Its all true, the boogie girl is real, and you've found her. She knits, sews, spins, does pottery and writes it all down in this blog.
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Afterthought
When I posted the picture of the skully socks there was a question about the heels. They are afterthought heels. This was a new technique for me and one that I love love love. I thought I'd show all how I do it. I know, nothing earth shattering to many but I find each and every new process and technique I learn to be enthralling.
On the sock that I'm showing, I knit from the cuff down to the toe but you could definitely do it the other way as well. This heel is really great for showing off stripes. Or making stripes like I did with the skully socks.
1. I knit the leg of the sock to my desired length. Instead of starting the heel I grabbed a piece of contrasting yarn and knit my heel stitches with that yarn. Then I knit back over that yarn with the sock yarn I'm using and continued on down the foot.
2. I continue down the foot. I make the foot portion 4 inches shorter than the foot I need, then I make my toe decreases. After breaking the yarn and kitchenering the toe I can go back and finish the heel. I insert my needles into the stitches on either side of my waste yarn.
If you have keen eyes you might notice I picked up the wrong side of the stitches on one of the needles. I could have dropped the back off and picked them up correctly. I didn't do that. I just knit through the back loop on those so that I wouldn't have twisted stitches.
3. I then undo the waste yarn. You could cut through it but I don't like to waste yarn even if it is waste yarn. Not to mention you'd have to pick out all the little bits. I just undo it all and voila! I'm ready to knit on
4.I set it up like I would a toe and do pair decreases until I decrease down to the right number of stitches. Then I knit an extra row even and kitchener the stitches. You can't tell that the heel was done after the rest of the sock was:
Here is my finished sock
I suppose I should try to make a second one now.
________________________________________________
Have you voted in yesterday's yarn poll?
I wanna know who voted for me to buy more yarn almost the second the post was published. Amazing. I published the post, went to make sure it published correctly and noticed someone had already voted. Some of you are super fast!
Jean asked me a bunch of good questions about yesterdays yarn choices and I thought I'd answer them here so you'd all know.
1. Have you tried putting the colors in pairs up against your face to see which combinations are the most flattering? --- I feel I look equaly good in all colors. I know nobody really does. But for me it's allabout how I feel. I rarely look in the mirror and in fact have gone most of the day at times with toothpast smudge or something on my face. I try to look in the mirror after I brush my teeth now. So the color to me isn't about how it looks on me, but how it looks on the garment.
2. What would you wear to coordinate with the sweater? --- Jeans. I don't have to get dressed up on a daily basis. If I did, I might look in the mirror. Coordination is not a problem and if I didn't coordinate well, there isn't anyone but a couple of kids to tell me so. Have I shown you how the 5 year old dresses?
3. Also do you already have sweaters in any of those combinations?. I do not have any sweaters that are in any of these combos. This answer to this question has suprised me because I'm one of those that goes to the closet and finds all the same color. Black and olive. Luckily my aging eyes don't like to knit black so I've branched out to different colors.
All day yesterday the grey/black and the burgundy/black were running even. It looks like I might have to have a "run off" poll or... swatch.... *gasp*