Productivity and project names: another pair of socks for the FO pile

I finished another pair of socks on Friday.  Which makes the third pair I’ve finished this year.  This puts me right on track for finishing at least one pair of socks every month.

I know.  I never told you about that goal.  But it seems that fingering weight is the natural weight I gravitate to when I go to peruse at yarn stores (or on the Internet) these days, so it seemed like setting a goal for knitting a certain number of pairs of socks over the course of the year would be a good way to ensure that I’m making good use of my stash.

I’m hoping the total will be more than the twelve I set as a minimum, but since I’m likely to be tempted away by other interesting knitting projects, I make no promises.

At least I have public transit to keep the socks coming.

The socks that I finished on Friday were what I call my “Fireside Socks” because the unnamed colorway of Handmaiden Casbah that I knit them out of reminded me of fire colors surrounding beautiful dark brown wood.  I realized later it’s a bit of a misnomer.  The pattern comes from the Pink Lemon Twist Elements Collection which is brilliantly structured so as to have two sock patterns per element — a simple, easy-to-memorize one (such as Lava Flow, the pattern I actually used for these socks) and a more complicated and challenging pattern (unfortunately for me actually named Fireside Socks).

Does anyone besides me have trouble coming up with good names for their projects?  I always want my project names to reflect both the pattern I used and the yarn I’m using to knit them, and it’s only rarely that it works.  (Witness my lovely Marlene D.’s which are stalled due to a sad realization that it requires more tugging than I like to get them over my heels.  I’m trying now to decide whether they need to become fingerless mitts or be frogged.  I kind of feel like they’re too pretty to be frogged, and I love fingerless mitts, so I’m leaning heavily toward the former, but then the question remains as to whether I will then proceed ever knit a nice pair of Marlene socks… or socks with my Wollmeise, for that matter).  So Firesides these are, pattern name snafu or no, and I love them.  The yarn was beautifully soft and a joy to work with, and I love the little picot hem that I chose to do instead of a standard twisted rib or 2 x 2 rib hem because I like the way the little peaks remind me of flames.

I also used a short-row heel on 28 of 64 stitches which turns out to be an excellent fit for my narrow heels and gave me enough stitches to leave for the instep (plus a few on each side that I picked up) to make plenty of room for my arches.

I wore them for the first time today… my feet were soft, cashmere-comfy heaven all day long.

I’m working on some other projects, big and small, bloggable and not.  The beauty of having serious trouble with project monogamy?  I always (or at least almost always) something to write about.  The downside?  Well… suffice it to say that I’m giving myself a huge pat on the back for showing a lot of self-restraint in not buying more sock needles at the yarn store today.

Setting a few goals (and the peril of nice cameras)

I have a wonderful, wonderful camera.  Which makes it really pathetic that so many of my posts here have no photos (hint: this post won’t have any photos, either).  I have a (small) pile of finished objects at home (and a couple floating about in my backpack that should be deposited in my drawer of handknits at home) that I haven’t really posted about because, well, I tend to not be home during the hours of the day where there is good lighting in the settings I like.  Which means that my little perfectionist self has to spend a lot an inordinate amount of way too much time staging, taking and editing the photos to have time to do any knitting.  Guess what wins?

It doesn’t help that the house, until quite recently, was still showing signs of a (relatively) recent move.

I haven’t done much, as far as knitting goes, in the last week or so (already?!  Time, she has flown!).  I finished a few more rows of MS4, putting me at almost done with Clue 2 (of 6.  sigh.), the Happy Wanderer Capelet remains in Stockinette Hell with no end in sight, mostly because I’ve found more interesting things to work on, I finished the knitting and seaming for one Eloping and the knitting for a second.  And the Bird’s Nest Socks that I’d hoped to finish by the end of last week?  Well, maybe (hopefully?) this week instead.  I’m just finishing the gusset decreases, after which I have six pattern repeats and the toe decreases to do.  Maybe finishing this week isn’t such an unreasonable goal.

In other news, more than a little of my knitting time last week was usurped by preparations for the aforementioned party.  In a fit of desire to add more seating to our home (and begin to make use of the pretty pretty fabrics we bought the weekend before) I spent most of Thursday night and more of Saturday morning cutting, pinning and sewing together a few floor pillows.  (Friday night was a wash.  Families, they are stressful things).  No, I don’t have pictures of those, either.  But I will.  Someday.

But, I digress.  This post was supposed to be about goals.

I read somewhere, once, and have been led to believe that one of the best way to reach goals is to make yourself accountable.  So, if, for instance, I say in my blog that I am making it a goal to knit at least one pattern from knitty per issue, before the next issue comes out, and one pattern from Knit.1 before the next issue of IT comes out… and one pattern from Interweave Knits before the next issue of THAT comes out, well, I’m signing myself up to be one very busy knitter.

I also have a lot of commuting time, so it’s probably not the Great Hardship that my brain would like to make it out to be.  After all, from the summer Knitty, I’ve already knit one Eloping and only have sewing to do on a second.  Too bad I didn’t start them until after the fall issue had been released.  (I set this goal earlier in the summer… but having not announced it, I clearly didn’t stick to it very well.  Oops.  Here’s to a new season!)

I guess my next Public Transit Project will have to be one of the pairs of socks from the current issue.  The trick will be the stitch pattern… I don’t think any of the patterns from this issue meet my ‘Easy to Memorize’ qualification… but they can probably be made easily portable, at least.

I am also making it a goal to make sure that I knit at least one project of the three I’m intending to do each season with a yarn I haven’t used before.  It’s so easy to fall into traps of thinking that absolutely EVERYTHING should be made with, say, Panda Silk.  Or Koigu.  Or something… which means I leave out so many of the beautiful yarns that are both out in the world and in my stash.  So I will make an effort to use yarns I haven’t used before, if for no higher purpose than as “research” into how certain yarns knit up.

I have other goals, too (knitting from books, knitting more large projects, having greater diversity in my projects, learning to knit continental style, learning a new skill with each pattern I knit, making one in every n projects a gift project… the list is probably not endless, but certainly Very Long), but if I listed all of them and didn’t make room to add some and subtract some when fall turns to winter, well, I’d have no room for the projects that I decide to do more on a whim than anything else, simply because they look like fun.

I have a hunch some of these goals will be reevaluated before winter, too, as I meander along the journey of finding out what works and what doesn’t… which goals were to lofty and which were too restricted.  And that’s sort of the point, really.

The key to success seems to be good equipment

Let me start by saying I am a real sucker for all things cute.  I love the patterns at Mochi Mochi Land for being adorable… (and am also tempted to make some of them for a friend of mine who’s having a kidlet in a couple of months… her kid is going to end up being so spoiled by my joint loves of knitting and cute baby things…) but I digress.

I got frustrated with the process of knitting small projects on dpns during the process of making the ruffled leg warmers. Don’t get me wrong… I love the results… but having my 8″ size 6 dpns stab me repeatedly in the arms or get caught in my sleeves while I was knitting the smaller rounds was frustrating to say the least. An ad in Knit.1 for adorable needles made of reclaimed rosewood (yum… rosewood is one of my long-time favorites) by skilled artisans in Vietnam that I saw right around my Anniversary of Annual Indulgence (otherwise known as the Anniversary of my Birth, but really, at this point, it’s all about indulgence. Aging once past 25 really isn’t that exciting) led me to consider the idea of shorter dpns. 5″ seemed like just about the right for my very petite hands. Add in an adorable collectors tin to keep them organized in and I was sold.

I ordered them in only a couple sizes at first, to go with the projects that I was working on… I’ve since ordered more since they’re wonderful to work with and, once I got over my fear of turning heels, love knitting socks. I’m justifying having ordered size 1 needles by the project I’ve chosen for the Ravelympics.

Having needles that I really love working with has changed how I think about needles.  I once bought ones purely based on price, which left me with a collection of multicolored aluminum needles that hurt almost as much to look at as they did to hold.  Then, I started knitting in the round and invested in a set of KnitPicks Options.  They are wonderful… but my hands occasionally get tired of holding them.  Either that or my hands just aren’t large enough to comfortably use size 7 needles.  I really do prefer smaller sizes.  I love the points on my Harmony sock needles, but for some projects they’re simply too long.  When I wandered back into the realm of the Knitters a couple years ago (and more seriously sometime last fall), I never imagined I would be so picky about how my needles “fit” my project… or how having a good fit totally changes the experience of knitting for me.

As a last quick note, I have my first FO of the year that I knit for myself.  I finished a scarf in January and a collection of chenille flowers in February, but those were both for my darling man who is very patient with and supportive of my Fiber habit.  I cast off the Pretty in Pink and Purple Ruffled Leg Warmers and wove in the ends about two weeks ago.  Time flies!

I think the ruffles would look a little better with a looser bind off, but other than that I’m very pleased with how they came together and how well my pattern modifications seemed to work.

I also have begun to observe that I like my fabrics to be much softer, drapier, and less dense, generally, than seems to be recommended at my LYS.  Ah well.  I’m the one who’s wearing them, right?