Knitting mad

So I finished my mini toe-up sock. It was a fun little project, though it looks quite odd because I decided to experiment with lace knitting halfway through. I'll try to take a pic and post it some time. In the meantime, here's a pic of the top down pair I knitted for myself:

I'm quite proud of them really. I used Silver's sock class except instead of Kitchener stitching the ends I used this method, which is basically Kitchener, but done with dpns instead of a tapestry needle. Which means I didn't have to hunt down a tapestry needle for it, and made keeping the tension even a lot easier. Doing the ankles was fun. But knitting down the length of the foot was dull. Very dull. So that's why I like the idea of toe-up socks - get the dull part out of the way first. I don't think I'll knit too many pairs of socks though.

I like doing hair ties much better:

This one has a basketweave pattern. It doesn't show up too well, because the yarn is very knobbly. But I managed to knit it in a day, which makes in my fastest knitting project by far up to this point.

I've also done a few pot holders - I might post them next time. I'm working on some other projects, but I'll post about them after Christmas :)

Stuff I found today: toe-up knitting, Stephen Conroy and a cool microfinancing project

This morning I learnt how to knit a sock from the toe up. I find this exciting, as it seems a great way to be able to knit a pair of nice long socks and know when you have to stop the first to still have enough yarn left for the second. I'm trying it out with a mini-sock. The cast on seems very loose, and I need to learn a nicer way to make stitches (the method I currently use leaves holes) but I guess that's all a matter of practice.

So I didn't just find Stephen Conroy. I've known about him for quite a while, more's the pity. Several years ago he came up with a silly scheme for internet censorship via ISPs. No, what I found out today was that apparently the results of the trials that were conducted will be released this week - at least according to GetUp, though I was unable to corroborate that elsewhere. I will be highly surprised (and skeptical) if the results don't show that the system will accidentally block legitimate sites quite a lot of the time, be circumventable, extremely expensive and slow down internet access. Which really makes it worse than silly - it makes it a backwards step for Australians who use the internet (i.e. most of them). Look into it, people. And then let Stephen know what you think.

And the last thing I came across was a really cool microfinancing project in Africa. The women themselves pool their resources for it. How cool is that? I'm all for empowerment. Seems intuitive to me that it would work better in the long run than hand-outs.

Now I'm off to see what other cool stuff I can find...

Talking to my brother

My brother is insane. To be fair: (a) he's well aware of the fact, and (b) so are we all. One advantage of getting up early and logging in to my computer is every now and then he's still awake (on the other side of the world) and will message or Skype me. And then we talk for an hour about random stuff. Pretty much like this: his first blog and his other blog.

The browser seems to think I'm typing in hindi all of a sudden. I'm not sure how this will come out, so if it's hindi characters - Namaste!

In other news, my scarf is coming along very well. Celia gave me a lesson on how to start a new ball and also how to perl/purl (however you spell it - the knitting one, not the coding one). I'm not doing any purl for my scarf though, I'm sticking with the garter stitch.