Knitting Along

So I'm progressing nicely with my last pair of Opals and my ambitious two-pair-at-once projects. Haven't had a great deal of time to knit lately, but even with three projects OTN, I'm already thinking ahead to what I'll do when I've finished these. I currently knit from the cuff down, and had been closing the toes with a 3-needle bind off. Don't ask me how many times I watched Nenah Galati's sock knitting DVD chapter on the dreaded Kitchener - and still couldn't do it correctly. The Kitchener Stitch thwarted me until recently, when I turned to my trusty Stitch 'n Bitch book, where I found instructions simple enough for me to follow. (Nenah seemed to go too quickly, and even when I tried advancing frame by frame, I still got lost!) I'm happy to report that I have finally managed the dreaded Kitchener...and now want to try my hand at knitting from the toe up.

I'd seen a few Web sites with toe-up cast on instructions, but none of them made sense to me until I found this one:

http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEspring06/FEATmagiccaston.html

Having reviewed it a couple times, I actually think I can do this. I've got two yarn candidates waiting in my stash - a dark green and multi-color striped Swizzle yarn, and a couple balls of Simply Stripes from Knit Picks.

In other news, I've decided I must have a ball of Step yarn in the Vulcan color. Yes, I am such a Trek geek that I will feel an overwhelming urge to spend $20 on a ball of yarn simply because it is called Vulcan. If they come out with a Klingon colorway, I'll have to have that, too. :-) Hell, I'd buy Romulan, too. But not Betazoid, because Deanna Troi irked the shit out of me all the way through ST:TNG with her insipid "sensing" of the blindingly obvious and all that ridiculous anti-grav bra she seemed to be wearing.

Mini yarn review: I've read mixed reviews on Sockotta yarn. Some like it, some loathe it. I found some at the coast (Atlantic Beach, NC) in a blue-green colorway that I really liked. I'm knitting with it now, and so far I really don't have any complaints. It has a different hand than the wool yarns I've worked with, but I'd expect it to because it is mostly cotton. I'm liking the density (I'm working on size 1 US circulars) of the fabric I've knitted so far, and I'm definitely looking forward to completing enough of the leg so that I can tuck each ball of yarn into its corresponding sock. The only drawback to working more than one sock at a time is the inevitable yarn tangles - which are in no way helped by the cat's attention to my knitting.