Friday, May 01, 2009

Knitting in China

The weather is warming up and I rarely wear my knitted socks anymore. Last fall I started learning how to knit socks out of need because the Chinese markets didn't sell any thick socks and my African sandal-adapted feet were freezing. But then Kyan sent me a care-package thankfully overdoing it with socks and now my cupboard is piled high with warm socks.

My students find it funny that I still wear somewhat thick socks as the weather is warming and I find it funny that they wear thin socks even when there is snow on the ground.

As the weather warms up, what shall I knit? Why socks of course. Next fall is fast approaching and it would be nice to be able to give socks as winter gifts. My hands like to always be in motion with a preference for no brain knitting. This is why I picked out The Classic Sock pattern from the book 2-at-a-time SOCKS by Melissa Morgan-Oakes.

My first pair turned out to be too narrow to fit over an ankle and therefore I changed them into fingerless gloves, a great suggestion by my sitemate.


My second pair fits perfect.

My third pair will again be maroon. I hope everyone likes maroon. I bought way too much yarn for my ribbed tank top.
I want to buy new yarn and to start new projects; however, I have so much leftover yarn from felting projects that I really need to use it up. The yarn I can buy in my city isn't very fancy. It is pretty uninteresting, basically wool and acrylic mixtures. It was really hard for me to find 100% wool that is feltable. I would hand the yarn merchant a note in Chinese asking for 100% wool. She would direct me to a wall of color. I went through 100's of RMB worth of 100% wool yarn that didn't felt for some reason. The yarn packaging in Chinese would say 96% wool + 4% + 10% something else. It was such a strange label for a scientist. That 14% something else doesn't felt.

I like felting projects. I have used up all of the wool that I bought in America during my Jan/Feb 2009 homeleave.

1 comment:

Kristina said...

I love your fingerless gloves!!!

I don't know how you do your socks, but I have a great pattern for knitting them from the toe up, which makes it a lot easier to figure out how much to knit. :) If you're interested, let me know and I'll see if I can scan it and send it to you. Or maybe I can just write it.

And how did you felt here!? What do you buy to make it work in these washing machines?