What do you say when your sock has a hole in it (again)?

Darn it (again)! 

And that’s just what I did...again...(but I might have used a different word...)

I knit this pair of socks in 2007 and I just love them. I love them so much I’ve worn holes in them. This is the third time I’ve repaired a major blow out. This is why I keep small bits of leftover yarn each time I knit a pair of socks. Handknit socks are very dear and learning to mend and repair your hand-knits is an essential part of the craft. This is the third repair job for these socks. You can tell that I love them dearly! 

A word of warning—the next few pictures are not for the faint of heart. 

The hole.

I have no explanation for how it got so big without me noticing my little toe was sticking out. (Those are my fingers, not my toes...)

Since the hole is under the ball of my foot or right where my pinky toe sticks out (depending on what foot it's on) I wanted something that would lay pretty flat and not make my foot freak out (hmmm...could be a topic for another day "what makes my feet freak out"). I decided to darn the hole by knitting a flap. (Instructions on the Woolery's blog.) 

It took a couple tries and a bit of swearing, but I eventually got the hang of it. The challenge was trying to figure out the decrease on the right side so it would correspond with the original toe decrease. 

You pick up stitches right below the hole. Then knit a flap and attach it to the sides by knitting an existing stitch (K 2 TOG) to the flap as you go. When you get the hole covered with a few rows of overlap you pick up stitches above the hole with another needle. Then graft the stitches together with kitchener stitch. 

Pretty dang cool!!

I had to pick up quite a few stitches. There needs to be strong yarn on either side of the hole so you can slip an existing stitch onto the needle and K 2 TOG. 

When your flap is several rows above the hole, pick up the same number of stitches and graft them together. 

There is a bit of a ridge where the flap and existing stitches are knit together, but it's flattening out each time I wear the socks. It's hardly noticeable now. 

I'll definitely be using this method again. Once I got the feel for the process it was very quick, and it looks good. I am a happy girl! 

Yarn: Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock Multi

About other stashes

I have numerous stashes, not just yarn. If you know me, this will not come as a surprise. 

Before I got back into knitting 25-ish years ago I did a lot of quilting. My quilt shop locating skills were on point (pun intended). This was before you could just plug “quilt shop” into Google Maps. Every time I went on vacation I would visit the local quilt shop and purchase “souvenir” fat quarters to add to my ever expanding fabric stash. I really enjoyed the method behind piecing quilt blocks either by hand or machine. I owned a lovely singer treadle sewing machine that was an absolute gem when it came to precise seams. I belonged to a fabric of the month club. I had bins of fabric stacked in my sewing room. 

Have you noticed that I speak of all this in past tense? 

When my son, Zack, was 4 he started playing on sports teams. I wanted something that I could do while sitting through the team's practices. I took a book but found myself reading the same page over and over. I took fabric to hand piece into tiny squares but the task also required close attention. I brought knitting and voila! I could keep my eye on what was happening in the field and also maintain a good clip with the needles. 

So what to do with all that fabric? Enter my mother. She is also a quilter and the one who taught me all my sewing skills. I let her raid my stash, and raid she did. All that remained was a single bin of mainly Christmas fabrics, batiks and fun juvenile prints. As for the treadle sewing machine, I hadn't used it in over 20 years and there was no room for it in my new downsized life. It really deserves its own post, but I sold it to an avid fiber enthusiast who was delighted to acquire it. More about it (along with photos) in a future post. 

Enough back-story...on with it! 

A friend of mine uses fabrics to paint on canvases. I thought I'd give it a try. A winter birch tree scene immediately came to mind. I pulled out my bin of stashed fabrics and took inventory. All wrong. There were a few good pieces, but I was going to have to augment. Yay!

I went to a shop over in Nashville's Wedgewood-Houston neighborhood called Turnip Green Creative Reuse. It's a non-profit store where people donate used art and craft supplies. Turnip Green sorts and resells the items. It's an amazing place! I was able to pick up several fabric samples for just a few bucks. 

From these fabrics with a bit of Mod Podge and Heat-N-Bond, this is what happened. 

10" x 20"

And then 5 years go by

I could list all the excuses I have for not posting to this blog FOR FIVE YEARS, but I won't. Ok, so I'll list a few, but not all... 

I've been busy and a lot as changed. 

I met a guy. Actually I met "THE guy"...swoon.

I downsized and sold my house. That was huge. I got rid of PILES of crap and lots of stuff that was weighing me down physically, financially and spiritually.

I moved into a great apartment with a killer view of Nashville's skyline with THE guy who is a super terrific partner and my best friend forever. His name is Chris, which we thought would be weird, but it feels like the most natural thing ever. We laugh. A lot. 

I had open heart surgery to remove a scary tumor near my heart. The tumor wasn't cancerous but the doctors found a different cancer. Surprise! Check out the link on the right for My Caring Bridge page. It helped me document my journey and remain sane. 

Then I became a cancer survivor. 

And now here we are. I've also done a lot of knitting, weaving, spinning, reading, painting, drawing, creating, and most importantly LAUGHING in the past five years. 

I thought about changing the name of this blog, or starting over (again), but why? I'll just keep on with this one and maybe those who followed me years ago (looking at you, Liana) might continue to follow this renewed effort. 

When I was dealing with my cancer diagnosis, surgery recovery, and chemo, I used Caring Bridge to blog about what I was feeling. As I wrote about my challenges I realized that I missed writing, and not the abbreviated style of writing that's so prevalent in social media. Sure, I'll still post photos on Instagram and I have a couple private groups on Facebook where my family gathers to share pictures and other stuff the general public doesn't need to view. 

So with that said, this blog won't be geared toward fiber only, it'll contain all sorts of stuff based on the whim of the moment. 

No fiber, just turtles

I took a break today and strapped my kayak to the roof of my car and went to the lake. Oh...if it was only that simple.

Before I could load up the kayak, it needed to be cleaned, which really means blast all the spiders with the high pressure nozzle on the garden hose. Then I gathered up all the kayaking "stuff" -- cooler of snacks, paddle, towel, dry bag, seat, life preserver, sun screen, hat, etc. That was the easy part. The next step was getting that sucker up on top of my Rav4. Alone. But I told myself from the very beginning that I need to be able to do this on my own.

The trick to hoisting a kayak onto the roof of an SUV is to start from the back. Basically, put the nose of the kayak on the back of the SUV with the stern on the ground. I use a towel between the kayak and the roof so there's no scratching of either the kayak or the car. Then I go to the other end of the kayak and lift and push it onto the top. Ta da! It takes a little wiggling to get it all situated, but it's not too terribly difficult. Then I tie it down and hope like hell that it won't shift during transport.

I decided to go to Montgomery Bell State Park, which is about 40 minutes from here. I wasn't in the mood for a river paddle, nor did I want to deal with all the jet skis and power boats on the bigger lakes. Montgomery Bell has three little lakes that are perfect for paddlers.

I pulled into the Lake Woodhaven boat access and backed my car a little bit down the ramp, hopped out and took the tie downs off the kayak. And the kayak slid right off the car. In slow motion. It bounced and landed right side up in the grass next to the car. Note to self...park the car on level ground before unstrapping kayak. Luckily no damage.

I loaded up my goodies, covered myself in sunscreen and took to the water. A perfect way to spend a Sunday!

Picking up where I left off

I walked away from my computer and another year has gone by...and now I have two cats. What the hell?

I'm also knitting a Christmas stocking. Didn't I say a couple years ago that I'd never knit another Christmas stocking? Ok, so I'm a sucker for Santa.

This one is going to be for my grand niece who is expected to appear on July 4th. (Yeah, that makes my sister a grandma.) The pattern is the same one my mom knit for my sister and me when we were babies. All our kids have the same sock too. This will be the third generation sock and I've done a little tweaking to the pattern.

The pattern is by Mary Maxim and it's well over 50 years old. I still have the original, and I've tucked it safely away.  I'll post photos of the tweaked pattern in a few days, once I get a little further into it. I'll also post the pattern. (I can post it because it's old enough to be in the public domain, so no copyright issues.) For now, here's the same sock that I knit for my brother in law several years ago.

 More to come. This time I mean it.