Travel knitting

So, tomorrow we go haring off to the Continent for ten days, and I'm trying to figure out what to take to knit. The plane trip isn't all that long, but I'll be in a car touring Bavaria and Austria for a while, so I need some small projects to work on.

Thankfully, I've got a couple of design ideas that need some work, so I'm packing up bits of yarn and lots of different needle sizes, a bunch of Xeroxed pages from Barbara Walker Vol I and II, and I'm hoping for the best. Here's what's on the docket:

A new sock pattern, (maybe) for Sock Madness 2011.

Some swatching for the 4! Ounce! Challenge!.

My Aran Necklace Tank (wait, that's not my design...). This baby is now joined for the body, and it's just mindless knitting in the round from now until I run out of yarn. So I'm packing the last of the splittier-then-all-get-out Jo Sharp Soho DK and hoping for the best.

I'm afraid blogging will be spotty for the next little while - I've got one post in reserve that I'll schedule for next week, but other then that, things will be quiet. And since the Wollmeise shop is closed when we'll be in Munich, I don't even have the lure of serious yarn pr0n to tease you with. And no one is sorrier then me, believe me...

Drummossie

So a few years ago, I knit a pair of entrelac socks. This pair, in fact, in some hideous Trekking XXL colorway that included black, grey, chartreuse, yellow and kelly green. They were something else - fun to knit, definitely challenging, but they ended up too small for me. Entrelac definitely does not have the side-to-side stretch of stockinette, so I gave them to my Mom. But I wanted to knit a pair that would fit me, and I wanted socks with entrelac on the top and stockinette on the sole.

After a bit of mucking around, I came up with these.

They ended up being for Himself - Trekking XXL for the entrelac, and a bit of Knit Picks Essential to finish off the heels and soles. I wrote the pattern up and submitted it to Knitty, but it didn't fit for them. Then last summer, I saw a call for sock designs for Sock Madness IV (which I've mentioned a bit before), and sent in the pattern for these. They liked it, and yesterday it was released as the final round pattern for this year's Madness.

The construction is either ingenious or diabolical, depending on your mood. You start with the toe, and then put half the stitches on a holder. The other half are worked as a flat entrelac panel for instep up to the ankle. Then you provisionally cast on the rest of the stitches for the leg, and knit entrelac in the round up to the cuff. The heel flap and sole are worked down from the provisional cast on, and are attached to the instep flap at either side.

So far there are six or seven pairs underway, including the four finalists. It's been a bit over 24 hours, and I'm thinking someone is going to be finished pretty darn soon. Which is amazing, since entrelac is not exactly a fast way to knit anything.

If you're on Ravelry and want to watch the contest wind down, the group board is here. I will be releasing the pattern in three sizes in the near future, so keep an eye out for it here and on Rav.

Designing

In addition to doing some knitting and spinning, I've been playing around with some design ideas for a while, and I just now emailed off a couple of proposals for The Sanguine Gryphon's Fall pattern line.

The inspiration for the pattern line is Steampunk (hurrah!), and I came up with a pair of mitts and a vest that I'll be working on. Even if they don't get accepted for TSG, I'll still work them up and publish them myself or through someone else.

The mitts were inspired by Tower Bridge here in London, which is a veritable Monstrosity of Victorian architecture.

But it is pretty...the mitts look like this:

This pattern is even already written up and ready to go. Although now I'm thinking that an elbow length version might be nice, as well as a shorter, more manly wrist length version. We'll see...

The second pattern is for a women's vest with a deep V neck. The swatch looks like this:

This is knit in the same overdyed yarn I used for Manon, and I like the way the stitch pattern looks in a semi-solid. I'm torn between liking it better unstretched, as above, or stretched out.

I like the laciness of this, but am also drawn to the cushiness of the unstretched version. We'll see...all I've got beyond these swatches is a very poorly drawn sketch, and some scribbled notes. Maybe I'll get to working on it one of these days. I'll keep you posted on the proposals in any event.

Now back to your regularly scheduled blog silence.

FO: Ply by Night cowl and mitt set

Pattern: cowl blogged here, mitts just made up out of my head using linen stitch and more or less the same made up pattern I used for the manly mitts.
Yarn: handspun BFL singles from Chris at Briar Rose Fibers, blogged here in its final form. I used about 3/4 of the yarn, lets say 180 yds for the pair.
Needles: US 5/3.75 mm
Start/finish (for mitts): 12 December - 14 December 2009
Comments: No mods because it's my own pattern. I cast-on 47 stitches and worked in linen stitch pattern for 2 inches. Then I increased one stitch at beginning and end of row (2 sts increased) every third row five times, working new stitches in pattern. worked for about 2 more inches, then put 10 extra stitches on waste yarn, rejoined and worked 2 inches. Bound off in purl. Picked up 10 extra stitches plus 3 more and worked in linen stitch for 0.75 inches around the thumb, then bound off in purl.

Thankfully my mom's hands aren't too big, because the linen stitch has very little elasticity. But the set was very well received!

Ehem.

You'd think, given the other project I've taken on this month, that very little would be getting done in the knitting department.

However, knitting makes very good procrastination/distraction from writing bad fiction (really, really bad fiction), so here's some of the things in the works:

A quick pair of socks for Boo using my 99 pence Oxfam yarn. It's been a long time since I did any really self-striping socks, and they're kind of fun.

Why write a novel when you can write a knitting pattern? Indeed...this is Version 2.0 of these mitts, which I'd really like to have done and published by the beginning of December. They'd make really good Christmas presents! This version is in Blue Sky Alpacas alpaca/silk. Yum.

And speaking of Christmas,

Back and,

palm of the Snail Mittens. I am adoring everything about these except for the fact that I'm having to knit them on size 000 (or 00 - I'm not sure) needles to get gauge. Ooof!

So, what's on your needles for the holidays?