No Turning Back

Since you claim you are not bored to death of the Norwegian Stockings, the Most Photographed Footwear on the Internets, here's the next installment. I am compelled to share that the heel of the Norwegian Stocking is complete and we're well on our way to the existence of a foot! I told myself that once I got the heel turned and the gussets and everything connected up in a functional way, there would be no more major frogging. Hold on to your Bea Ellis head coverings 'cause it's full speed ahead now (or at least as fast as full speed is during exam season, which is, well, you might want to pull those earflaps down because it could be a long ride).

You should know that the heel is not especially beautiful. I'm notoriously bad at picking up gusset stitches, and the heel tension is off... though that was actually sort of on purpose, since I wanted a snug and sturdy heel. Also the heel stitches are a little squinched in places, because I tried to fiddle with the floats to tighten up the slipped stitches to be picked up on the gusset.

Blocking might help a great deal with most of the heel problems. As for evening out the floats inside the heel, I guess I'll just continue to fiddle and get them to even out as best as I can. Things got a little messy in there, what with all my pulling and tweaking, at least on the first side you see:

For those interested in how the gauge turned out with this new stocking, here's a comparison between the first attempt (R) (knitted inside out on size 1 needles, ironically) and the second (L) (knitted right side out with size 2 needles and generally normal tension). All told the second attempt is MUCH better. The fit's almost perfect, if I may pat myself on the proverbial back. There's about a 1.5" - 2" difference in circumference:

In other news, Chris took me to see The Losers' Lounge at Joe's Pub on Saturday. For the unindoctrinated, Losers' Lounge is a loose collective of musicians that perform ever-changing menus of "tributes." We saw their tribute to Roxy Music and Brian Eno. Neither of us had seen them before, but it was loads of fun and the Roxy / Eno combination made for a perfectly hammy performance. We'll go back if we can scrape up the cash... we were on the young end of the crowd age-wise - probably a combination of the era of music and the (relatively) pricey tickets.

Do musicians who are "tributed" ever show up at those tribute shows? Like I wonder whether Neil Diamond has ever seen Super Diamond, Madonna has ever seen Mandonna, or Arcade Fire has ever seen any of the five jillion bands that sound just like Arcade Fire... oh wait, nevermind.

UPDATE: Hey, have you seen the new Knitty? It's great! The patterns are really strong and stylish, and employ a variety of techniques. Might be the best one yet - and they seem to have more patterns than usual this time around. Among my faves are Namaste, Best Friend, Danica, Spike, and last but not least, Tubey, a coup from our very own NYC knitter Cassie!

Posted by jess at December 5, 2005 12:39 PM