juju or something because the Jaywalkers I had started, as seen here, were too small too. I don't know what to do. So I'm turning to you...

For now I'll just let them sit on the needles (but I only have the one set of 2.5 mm metal dpns, so I need to decide soon!).

Because I was so frustrated with the Snickets, I decided I needed to start on another pair of socks. I've had some DK weight yarn sitting around to make some socks for C's giant size 13 wide (that's size 47.5 for those of you in Europe) feet. So I had him look through my stitch dictionary (Harmony Guides Vol. 2), knit a swatch, and cast on.

Yeah, I've already turned the heel... they're going suprisingly quick!

Stitch pattern: Triangle Ribs (page 27 of Harmony Guides Vol. 2)

Eye of Partridge Heel

iPod nano for scale

They seem really big, but they fit on his foot (almost) perfectly so I'm really happy with them.

No real progress has been made on Tubey. I've knit a few rows, but that doesn't make for very exciting pictures.

Nothing's better at curing Homesickness than....

A beer festival! (and some knitting.)

Sorry that I haven't written in a while and that the last time I wrote it was a depressing note about how I wasn't enjoying being in Germany and didn't really have anything to do about knitting. At all. Hopefully this entry will have more knitting content, but of course there has to be some beer!

Ok, so I'll get the knitting stuff in first. Tubey is coming along nicely. I finished the sleeves!

Now just to do the body. I think I've calculated that I'm halfway done now though. Yay! It's a little looser in the sleeves than I would have liked. And I'm not liking the colors (the green) as much as I did when I bought it and it was separate from the black. And those dang color changes look like crap. Sigh. Well, if nothing else I'll have a warm comfy sweater for those days I just want to stay inside.

The Snicket Socks are coming along rather slowly (I've been working on Tubey!) but I'm not half a repeat away from starting the heel.

I think I've figured out what to do about the pattern and the instep. We'll see how it turns out.

The lace scarf for my mom is also coming along. I have 1.5-2 feet of it done (I've been working on Tubey!)

I'm not a huge fan of the lace pattern. Especially in the dark yarn. But she chose them both. So I'll do it for her.

Well. Umm. That's all the knitting content. Ha. Now for the beer!

So there's a local beer festival going on right now called the Bergkirchweih. Apparently it's the 3rd largest beer festival in Bavaria. And it's about a 2 minute walk from my apartment. So C and I have been going up there every night and getting dinner or a beer or both. Here are some pictures from it.

An oompa band and Miss Bergkirchweih 2007

The first beer from the "first" keg of the festival and C and I sharing a "Mass" (1 L of beer)

Sauerkraut, Bratwurst, and an Ox sandwich. Yum! and 2 "Krugs" to hold all of our beer

Lots of People!

P.S.

Knitting-wise not much happening. A friend who was travelling around Europe stopped by the last day my brother was here/the next day and so I was crammed into my apartment with lots of people and hostessing duties. I did get the chance to work on my Snicket socks a little more.. almost time for the heel!.. but I am having a hard time figuring out what to do. You see.. the pattern just says "continue the pattern across the instep" but that wouldn't be centered, and if I center it, there aren't enough stitches to do the cables along the edge. I think I have kind of a general type (haha... great grammar!) idea of what I'm going to do. Hopefully it will work. I would also like to work on Tubey a little. I'm still stalled at the same spot there... right before the color change on the second sleeve. Maybe that will be my project for this week!

Venice! (and Yarn and Knitting of course..)

Hey!

Venice was great! Well... good. Venice would have been better if had been me and my boyfriend. Or me and anyone but just my brother who thinks a trip to Europe involves sleeping 15 hours a day and once you've seen one canal/bridge you've seen them all. Sigh. C'est la vie.

Anyways, a few pictures (ok, LOTS of pictures... sorry) for your enjoyment.

A view of Venice from the plane. This was taken on the way back, but I figured it was a nice picture to start out the whole "Venice" picture thing with.

Yum. Cappuccino and a chocolate croissant like thing for breakfast. (That is my brother's hand and plain croissant-- boys don't appreciate chocolate--in the background)

Piazza San Marco (AKA St. Mark's Square) from a water bus.

A self-portrait* from St. Mark's Basillica over-looking the square. (*Yes, I had to take a self-portrait because my brother decided that 2 minutes was long enough to look at a famous square.)

Canals are pretty....

Really... they are pretty!

Rialto Bridge over the Grand Canal with some gondolas... from a water bus. I know, I'm talented.

The nearby island of Murano is famous for its glass. Below is a picture of someone making a part of a chandelier.

Glass Christmas tree.. in May. But it's pretty!

Close up on the tree.

And now for some knitting... my Snicket Socks managed to come with me! Here they are by a canal in Venice while I was out wandering about after my brother decided to take a 3 hour nap in the afternoon of our 1.5 days in Venice. Sigh. But it turned out OK because it started to rain while I was out (the only rain we had) and on the other side of this bridge I just happened to pop into a store that sold yarn. And I bought some. By the time I was done (only 20 minutes or so) it had stopped raining. I'm pretty sure that was a sign that me and this yarn were meant to be. More about the yarn later.

Yummy pesto and some yummy wine. I had to drink the whole half bottle by myself because it was the smallest size of wine they sold (no glasses!) and my brother didn't want any (sigh again).

Fish stand outside our hotel.. it was really colorful!

New knitting bags! So now I'm up to 5. I already had Germany, Austria and Paris. My boyfriend (C as you recall me naming him... yet I haven't really used it) bought me the Luxembourg one because we had been there before I began collecting the bags and he lived only 30 minutes south by train when he was in France. I bought the Italy one on the trip.

The 2 pretty balls of 40% mohair and 60% Dralon (R) ?? by a company called Tropical Lane. The line is Follie di Colore and it's a blue/purple (more purple than it looks in the pictures). It's really soft and nice.. and was only a little more than $5 for 50g/150m (if that's not a good deal, please don't tell me. I convinced myself I could buy it because I thought it was a good price.... and it was pretty/soft/yummy). I'm thinking a scarf because I don't know if I have enough for much else. Any ideas anyone?

Well I suppose that's all for now. Sorry there's not so much knitting content. I got another repeat done on the Snicket Socks and have knit a fair bit more on the lace scarf (it was my 6 hours in a train to and from a beer festival knit) but the pictures aren't all that exciting (at least not as exciting as Venice!).

WIP update and some past FOs

Hi Again.

First an update on my WIPs. The lace scarf isn't progressing very quickly. Other things seem to be grabbing my attention, so no update pictures for that.

Tubey has progressed some. I finished the first sleeve and decided to bind it off with an i-cord binding. I picked up the stitches from my crochet provisional cast on and have begun knitting the second sleeve.

I haven't worked on my Jaywalkers at all. I rewound the ball of multi-colored yarn, but don't think I'll use it for Jaywalkers again. I didn't like the pooling at a larger circumference so I guess I'll save it for another pair of socks.

I did start a new pair of socks though. It's the Snicket Socks from MagKnits September 2006 issue. I see them as a warm up for the bayerische socks I mentioned in my last post. I'm doing them in Lana Grossa Meilenweit Tweed fingering weight yarn. The base color is kind of near rust with green, yellow, and blue specks dispersed throughout. Here are some pictures of what I have so far.

That's about all that's going on in WIP-land. I'm considering not starting any socks for a while because I have joined my first KAL... Summer of Socks 2007. The actual KAL begins on the summer solstice (June 21) so I have a while to wait. There are contests for the greatest number of pairs of socks knit.. and a vacation photo contest. It's a bummer it doesn't begin earlier because I'm going on a trip to Venice in about a week and I could get some great gondola/sock pictures! I'm going to keep working on the Snicket socks, but I think that may be my last pair until the end of June.

I'll leave you with a few pictures of FOs from the past. Nothing too exciting so I won't go into detail on them. If you want more detail on anything specific, leave a comment and I'll write about it in my next post.