Welcome, all of you who surfed over from my guest post on ProfHacker! I think this means I should probably update this blog more often. I didn't quite intend to take a month-long blogging break, but the summer vacation mindset was hard to shake off. Anyway, I still feel like writing about knitting, so herewith, some Random Bullets (TM):
- Cool thing I just learned to do: knitting two socks at a time on a big circular needle, from the toe up. The Mash-Up Magic Toe-Up Socks Tutorial has been invaluable. If you knit, and you've never done the two-socks-at-once thing, give it a shot. I now know why people swear by the magic loop method: there's no way to succumb to the dreaded second sock syndrome ("But I just finished a sock! I have to do the exact same thing over again? Bored now."); you're less likely to wind up with inconsistent tension; and you can make sure that your two knitted things are exactly the same length. Next up: two Farinelli gloves at a time, and after that, if all goes well, two Bobbie gloves at a time. Because no way am I patient enough to make something that elaborate twice in a row with the same yarn.
- Other cool thing I just learned to do that looks complicated but really isn't: beaded knitting. One of my knitting groups is making a slew of ornaments with beads and metallic yarn; they're so nifty that I might make a few of my own to give to relatives this Christmas. The fiddly part is stringing the right number of beads onto your yarn before you start, and after that, you just have to remember when to slide one in between a couple of stitches.
- Fannish knitting is one of my favorite things ever. I've been rewatching the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy and thinking I should reread the books.* On a whim, I started searching for Tolkienesque patterns on Ravelry, and found these in a matter of seconds:
- One Ring scarf (the question here is: does one dare wear the One Scarf to Rule Them All? Wouldn't one have to worry about becoming a wool-wraith?)
- A whole series of fannish projects; I particularly like the Dwarrowdelf shawl.
- A chart to add the Tree of Gondor to your sweater.
- Hobbit feet socks, vastly impractical but hilarious.
- Of course there's also a LOTR group, which I've just joined, on Ravelry, with a great list of relevant patterns. Some of them are only vaguely related to the books, but no less lovely for that. I was immediately enamored of this tree-themed sweater, because I'm a sucker for any kind of complex cable pattern that looks like a big tree. (Which is why the vastly ambitious Yggdrasil afghan is in my Ravelry queue.)
* The movie marathon was prompted by my coming across this guide to Howard Shore's score to the three Lord of the Rings movies, which I highly recommend, even if you're not a music theory person. I'd never even noticed the "Into the West" foreshadowing until this time around.
Amanda! I was just catching up on my profhacker reading and was excited to see your knitting post. Just the thing to brighten up a Friday evening (after a looong week) ref desk shift.
Posted by: Bronwen | September 24, 2010 at 05:47 PM
Glad you liked it -- and even more that it brightened up your ref desk stint! Lately it seems like all I want to do is immerse myself in the theory of lace and start designing shawls with clever literary names, or spend hours charting cable patterns.
Posted by: Amanda | September 25, 2010 at 03:20 PM
I've been on a lace kick these past few years (I've just discovered circular lace knitting and am trying to figure out what I want to do with it). I've been kicking around an idea for a Metropolis shawl (from the ashes of the idea for a Metropolis sweater). Maybe we can compare notes at THATcamp in Nov!
Posted by: Bronwen | September 26, 2010 at 10:50 AM