All of my knits have been in the unbloggable category these days, but I managed to create some bloggable drama.

Drama! I was happily knitting along on this pair of socks when I decided to change the rib pattern after starting the second sock. I made the executive decision to chop off the almost-completed first sock’s cuff, reknit the cuff in the new pattern, then graft the first sock back together again.

This was a bad idea on two counts. First, chopping off the cuff (well, snipping a stitch and unraveling a row to separate the two halves) was a pain in itself, because I ended up with way too few stitches on the needles! I was way off, by three or four stitches per DPN. I had to slowly unpick stitches for a couple of rows in order to get the correct stitch count. Then, I was left with the prospect of grafting in rib. The book I have gives instructions for 1×1 rib, and it was pretty difficult for me to extrapolate the instructions to my 2×2 rib.

I ended up knitting a rib swatch with a one-row stripe of a contrast color, and then figuring out the sequence of steps by following the path of the contrast strand. Hopefully these instructions will help someone in the same predicament!

Here’s how to graft 2×2 rib, where you chopped up your knitting so that one of the pieces is shifted by a half-stitch (ETA – this will also work if you provisionally cast one of the pieces). The normal 2×2 portion is the Lower instructions and the 1/2 stitch shifted portion is on the Upper. Start with the K2 part of the rib.

The stitch in parenthesis is the type of stitch on the needle. K-p denotes one of the half-shifted stitches in the Upper portion, although I wasn’t very consistent in labelling them in my notes. Always drop the first stitch in a pair.

(k) Lower – draw yarn through as if to K
(k) Lower – as if to P

(k) Upper – as if to P
(k) Upper – as if to K

(k) Lower – as if to K
(p) Lower – as if to K

(k) Upper – as if to K
(k-p) Upper – as if to P

(p) Lower – as if to P
(p) Lower – as if to K

(p) Upper – as if to K
(k) Upper – as if to P

(p) Lower – as if to P
(k) Lower – as if to P

(p-k) Upper – as if to P
(k) Upper – as if to K

I think I’ve figured out the reason why I’ve been such a lax blogger lately. I absolutely and totally procrastinate on writing the posts. Photos hang out on flickr for weeks before I can muster the motivation to sit down and write a couple of paragraphs. So! I’m going to try to post more and write less. Photos are the fun part, right?

Here’s my trip to Maryland last weekend in a series of pictures and minimal of pesky words. I managed to convince my friend Allison to accompany me, and it was mucho fun!

People! I’m the silly looking one in the green shirt. Everyone else is: Olga; Cristi; Lolly, Isel, and Jenna; Jess; Jody and Christy; and Christa (who recognized me from my mascot, Tissue-San!). We went to the Ravelry meetup in the afternoon, but didn’t stay terribly long. And go figure, I don’t have any photos of the people that we spent the most time with – Chris and NanC, fellow Texan fiber enthusiasts.

Sheepdogs! I want to get a sheepdog and watch it herd the cats. The sheep were hilarious. They were such sheep, all huddled together and generally clueless.

Baaaaaa! Heh.

DC! We skipped the Rav party to meet up another friend of mine in DC. Next year I will party with the knitters, next year. We did some touristy things on Sunday, including the adventure of finding street parking near the National Mall. Fun!

Of course, you want to see what I bought, right? I was quite restrained and spent a little over half my budget (where my budget was what I spent last year).

The last thing that I need is worsted-weight, scarf yarn, but the Brooks Farm Solana was irresistible. It’s a bit more purpley than it looks here, and I’m going to call the other color orange rather than brown, so that I can wear my future worsted-weight scarf with my black jacket.

Tess Super Sock and Baby. I heart this stuff, and I know I’ll use it. At this rate, I’ll never knit through all of my sock yarn.

Fiber roll call, from top to bottom (the links to go individual flickr photos):

Camel fiber from the Fold (we stopped by after all the crazy STR junkies left).
60/20/20 Angora/merino/silk batts from Wild Meadow Farms.
50/50 Merino/silk from Cloverleaf Farm.
BFL from Cloverleaf Farm.
70/30 Merino/tussah from Cloverleaf Farm.

As you can maybe tell, I really liked the Cloverleaf Farm booth. They had pretty awesome prices – the BFL was $10! I should have bought more. Now to get spinning!