I am a knitter, honest!

I keep starting every post with an apology and a promise to start posting more after I finished the craft show.


The craft fair went really well. I sold out of the adult sized felted hats by mid-day on Saturday. They were so popular. I will be working really hard to get more of those done for next year. I will also be including a few accessories for them as well to make them more appealing. (I took one and pinned a broach on it so it looked like a cloche from the 20's. It was very cute!)


I received a couple of custom orders as well, so I've been scurrying to finish those up. The first hat I finished up already and when I called the person who ordered it, she canceled. I hate it when people are flaky like that. I put a lot of effort into getting it done quickly and then I get nothing for it. (Well, not nothing, since I can put into inventory for next year. But, still, it is pretty rude if you ask me.)

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I have an announcement.


Brace yourselves.


I have finished a pair of socks.

Not just any socks.

The socks that sucked the soul from me.

I have finished the Pomatomus socks.







I started these last summer. But I had a few problems with the yarn. It was knotted in at least 4 places and when I went to return it to the store, the hours on the card that I picked up when I purchased the yarn that week were wrong. Then the clerk was rude to me and said that I couldn't possibly have gotten the card there recently. She didn't even have the class to apologize when proven wrong either. (It was the last time I shopped there.)

Then, Eric got so sick and life fell apart. I knit on these while he was in the hospital and ever since they have left a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach.


Then, when I decided that it was not fair to the yarn to let it languish in my WIP basket forever, I found this. I finally screwed up the courage to try and fix them this weekend. I decided to reknit the 2 rows that were damaged and just run a strand through all of the remaining loose stitches. I think it came out pretty well, all things considered.


Honestly, it is as if I was not supposed to knit these socks.

A knitting we will go

Honestly, knitting does happen her occasionally. Like last night. I turned the heel on the hippopotamus sucks socks. I have to admit that I am less and less infatuated with KPPPM as I knit these socks. I am finding it to be splitty and a bit underspun, which I am sure contributed to the disaster.



I really want to finish these up. I'm not entirely sure why I picked these up from the bottom of the WIP pile considering that I have Sizzle in the mix and the summers in Wisconsin can be wickedly short (compared with the winters which seem to last a lifetime). I think some of it is that all of the other knitting that I have been doing is utterly brainless (felted hats and dish clothes for sale) so a bit of lace is a nice respite.



That and I am not entirely sure about how I feel about Sizzle at the moment. I have not tried it on recently to ensure the fit. Factor in the blooming that will happen because it is Cotton Fleece, the fit feels like a total crap shoot. And yes, I did swatch and am following it faithfully.

BTW, stop over at the Heathen Housewife for a chance to win a copy of Victorian Lace.

New bags available

Yes, yes. I know with the name House of Wool, in theory at least, this is a knitting blog, but lately my fabric stash has grown at an astonishing rate. Sadly, I have not bought myself any yarn since last year. I have purchased some for bagatelle, but that's it...

Anyway - I have a couple of new bag designs available. As always, they are fully lined with a coordinating fabric. Both designs have a slip pocket and a zipper closure.

I still haven't finished the fix on the hippopotumus* socks. It turns out that there was one broken strand and the strand below that was just about to break also. I decided to fix both rows (genius, I know) so there wouldn't be further problems down the road. I clipped the strand that was nearly broken and slipped the stitches from the row below onto a dpn. With a short piece of yarn, I reknit about 8 stitches on the first of the rows. All that awaits me now is grafting the row where the strand had actually broken.

For some reason, I am not quite up to doing this. If it were just plain stockinette, it would be a snap. Cables, bring 'em on. Twisted stitches, ribbing and K2togtbl, however, leaves me a twittering mess. I've done the first stitch or two and while not great, it is better than I had expected. But then my liquid courage ran out and adding more to the mix did not seem prudent given the difficulty of the task ahead.

Until I get up the cajones to work on this, I am studiously ignoring the offending sock sitting next to the couch.

*Yes, I know that isn't the name, but it is what I call them in my head.

oh crap

Last night I worked diligently on the second Pomatomus suck sock. The leg is now finished and I started the heel flap.

In a moment of whimsy to congratulate myself for my self discipline, I seized the first sock and put it on to admire its inestimable beauty.

The gasp was loud enough to bring my husband running in from another room. (It's possible that he thought I was seriously injured (which, psychically, I am).) Really, the next bit is a blur. I have a vague memory of whimpering quietly, of a few choice words, of complete and utter dispair.

I have no idea how to fix this.

Now, its not as if I haven't dealt with my fair share of knitting horror stories, but this one takes the cake for me. I briefly toyed with the idea of frogging all the way up to the break. In all honesty, given the complexity of the lace (not that bad when knitting but murderous when repairing), this may still be an option. I also thought of sending it to our beloved Harlot because she can fix anything.

I first tried to darn the area by duplicate stitching the broken stitches, but it was a disaster. Thinking about the mis-twisted cable fixing demo done by the Yarn Harlot, I realized that by only hope is to unravel the broken strands for a bit and reknit the hole with separate strands.

Stay tuned to see if I survive or if I burn a sacrifice.

The answer to the burning question

I know it has been on everyone's mind. What was the drawing actually supposed to be?

The majority of you guessed it as a Rocket Ship and that is what he insists it is. Personally, I was a bit concerned that the people who moved into the apartment upstairs would be upset because they have a 13 year old daughter. I didn't want the new neighbors thinking that we were a bunch of pedophiles.

In actual knitting news, I worked a few rounds last night on the Pomatomus socks. (Is there a hidden meaning to the fact that I originally typed sucks? I thinks so too.) I am about half a repeat before the start of the heel flap on the second sock and it just seems to be taking forever! Although in all fairness to the socks, it would probably be faster if I actually picked them up from the knitting basket.

Honestly? There were so many pairs on needles in the ziplock that I was momentairly baffled. The sock is currently on 3 needles instead of the 4 that I prefer to use (the patterning definately needs to be on 3 needles...) The 5th dpn was floating loose in the bottom of the bag. There were 3 circular needles in there also - 2 from KnitPicks and one from Clover.

I sat there for a minute completely not understanding what I was seeing. Then I remembered that I had been knitting the foot of the sock on 2 different sized circs (one that matched the dpn size for the top of the foot and a smaller size for the sole so it would wear better). Halfway through the first foot I changed from the clover circ to the knitpicks because of the join and apparently never put the clover circ away.

For the record, here are the two skeins that I dyed with Caleb. The first is handpainted with leftover Paas and was done at Easter time. The second is from the Kool-Aide dyeing done the other day. It came out much more purple than I had anticipated. I am planning on doing a simple beanie for him with stripes. Even if it isn't a perfect match, the dark purple will help tone down the, um, vividness of the handpainted.