Oh, hi. You got that basketweave sock done all the way to the heel then?  Not quite?  OK, good, we’ll "pick up" where we left off.  (ha, ha, little knitting humor there.  Very little.)
Last time we went through the exercise of setting up the basketweave pattern st so that it was centered on the [...]

Well, life has been happening with a vengeance around our house the past few days.  So you’ll have to forgive me for just throwing out a couple of updates here.
First of all, there are a few spots left in the Knitting 911 class this Thursday night at Knitting Bee.  This class is always a lot [...]

(This is the second in a series of posts discussing the process of designing DH’s basketweave socks.)
We left off Part 1 with a completed toe, and have discovered that in order to have a sock foot that is about 7" circumference, we have ended up with 64 sts total for the foot of the sock.
Part [...]

Oh, happy day!  DH has another pair of handknit socks, and I have one less UFO.  (Believe it or not, I’m down to just SIX UFO’s.  My advice is to keep an eye out for plagues of locusts.)

I started these socks on the trip to New Zealand, with yarn I bought there:  Naturally Haven, a 100% [...]

OK, you got a peek at the toe a couple of weeks ago — now here’s the rest of it!  

I said you wouldn’t get bored halfway through, now didn’t I?
This is the pattern for the April ‘09 shipment from the Fearless Fibers "Whisper of Spring" lace club.  It’s only being sent out to club members [...]

OK, so obviously I am a sucker for pink.  And being a redhead, this can be problematic — although I am starting to see more and more hairs that are, shall we say, colorless — so maybe this issue will resolve itself in time.  (My hairdresser refers to them as "platinum highlights", BTW.  Talk about [...]

You may remember that one of the things I recently finished was a pair of short socks for DH.  Unfortunately, they turned out to be short in multiple places:  one of which was the leg, as intended, and one of which was the foot, which was not.
And you may also recall that Sheryl’s remark opened [...]

The rest of the old Buddhist saying is, "…then the teacher will appear."
Well, usually I’m the knitting teacher — but in this case, I became the student. 
Last Friday, I was grousing about the short black socks I had knitted for DH while on the trip in New Zealand.  Although I had faithfully copied the original socks, [...]

I’m sure at least one of you is wondering — "Well, fine, lots of sheep, some yarn stores, but did she actually get any knitting done on the trip?"
Well, yes and no.  OK, well, actually, there can only be one accurate answer there, which is YES, I did knit a couple of things on the [...]

Well, it had to happen sometime. I had to stumble upon some yarn eventually.
I didn’t expect it to be in the little town of Gore, though. Nor did I expect it to be some lovely handspun.
Just hold your horses — I’ll get to the picture of the yarn in a minute.
We drove from [...]

OK, I believe I now have incontrovertible proof that the socks I am currently making trying to make for DH have some kind of curse upon them.
You may remember all the trials and tribulations that I went through — admittedly, some self-imposed — in getting this pair off the ground.  But, I finally bowed to [...]

I admit I don’t really have a focus to this post (when do I ever?) but I felt a need to kind of throw an update out there before the big Holiday Weekend.  I have been doing some stuff — really, I have.  And here’s some pictures to prove it.
First, here’s a pic of the [...]

Oh, boy.  It’s been, like, a week and a half.  What happened to blogging?
Well, I’ll tell you what happened to blogging.  Life happened, that’s what.  That, and as I mentioned recently, knitters wanting knitting lessons have reappeared this fall with a vengeance.  In the past month, my teaching hours each week have been up 50-70% [...]

OK, I know both of you were kind of worried about it, but I believe I have figured out an elegant solution to a looming knitting problem:
What on earth do I take along to knit in New Zealand??
See, it’s a three-week trip (not to mention a loooong flight), so I couldn’t possibly go without taking [...]

Ahhhhhh — finally, I can sit back, relax and blog a little bit.  And it’s great that I can now write about something that’s recently been taking a lot of my time.
If I were to tell anyone else how things have been just "crazy busy" lately in the world of knitting, well, they’d probably just [...]

Well, I’m sure both of you have done Kitchener stitch, or grafting, in the usual way:  it involves a tapestry needle, at least one reference book, and some quiet time alone — not to mention gnashing of teeth.
Wanna try another way?
But first, a warning:  for those who openly mock my habit of collecting of old [...]

Yes, you may well have been questioning why there is a total of 12 UFO’s on my UFOlympic "decathlon" list.  (Actually, there are 13, because I had to add one UFO #0 that I forgot about when making the original list.)  But it’s a good thing.
Truthfully, I could probably do at least two decathlons with [...]

Hey, we’re back from our trip to [Sasquatch->] over the Memorial Day Weekend.  And it was an interesting weekend.
(BTW, this post really does include something pretty interesting about sock heels too, although that bit’s way at the end.  Just skip down there if you must.)
Sasquatch is a big 3-day music festival held annually in an [...]

OK, even I can admit that this short row heel obsession thing may be getting a bit out of hand.
But there’s another little gem of genius here worth sharing, in my efforts to eliminate the inelegant flap-and-gusset-style heel from the face of the earth.
I’ve seen where some people, especially men, prefer the fit of an F’n’G heel, because [...]

So — a few weeks ago, I wrote about sock heels.  How I don’t really like flap-and-gusset style heels, and how the EZ afterthought heel usually seems too small for me, and how I’d been checking out all kinds of short row heels, in my search for the Best Short Row Heel of All Time.
I did [...]

OK, once again my lack of recent blogging is due to me having to work on other stuff.  (Lately I’ve really been forced to admit there are only so many hours in a given day, or week.  And some of them are required for sleeping, or else I get even more really cranky.)  But big [...]

So, while I haven’t been blogging much in the past week or so, I really have been busy.
One of the things I’ve been working on is a sock pattern for my friend Deb, whose blog lives over at www.fearlessfibers.blogspot.com.  She dyes bee-you-tee-full yarn and sells it on [Etsy ->] – which if you haven’t visited is a very fun [...]

Over the weekend, I had a touch of  "the depression" *.
Specifically, I had the knitting depression.
I didn’t have a single decent current project, the UFOs were one big pile o’ crap, I hated everything in my hotlist **.

I HAD NOTHING TO KNIT.

If this sounds to you a bit like closet angst (I HAVE NOTHING TO WEAR), you [...]

Admittedly, I haven’t written much in the past week (heck, I haven’t written anything).  But, I have an excellent excuse reason.  Actually, several reasons…

#1 reason is, I have a bad Continental knitting habit of using my right index finger to help out on each and every stitch.  I don’t actually need to use it — I can [...]

The other night, I complained mentioned to my loving, caring DH how my feet had been freakin’ FREEZING ALL DAY.
DH was kicked back sideways on the chair-and-a-half, with his legs propped up over the arm of the chair and his feet aloft.  He said smugly in a very meaningful manner,

"YOU should wear hand-knit socks more often."

Well, it was obvious just [...]

Aaaaaand here they are, in all their glory:

These socks comprise many of my favorite sock-knitting techniques to date.  I prefer techniques that work well and are easy to memorize, so for those of you who want to know the nuts & bolts, here’s a brief recap:

 Tess’ Best Toe-up Socks recipe
Judy’s excellent-(but-not-magical) CO:  20 sts.

(M1, YO) inc to [...]

OK, it’s high time I wrote something new & exciting.  Hmmm…!
First, let me tell you that the site has gotten just a teensy bit better, with the addition of two new pages:  look up at the top, on the navigation bar, and you’ll see "Site Map" as well as "Knit Links".
The former will give you a listing [...]

Well, on Sunday evening (Sunday the 13th!) I finally cast on another pair of socks for DH.
The yarn is Lana Grossa "Meilenweit 6 fach" in a true solid dark green – his favorite color.  I like doing toe-up socks, so I don’t have to bother too much with a gauge swatch or any math or anything.  I [...]

Both my sister and a college friend recently sent me copies of this Wall Street Journal article about knitting.
More specifically, it’s about "Sock Wars", where the idea is that everyone playing the game is an "assassin" and has an assigned  "target".  You are supposed to "assassinate" that person by knitting them a pair of socks, and then you send [...]

Last night, Don said he had a “dangerous” question for me.
“Did you knit me another pair of black socks?” he asked.
I knew right away what had happened.  After all, there are only two pairs of hand-knit black socks in the house.  Yes, it was quickly confirmed that the black heavyweight socks I had made for me (Mission [...]

Every so often, of course, the subject comes up. Why (the expletive) would anyone HAND-KNIT a pair of socks?
One year, at my family reunion, I presented one of my brothers with a pair of obviously hand-knit socks, in his all-time favorite color – dark purple.

(Where, you ask, did I get dark purple sock yarn? Funny [...]

Is it just me, or does it happen to everyone else too?
Without fail, the handknit superwash wool socks come out of my dryer with hairs stuck to them.
At least it’s definitely our hair: my DH has dark curly hair, and I have longish red hair. Both of these end up being fairly obvious when stuck [...]