Birkenwasser knits

It's Tour-de-Sock time again! Last summer I swore that I would never do it again, but by May I was just checking the schedule and yarn requirements, matching my stash with the sock schedule and not going to participate at all, and before I knew what I was doing, I had signed up for the competition.


The first round started on Saturday, July 15 at 2 PM. This was in the middle of a family vacation tour through the Baltic states and we were supposed to drive from Daugavpils in Latvia to Vilnius in Lithuania that day. I knew that I couldn't sit at the hotel and knit until the socks were finished, but I wanted to use the driving time for knitting. Luckily, the world's best playground is located in Daugavpils, so the rest of the family agreed to spend the morning in the park and head to Vilnius after lunch. I was able to read through the pattern before we left, and luckily it wasn't too complicated so knitting in the car was ok. I skipped the part of learning what Turkish cast on is, and used a more familiar one due to the circumstances. In Vilnius, I was able to knit a couple of hours more before going to bed.


Luckily, the pattern was easy to memorise, and I carried the socks with me, taking advantage of any playground stops or waiting times. Of course, I didn't get the socks done before leaving Vilnius, so there was more knitting time on the road, stopping in Trakai and Kaunas before arriving in Klaipeda. I managed to knit the easy parts during the day, and then for the unusual heel construction (afterthought leg - as in afterthought heel, except that here you knit the heel first and then pick up stitches for leg) and the fins on top of the cuffs I did in the evening at the hotel. The last fins I knitted on top of the Parnidis dune on the Curonian Spit, which, by the way, is one of the most amazing places I've seen. We stopped at a cafe to take pictures of the socks, and I tried to e-mail the pics and post them to TdS forum to claim my points. In the end, four days after the beginning of stage 1, I was 139th to finish. It didn't go that well, but I have to say that I'm happier for the day in Vilnius than I would have been for staying at the hotel and finishing earlier. Also, with the new point system it means that I still got 17 points. Let's see if that's going to be any good in the overall standing.

During my short online presence in the knitting world I have already discovered quite a few things that I've never tried, but that seem to be pretty popular. As a note to self - try these:

1. Top down knitting. You know what, I honestly had never heard of knitting pullovers top down, and I'm still not quite sure why that would be better than knitting bottom up. Therefore, I'd better give it a try!

2. Along the same lines: socks knitted toe up. Actually, I don't think the flat toe looks so nice, but as this is something that I also haven't tried, I'm gonna do it just to see how it goes.

3. Shawls. This one I share with Of course she knits who is also new in the online knitting world. What's with the shawls? I never see anyone wear shawls, so do you just knit them for the fun of knitting? I'm definitely going to knit a couple of them. Maybe Quicksilver and then something lace. I keep seeing pictures of Quicksilver, and can't figure out how it was knitted. It just might have to be the first pattern that I buy.

4. Three needle bindoff. Picot edge. I was looking for a dictionary of English knitting vocabulary and found these Learn-to-knit instructions. It seems that there are some really basic(?) things that I've never tried. Also the ways of sewing things together look different from the way I was taught to do it. Then there are row (or whatever) markers. Those I'm not going to try before someone explains to me why they would be useful. Aren't they just extra work, moving them around?

5. Linen. The first four items on my list could be explained by the little engineer in me who wants to try new techniques and see how things are compiled in three dimensions, but this one can't be explained. I really want to knit something linen.