Pittsburgh, PA Saturday, July 30, 2011

Hello from Pittsburgh!

I am in Pittsburgh, picking up my son, Luke, from his summer dance intensive with the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School

Yesterday, they had a student choreographed performance which he was NOT in.  His dance was canceled.  But we (my friend MG and I) were able to sit with Luke and watch the other students dance.  A really wonderful show.  The dancing was excellent, and the choreography, the first piece ever for many of the 10 student choreographers featured, really nice.

But before the show...

MG and I had a day in Pittsburgh.  Since he is not particularly interested in yarn (RATZ) and it was hot, humid and overcast, we spent the day at the National Aviary.

First we tried to go to the St. Anthony's Chapel. 

But if you look closely at the sign MG's pointing to, it was closed!

Oh, well.

We had a lovely afternoon at the National Aviary.  I'm only posting 2 photos of birds. 

I could have taken/posted a gazillion photos of the birds.  They were spectacular.  But, since I don't want this blog to be just "Travels with Carol,"  or "Birds Birds Birds," AND since most of the rooms were open flight areas and those birds are much too fast to photograph clearly, I'll just post these 2.

In spite of my bird and dance watching, I was able to get in some serious knitting while relaxing in the hotel before and after.

I have finished the heel cups and heels of Zach's Red Hot Socks!

Here is one heel cup:

The finished heel:

And a view of what the socks look like right now, side and top views:

I have discovered that I totally did the heels cups wrong for Allie's Rain Socks!  I am going to just have to take those socks apart and remake them.  The yarn is simply too nice to waste.

What I did wrong:  When you make a heel cup, you knit 1/4 of the way across the sole, place a marker, then knit across to the 3/4 stitch, place another marker, and then purl back, knit back, and so on, back and forth between those markers each time, wrapping the last stitch,  smaller and smaller until you have built up a small "cup."  So, these directions call for decreasing by 2 stitches each row.  So you knit (or purl) to 2 stitches before the spot where you last wrapped, slip the stitch and wrap it, turn and repeat.  I don't know why I was just sure that EVERY stitched had to  be wrapped.  If  I actually followed the directions, every OTHER stitch would be wrapped.  So on Allie's Rain Socks, I wrapped every stitch, which made for a very defined heel cup:

These are unblocked, but you can see how the heels bulge out.  They are twice as round as they should be!

Oh, well,  I am learning.  And boy am I learning.

So, all I need to do now on Zach's Red Hot Socks is the legs.  I need to simply knit my 4x2 ribbing until they are a decent height, then I think I will knit an inch or so of 1x1 ribbing, and they will be finished.  In time for his birthday, I might add.

C. A. Losi