I've been meaning to tell you that Stranded Color Knitting (see how to order and more info on the right) has now made over $300 for rabbit rescue. How wonderful! Also, a couple of people have written and asked if they can purchase the book with a check. Yes, you can send a check to me for $13.99 and I'll have Cafepress send you your copy. Email at nanetteblanchard AT earthlink DOT net to set this up. If you're interested in knitting with more than one color or looking at photos that show many different ways to hold the yarns or getting two colorwork hat patterns, please check out the book.

  

 

CHASING RAINBOWS CAP













I've been wanting to do some rainbow projects. This hat is done with Nature Spun sport and size 4 circs and dpns. It uses 21 colors and I got the idea for the method from the rainbow socks in Socks, Socks, Socks. Then I read the PGR article in IK on intarsia in the round and she discusses it as well. Cut lengths of yarn for each color and when you get to that color, knit it, then drop the color. On the next row just grab the yarn when you get to where you knit it. As you can see from the reverse side, it looks like intarsia on the inside. No floats.



This method is also slow, has lots of tangled yarns all over the place, and the hat itself had over 60 ends to work in. It was also more difficult than I expected to arrange the colors in a rainbow progression and I'm not at all happy with the greens. Still, I like the finished hat very much. The cap has already gone to its new home to Melissa (mother of apple-cheeked Taylor who modeled the green toddler Aran) to pay her back for doing me a big favor this week. 

Lately I've had the strongest desire to start canning again. I love to make pickles and jellies and all that good stuff. In our house in Colorado I had this huge heavy wood shelf in the kitchen and I filled it with beautiful jars. When I was interviewed once for the local paper the reporter went on and on and on about all the jewel-colored glass jars on the shelf. I gave her some of my cranberry-orange jam just to shut her up.



When we moved here to NM I decided to not lug along all that glass. We probably have another move in our future so I can't buy more canning jars but I do get all moony-eyed when I stroll through the canning section at the store lately.



I do look forward to green chile season in about 3 weeks. They start shipping them up here from Hatch in mid to late August. This year we're going to get two bags (I think they are 25 lbs) as soon as they start selling them. I've heard the early crop is always better. They are sold and roasted here pretty much everywhere you go. The smell of roasting chiles is one of the best aromas on the planet. I just stick them whole in the freezer and then peel them before cooking. DH likes to stuff them with cream cheese and then top them with his red chile enchilada sauce. I may still break down and get some jars and make green chile jelly. Yum.



The photo below shows what I'm currently spinning. 1 more ounce for the rainbow project and some skeins of Easter-egg dyed merino. I plan to use the merino as energized singles somehow.



I started the Churro socks for DH. Tomorrow I will show you the Chasing Rainbows hat, project two in my "knitting without patterns" phase. It may be my favorite knitted project this year.

Here is the Red Bird Knits Sock of the Month for July. It is called Waterfalls and I'm going to cast on as soon as I translate the pattern into a chart.



I'm also working on a rainbow hat in 21 colors of Nature Spun sport - that should be ready to show here by Thursday.

DOS CALCETINES DE LANA 

  

   





  Here are the Pearls of Wisdom socks from Socks, Socks, Socks with the last stanza of the Pablo Neruda poem in Spanish. (Scroll down a few blog entries to see the full text of the poem in English.) These were knit in Nature Spun sport weight on size 2 dpns.











I made a lot of changes to the pattern mostly out of sheer laziness on my part. The punta edging looked too complicated, I tried the two-color purling and that was extremely slow so I scrapped it. The original pattern also has you charting out your own text on the feet of the socks and I was too lazy to do that so I used less text on the cuffs and put it on the feet instead. I also changed the heels to add more colors although I think the heels on the original socks look better. The socks use small beads in the circles but I duplicate stitched with lime green there instead.



The text on the socks: "Dos veces es belleza, la belleza, y lo que es bueno, es doblemente bueno, cuando se trata de  dos calcetines de lana, en el invierno, Pablo Neruda."

I'm sad that Geane has decided to blog no longer. I will miss her humor and I've admired her beautiful knitting for years. I hope she finds another way to post photos of her projects so we can all admire her work. Geane, you're welcome to send photos of FOs to me to post here if you like.

 

 

THE "I LOVE A PARADE" HAT

 

Sometimes it is a good thing to cast on and just start knitting without a specific goal in mind. In my new "no-more-stupid-rules" outlook on knitting, I'm hoping to knit more often without patterns at all. Here is my latest effort in Cascade 220.



 

 

This hat shows the "lazy knitter" method of doing corrugated ribbing - change colors on the knit stitches instead of on the purl stitches. It is easy and quite fast if you're a two-handed color knitter - just do the purls with your right hand and the knits with your left. Here you can see the reverse side - I almost like the way the top design looks better in reverse. (INKnitters once had an article on using the reverse side of color stranding for the front of the work - I think I'll try that some day.)

 

 

 

To make the curlicues on top, cast on a random number of stitches, knit into the front, the back, and the front of each stitch and bind off in purl. Do this as loosely as possible with your pointiest needles or you'll go insane. You can also use this technique for simple flowers.

I should finish the Pearls of Wisdom socks tomorrow - as you can see there are many ends to deal with. They also need blocking so you won't see them on the blog until Sunday afternoon. The letter knitting part goes really fast because it interests me; if I was knitting the same amount of plain stockinette it would take forever.



Here's the English translation of the Pablo Neruda poem in its entirety. Wouldn't it be nice if everyone we knit for was as thrilled with a pair of handknit socks?



ODE TO MY SOCKS  by Pablo Neruda



Maru Mori brought me

a pair

of socks 

which she knitted with her own

sheepherder hands,

two socks as soft

as rabbits.

I slipped my feet

into them

as if they were

two

cases

knitted

with threads of

twilight

and the pelt of sheep.



Outrageous socks,

my feet became

two fish

made of wool,

two long sharks

of ultramarine blue

crossed by one golden hair,

two gigantic blackbirds,

two cannons:

my feet

were honored

in this way

by

these

heavenly

socks.

They were

so beautiful

that for the first time

my feet seemed to me

unacceptable

like two decrepit

firemen, firemen

unworthy of that embroidered

fire,

of those luminous socks.



Nevertheless,

I resisted

the sharp temptation

to save them

as schoolboys

keep fireflies,

as scholars

collect

sacred documents,

I resisted

the wild impulse

to put them

in a golden

cage

and each day give them

birdseed

and chunks of pink melon.

Like explorers

in the jungle

who hand over the rare

green deer

to the roasting spit

and eat it

with remorse,

I stretched out

my feet

and pulled on

the

magnificent

socks

and

then my shoes.



And the moral of my ode

is this:

beauty is twice

beauty

and what is good is doubly

good

when it's a matter of two

woolen socks

in winter.

I'm not fond of Blogger's new software - it takes too long to edit a post and I've yet to figure out how to cut and paste while editing but at least now I can do this.

 

I received my lovely trade yarn from Dena. Here we have some terrific Regia which I plan to use for the PGR intarsia-in-the-round socks.





And this. When I first saw this in a little baggie I thought that sending me the innards of padded manila envelopes was a bit unusual. It turns out this is cut silk. How cool is that? Dena says it takes dye well. I can't wait to play with it.