Finished Objects & Work in Progress

Finished Objects: the baby-yarn socks.

When I was putting this yarn away, I noticed that last year's were made of Red Heart "Soft Baby" and this year's are Red Heart "TLC Baby". I'll try to pay attention and see if they wear any differently.

I thought before jumping into another project I would try to make some progress on things already on the needles.

These legwarmers that I started back in February have been sitting around because I was almost out of the yarn from the first, original legwarmer that was too long and too tight. That little squiggle in the middle is all that was left of it.

They are sitting on the second original legwarmer, waiting for me to unravel it.

When I unravelled the first one, I really liked how it had been cast on. So I took some pictures when I unravelled the second one.

See at the top, how the cast-on is unfolding? I found that intriguing. I liked how the edge looked on the originals, a lot like the tubular cast-off, where the stitches seem to flow from the outside, over the top and down inside the sock.

I haven't read a lot of knitting books, but Stealth Brain instantly handed me a way to do this.

Here's a close-up showing both sides.

The way I reproduced this was to start with a provisional cast-on, the one where you use a piece of contrasting waste yarn that will be removed later to leave live stitches at the bottom.

I used the provisional cast-on that takes a straight piece of waste yarn, one knitting needle, and two hands. This one, rather than the one that starts on a crochet chain.

I cast on half of the number of stitches for the legwarmer, then I knitted them once. From the photo, it looks like in the originals, the cast-on stitches were knitted two or three times.

Then I did the tricky part: I knitted one, then picked up a loop from the waste yarn, put it on the left needle, and purled it, so that I ended up doubling the number of stitches. I really love how neat and stretchy this cast-on turns out, and it works great with K1 P1 rib.

Here's a bird I would have had trouble identifying if I hadn't heard him singing, and seen his parents feeding him and two siblings. (It was bright outside, and I took this cloudy picture through two panes of glass and a window screen.)

This is a juvenile Eastern Towhee, Pipilo erythrophthalmus. The Cornell page says southern birds have pale straw-colored eyes, but this bird's parents have red eyes. Cornell's page also has a sound file of the towhee's "Drink your tea!" song, and the loud "kreek" they make in between songs.