Thursday, May 07, 2009

Toe-Up Jaywalker Heels Are F-U-N

Can I say how much I'm loving the heel of the toe-up Jaywalkers?! It's the first time I've done a toe-up heel with a heel extension that has picked up stitches. I wasn't sure how close it would look to the original pattern until I actually did the heel: it looks the same. (Note: I slightly changed some numbers to match the original, which you can read about on my project page on Rav.) The direction of the stitches in all parts of the heel are the same as my first pair of (cuff-down) Jays. Yay! My favorite part of the heel was joining the gusset to the heel with decreases -- love, love, love. Los Manos Locos (the toe-up Monkey pattern) does this, too. The difference between the two heels in these patterns is the Crazy Monkey heel has no picked up stitches at the heel turn, while the Jay heel does. The only thing I wasn't crazy about on the Crazy Monkey heel was the Eye of Partridge stitch on the sole. I prefer it only on the back of the heel. So next time I do a Crazy Monkey style heel, I'm going with stockinette on the sole.

Something else I noticed while knitting the heel on these toe-up socks: there's not as much tension. When you're doing a cuff-down heel and have picked up stitches on each side of the flap, there's a good deal of tension those first few rounds that follow. Meanwhile, on my toe-up Jays and Monkeys, there is minimal tension the first few rounds of the heel decreases, and when you get to the top of the heel, it's really fun to look at an almost-completed sock.

Besides trying the Los Manos Locos heel with a stockinette sole, I'd also like to try the toe-up heel where you put a stockinette flap on the sole and follow the exact directions of the cuff-down heel. So you pick up stitches on each side of the stockinette flap and make gusset decreases, meanwhile putting in a slip stitch pattern on the back of the heel between two markers. The demarcated line of picked-up stitches is parallel to the ground rather than perpendicular to it. I wonder how that looks... I've tried looking at my original Jays with the leg and foot switched to enable me to visualize it.

A fellow knitter shared an interesting link today. If you like hearing about the brain and how it perceives color when it relates to art, you might like this, too: http://simplyrobin.blogspot.com/2009/05/talking-about-color.html.
Color is relative? Whoa, I was skeptical until seeing this. Makes ya think!

AI? Well, I knew Allison had to go at some point. So I wasn't completely crushed or surprised that she was eliminated. But, I was a little irked that Danny survived after an ultra-bad performance. Some Gokey lovers are saying, "Well, people voted based on his cumulative log of performances rather than this past week's." That would be fine in the middle of the competition. But when everyone left deserves to be there, I think poor performances should get a person immediately booted... my favs included. On a more positive note, at least Kris made it one more week -- yay! I hope that announcing him as the first person safe last night boosted his confidence and will make him try hard next week. My wish is that Kris makes a comeback and Danny chokes big time. I want Adam and Kris for the finale!!! If Danny does poorly again and survives, I'll definitely start believing the hype about this being a culture war.

Jared said that this season reminds him of Season 3 when you knew way ahead of time that Fantasia was going to be the winner. Season 5 also had a clear front runner in Chris Daughtry, but he got eliminated almost like Adam did last week. Last year, David Cook emerged as the front runner ahead of David Archuleta, but there were enough Archuleta fans out there to scare me when it came down to the final vote. Luckily, America got that one right!

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