Sunday, November 16, 2008

Finished socks, and thwarting kittens

I finally finished my Halloween wool socks. I only bought this yarn a year ago (!!) from a woman on eBay. It's 100% superwash wool, so I ran some woolly nylon with the yarn as I knit the heel. This yarn was the "naughty yarn" I'd started to work with in '07, then after knitting 9 inches, realized I had made them too small. Although I hated frogging all that work and starting over, it turns out that it was best that I did. I originally knit these socks cuff down. If I'd continued that way, I would have likely run out of yarn before I could complete the toes. When I started over, I knit toe-up, using all but about 10 inches of the yarn. They ended up a little shorter in the leg than I usually like, but I'm delighted with the end result. I've already had a rave review on them, from a truly charming senior citizen I interviewed this afternoon. I have two more pairs on the needle, and I just located my size 5 circs so I can begin a pair from the Moda Dea Vision yarn I talked about in my last post. I also completed two cotton washcloths last week, which I'll wrap around a bar of handmade soap and give as gifts next week.


Necessity being the mother of invention, I created a kitten-proof project holder for small works-in-progress. It's easy: Take one of the plastic containers you get when you buy a big stack of CDs (they come with the black base featuring a spindle on which the CDs sit and a plastic, bucket-shaped, locking cover). Use a hacksaw to cut the spindle off the base. Take a bit of sandpaper to the spindle nub to sand off any rough bits. Turn the bucket-shaped cover over, tuck your yarn and circs inside, put the lid on and give it a twist to lock it. Ta dah! Kitten-proof storage.

2 comments:

  1. What an amazing idea! You are sooo smart! There are a ton of those containers around our house since my hubby is a movie freak.

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  2. Glad you liked my idea. I'm sure someone else has thought of it, but I have to admit that I was really glad it occurred to me when it did. I have my sock projects in kitten-deterring bags but the cotton washcloths I was working on were just sitting in my knitting basket. Far too tempting for the kittens to resist, of course. This trick solved the temptation problem very nicely and it gave me something to do with the leftover CD containers that had been sitting around gathering dust. (I do wish they'd make those things out of recyclable plastic!)

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