Monday, December 6, 2010

Two left feet

A glance at the calendar told me I'd better get going on my super secret big Christmas project, so I was dutiful over the weekend, making huge progress in anticipation of a long day of waiting-room knitting later this week. You know, you don't want to be stuck in a long patch of counting and manipulating while sitting in an office from which you might be plucked at any moment.

However, I did find time to knit a second Turkish Bed Slipper and graft the toes, which gave me this:

Thanks in part to bad lighting - and get used to that by the way because the temperature has plummeted here such that I won't be going outside with bare ankles any time soon - you can't tell from this picture how perfectly the colours match up. They do though, thanks to my compulsiveness about matching the cast-on point.

Oddly, since I was apparently less compulsive about maintaining even tension, one is about two sizes bigger than the other. The short one did stretch to fit as you can see, but it wasn't comfortable.

The upside: I was making one pair for somebody with a size 7 foot, like me, and the other for somebody who takes a 5. So what I have now are two left feet.

And pressure to produce two corresponding rights. I don't know whether you've ever had to match tension but I can tell you from experience it sure isn't easy for me. So this week should be rather interesting.

In other news, I did a little more spindle spinning with my undyed Polwarth and finally made it here:

Ready to ply. This project is destined to make a stuffed toy for a Christmas-vicinity treat so I figured I'd better get onto that, too. I looked at the calendar again this morning, and it seems there are just 11 crafty days left before I have to pack up my stuff to make way for the tree and the annual baking fest.

(after which I will have to sneak out some small knitting to keep from eating so much at least of the gooey stuff. I wonder if that could be a good strategy this year - only making gooey crumbly stuff?)

2 comments:

heklica said...

I haven't knit any socks so far but have knit a few pairs of gloves so I know what the problem may be. Have you tried knitting the two items together, at the same time? I haven't tried that method but I suppose it might help maintain the even tension.

Mary Keenan said...

Together is definitely better! I usually do socks on two separate sets of dpns but at the same time (some of one leg then some of the other, all of one heel then the other, etc.) but these are so quick I thought I could get away with one at a time. Not ;^)