Second Time Around...

My niece (who is my borrowed daughter :-)), goes to school in Tijuana B.C.. They get to wear those cute little plaid uniforms with the knee high socks. Ever since I learned to knit socks I had been planning to make her a pair of knee highs. But, of course, my procrastination is always live and vivid in my life. Recently, I went to this new yarn store I discovered, to browse around. They had a huge bin of clearance items and they had a bunch of 3 skein packages of white fingering weight sock yarn for $2.99. I got two packages, 2 pairs of size 0, 16" Addi Turbos (and also two packages of 50/50 wool/acrylic bright red yarn for 1.99 each, woohoo!!). I get home and start knitting and just loved the yarn!! It so perfectly stretcy!! I called the store and asked the if she knew what it was and she stated it was either Bernat or Paton acrylic. Unbelievable. I plan to go my next paycheck and get to more. I mean, I can always experiment with dyeing right?? Well, anyway, for her first pair, I'm making the True Love Socks. Which I already started once but the Crystal Palace Panda yarn was not the strechiest and also are being finished for my niece who was the only one who fit into them. Ill post pics up soon!!

My adventure In Double Knitting

Ok, so I have been working on a project that is meant to be for a friends daughter. I've altered it from a pattern called the Eclipse Socks which is inspired by the Twilight Saga. I'm making it into a scarf. Now, I had this wacky idea to do the ribbon on one side of the scarf and the I ♥ Jacob (cause my friends daughter is a Jacob fan) on the other side.
First I tried doing a figure eight cast on and work it in the round. But my Intarsia in the round puckered and I have restarted countless times with no satisfaction. I was not about to make this long double sided scarf that I was not gonna be happy with. This is what it looks like:

I posted a thread about it in Ravelry and someone suggested Double Knitting. I'm making a DK swatch now and having to learn Continental knitting all at the same time (I'm a thrower). Here's what it looks like:

I really love the yellow black thing!! I just used to random balls of yarn from my scrap stash, but they go pretty good. After a few rows I got the whole Continental style and the DK is simple enough.
In order for me to do to a separate design on each side of the scarf I have to do the Non-reversible Double Knitting technique. With basic Double Knitting one side is the mirror image of the other side with colors in opposite areas. With non-reversible DK you can use 2 separate graphs to make to different designs on each side. Alasdair has a great anti-blog on non-reversible double knitting. Its amazing!!! Im super excited to start this technique. But for now I am still making my swatch and trying to get a little more practice. And so it will continue...