Quite a little while ago, I entered Karrie‘s Fake Rhinebeck Contest. To my great surprise and delight, I won! The yarn lazed around my kitchen and living room for a bit, waiting for me to get my act together. Let’s not mull on how long that took. Look! Pretty yarn! Thanks, Karrie.

The yarn still hasn’t told me what it wants to be. I’m tempted to do something similar to the Red Bird Knits’ Latvian Wedding Socks pattern with it. Time shall tell.

The yarn is Syncopation self-striping sock yarn in ‘Dayspa’.

I am relatively new to stitch markers that aren’t little circles of plastic, twisters, or bits of yarn, so I was thrilled with these cute markers Karrie put in. You can’t tell in this photo, but behind the ‘knit’ and the heart both look like knitted fabric. They give me a thrill quite out of proportion to their size. Must get more stitch markers.

	Hubby’s House Socks are coming along. He decided on a Greek Key pattern for the top. I was worried about this yarn, as he asked me to duplicate my colors from the first Hogwarts Sock Swap that I did. Thank goodness I took some notes.
Even with the notes, the colors aren’t quite the same; the new yarn is a bit lighter than the first go-round. I’m not sure whether that’s a function of the base yarn I used, the fact that I dyed more at a time (though I upped the dye amount to compensate), or just the dyeing fates. At any rate, John likes it, and that’s what matters.

The hollow shell-of-a-ball of the old yarn is on the right (Fingering weight KnitPicks base) and the new yarn on the left (DK weight Louet Gems base.)

Time for a little show and tell. This time, I’ll show you what got sent off to my Hogwarts Sock Swap pal.

Meet Mirabella.

I spent a lot of time monkeying with the pattern at first, because I couldn’t seem to get anything to look right. I finally realized that I needed a smaller needle and more stitches, which was a problem with the lace and cables. After investigating several other cabling options, I decided to widen the lace panel to 21 stitches.

It all worked out, thank goodness.My favorite part of these socks is the twisted stitches up the side, which I accented by using the toe/cuff color.

Started:	October 2007
Finished:	October 2007
Pattern:	Mirabella by Mary Joy Gumayagay
Yarn:	VanCalcar Acres Sock Yarn
Needles:	Skakel size 0
Notes:	Modified to work on 64 stitches with a size 0 needle. Modified lace to 21 stitches instead of 17. Cuffs: worked 12 rows of k2p2 ribbing. Didn’t work k2tog on each side of last row before cuff; instead, k2tog on each side of cable in stockinette on back to allow cable to flow into ribbing.

The other “must haves” for the swap were yarn, a pattern, and a bookmark. I found a lovely blue and purple handpainted yarn at my LYS, and included a Red Bird Knits fair isle pattern in the box.

For the bookmark, I chose Ravenclaw-colored beads from my local beading place. The brown bead is agate, and the blue/bronze one is porcelain. The bookmark came together quickly and looks useful – I see more of these in my future. The pattern for the book mark was Book Thong.

Finally, I sewed up a quick knitting bag in house colors. This drawstring bag is based on the Yarnmonster’s bag tutorial. Instead of leaving an opening for the drawstring in the top seam, I put buttonholes on either side of the outer bag and fed opposing drawstrings through. I’ve always liked the ‘cinch it from both sides’ kind of bag.

I’d show you photos, but we had a drive failure and I lost about 10 days of photos. Ah, well.

That’s it! I’m done with swaps for a while; time to sit back and knit for my family for a bit.

So, awhile back I built a Lego swift, and it was workable. Then, I found a box of K’nex on sale at the toy store for $10. I couldn’t resist! The result is a swift that works more smoothly than the Lego one, which creaked and groaned quite a bit. Besides, the boys started building specialized contraptions last night, and the Lego swift was cannibalized for parts. R.I.P.

Here is version one of the K’nex swift. It’s horizontal like the Lego swift, and would have worked well with a few improvements. The last arm-joins also held the yarn. In fact, they held the yarn a little too well, causing it to tangle around the joiny bits during winding. Grrrr. I wound with it once, and then let the boys tear it up to build robots.

This morning, after the unfortunate demise of the Lego swift, I once again needed to wind yarn. So, out came the one box of K’nex I own. Version two of the swift:

This worked all right, but see how loose the yarn is? That’s a tangle waiting to happen, and it did. What’s a gal to do? Why, lengthen the arms, of course. Anyone playing along at home will notice I also had to add height to allow the longer arms to swing. This took some creative joining due to my lack of K’nex. A larger selection will yield a much prettier product. Here’s what I ended up with:

This skein of Louet Gems is sitting nice and tight now. If it were a bit longer, I’d have added orange clips to slide along the end of the arms to adjust for length. As it is, my skein was sitting on the blue rods. Here’s a close-up of the arm end. The orange clips weren’t present for my skein.

Happy building! Those of you looking to build your own (you know who you are) will be happy to know that K’nex are color-coded. So, it should be easy to follow along from the photo. If you don’t have the same colors, experiment. The K’nex system is built so that parts can be swapped out (for example, two blue rods and a joiner is the same length as a red rod.)

My husband takes all of this as a sign that he needs to buy me a real swift for Christmas. Who am I to argue?

[PS - The tub o' K'nex I bought was called the "Silver Edition Value Tub".]

Hey, y’all. Long time no see.

I’ve been busy for a bit, but couldn’t show you any of the yumminess because it was all destined for my swap buddy, the wonderful Duchess of Gravity. So, I thought I’d start back in again by showing you what the Duchess sent in my Hogwarts Sock Swap 2 goody bag. It showed up on time near the end of October… I’m just this late with the show-and-tell. Lookie!

I’m pleased as can be. See the pretty socks? Okay, they were prettier before I stretched ‘em all out of shape by wearing them yesterday, but still. The cathedral bookmark reminds me of my mom, and the bag is pure genius. The yarn? Yummy, squishy Louet Gems in just the right color to go with jeans, and plain enough to show off any lace or cables I throw at it. Mmmmm. Oh, sorry, my mind drifted for a bit there.

It took me a while to hunt up everything for this photo, as the patterns were in a pile where I’d been showing them off, the socks were in my room, the bag has my current project in it… well, you get the idea. Her pattern choices were fun. I received Cookie’s Gothic Spires pattern – which I’ve been fighting the urge to cast on since I opened the package – and a lovely mosaic pattern that I’ve never seen before called Ode to Eames.

Thanks, dear Duchess, for such a fun swap.

In other news, I’ve been swatching for Rogue. I *had* been swatching for Eris, but you can only go down so many needles sizes with Aran-weight yarn. I was knitting it on US-2′s and STILL not getting gauge. At that point, it occurred to me that buying the pattern for Rogue – which I’ve ogled from afar for many years – was cheaper than buying new yarn for Eris.

So, swatchy-swatchy. I got perfect flat-knitting gauge with a US-6. I’m certain that watching the swatch will sufficiently screw it up; we’ll see. I don’t have US-6 circulars to swatch on, so I guess I’ll have to shop.

Have a great weekend, everyone. It’s a three-day weekend for our family, and I plan to snuggle in and enjoy it to the fullest.