Tuesday, June 17, 2008

American in Holland

Right before last Thanksgiving, I put a post up on Ravelry that I had some extra DVDs of a certain tv show and that if anyone would like to trade me some yarn for the brand new DVDs, I would be happy to do it and that I would be in Ohio at Thanksgiving to mail off the DVDs. I got a quick response. It was from a very nice woman in Ohio. We made arrangements and she sent her yarn off.

Then I got a message from a woman who is fairly well-known in the knitting world. I knew she had access to some pretty great (and exclusive) yarn. People love to send her stuff so she can talk about it. So I bought another set and sent them to her. It seemed kind of cheaty, but she was trading for DVDs, not DVDs that I actually had, so I didn't lose any sleep over it. Well, she was totally lame in sending her yarn, but when it finally got here, I was pretty happy with it. Very nice colors, except for one skein, which seemed sort of boring. It was just some browns and purples and some blue thrown in. I let the whole mess sit in a box for a while.

When I saw the pattern for American in China on Knitty, I realized that the boring sock yarn would probably be just the thing. Then I wound it up into a ball and realized that I was really wrong (I know, I was surprised too!) about the yarn. It's beautiful. It's Interlacements Tiny Toes in a color called Mountain Jewel. The name is a little foofy, but I like it a lot. And it's nice to knit with really good sock yarn. I like Regia just fine, but this just feels different.

And I'm sort of crazy about this pattern. It's a lot of work, but I really like the linen stitch on the bottom of the foot. And the pattern is pretty easy to memorize. It's a really beautiful fabric and it feels really solid. I think these may actually fit me, which would be swell. I'm not doing them on Magic Loop. I'm using two circulars. The pattern translates easily to two circulars. Here's what I have so far, with some detail shots.



And that was just what I did yesterday. So I have been knitting. I'm actually working on a bigger project that's been taking up all my knitting time. Not sure when I'll post about that. It's been interesting, and it's good that I like Rowan Felted Tweed, because it involves a lot of that.

A student told me today that I was the first male knitter that he's ever met. That's me, a pioneer, helping the world discover that men do knit.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think the colors are completely lovely. Isn't amazing how sock yarn can fool you?

Anonymous said...

Your sock is gorgeous! As is the yarn!

I can never tell what something will look like knit. I just don't have that vision. I'm so glad it worked out for you!

JackieCastsOn Ravelry

Anonymous said...

That's really cool what that linen stitch does with the color patterning. I like that. A LOT. (It's always quite nice to be yanked a bit out of my no no no I'm not knitting socks mantra.)