Hot and Bothered (Heather)

Not a lot of knitting being done Chez Heather, for various reasons. It's been a busy time, not the least reason being that my husband Mike formally received his teaching degree last week!



I gotta say, I enjoyed the UWO ceremonies better than the U of T one, but perhaps that is a bias. Also, the B.Ed hoods? What an awful colour? I think they are supposed to be mint green, but due to there being at least three phases of the same hood, the colour varies from mint to chartreuse to crossing-guard-neon green. But it was neat to walk out of a door and see the CN Tower staring us in the face. And now Mike is a full-fledged teacher of high school Latin! I am very glad that he has found a career that he is passionate about and went and did what was necessary to achieve it. Who knows where this will take us?

I did manage to finish the first Dahlia sock!



Have I mentioned that I love this yarn?



I am rather partial to the finished sock, too.



This being the first sock I have knit without ribbing, I don't find that the picot edge slouches at all. The true test will be when I wear them for a day.

I finished the sock on Saturday and seamed on Amaya for awhile on Sunday, but it has been brutally hot here and the humidity has stolen my will to live. We have an air conditioner, but we haven't installed it because as long as I can live with just a fan (a really big one) I feel like it makes up for me using the electric dryer, not composting, and all the environmentally conscious things that are difficult to impossible to do in a wee apartment in a densely populated area.

I know that some people think we are crazy, but to be honest, I have lived in Southwestern Ontario my entire life and I only have air conditioning for two summers out of that. On top of that, we have poor fuses in our apartment that I am not sure could take the onslaught of the A/C (since they refuse to accommodate the microwave AND the kettle) and we only have two small windows and I am not prepared to give one up for the summer. I do have sympathy for Mike, since before he met me, he didn't really have a working knowledge of humidity (being a Vancouver native) but he seems to have accepted the summer extremes of Ontario as well as the winter ones.

The downside of the muggy state of our apartment is that the idea of knitting seems pretty abhorrent on days like this. I might head over the air-conditioned library if it gets really bad this afternoon, so maybe I will cast something on then. On the plus side, my herbs are growing like crazy!

Oh, I got my Ravelry invite today! I was so excited that I promptly signed up and misspelled my user name. I feel like a total idiot and am waiting to see if there is anything that can be done about it before I start using it. At least I can blame everything on the heat.

Dye Swap Socks (Heather)

As Rosemary has posted, I participated in a three-way yarn swap in which we dyed yarns according to each person's request. I asked for yarns based off of Kaffe Fassett quilting cottons. Rosemary based hers off of his Dahlia Blooms, the 'succulent' colourway, and I think she is spot on!



Considering I don't think I got too close with hers, I am really really impressed with her achievement here.



I asked for Knit Picks Donegal Tweed as the base yarn... I was curious about the tweedy flecks. I love how they work with the colours Rosemary chose! I particularly love that patch of swampy green there. I am obsessed with this yarn! I stared at it while I finished Mike's socks, and then finally, I got to wind it.



I should have waited for Mike to help me... winding this by myself was a pain! Now I feel bad for the super-long skeins I have given people. This one wasn't even that long! Molly was not very helpful, I must say, though very attentive.

I was all ready to cast on for Coupling, but I didn't know how the colours would show up with the lace pattern, and really, this yarn is ALL about the colour. After a huge test swatch to see how things would land, I just cast on for a plain sock, and spiced it up with a picot hem. I must say, I could have really used a lace Addi for picking up those cast on stitches to knit the hem in. It was a bit of an ordeal with the regular Addi. The end result is very cute, though! In my humble opinion.



Aren't the colours fabulous?



And those tweedy bits?? (Jane, you can't pull them out over the internet, sorry!)

Amaya's knitting is done, she is now very slowly blocking. It doesn't help that the city is so humid that moving around the house feels like swimming... Once she is dry, there is some sewing and a quick trim around the armholes and done!

I also have the lovely yarn that Adriana dyed for me, but it has not yet been fittingly photographed. I suddenly want to knit every nice sock pattern that I can find! Summer of the socks?

Also, speaking of the new Knitty, does anyone else love Coachella like I do? I just happened to notice that the gauge is appropriate for Bamboo Tape. How luscious would that be?