Knit Flix

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Knit. Sock. Love.


Knit. Sock. Love.
Image used with permission


A true labor of love, Knit. Sock. Love. is the latest book from the mind of Cookie A. The look and feel of the book is beautiful and sings the praises of Cookie and her attention to detail--believe it or not, this is a self-published book.

So here's the deal--the physical book and a full PDF of the book are available and if you buy them together you'll receive an $11 discount.

Talk about the ultimate in flexibility--you can have the PDF available from whatever compute device you use, you can search the PDF, and you can print out a pattern and mark it up as needed. But if you're like me you'll also want the book. There's something very satisfying about holding a book in your hands, feeling the weight of the words and photos, and admiring the physical qualities of the product.

The book is gorgeous and full of beautiful photos by Laura Kicey with multiple photos of each of the 19 designs that are uniquely Cookie. Of the designs, 7 are new and the balance have been re-worked and re-edited. All but one are worked from charts. As you would expect, all of the patterns are innovative and have the undeniable CookieAesthetic.

Cookie also devised amazing diagrams that show where each stitch pattern section is used and where they appear in relation to the construction of the sock--the diagrams are like 3D models that are cut open and shown flat.

Think: Industrial Engineering meets Knitting. Genius.

Although I haven't knit a pair of socks from K.S.L. yet, I feel like I know them all intimately. You see, I was the Technical Editor for the book. I had the pleasure of meeting many of the new patterns before they were named.

Some socks were not that difficult to check while most required fairly extensive charting to keep track of the pattern changes and stitch counts. Then there were those "other" patterns (I'm looking at you, Wedge). That was the one that required me to practically knit an entire mini-sock to make sure I could understand what was going on with all the short rows. If you're not familiar with Wedge, take a look at its diagram on page 99 and you'll get an idea of the difficulty in understanding where you are in the pattern without actually knitting it. My head couldn't do it, but with needles and yarn it all made sense.


Wedge diagram
Image used with permission


Now that the book is out in the wild, I'm combing discussion groups to see if anyone's reporting errors. That is where my anxiety lies now, not with deadlines or checking and rechecking numbers and sizes and formatting and page numbers and styleguides and checklists.

Knit. Sock. Love. is the most challenging Tech Editing job that I've had to date and is absolutely without a doubt the most rewarding. Thank you very much for including me Cookie, I feel very fortunate to have been given the opportunity to contribute to the book.

Knit. Sock. Love. describes this collection perfectly.

Bobbin's Nest Studio is hosting a book-signing party for K.S.L. this Saturday. Unfortunately I can't be there (and I'm really not happy about that!) but hopefully you can go.

Holiday Cookie A. Party and book-signing
Saturday 12/4 from 4-6pm
Bobbin's Nest Studio
1171 Homestead Rd, Suite 130
Santa Clara, CA 95050

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Friday, November 26, 2010

HKF

It's a chilly Hand Knit Friday morning. What hand knits are you wearing today?

I'm keeping my feet warm in these:

Blueberry Waffle Socks
Project details on Ravelry

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Thursday, November 25, 2010

Living up to its potential

Remember this little guy?


First lime of 2010 in February


First lime of 2010 in April

Believe it or not it was still on the tree yesterday.


First lime of 2010 in November

You're probably thinking, "I thought it was a lime." I know, the color is deceiving. It is a lime. We've found that if we pick them when they have some yellow color they're bursting with tasty juiciness.

After taking the photo I picked what I needed for Thanksgiving dessert. The First Lime of 2010 literally fell off the tree when I touched it. Uh oh, maybe I waited too long? No, the fruit was firm and the skin was unblemished. Nice.

The little lime hung on for close to a year and its zest and juice are now in an Old Fashioned Lime Pie, one of the desserts for today's family gathering.


Lime Pie

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Sunday, November 21, 2010

Seeds for next year's bumper crop

of tomatoes!

Wintersown.org has an incredible offer--free tomato seeds. Free! Okay, it will cost you 2 first class stamps and a couple of envelopes, but other than that...

Their list of tomato varieties changes frequently but as of this blog post there were more than 140 types available. Wow.

Choosing 10 varieties was not easy, that's for sure. I ended up searching for "heirloom" and also read the descriptions for hardier tomatoes since I'm not that experienced in growing them from seed.

The free offer is for your top 6 picks and then you specify 4 alternates in case any of your top picks aren't available.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

For a minimum donation of $5 you can get all 10 choices and that's what I ended up doing.

Here they are--


Tomato seeds from WinterSown.org

Clockwise from the top:
1. Great White
2. Black from Tula
3. Cherokee Green
4. Costoluto Genovese
5. Mikado Violettor
6. Super Marmande
7. Henderson's Crimson Cushion
8. German Johnson
9. Powers Heirloom
10. Paul Robeson (center)

Now how am I going to decide which ones to choose for winter sowing?

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Friday, November 19, 2010

HKF

It's Hand Knit Friday. What hand knits do you have on today?

I'm wearing

Lite Brite socks
Project details on Ravelry

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Monday, November 15, 2010

From blanks to socks

Remember the Machine Knitting to Dye For sock blanks?



Here are 2 blog posts to get you caught up on the story: Satur-dye-day & The finished product.

The blanks on the left in the photo above were sent to my secret pal (and real life pal) Emy, the blanks on the far right were knit into socks--lovely matching socks if I do say so myself--


Dye-o-rama socks
Project details on Ravelry


and the blanks in the middle have been marinating in the stash... until now.

Machine Knitting to Dye For socks
Machine Knitting to Dye For Socks
Project details on Ravelry

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Saturday, November 13, 2010

New yarn: Sausalito

The other day a bulging envelope arrived from Crystal Palace Yarn. I love it when surprises come in the mail. Exciting! What did Susan send me???

[rip rip tear tear]

Ooooooo.

Sausalito from Crystal Palace Yarn
Sausalito

Crystal Palace Yarn, Sausalito, color = Coffee Cake
80% machine-washable Merino, 20% nylon
198 yds / 50 gms
6-8 sts / inch
Sausalito color card

Sausalito is a 2-ply yarn that is slow-striping. I separated the plies in the photo above to see how thin the singles are--the barber pole effect reminds me of my 2-ply handspun, but of course it's much more evenly spun and plied than my handspun. Maybe I should say that Sausalito is what I imagine my 2-ply handspun to be as I'm spinning it.

I've been working on a design and a slow-striping yarn might be just the right match for it.

So Sausalito is a favorite destination, a delicious cookie, and now a lovely yarn. How appropriate!

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Friday, November 12, 2010

HKF

It's Hand Knit Friday! What hand knits do you have on today?

I'm wearing corn socks...

Sydney
Project details on Ravelry

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Thursday, November 11, 2010

Happy to learn

We were fortunate to have Amy Singer in our part of the world last week. She stopped by Purlescence to teach Easy Non-Wool Socks. Yeah, I signed up for it--I signed up for it in a heartbeat. Not only was I interested in new construction for socks, but I absolutely had to take advantage of the opportunity to meet Amy in person.

The internet is an interesting medium... it brings us together virtually and sets expectations that may or may not be realized when you meet someone in person. Well, in this case Amy was just as funny, charming and engaging as I had imagined. Oh my, I'm doing the fan-girl thing, aren't I? Sorry about that. Sorry.

Amy taught us her recipe for toe-up socks using non-wool yarn. I was able to find some Crystal Palace Panda Soy and suitable needles in my stash so I fulfilled part one of our homework. Unfortunately I didn't do the second half of the homework and so I was not in the least bit familiar with Judy's Magic Cast-on when I got to class. But I was able to get a quick lesson from the knitters there and although I didn't execute it well, I got stitches on my needles and was able to continue with the wee sock.

Toe-up is a great construction for non-wool socks because the elastic (or non-elastic) nature of those types of yarns. Toe-up means you can try the sock on as you go and make on-the-spot adjustments for your specific yarn, st pattern, and elasticity. Skinny foot? Stop the toe increases earlier. Need more room for your instep? Work more gusset increases. Fabric not stretchy enough? Start adding increases to the leg every X rounds. You get the idea.

The really cool thing about Amy's recipe is there's no tricky math involved. Sure there's easy arithmetic, but none of the figurin' I typically go through when planning a toe-up heel turn--not that the planning is that difficult, but her method is much easier. As Amy puts it, if you stay with an easy stitch pattern, this sock is the perfect travel project because your st count and markers (and a little experience with the recipe) will let you know what comes next.

Her heel turn is similar to mine in that it uses short rows, but hers are Japanese short rows which makes it really easy to keep track of where you are and what loop to pick up because there are markers hanging off the back of your work. I'm able to deal with W&T short rows, but I admit that I don't like putting my knitting down until I'm finished with the heel turn when making or picking up wraps because I'm afraid I'll lose my place. The markers make it easy to stay on track.

Once I finish the current pair of socks on my needles, I'll cast-on the adult sized version of the Amy's recipe.

Hmmm... what else? Well, I guess showing off my wee sock would be a good thing to do. Here's a bonus for you, CJ's sock on the left in Elann's Fixation and mine on the right in Panda Soy Wasabi (love the color name).

Wee socks
Wee socks

Thank you to Purlescence for hosting Amy's class, and thank you Amy for coming out and teaching. It was a pleasure to meet you. Fan-girl signing off.

with Amy Singer
with Amy Singer

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Friday, November 05, 2010

HKF

It's Hand Knit Friday! What hand knits do you have on today?

I'm wearing the siblings of the Mosaic socks socks that were featured last week--
Fair Isle Socks
Fair Isle socks
Project details on Ravelry

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