Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Small Finished Objects

So to heck with the KCBW.  None of the rest of the blog themes really grabbed me enough to make me put down the knitting and actually blog.  What have I been doing? this stuff:


Finished a beaded net cover for my stainless steel water bottle. Nepali aloo yarn, 6/0 metallic red glass beads.  You saw the start of it when I talked about the yarn.  Behind it are my brave little tomato seedlings.  Every year, they are the evidence of belief in spring, raising their tender little leaves to sunshine that's still reflected off ice and snow.  But I digress.

I started using metal water bottles when the information about leaching plastic started leaching into our awareness.  Only trouble is, I exercise in a warm, humid pool atmosphere and the metal bottle gets sweaty (ewww) and slippery.  "But hey," I said to myself. "I'm a knitter--I can solve this problem!"  So I did, with inelastic yarn, and yo k2tog.  The beads add extra grip, but the bling factor gets it noticed, and I'm hoping it will solve another of my water bottle problems and bring somebody yelling and waving it at me when I leave it behind, as I have done to so many other bottles.

In other news, I actually made a pair of socks out of sock club yarn!  The Harlot may have her own personal alternative sock club, but I am so alternative, I rarely even make socks out of sock yarn.  And then Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test from the Rockin' Sock Club arrived.  My daughter spotted it from across the room  and said, "Oooooooo--that's some beautiful yarn."  "Want some socks?" sez I, and days later, there they were:

Astute sock-watchers among you will notice that these are very plain vanilla socks, and not one of the clever patterns that come with sock club yarns.  That's because the dye job on the yarn so brilliantly mimics a tie-dye t-shirt that I couldn't bear to interfere with it.  The only fancy bit is the picot cast-on, which you can learn, too, from the very same video.  And as usual, there was enough yarn left after the socks to make a pair of baby booties, the fantastic pattern from the Socks Socks Socks book.