the Soxophone Player

Teenagers seem always to be upset when its time to get dressed up and go out for a little culture.

On the week-end we got cleaned up and headed down to the big smoke to a dance recital. You can see Jesse isn’t big on getting all ‘cityfied’. (Probably because I wouldn’t let him bring the goundhog-head he’s dragged out of God knows where.)

But off we went, anyway.

GK2 did a solo routine in some discipline I’d never heard of – and I forget what its called – but it’s a hybrid between ballet and gymnastics.

And here she was doing a tap routine to Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy (not the Bette Midler version ;o) ).

Alas, my photos were as unsuccessful as last year, and out of about 100 only these two aren’t blurred. You can’t use flash, and the lighting was quite unhelpful to shooting pictures in motion. I tried increasing my film speed which helped capture these two shots, but my shutter speed, set automatically, was so slow that the rest of my shots blurred to the motion of the dancing.

Last year I had only one good reasonable shot, so I’m up by 100%. Who knows, maybe three next year.

(Any camera buffs out there with suggestions how to capture motion shots, indoors, with limited lighting and no flash! I’m using a Nikon D80)

And now Jesse can relax, as it will be another year before he has to get dressed up again…

I didn’t know what else to call these! But I knit them with sock yarn from 3 different Euro labels, so Euro Knee Socks it is!

Staying with size Medium + (until the bin is full)….knit with the 72 needle cylinder on the Verdun 47.

The Black and Dark Grey are Schoeller & Stahl’s Fortissima Socka colours #1002 schwartz (black) and #1059 anthrazit (coal).

The black, white, grey, pink patterned yarn is Lana Grossa Mielenweit # 7710.

And the hot pink feet are Opal Uni #1412.

A sign of a good sheep mother is that she eats the afterbirth and all the yuk at lambing time. I believe its a good trait of any prey animal – to get rid of the scent and thus have less chance of being sniffed out by predators.

Like wise, I guess the sign of a good predator is one who rolls about in dead prey animals or their yuk, to disguise his scent while on the hunt approaching prey.

Good boy Jesse.

Good #$$*((%#@7 Boy!

I seem to find myself in the midst of a knee sock binge.

Binges are good, at least in sock knitting. I find it easier to repeat a pattern several times -or many times – because I get a rhythm happening and don’t have to keep looking at my crib sheet.

This pair is knit with Koigu KPPPM hand painted merino in 4 colourways: 608P on the foot, 439P for the cuff and dark strips, 436P for the medium tones, and 402P for the lighter tones.

I needed one skein plus 15 grams of a second skein for my dark colour,  about half a skein for the lightest colour, and about 2/3 skein for each of the other two.

Besides being on a knee sock binge, I’m on a subset binge of size Medium +, so that’s what this pair is, knit with the 72 needle cylinder on the Verdun 47.

KPPPM  is 100% merino. I reinforced the heels and toes with Wooly Nylon.

I finished the Over the Knee thigh high socks I’ve been working on.

These are size Large, knit first on the 100 needle cylinder for the over the knee part, and then on the 72 cylinder for the under-knee to toe.

I didn’t weight the two colours (Jet Black and Rhodamine) individually, but the pair of socks is ~ 250 g.  This is my own  Home Grown 75/25 fingering weight wool/nylon.

I’ve made a few pair of these in the past in size M and M+, but I decided a Large pair were in order, in part because the design was inspired by Betch Kelly on You Tube.

My 100 needle cylinder fits my Legare 400, which is usually home to the 54 cylinder. But the next time I clean the 54, I’ll pop the 100 back on and start a few more thigh high tops. Maybe something a little louder ;o)

Here is a pair of knee socks knit with Opal Hundertwasser, series 1, colourway 637A. (75% Wool 25% Nylon 400m/100g)

Recall that Opal based the Hundertwasser series on the work of Austrian painter Friedensreich Hundertwasser.

637A is named Wartende Hauser (Waiting Houses) after this painting:

The socks are size Medium +, knit with the 72 needle cylinder on the Verdun 47.

I have a love/hate relationship with Opal. This is one of my favouritest favouritest sock yarn colourways of all time, and the Hundertwasser series 1 is one of my favouritest series ever. On the downside, I have had many discouraging moments with knots mucking about with beautiful Opal  patterns ;o(   I was in luck with the two balls it took to knit these knee socks… nary a knot to be found.

O happy day….

Nothing borrowed and nothing blue.

But this Austermann Step, colour #07 is an old favourite of mine from the original series.  75% Wool  25% Nylon with Aloe Vera and Joboba Oil infused into the yarn.

On a recent Stash-Up I grabbed a bag of it. Truth be told, I love all of the original Step colourways.

This pair is size XL, knit with the 72 cylinder on the Verdun 47.

And this is colour #51

Just in time for spring, these wake-me-up colours are just what the doctor ordered to treat many winter weeks without sun!

This pair is size M+, knit with the 72 cylinder on the Verdun 47.

The Step yarns are a treat to knit – they flow through the sock knitters like a hot knife through butter. I do find that I need to vaccuum the csm’s after every dozen or so pairs as there gets to be a build up of powdery fluff, which I presume is from the oils.

And I refuse to answer the question, “can a vaccuum suck the needles right off a sock machine?”.

When knitting a project such as Thigh High Socks, I want more stitches on the top part of the sock – the over the knee part – than the ‘regular’ part of the sock.

In the first picture, I’ve knit the top part of a Thigh High on the 100 needle cylinder. I’m using my own 75/25 Wool/Nylon fingering weight yarn (~400 yds/110g) in Jet Black and (separately) Raspberry (which in a lower value dye pot presents as hot pink).

I’ve got an 80 row hem top in an 11:1 mock rib, followed by even stripes in black and pink with all 100 needles in work, and then finished off with scrap yarn and taken off the sock knitter.

To carry on knitting my sock topper – I rehang the stitches from the final row onto the empty needles on the 72 cylinder.

I started and ended the knitting of my topper at the right red hash mark (where I start and end everything) and so the tails of my good yarn and scrap yarn show me where to start hanging stitches on the 72 cylinder. The very last pink stitch (stitch #100) is the one that has the final tail coming from it, so the first stitch  beyond that one is the actual Stitch# 1 -  first stitch of the row.  So….I hang that stitch on the first needle AFTER the red hash mark.

I have to spread the stitches out, since I’m putting 100 onto 72 needles. My simple method for that is to hang every third PLUS fourth stitch on every third needle, while hanging only one stitch on every first and second needle (of every three needles). That all adds up to 97 stitches. So at 12 o’clock, 9 o’clock and 6 o’clock I hang two stitches on the first needle in addition to the two stitches that go on the third needle.  And that ends up with the 100 stitches being evenly hung on 72 needles.

Now I start knitting as if I’m beginning a new sock – with the first stitch beginning immediately after the red hash mark. In this project I will start with black, to carry on my stripe pattern.

There will be a small hole where the first stitch of the new work begins. When finishing the sock, running that final pink tail from the topper through the back loop of the first pink stitch that I hung on the first needle, and then weaving that tail in will close the hole tidily.

The rest of the project is basically knitting a Knee Sock – beginning with a looser tension at knee level and working to a ‘normal’ tension by the time you get to the shin.

When the sock comes off the knitter you still will have the scrap yarn (blue arrow) where the topper joined onto the 72 cylinder. It is simply unraveled/pulled off as you would any scrap yarn. (If you missed hanging one of those 100 stitches…this is when you find out!)

This pair I am working on is size Large.

The snow is fast disappearing from the farm. With rain forecast  for the next several days, that may be the end of winter.

Above is the first sign I’ve seen of the first groundhog, who has started its spring cleaning by pushing some muck out of its hole. I haven’t actually seen the varmint yet,  but his tracks show he’s been scoping out the area around his door. This hole is actually quite near the house, and Jesse it paying close attention.

Jesse and I have been making plenty of our own tracks, here seen on the back trail beyond the knoll. #1 is my Skidoo trail, and #2 you can make out my ski pole marks. I like to set a Cross Country ski trail by skidoo. And #3 are my Snow Shoe tracks. I’m a true Canadian, so am extremely fond of winter. I love it when Jesse and I can explore the trails on the farm….and with the rains coming we may be housebound until the mud season has come and gone.

The sunny weather of late has wakened many from their winter naps, and #4 shows the tracks left by raccoons, rabbits, skunks, porcupine, turkeys, and, I think, weasels.

Interestingly, there are no deer tracks, and there haven’t been for about three weeks – since the last major dump of snow. Since I ALWAYS see lots of deer tracks, and the deer themselves, I presume they have yarded up  -probably around the wild apple trees in the bottom land of the back corner.

Deer, like sheep, don’t really care to trek through deep snow. As prey animals they know they are vulnerable to attack when the snow is too deep for them to run fast. And the coyotes are smart enough to know where the deepest snow is (the ravines and gullies)…and they would be quick to chase their prey into these areas of deepest snow to make the kill. Whenever I suspect a kill in winter, I check the gullies first!

A reprise of my Koigu Rainbow Socks – this pair in size Large. My main colour is P702, and the heels/toes are P132. My rainbow stripes are: Red P622, Orange P831, Yellow P712, Green P525, Blue P416, Purple P142. The main colour is one of the newer speckle yarns, and the other colours were ‘one-ofs’ that I picked off the showroom shelf at Koigu.

This pair is size Medium +, changing the heel/toes colour to # P622.

Both sizes are knit with the 72 needle cylinder on the Verdun 47.  Heels and toes are reinforced with Wooly Nylon.