Weaving Rainbow: This & That

30 Days of Get Your Art on & Last day of August!

I'm going to be doing this challenge. It starts tomorrow (September 1st). Although I may not post every day, I'll take a picture of what I do every day & post every so often, or may just post a picture every day without writing anything...

Last day of August!!

aaaaand we may not go over 100 degrees today for the first time in a while (at least since we broke the streak 2 days before we could have tied the record. Wichita Falls definitely broke the record for the longest streak of 100+ temperature days (by over 10!) and Waco & Mineral Wells probably did... looking forward to not really being aware of the weather & HOPE WE GET SOME RAIN! Not in the form of a hurricane, though... that would be like jumping out of the frying pan & into the the fire, though that's a bad analogy since we've got some serious wildfires going... the one in Possum Kingdom Lake is pretty bad. I just read that at least 30 houses have been destroyed. :/

Indy's leg was hurt

Today I have to take Indy to the vet: he got hit by a car yesterday when he & Pixel got out (he is just TOO hyper) and he probably has a broken leg. I hope he doesn't lose the leg and the treatment is simple. We'll find out... he was in pretty good shape this morning except for the leg. I didn't feed him just in case the vet needs to be able to do surgery today... I'll post more later. We have GOT to get fencing put up asap and I'm hoping that once I sell my spinning wheel, we can get what we need to fence the entire place but at the very least, we need to fence enough so that the dogs can go outside easily. Will talk to the others about how best to do this and whether we want to do just one fence around the whole place or 2 levels of fencing... 2 would make it less likely that the dogs might get out & get run over. Damn the road we live on!

Time to start getting ready.. need to walk Pixel & when it's time to go, Micah will carry Indy down the steps. He can walk just fine with 3 legs but doesn't need to add to the injury...

Socks, Drawing & Music...

Well I am still working on the Couldn't Foot It socks but making some good progress... I haven't decided how long to make them but I'm thinking I should knit until the leg is about as long as the foot to the toe & then start on the cuffs. I got one sock caught up to the other & knitted a bit too much so now it is longer than the other sock & now I'm working on the other sock to get it caught up. THIS IS WHY I CANNOT DO ONE SOCK AT A TIME! If it had a specific pattern or an easy way to count, I could but I won't even TRY to count rounds with this pattern! Ha. I probably could do the Trossocks one sock at a time and get both socks the same size because the pattern repeats are a certain number of rounds... that is, if I keep track of the "easier" rounds properly!!

Since I've already posted the socks up to around the ankle, I won't post them now since I'm using the same yarn & the "stripes" follow basically the same order.

Last Friday, Gary & I & the twins went to see Reverend Horton Heat at the House of Blues in Dallas.. had a fun time. I did a few drawings while there... First Missile (a local Dallas band) played:

Then the Nashville Pussy band played (they're from Georgia, despite the name):

And this is the Rev's concert:

He played for a LONG time... I think 2 encores...

Re: the drawings: done with either Sharpie pen or Pigma pen and I still consider myself in rusty practice mode where skill is concerned. In spite of that, a couple of people took pictures of me while drawing and commented...

Downloaded a couple of Andrew Loomis' books & did a little practice from it. In a couple of days, I'll be starting a workshop with a new Yahoogroup another artist introduced me to, given by Quinn McDonald... looking forward to it & hope to be able to find some nice watercolor paper this weekend... failing that, I'll use the Strathmore Bristol paper...

Around The World in 80 Days Shawl

Been working on this also... hard to see the beads in this photo, but they are there!

Much Ado About Making Socks

Well I got to thinking about how I make socks. I don't think I've made a LOT of socks in my life, maybe less than 10 or 15 pairs? I once did about a week or so of on/off marathon knitting in 2004 or 2005 for the boys (who at the time had smaller feet than they do now) and did a pair for Micah in a worsted weight, a pair for Evan in sock (fingering) weight & a pair for Harrison in sock weight for Crazy Socks day. Sadly, none of the socks won any awards on Crazy socks day... I guess they didn't realize that the socks were handknit?

Here's a photo of Harrison's socks:

I still have one of Micah's socks and some left over yarn from Evan's somewhere...

Here is a picture of what may have been the first socks I ever made: Wisconsin Winter Socks (I sell this pattern on my Weaving Rainbow Website I made these in the early 90s.

And here is a picture of a pair of pink cityline socks that I finished in 2005:

I loved wearing these socks & I plan to make my sock summit couldn't foot it socks about as tall...

And here are the Sock Summit Challenge socks as of yesterday morning:

I did a bit more since then but when it was close to the time when I could have finished as a runner up, I ended up with a bad yarn tangle while working on the cuff, was running out of time & decided that I was going to just rip out the cuff progress & make the socks taller...

I ordered some knitting needles from Grandma's Handknitting on Etsy so that I can straighten out the picked up stitches & may just do the socks a sock at a time instead of 2 at a time... at the VERY least, I'll get them caught up to each other as i frogged a bit more on one sock than the other... I probablly will do the cuffs together, though.

I am trying the CiaoGoo lace needles (in size 0 for doing heels & maybe toes... figure the sharpness of the needles will make it even easier to pick up gusset stitches) and in size 1 for working on the body, but with a shorter 24" needle.

WHICH gets me to the point of writing about what the title of this entry is about: there are many ways to do socks: toe up, cuff down, sideways, one at a time on double pointed needles or on a circular needle or on TWO circular needles and 2 at a time (on circulars (as magic loop OR 2 at a time)... you can also do as Anna Makarovna, the nanny in Leo Tosstoy's "War and Peace" did and work 2 socks using a double knitting technique and when they are done, pujll one out of the other & voila, 2 socks done!

I'm sure there are several other ways, but these are the basic methods that I can think of. I wont get started now about the different ways to do a cuff or heel or toe... heh.

SO... I'm thinking of trying a pair of cuff down socks... and may also try doing socks one at a time... not sure yet. I just want to make some socks for wintertime so I'll have toasty toes... fingering weight for going out & worsted plus fingering held together for keeping ultra warm... and worsted weight.

I'm not sure about knitting socks one at a time because I don't want unpaired socks. Casting on 2 on separate needles & working back and forth on each might be the way to go. And then there is the issue of whether or not the socks are going to be the same size. I suppose I could use tick marks OR only do one at a time like this if I have a pattern with something going on in each round rather than "knit for 2 inches and then blah blah blah".

And then there are the shawls and sweaters and hats I want to knit. I'll rotate.. never was one to practice project monogamy!

With that in mind, I shall sign off and do some work on my "Any Art Everyday in August" project. Already missed yesterday, was busy trying to finish the socks & was too tired by the end of the night...