This Post Brought To You In Part By Greyhound

I can't get enough of these Norwegian Stockings. Like cupcake photos, something makes photos of them seem a lot like porn. Witness:

... although I feel a little bad about including Catty in a photo that, by some, may be considered mildly pornographic.

The Thanksgiving holiday brought lots of knitting time, especially on the Greyhound. These stockings are brought to you in part by Greyhound and its predictable lack of preparedness for Thanksgiving travel. Thanks, 'Hound! In any case, here's the scoop. After worrying about the fit of my stockings, I began a second stocking on size 1 needles using Magic Loop. The size of the stocking is only slightly smaller overall. Still, there's a bit less give in the fabric, which is more reassuring fit-wise. They do fit a bit more closely.

I decreased for the calves after just two decreases + 4 rows (as opposed to the 4 decreases suggested in the pattern), and so far, so good with calf sizing. The ankles will, I suspect, be a little loose - I'm thinking of switching to size 0 for the gusset and first few ankle rows. Then I may decrease on sole around the arch, since the pattern isn't so complex there.

Another benefit of starting again is that my fair isle is, I think, greatly improved. I knitted the first stockings with the main color under the contrast color. That's wrong. It exacerbates any tension problems and pulls the accent color into a sea of main color. When you switch the over/under setup, picking the MC over the CC and the CC under the MC, it makes the CC stitches "pop" a bit, since the floats aren't putting tension on them from the back.

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been knitting inside out. The floats aren't necessarily "regular," but they are okay tension-wise overall. When I finish, I'll go through the floats on the inside and even out the loose ones by pulling any slack through to the tighter ones. It seems fairly easy with fair isle to correct such mistakes by redistributing the tension in this way.

So that's that. With exams coming up, knitting progress will likely be erratic. These might not be finished 'til Christmas. I have to admit I've been feeling a little knitting and blogging inadequacy of late... a couple of my favorite knitbloggers have been cranking out the beautiful FOs in approximately 1/10 of the time it seems to take me, and with technical aplomb of which I could never even dream! C'est la vie - for more hours in the day, eh? Maybe I can find a way to sleep less. I sleep too much.

You may also have noticed a dearth of holiday knitting on this blog. I have decided not to knit for the holidays this year, with the exception of one special request from my Mom. This is part selfishness (I'm still knitting, just for me), part time crunch (newsflash to self: you're in law school!), part sanity-preservation (knit knit knit knit knit til your fingers are raw! must! finish! by! Christmas!). It's easy to feel bad about it, but to be honest, this year I'm not in the holiday spirit so much. Could be that it's been like 60 degrees outside for the most part, could be that holiday decorations have been up since mid-October and carols on the radio for the last two weeks, could be the incessant media coverage for the last two days of people mauling each other over holiday sales, when holiday sales numbers seem to be exactly the same as last year. (Hey media, just because Best Buy sends you a press release about the crowd outside their door on Friday morning doesn't mean it's a top story) Either way, I'm okay with no holiday knitting. If there are to be knitted gifts for others, they will come at unpredictable times through the year, not all on the same day. And there will be just as much thought contained therein.

Posted by jess at November 27, 2005 10:22 AM