Limonene Knits

My second pair of socks for Summer of Socks is not the rousing success that the first one was. Is it possible to have second sock syndrome before you’ve even finished the first one? It’s not the pattern. My problems can be attributed to a combination of user error and fussiness over sock fit, but as a result of having to rip back all the way to the toe, it’s taken me over two weeks to finish one sock, and I am ready to be done.

At least I’m learning something from the project. It’s the special Summer of Socks ‘08 pattern, and it’s my first pair with a toe-up flap and gusset heel. So far I’m finding that these heels are a little bit harder to “fudge” than the short-row heels that I’ve done on every other sock I’ve knit have been, but that could just be the learning curve talking. My second go at it was much more successful than my first one was (knitting the instep of one size sock and the sole/heel of the next bigger size might have also helped). The mesh pattern does bias, in spite of a half-hearted attempt at taming it, but I think that’ll block out. Despite the setbacks, I’m very happy with the way the socks look, and how the lacy pattern breaks up the way the colors spiral around the foot.

I’ve also had a lot of other stuff on my plate over the past few weeks. I’ve had not one, but two secret knitting projects going on (which will be revealed in time, but I’d rather not spill all to the Readership right away). But knitting hasn’t been the only thing on my plate.

There have been lots and lots of my favorite summer fruits out there that just had to be eaten.

I celebrated my country’s birthday by watching the Macy’s fireworks display with several thousand of my closest friends.

I also ended my boycott of All-Star Game related activities by attending Bon Jovi’s concert in Central Park with my cousin and 50,000 of our closest mutual friends (there was very likely some overlap between those two groups of close, personal friends). Oh, and I got my Mactop back from her adventures in data retrieval and getting a new hard drive installed, which means that I’ve got a month’s backlog of photos to go through and upload. There are going to be quite a number of trips down knitting and baseball memory lane in the very near future.

Rest in peace, Bobby Murcer. I’m too young to remember him as a player (I was 3 when he retired), but his warm presence in the broadcasting booth was always welcome in my living room. His positive outlook in the face of treatment for brain cancer was inspirational, and he will be deeply missed.

I’m doing the Summer of Socks 2008 knitalong this year. I’m trying to be realistic about what my goals for the knitalong are. I know that I don’t have a chance in the competition to knit the most socks (it started at midnight on Saturday, and people had finished socks by Monday), and I’ll have to see how I do with my “socks on vacation” photo. So I’ll be treating it as an opportunity to work through some of my sock yarn stash and to try out some new patterns.

One sock pattern that I somehow managed not to knit yet are Monkey socks from Knitty. I’ve had them in the queue pretty much since the pattern came out, but just never got around to doing them. But once I received my latest skein from the All Raveled Up Sock Club, I knew it was fate. The name of this colorway is “Codemonkey,” so what could be more appropriate than, well, Code-Monkeys? The first one knitted up incredibly quickly for me. The lace pattern is very easy to memorize and read, and I found it to be simple enough to be social knitting.

I finished up the first one at a Sit ‘n’ Knit event on Wednesday night, at the Raul Midon concert in Madison Square Park.

My Mactop is in the shop with a busted hard drive, so I currently lack the ability to crop photos.

When she gets back, I have a lot of baseball game recapping to do, between seeing Joba and Andy start for the Yankees this past weekend (and yes, Andy Pettitte does have the sweetest pickoff move in baseball), and my plans to catch the Brooklyn Cyclones with M on Saturday, and the Red Sox with J over the holiday weekend. The season is three months old, but it’s finally baseball weather and I am loving every minute of it.

All I can say is thank goodness for air conditioning. It’s the first truly hot week of the summer season, and although I haven’t had to spend much time outside, the heat and humidity are just oppressive.

Before the warm front moved in, I did get a chance to see Joba Chamberlain’s Major League starting debut. Joba was clearly a bit jittery, and wasn’t always hitting his spots, but was a textbook example of why, if somebody took leave of their senses for long enough to put me in charge of a baseball team, I would never reveal a total pitch count ceiling to the press. Because when you have to get through as many innings as you can on 65 pitches, any opposing team worth their salt will take as many pitches as they possibly can. And the Blue Jays did just that, knocking him out after 2.1 innings.

Chamberlain was followed by Dan Giese, making his debut as a Yankee, and doing quite a respectable job, despite being tagged with the loss. It was one of those games that could have gone either way, until the bullpen completely imploded, allowing 6 runs and putting the game totally out of reach. Well, at least someone in the Yankees organization had a lot of fun photoshopping moustaches on the players who had grown them.

Perhaps the nicest thing that I can say about the game is that it gave me an opportunity to get a lot of knitting done. I turned the heel and got a couple inches into the cuff of my pinstriped socks.

There was one other good thing about the game. Because I stayed until the bitter, bitter end, I did get to see Derek Jeter get his 2,415th hit, putting him into a tie with Mickey Mantle for third on the all-time Yankees list.

Derek got his 2,416th hit the following game. Only Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth are ahead of him now, and he’s in some mighty rarefied company.

I don’t usually do memes, and I’ve never done one here, but since I’ve been tagged by both Penelope and Nicole, here goes nothing:

1) What was I doing 10 years ago?
This would be right about when I was recovering from my AP exams and getting ready to take finals during my senior year of high school.

2) What are 5 things on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order):
Run the dishwasher (if it cools down at night)
Finish up a gift
Pay the bills
Some experiments down in the research mines (I could have 5 things right there, but I’ll spare everyone the alphabet soup)
Staying hydrated

3) Snacks I enjoy:
Raspberry Milano Cookies
Fruit
ice cream
cheetos, or almost any cheesy chip or cracker

4)Things I would do if I were a billionaire:
Among other things:
Fully fund a scholarship or three at my high school.
Season tickets to the Yankees (good seats, even) Or, I suppose I could just buy a baseball team, take leave of my senses, and put myself in charge of it.
Lots and lots of travel: the 30 ML ballparks, the Grand Tour of Europe, and then the rest of the world

5) Places I have lived:
Sayreville, NJ
Cambridge, MA
Manhattan, NY
Until I was 22, I had always lived in Middlesex County. Only the state changed.

I’m also not big on tagging people, but if you want to do this, consider yourself tagged. I have a sneaking suspicion that I’m the last person to do this one anyway.

I seem to have spent the entire last week spectating one event or another. I started out by watching the Yankees trounce the Mariners on Friday night.

It was rewarding to finally see the Yankees put some runs on the board and get a win, in a game that included some fancy baserunning by the Captain, a clean outing for Andy Pettitte, and an opposite field double by Jason Giambi (I know the last one is hard to believe, but it did happen).

I spent the rest of the weekend in Massachusetts meeting friends and going to parties of all sorts. I could have gone to Minds Eye Yarns out in Porter Square before attending a pottery painting wedding shower, but elected to stick around Somerville for their Memorial Day Parade instead.

In addition to marching bands, local politicians and veterans, the Somerville parade also features re-enactors of just about every war since the Revolution and a very healthy contingent of Shriners. I know that the Shriners do very, very good work, but I have never seen so many forms of miniaturized transportation in one place in my life.

Finally, I watched people lining up to watch Manhattanhenge:

I missed getting to see how things lined up at sunset though, because I was heading north, and Central Park blocks the view.

Unfortunately, one of the things that I *wasn’t* watching was what I was doing. I was so happy that I had finished knitting my second February Baby Sweater after knitting group that I didn’t really look too closely before washing it. If I had, I might have noticed a pretty crucial flaw:

I couldn’t get the sleeves to block out evenly because one sleeve is a lace repeat longer than the other. Did I mention that I didn’t realize this until the sweater was sopping wet? I had to wait a day for it to dry out before I could rip back and fix things (although I was sorely tempted to make a go at it when the sweater was merely damp), but now that I have, I’m feeling much better about the whole project. I still think it’s a darling little sweater, and if I had more babies in my life right now, I’d definitely be knitting even more of these.

I’ve read a bit about Elizabeth Zimmermann in knitting magazines, and I’ve picked up a couple of her books, but I had made it through several years of knitting without ever attempting one of her patterns.  It seemed like high time to fix that, with the February Baby Sweater on Two Needles from Knitters’ Almanac.  After all, how can you go wrong with garter stitch, a simple lace pattern and almost-seamless construction?

You really can’t.  The terseness of the directions was a bit alarming at first, as the entire thing is about half a page long, but sometimes things really are that simple.  This sweater is a very refreshing knit.

The details:

Yarn: Debbie Bliss Merino DK (just under 3 skeins, left over from Wicked
Needles: 4 mm
Buttons: From M&J Trimming
Notes: I took a page from Anne-Marie and made 3 buttonholes at the top of the sweater instead of all the way down the cardigan (I also took her advice to start the buttonholes before the pattern mentions doing them). The other main change I made to the pattern was to make it seamless by putting the stitches for the sleeves on hold until the body was done and then picking up stitches under the arm for knitting in the round.  I’m aiming for a 6-month size, but I know so little about the relative proportions of babies that I can only hope for the best.  The sweater is 11 inches wide, and 10 inches long, if that means anything.

What can you do when you’ve just finished what may be the sweetest baby sweater ever? Why, you cast on another one.

This one is Knitpicks Shine Sport in Orchid that was re-purposed from another intended project, and 3.75 mm needles instead of 4 mm. It’s going even faster than the first one now that I’ve figured out what I’m doing, and I bought the cutest little duck buttons at Tender Buttons on 62nd St.

And speaking of ducks. . .

They’re back!

My Everlasting Bagstopper is complete! I bound off during the Sit ‘n’ Knit Sock Exchange Party, which was especially appropriate, because I’d won the yarn at one of the group’s parties. I ended up supplementing the skein of Allhemp 6 I’d won with a second skein from Knitty City because my attempt at making a one-skein bag wasn’t working out, and it was definitely worth it to have a proportional-looking tote. Despite my casting on 4 fewer stitches for the base and using US 10 needles instead of US 10.5 needles, the bag turned out huge, and it expands to fit pretty much anything that I could want to carry in it. I’m a little nervous about how sturdy the job I did sewing the handles on will be, but hopefully I reinforced it enough. I’m not usually a fan of knitting with plant fibers (they’re really tough on my hands), but the hemp yarn wasn’t too hard to work with, and this bag sure does knit up quickly. I’m also a big fan of the bright saturated green color of the yarn. It really “pops” in person.

The grosgrain ribbon that I’m using as handles was purchased during my first-ever excursion to M&J Trimming. I bought 1.5 yards, but I ended up only using about a yard of it total. This is a very large, very stretchy bag, and longer handles than that would have resulted in bruised knees. I also picked up some absolutely darling daisy buttons for another project. I was really impressed by the selection of ribbons, and buttons and laces and stuff that they sell there, and I’m looking forward having an excuse to go back. Perhaps my bagstopper will need a drawstring closure after all. . .

Despite the chilly evenings and fluctuating temperatures, there are still plenty of reminders that spring has actually arrived in the city. The lilacs are in bloom in Central Park and elsewhere.

I came across a large stand of them by the Sheep Meadow when I was cutting across the park on my way home from Knitty City.

I’m not used to seeing lilacs that are this particular shade of pink-purple, but I like it. And anything that makes the city smell nice for a few weeks a year is much appreciated.

A while back I posted a picture of some sock yarn I was casting on, and then I never mentioned it again. That wasn’t because I had flitted on to a new project in the meantime (for once), but because the project in question was for my knitting group’s secret sock exchange, and I didn’t want to spill the beans. But our socks have been swapped, and can now be revealed:

They’re Pomatomus by Cookie A. from Knitty, and they’re in Fleece Artist Nova Sock in Amethyst. I made them for my sock partner, Nicole, who has awesome taste in yarn, hobbies, and spectator sports (although she may be a bit misguided in which team she roots for). Anne-Marie did a great job in partnering us up based on our mutual love of baseball, and this is yet another example of how knitting has allowed me to meet people who are just all around super-cool

And here are the adorable socks that I got in exchange (see, it wasn’t a pyramid scheme at all!). They’re in Socks that Rock Silkie, and are simultaneously cushy, cozy, and really snazzy looking. Pretty much all of my favorite colors are in there, and I love them.

At the end of the exchange, we took a group sock shot.

An afternoon with happy feet, all around!

There’s nothing like an early-spring jaunt to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. When J was in town early in April, we headed out there to see the beginnings of the cherry tree blossoms.

At the time, the cherry tree map (mouse over the tree symbols for pictures) indicated that there were only a couple of trees in bloom, but they were definitely worth seeing.

Most of the cherry blossom action was happening around the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden. The pond is well stocked with koi, who clearly expected us to feed them, and ducks, who were fighting over their turf. There were so many ducks in the garden that day that pretty much every body of water that was duck-width or wider had a few ducks in it.

Of course, there’s a lot more to the garden than the cherry trees. They had fountains and bunnies. There are plenty of garden walks that are nicely landscaped, as well as a series of conservatories that are connected underground. The tops of the conservatories poke out into the paved area where the snack bar is, and it’s altogether a pretty efficient use of space.

This was my indication of what a classy place the Botanic Garden is. They have Society Garlic–none of that riff-raff garlic for them.

They had a few really neat looking bonsai as well. I really admired the ones that were grown over and around large rocks. It’s a form that I’m not so familiar with.

While we were still at the garden, J was kind enough to re-enact winter for a few moments so I could get a picture of him in his Be True To Your School Scarf. Now that I’ve gotten to see it in person, I’m so happy with how it turned out, and that he liked it.

Sit ‘n’ Knit NYC had its spring party last night, and in honor of Earth Day, we had a cup cozy competition. I got a late start on mine, casting on the night before, getting a few rows in and then knitting feverishly throughout the event to try to finish it in time (I came close, but didn’t quite make it. Note to self: when knitting for speed, avoid sport weight yarn). The winning cozy of the evening was a very pretty green color and was laced up with a matching satin ribbon, and unfortunately I didn’t write down the knitter’s name. As always, I had a great time chatting with everyone, and came away with several different projects to try in the future, including the Maude sweater, which is really cute in person. I also won one of the door prizes in a raffle! It’s the skein of Hemp for Knitting Allhemp 6, in color 019, a beautiful spring green. In keeping with the green theme of the evening, I think I’ll turn the yarn into a shopping bag. I might see how much of the Everlasting Bagstopper I can get out of one skein and pick up a second skein if needed.

All too soon it was time for me to head down to Brooklyn for my regular pub quiz night. I felt bad having to run out of the party early (especially after winning the raffle), but in the end, I’m glad I did. It turned out that none of the other teams of two at the pub quiz wanted to join forces, so if I’d flaked out, my friend D. would have been playing alone, which can’t be much fun. The fact that the two of us somehow snatched victory from the jaws of defeat certainly didn’t hurt either.

Although I didn’t manage to get all the way through my cup cozy at the knitting party, between the subway ride and the quiz I had time to finish knitting and bind it off. Here’s my cup cozy moonlighting as a soda cozy at pub quiz.

And here’s my cozy doing the job it was intended for on my midmorning coffee. I sure am glad that I picked yarn that is busy, superwash and heavy on the brown for this project because I’ve already managed to spill coffee on it. I have a feeling that this cozy is going to be getting washed on a very regular basis. But hey, it keeps my hand cool and my coffee warm, and what more can I ask from an evening’s worth of knitting?