Sock Wars

I saw the article about Sock Wars today on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

I love to knit socks. I wish I'd known about it before. Players eliminate each other by knitting socks. If you are eliminated you have to mail the unfinished socks you are working on to the person who eliminated you, so that she can finish them off and eliminate another person.

Sock Wars has a Yahoogroup.

While looking for information about Soxk Wars, I came across a knitting blog I like called Yarnivation. I think but am not completely sure that the blog author Julie Gardner is the organizer of Sock Wars. I like the works in progress chart in the side bar. I want something like that.

Sock wars is not to be confused with the other Sock Wars, which is Star Wars acted out by sock puppets.

KnitML

Two people sent me a link to KnitML yesterday.

The KnitML Project's main goal is to develop and promote adoption of a standard content model for knitting patterns. By developing a community-supported specification (KnitML) and providing basic rendering and transformation tools, the KnitML Project aims to make KnitML easy to use and valuable to the knitter.

Old Knitting Books

I recently got this knitting and crocheting book at the Book Mill. It was published in the 1940s.



When I was looking through it, I was struck by how the illustrations for knitting books looked back then. The stuff they showed looked less perfect than the items in my modern knitting books. It looked more like how things really look after you hand knit them. All the pictures were black and white, which nowadays you really would never see. This image of a cute little girl in woolens holding her kitten by its neck was particularly hilarious:



But then I decided to pull out some of my modern knitting books to compare, and I discovered that the photos illustrating some of these are also fairly freaky. This are from Loop de Loop, which I bought mainly because it was on sale. They seem to have been trying to go for some kind of moody arty vibe with their illustrations.

This is the best weird image of the bunch, but there are several others in the book where the adults posing with children seem to be angry, resentful, psychotic, or suicidal.



Just put the child down. Slowly. Slowly.

Jason's Birthday Hat

This is the hat I made for Jason for his birthday. He ripped off the tassle. Looks good with the spikey nubbin.

First Mittens

I recently knit my first pair of mittens. Mittens are so quick to knit and so easy, I knit three! Actually, I didn't knit three because it was so fun. I knit three because I messed up the increases on the first one and it was so much uglier than the second one that I felt obligated to make a replacement.



There is a trick to making pretty increases that I had forgotten. When you increase, to avoid having big, gaping holes where you did your increases, you have to knit through the back of the loop, to twist the hole closed. You don't see holes in my ugly mitten because I went in and darned them closed. But it still looks lumpy and ugly.



I knit these with double strands of yarn. One yellow and one cream-colored. The pattern of which color shows is completely random. I did the thumbs a different color under Vigo's design guidance. You might also notice that one of the mittens has a longer cuff than the others. That's because I was daydreaming.

To make these mittens, I used the recipe from Knitty. I love their basic recipes.

Socks for Vigo

I have been knitting a fair amount lately. I have a couple sweaters I'm working on. One of them is stalled because I can't for the life of me understand the pattern and the other because I had to roll a skein of yarn into a ball before continuing and it completely threw me off track.

But, with the sweaters stalled, I knit those two hats and a pair of socks for Vigo, and I also just finished my first pair of mittens, also for Vigo. (Picture coming soon).

Vigo chose this yarn for socks about two years ago, so it's about time I got around to knitting them. It's some of that miraculous self-patterning yarn. I don't know if you can tell in the photo, but it has strands of metallic silver running through it.

Vigo's Space Invader hat

vigo helped design this by choosing which Space Invaders to put on it. I'll eventually put up the pattern, but I think my next how-to will be "How to design your own Space Invaders hat." That's more interesting than patterns.

Space Invader Baby Hat

I just made this hat for a friend's baby. It fits a baby head, 6-12 months. Read on for the pattern.

Materials:
Black and white yarn--I used Cascade brand 220 Superwash (100 grams/3.5oz 220 yards)
Size 8 (US) circular needles
Size 8 (US) double-pointed needles
Three stitch markers
The gauge is 1.5 sts for 1 cm, or 15 sts for 10 cm.
**********
Charts
It'll probably be helpful to just draw the charts out for yourself on graph paper.
Chart #1

Chart #2

Chart #2, too
*********
Instructions
1. Cast on 7 st with black yarn
2. Knit the ear flap, from the bottom up, following chart #1. You'll increase by 2 sts every other row until you have 17 sts. Add a st after the first st and right before the last st of every increase row. Don't despair if your increases leave holes that are kind of ugly. You can go in and patch them up a bit when you weave in the ends. Make the first and last stitch of every row pretty tight.
3. When you've got the earflap knitted according to the chart, cut the thread (kind of longish) and remove the flap from the needles to put it aside. You should finish on a wrong side row and be ready for a right side next.
4. Repeat step two (but not step three) for the second earflap.
5. When you've finished the chart for the second earflap, turn it over and knit across, continuing the seed stitch pattern on the edges.
6. Cast on 8 sts.
7. Put the other earflap on the right side of the circular needles. Knit across, continuing the seed stitch pattern on the edges.
8. Cast on 18 sts.
9. Join the two end of your knitting into a circle and knit around five rows in seed stitch, but knit in garter stitch over the garter stitches in the center of the two earflaps. You're making a garter stitch border around the hat.
10. Knit around three rows in garter stitch.
11. Find the center back of the hat and mark off three stitches on either side (6 sts between two markers). These are marking the beginning and end of the repeat space invader pattern that goes around the hat. 54 sts or 23 x 2 +8. Don't worry about the math unless you want to.
12. Knit past the first marker and right after the second marker, start the pattern from Chart #2 at the bottom left and read the chart from left to right. Because you're knitting in the round, you will read every row of the chart from left to right and from the bottom up. I drew out the entire pattern, even though you really only should need the two repeating invaders.
13. Knit chart #2.
14. Stockinette stitch 3 rows.
15. Begin decreases every 20 sts. Decrease 6 sts every other row for 8 rows.
16. Transfer knitting to double-pointed needles.
17. Decrease every row until you have only 8 or 9 sts left.
18. Tie off the top of the hat
19. Weave in loose ends.
20. Block flaps with a steamy iron to make them flat.

Adirondack Chair

We've been talking about maybe making some lawn furniture for the back yard.

This is my favorite design after a quick look around at the free DIY patterns out there. It's from Popular Mechanics, which is one of my favorite magazines to get when I take the plane.

Here's a nice, simple how-to for an adirondack chair on Amateur Woodworker.

Eleven steps to an adirondack chair from Build Easy.

Cadavre Esquis

These are the drawings Serena, Brent, and I made together on my last night in Baja

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Skeletal Systems

A CHARACTER STUDY OF 22 PRESENT AND PAST CARTOON CHARACTERS, by Michael Paulus



via

Nosquito

Nosquito.
Fatal to the Flesh.
by Rafeal Rozendal

Brain Wave Etch-a-Sketch

Brain Wave Etch-a-Sketchon Tom Moody's blog, on Digital Media Tree.

Joe Sacco

I wonder if Joe Sacco the comic-book artist is related to the Bowl Haven Saccos.



via Biblioklept

Crochet my Spinal Cord

Neuroscientific art via the Kircher Society.

Frances Trombly

Frances Trombly makes incredible things. This pile of birthday trimmings is all knitted and embroidered. Check out her site and look at the work gallery. It's inspiring.