Slow

I don't seem to be making much progress on my Stepping Stones rug. It's been a busy week and I seem more content to spend my free time either reading or fooling around on the computer.

Fooling around doesn't include blogs - that's in the reading category. No, I'm talking about playing games: mostly solitaire variations but maybe bingo or an ice fisherman trying to catch fish before the silly little penguins steal them. OK, it's mindless but sometimes one needs mindless.

This is as far as I've gotten with the rug. Four stones and a donut.

Several more to go and a lot of stream. I like (not love) how it's turning out. It does make me appreciate the difficulties of using just two colors. It also reminds me of why I prefer hooking over quilting. It's that I can get a more painterly quality to the coloring. If I were quilting a stylized pattern like the stones, I would probably only be using two fabrics. And I would get a fairly flat result. That's one of my problems here: it is not as lively as other rugs have been.

I think the other problem is in me...I like variety. Being able to pick up a new color or shape every now and then keeps me going. I suppose that's why hit-and-miss is such a favorite technique of mine. A bit like knitting striped socks. They go really fast because you're counting off the stripes rather than the rows.
However, it's all in my head. Mind over matter. I'm not giving up - just kvetching.

Not so easy

The photos, I mean, not the socks.

I was trying to demonstrate that with a basic sock pattern and a few knit and purl stitches that anything is possible.

I wanted to have some stripes along the sides of these pink socks and I wanted something cable-y. I decided on two rows of a 2-stitch twist every other round with one strip beginning at the ribbing and the other a few rounds lower. The twisting on each was done on an alternate row so I was actually twisting - on half the stripes - every round.

The back was the tricky part to photograph. I don't know if my model found it hard to stay still or not but none came out really clear. This is the best. I also chose it because the color is perfect which is another hard thing to get right. The back has one stripe in the center and one lower on each side. I think that if I were to do it again I might continue the stripes into the heel. I was thinking of comfort in a shoe and figuring that it wouldn't be visible. But the design doesn't flow and I'm sort of not happy about that.

That's what photos do: show you the little things that you thought you could live with. And, of course, I would rather move on to new ideas than re-work one I've already done. So many stitches...so little time.