blocks and turns

Tube pre-turn (i.e., the leg of the sock)

The heel turn is one of the niftiest parts of a sock.

The outside of the heel turn

A sock is essentially two tubes that go around a corner with one end closed off.  The tricky part, when knitting a sock, is how to get around that corner.

There are several ways of doing this, but the heel turn I've encountered most frequently basically involves extending one side of the tube a little, then executing a totally clever turn, then picking up the neglected half of the tube, shrinking it back down, and going on.  If you care enough about these things, this video demonstrates the heel turn, and is from the video series that I learned to knit a sock from. She talks a lot, and repeats herself sometimes, but it works if you're following along as you knit.

The inside of the heel turn

Anyhow, this is all to say that I have just completed the heel turn of the second of the socks I'm working on right now.

House socks

I've also actually finally gotten around to blocking a pair of house socks I made a while ago.  I also blocked a scarf I made as an experiment with single balls of fingering weight (aka sock weight) yarn, also a while ago.  I don't have blocking mats and stuff like I think you're sort of supposed to have, and I was being too lazy to try to weave a piece of yarn or find wire to block it the way you're supposed to block lace.  I got a cheapo bulletin board at Target and a couple sets of T-pins at Joanne's.  I used a measuring tape and a Sharpie to mark off 1-inch increments around the edge of the bulletin board, then used a couple pieces of string to help me keep it straight, and pinned the scarf (or most of it) to the board.  I then ran into a dilemma... I have no idea where my spray bottle is, I don't own an iron any more, and I did not wet the scarf prior to pinning.  I ended up pouring water on the scarf and then blotting it with several towels.  We shall see how this works out tomorrow...

Lace blocking (I can see at least two places where I made mistakes... one of which I hadn't noticed before examining the photos I took... sigh)

Sleepy Perry

In other news, Perry likes to sleep on the chinchilla's hay and he likes to hide in my drying laundry.

Sneaky Perry

[Some of the links go to a knit/crochet online community called Ravelry.  These links are for the details of the projects and more pictures, but will require an account to see.  You're probably not missing anything interesting.]

Why yes, the blanket looks good.  Why would my owner buy anything that didn't look good with me?