Eyes on the Prize

June may not have been a prolific month for blogging, but it has yielded a mighty crop of finished knitted goods. Father's Day was last Sunday, and prior to that most hallowed of days, I had decided to make my Pop a gloriously knitted eyeball, complete with all those important little muscles that allow your eye to do all the things it does. Being an ophthalmologist, I knew he would appreciate such a curiousity, and being a pediatric ophthalmologist, I thought that maybe the children in his office would be less likely to spit, scratch, scream, and hit, if they had a huge, cuddly knitted eyeball staring at them menacingly from the desk. (The poor behavior of these children is no reflection on my dad, who is an excellent and caring doctor, children are just generally poorly behaved.)



I sort of made the ball part up as I went, by casting on 12 stitches and knitting in the round, increasing in four panels about every other row or so, then knitting even for a few rows, and decreasing in the same manner. It's not a perfect sphere, but I bet the human eye isn't either. I turned to the Internet for the number and placement of the muscles. Did you know the place at the back of the eye where all the muscles converge is called the annulus of Zinn? How great is that? It sounds like some sort of magical, amulet-housing temple.



Danica

Finished up the Danica scarf, which blocked beautifully (as I knew it would.) It's a little short, but blocking helped quite a bit and I think it would look quite nice with a pretty brooch or pin. Must find one to give along with it. I think I'll give it to my mom for her birthday, since it's in the autumn.




Big Bamboo

These turned out to be a bit of an adventure. You may remember from a previous post that I had finished one, and was wending my way towards finishing the second. I wended and wended, until I wended right out of yarn.



There was nothing for it but to rip back the toe of the finished sock, use that yarn to shore up the second sock, then finish the toes in some extra pink sock yarn I just happened to have left over from another project.



So yeah, they took forever, but I never stopped loving this yarn. I didn't stop loving the yarn when the second sock started looking drastically different than the first. I didn't stop loving the yarn when it started to become alarmingly clear that indeed these socks would not match--not even a little bit. The first sock has a smoky stripe that swirls down the leg, the second sock has no such stripe.



In a way, it's good that the toes are done in the pink, because it tricks the eye into thinking the socks match more than they actually do. Still, I will wear them with pride. They're comfy and soft and oh so stretchy. Plus the toes have these cute little cables. YES.

Breeze

Remember that Lorna's Laces sock yarn pr0n from last time? That sock yarn that I already had lined up for the next pair? Well, I got greedy. Surfing the Internet the other day, I noticed that the Knit Happens online store seemed to be having a ridiculous sale on Lorna's Laces. $4 a skein? Really? Anyway, I live and work only a couple of blocks away from the real Knit Happens, so I took myself over there after work last week in hopes of scooping so sweet discounted sock yarn. Sadly, the sale didn't extend to the stuff in the store, but apparently that didn't stop me. I ended up getting some Koigu KPPM, a sock yarn I'd heard much about but never tried. I'm not sure what attracted me about this colorway, since it's not that pretty at first glance, and as I knit it, it's reminding me more and more of a fruit roll up. I think it's fitting, though, that the colors are so tropical, since I'm using it for a pair of Breeze anklets. Toes, hooooo!