Kid stuff

Recently completed:  a pair of Portuguese-style baby booties that are quick and adorable, and the pattern is free from the Knitting Daily website.  What's not to like?

Taken with my new camera, an Olympus OM-D-E series.  The stalwart Panasonic Lumix of yore developed problems that led me to conclude I'd outgrown its capabilities.

I used leftovers of Online Supersocke--the grandmère of this baby has a slightly larger pair from the same yarn. Said grandmère's other grandson, now eighteen months, will get a pair of toddler socks from the rest of the remnants. I like to keep things in the family!

Portuguese knitting involves a different method than most Americans employ, and there are interesting video demonstrations to watch. You don't need to use the Portuguese method for this pattern, but it has efficiency and ergonomic advantages that could be useful to anyone who wants to decrease stress on the hands.  Worth having a look, methinks.

And while we are on the topic of knitting for kids, I must share a photo sent by a friend, who saw this little person at the Sterling (Massachusetts) Fair 2013, ongoing this weekend.

Credit:  Margaret Haynes-Lamont

Yes, her beautiful coverall is hand-knitted.

Wilted

Imagine the steamiest shower you've ever taken, the hottest wettest laundry room, the alligator pond in full sun at a suburban zoo--scummy water with a cloudy overlay of mosquitoes and midges, mainly but not quite obscuring the rarely-blinking eyeballs of the mostly-submerged, sludge-colored reptiles. Humidity, heat, stasis, torpor.

That is today's weather in New England. It was also yesterday's and that of the day before, and it will be tomorrow's as well.

O divine goddess of the conditioned air, I thank thee for thy cooling breath that refresheth my listless, depleted, heat-enervated soul, and for thy wise, judicious thermostat that gloweth in the dark and maintaineth my dwelling in shady comfort. 

Of course, I am knitting socks. I mean, why not? Inspired by a recent post on the Knitting Daily blog, I did a heel in the Eye of Partridge stitch.

I like this! It looks kind of Byzantine, and it also seems cushier and is possibly more durable than conventional heel stitches. I'm thinking about how Eye of Partridge can be adapted to toes, which usually bear more stress than do the heels.

Meanwhile, I finished the buttercup yellow socks of North Light Fibers' lofty and light alpaca/mohair sock yarn called Island Meadow Blend, but it is simply too hot hot hot to wear them, so they obligingly struck a footless pose for me amongst drooping greenery:

Please note the fine stitch definition of this yarn.

Gentle knitters, if you have additional interesting suggestions about coping with sticky, horrible, horrendously humid heat, I should be ever so pleased to share them with the readership. Do let me know.

Heartfelt

It's a self-evident truth that V-day is nearly upon us. Recently, as I perused the assortment of regular daily emails that fly into my Inbox, I happened upon this from Knitting Daily, a charming and completely free-of-charge felted heart pattern designed by Mags Kandis.

In a eureka! moment I realized that my knitting of these lumpy little valentines would accomplish much in one fell swoop:

• I'd use up scraps of yarn;
• I'd practice "wrapping" stitches, as the pattern called for;
• I'd practice short rows;
• I'd try out a knitting app I'd downloaded onto my Iphone;
• and...I'd end up with several funky knitted heart-like things.

Well, it all worked like a charm, I'm happy to say. 

Knitted heart in primitive evolutionary stage.

Does not this open-faced heart resemble a ginko leaf? And gingkos are evolutionarily both primitive, in the sense of being very ancient, and also sui generis among trees.  (Don't ask why I know this.)

Following the 18-row pattern, I did a long-tail cast-on (thanks to the Knitting Goddess, who demo'd it for me and led me through two practices), reviewed the wrap-and-turn process of short rows (again thanks to the Knitting Goddess, who was, I think, born knowing all of this very useful stuff), and worked my way down the lines. But...I'm not a diligent note-taker, and it soon was apparent that I needed an aide-memoire.

Then I recalled that a few weeks ago I'd done a search in the App Store using the keyword "knitting," and had found a few gizmos to download.  (About these as a group, stay tuned for a future post.) One, Knit Counter Lite, seemed like it might be just the ticket, and I must say it was. With a mere tap of my pinkie, I kept track of rows and where I was, exactly, in the midst of them.

This might not seem like such a big deal to those who enjoy the tactile sensations of paper and pencil to tick off the rows completed, but I am the kind of person who starts with a paper and pencil and then gets annoyed because I don't want to put down the knitting to use them, so I say forget that, and I then do promptly forget where I am in the pattern.  With the Knit Counter Lite app, I could hold the knitting and simultaneously add each row with a tiny tap, or subtract  if I ripped one (or more) out. No longer was I lost nel mezzo del caminn, as it were.

I can't remember if this app was free of charge, and my Iphone won't tell me. A more sophisticated Knit Counter by the same company (Cordless Dog) costs $3.99 to download, and it's probably worth the price of admission, as it does quite a bit more than the Lite version.

Practical-minded knitters are undoubtedly wondering what I plan to do with these fuzzy felted hearts...and so am I, though Ted thinks they make a great bikini.

At this point I'm not worried about their purpose, but more inclined to say, along with M. Pascal, "the heart has its reasons...."

(Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point.)