Ribbed!

Okay, I've gotten into a groove with the ribber. Still a little hesitant around it, but I have my confidence, which is really something that will make me WANT to work with my machine.

I had some Schaefer Anne yarn that's been sitting in my stash waiting on me - I wanted ribbed socks with it.

Here they are:

LOVE the colors! I have enough to make another small pair of socks. May just have to hand knit those for M as the ones I'm making on the CSM are just not working out - too big.

Last night I decided that I need another new pair of lovely ribbed socks. This time it'd be a combo of ribs. I even did a swatch tube to determine what the row gage is!

Here's the first sock - need to crank out the second one tonight at SnB.

Notice how the heel and toes are slightly different colors. That's because Jawoll comes with some reinforcing thread and I added them to the heels/toes. Finding that some of the socks I own *do* wear out in the heels (not so much with the toes yet). Cranking the machine was really difficult with the additional reinforcement thread and the socks took longer than normal as I had to go back and loop the un-knitted stitches - my thumb hurts this morning.

The other thing I did last night was to make some CSM tools. I lost my handy latch in a dowel and saw someone had made their own with a FIMO clay handle.

Joann's has FIMO clay on sale for 50%, so I bought some and made these:

Each handle took one pat of FIMO clay. Super easy, cheap, and fast.

I also got something in the mail yesterday - new CSM needles. I've eaten through my ribber needles so much that I can't work on my 36 ribber dial, so I ordered some new needles from Pat Fly of Angora Valley Fibers. I also got a complete set of large hook needles (ribbers and cylinders) as I'm finding that it'd be nice to have them for heavier yarns. I have two balls of cotton/elastic yarn that's just itchin' to be made into socks (from a long ago Secret Pal!). I'm also hoping they hug a little better and can finally make some socks for M - who is being terribly patient with me.

Today I'm getting a shipment of yarn that I bought off of ebay - 40+ cones of machine yarn. It was an impulse buy, but one I feel was a pretty good one. I'll keep the blog posted.

The last thing I want to blog about is that I am thinking about how to make alligator mittens on the CSM. Should be easy enough now that I know how to use my ribber! Just need to figure out how to knit flat.