I’ve been a bad blogger lately, but we’ve had company. M’s sister stayed with us for several days. We had a good time. We all took lots of pictures with M’s sister’s great camera she just bought for her trip to South Africa and Botswana (she leaves for Africa Saturday!). We all forgot to download the photos to my computer before she flew away today. Sigh. We even toured a chocolate factory. M and I live about an hour from Scharffen Berger Chocolate Factory<\/a>. Our tour guide was not the best; she was rather disgruntled and couldn’t answer many questions, but the tour was totally worth it for the smell alone. The whole place was permeated with a warm chocolate aroma. It wasn’t over-powering–just really cozy and wonderful. All the workers seemed very happy.<\/p>\n

I have done a little knitting. The lace scarf was playing least in sight as I am debating giving it to M’s sister. I did modify and finish the thick-and-thin mitts, so those are waiting for a FO post. I found my wimple, which I had “lost” by putting it away as though it were already blocked, so now I can block it and have another FO post. But as for WIPs, this week the socks rule.<\/p>\n

Pete’s second sock is almost done, and it is striping and pooling very much like the first, so the pair shouldn’t look too odd:
\n&ot<\/a><\/p>\n

Once I had turned the heel on Pete’s second sock, I felt it was fair to start Nancy’s birthday socks. I really like the Lorna’s Laces Mother Lode colorway. I debated what pattern to use. I was determined to use an extant pattern and not just make something up, as that seems to be all I’m doing lately in terms of socks. I have Loksins<\/a> from Cassie<\/a>, but I want to use a more muted colorway for those, so I tried the Undulating Rib sock from Favorite Socks<\/em>. Nancy has shapely calves because she runs, so I thought I should change needle sizes part way down the leg (the pattern also instructs one to do this). I really liked how the pattern was working out on the larger needles. I was quite pleased. And then I changed needles down one size. The pain. The agony.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

All the gold is on the OTHER<\/strong> side! It looks oppy (to use a favorite term of Mom’s). I can’t give this as a gift. With the second ball of yarn, I tried an alternative pattern: Stansfield 196 from More Sensational Knitted Socks.<\/em> I looked at the chart and then knit it “from memory.”<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

So, this isn’t really<\/strong> Stansfield 196, but it may be acceptable. I’m not far along enough to decide. What I don’t understand is why everywhere on the web the stitch patterns by Lesley Stanfield are referred to as Stansfield (including sites that sell her book, showing the cover with her name spelled out). It took me a devil of a time to find her book, but I now have a copy. Very nice.<\/p>\n

Well, I must make weighty sock decisions. It would be wrong to knit myself a pair of Loksins in the meantime, wouldn’t it?\u00a0 Sigh.\u00a0 Where’s the chocolate we bought?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been a bad blogger lately, but we’ve had company. M’s sister stayed with us for several days. We had a good time. We all took lots of pictures with M’s sister’s great camera she just bought for her trip to South Africa and Botswana …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7pEGF-1K","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.molecularknitting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.molecularknitting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.molecularknitting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.molecularknitting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.molecularknitting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.molecularknitting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.molecularknitting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.molecularknitting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.molecularknitting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}