Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Ta-Dah Tuesday

Today the heat wave that we've been having here finally ended. It's cloudy, and much cooler. Much more seasonal. It was nice to have a few warm days, but... yeah, let's get on with autumn! Hopefully I'll get to buy some pumpkins and gourds again this year, and do some decorating. No one here carves jack-o-lanterns, but I have seen plenty of people decorating with mums and pumpkins. Perhaps it's just all the other Americans who live in the area?

I have another ta-da to show off today. Yay!!! I love having finished projects! So here we are.

new socks!

They're my Burning Stripes socks. (Pattern available here on Ravelry.) Yay! I'm so glad I finally finished them. And I love this pattern. I love the striping detail. So neat and genius, because it helps "carry" the contrast color through the next stripe. Awesome, no?

Since this is my first pair of finished socks, they are not without errors. For one thing, they're a little too big. I'd read about "negative ease" and all (making the clothing item smaller in measurement than actually needed, so that the garment stretches to fit). I thought I was doing it alright, but overall, they're too big. And since I didn't do them two-at-a-time, the second sock is even bigger. My tension loosened up a lot, some how. Second mistake there. (Next time I'll do them both at the same time!). Third thing is that I never tried the second one on. Not until I was doing the cuff (almost finished). If I had KNOWN that my tension was so loose on the second one, I could have easily adjusted or just stopped and started over. But that heel is such a pain to do, and the second sock was so close to being done, I didn't have the heart to unravel it all and start over. So I'll live with my mistakes, and learn from them for the next pair.

I also didn't do a very good job with the heel on the second sock.

my holey heel

I'm not sure what happened. I tried picking up extra stitches to close up the holes, but I guess I didn't pick up enough or did it wrong. Oh well. The holes aren't THAT big. I can live with it.

Now that the socks are done, I've moved on to other projects. I'll be showing you more puffs and a scarf in the near future (and probably much more!).  Hopefully you like them all!


xxx


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