Hey look! More stuff finished!

Friday night I finished these, slapped them on my feet, and they've hardly been off since. I figure I'll wash them today so I can have them ready to go for Thanksgiving road-tripping.



Garter Rib socks - pattern is from Charlene Schurch's Sensational Knitted Socks, which had a lovely way of stepping through the simplest of patterns. I liked the garter-stitch edging on the heel flap and the attention to detail throughout. I will be knitting more from this book.

And my great accomplishment lately:



Giant grey socks. Okay, so they're not really giant, but they're much bigger than they would be were they for me, and they're grey, finished just in time for the weather and the rest of the world to become the same color. These are Christmas for my Dad and it's a huge load off to have them done.

Down to two single socks needing mates and a total of only 5 works in progress. I've decided I'll start Mom's Christmas socks after Thanksgiving, and meanwhile I'm working on finishing things. First is my job applications, then there's the cabled sock pattern, and my still-unfinished first sweater. I'm going to get road-trip knitting time this week, though, so that'll be good for making things happen.

I doubt I'll be posting before the holiday, so have a good one, all!

Hey Look! Content!

In a remarkable aberration from my usual behavior, I was entirely monogamous last night at knit night, and therefore, the Nuclear Winter mittens are finished, with ends woven in, even! (okay, once they were done, I started playing with the charts for the cabled socks, but still...)



More pictures are on ravelry, showing that I did make left and right ones and they do match. Norwegian Mittens from EZ's Knitting Around, Classic Elite Lush, one ball each of black and lime. I shook hands with almost everyone at Panera last night so we could all enjoy how soft and yummy they are. I'm very pleased with them.

I finished Fetching on Tuesday, and today I gave up on the search for Ice Blue Raspberry Lemonade and went ahead and dyed them. I'm guessing the crappy Kool-aid selection right now has to do with the fact that it's no longer summer.



I soaked the mitts in water and vinegar and went to town. I used a piece of straw to drop dye where I wanted it, with a plastic baggie inside to prevent bleeding through. Microwaved for a minute, allowed to cool and rinse. Not my favorite thing ever, perhaps, but they'll do. Here they are next to the Lemon Twist hat:



The blue in the mitts is Berry Blue, so there's a little difference. With the hat on my head and the mitts on my hands, it should be ok.

Wow. Finished two things in a week. Now I get to cast on something new, right? Maybe. Maybe not. The grey sock will get some done during the Georgia game tomorrow, and I'm going to knit a lot this weekend, I hope. Mom's birthday socks are on their way to her, so it's time to start her Xmas socks, but I'm still having trouble choosing a pattern. I'll figure it out sometime, I'm sure.

In other news, I'm down to one job, so that's a happy, and it's teaching math, so that's even better. My brother is going to run out of work soon if he hasn't already, and so I've been spending a lot of time today reading about the WGA strike. I've got a book due at the library Sunday that I've only read a third of, so that's something to do. I'm keeping busy. And that's good.

Not remotely knitting-related

Click for video

I know I told this story at knit night this spring. The PA that John Krasinski mentions is my kid brother!

What priorities? and Switching sides.

This working two jobs thing has definitely killed my weekday posting. We'll see how things shake out once things change this week.

So I'm on ravelry, right? I have my projects in, my yarn is not all there yet, but maybe that can happen over christmas, or maybe I'll just decide to do it. And I have a queue, with about thirty things in it. I try and keep it in priority order, but that doesn't work usually. Stuff hopscotches up or drops away altogether. It happens.

Meanwhile, I've been trying to clear my needles. Part of this is a feeling of being overwhelmed by WIPs, and trying to get Christmas knitting prioritized and done. And I'm considering switching sides, and going from english to continental, which is a bad idea mid-project. (Two-handing the Nuclear Winter Mittens is what's got me thinking of the switch. They're getting close to done, but for thumbs.)

And this weekend Fetching leapfrogged my queue altogether and jumped onto my needles. Oh well. The pause for this post was brought to you by my anal realization that the symmetry of the fingerless mittens will be thrown off if I do the thumb trick at the start of a round on both hands. Since then I realized I can center the seven thumb stitches over the first purl column (note: a one-stitch shift - but to me, it matters) and all will be well. The first mitt is to the thumb, and but for the first few rounds and parts of the cable rounds, they've been knit continental. As per Mandie's suggestion Thursday, they're going to be dyed with Kool-Aid after they're done to match the Lemon Twist hat.

Okay. That's all I have to say. Maybe next weekend I'll have FO pictures of the Nuclear Winter Mittens or More Lemon Twistiness for you. But I'm not promising anything.

Math and Knitting

I went to a graph theory conference in Detroit a few weeks ago, and while there was math happening, nothing really caught my fancy. I went to talks, I listened, I zoned, I free-associated. And this happened:

This is the Petersen graph. It's a well-known and much-used example and counterexample graph. It's complex enough to be interesting, but basic enough to be easy to play with and test things on. (Trying to find a way out of ending that sentence with a preposition. Failing.)



The graph above has had the vertices (the dots) labeled by me to go with the matrix below. An adjacency matrix is a representation of a graph in which the vertices correspond to both columns and rows, and the entries are the number of edges (lines) connecting adjacent vertices. The top matrix below is the adjacency matrix of the graph above. Below that is a chart. The entries in the matrix have been replaced with yarn overs.



The symbols along the diagonal are k3tog, the ones on the right edge are k2tog. o's are yarnovers, - is purl, and if unspecified, they're knit stitches. Since the diagonal of an adjacency matrix is a funny place, defined by whether or not you consider a vertex to be adjacent to itself (I said no in my matrix), I figured decreases would work along it. Since I didn't want to deal with triple decreases, I made them double, but since the graph is 3-regular (every vertex is adjacent to three others), I needed a third, hence the line of decreases on the right. The purl column was for definition, but I'm not sure how necessary it is.

I knit it up using the yarn and needles I had on me at the time (giant grey man socks that are still threatening me with their not-done-ness). Here's the swatch that resulted. The top is the pattern in the chart. Below is the same, except the k3tog's are instead slip 1, k2tog, psso.



It's a crappy blocking job, but I'm pretty sure a good one would still have issues with the diagonal skew - which seems like it would be predictable were I a more experienced lace knitter. In all, I'm not in love with it. I find it highly doubtful that I'll be working on Petersen socks anytime soon, but I found the idea interesting anyway. I have a hypercube matrix charted out that might have fewer issues, but then again, it might have more.

Blocked

Progress report:
I washed the Petersen swatch and pinned it to the carpet today. I hope to have pictures in the next few days. The grey sock is to the heel flap, the blue fuzzy sock has the heel turned, but the gusset is not yet picked up. The first sleeve of the sweater is almost where it started today when I realized I really didn't like the way the increases were, so frogged back to the start of the elbow and redid them. I've got myself a bit blocked about how the whole "paired increases" thing works. Need to start the second mitten if I want to finish the pair in the month, which I do. Also need to start writing up that cabled sock pattern.

Auburn is currently winning, but I'm not counting on that continuing. Am Hoping though. War Eagle.

Move along, nothing to see here.

It's been a while since we've had an FO here. I know, it's grating on me too. Darn pairs of everything. I have most of a mitten (no thumb) done and three second socks going. The sweater is getting to a point where Something needs to be done, but I'm not quite sure what (but I bet it involves a second sleeve), and between the two jobs I have now, knitting time has been scarcer.

Besides, I had a couple evenings of complete zombieness. It was cold. I have lost the furnace wars. Maybe next year, when I have more finished knitwear, I will last longer. Really it was kind of amazing the difference the three degrees between 65 and 68 made in my ability to be productive yesterday.

Okay. There's football on. LSU lost, which gives Auburn a chance at winning the SEC. But first they have to beat Arkansas, which they're doing right now in a really boring game.

I have gray sort-of lace swatch that grew from last weekend's math conference. I need to block it and see if it actually looks remotely like something worth having. Lace charts from graph adjacency matrices could work, right?

Ok. Moving along myself. Good weekend, everyone.