More Socks

Nov21

Sometimes being a knitter comes in handy in unusual ways! We did Senior Photos for the girl over the weekend, and for one photo she needed a conductor’s baton. We didn’t have one of those, but guess what? A 14″ straight knitting needle fits the bill in a pinch! Fortunately we were close enough to home for me to go fetch one, since I didn’t have one on hand. All the other photos went smoothly and I can’t wait to see the official photos.

I managed to fit in a bit of knitting as we drove between locations, and during the kids’ concert on Sunday, so I made good progress on one of my socks. This will be a plain vanilla sock, my first Felici sock, and so far I’m pretty happy with it.I’m trying the baby circs again, and while I still don’t love them for socks, I am getting more used to them, and I can tolerate them when I need so many socks on the needles.

This pair is another gift, and my first sock with Knit Picks Chroma. I love the colors in the Chroma, but the yarn isn’t as nice for me as the Felici. It’s fuzzier, more sticky, so when I have to tink, it’s a bit tricky. (Haha! I made a little rhyme!) I probably should have done a plain sock for these too, but I have a vision in my head, and I really want them to be Strutting Peacock socks. And once I get into the rhythm of the pattern, it’ll be fine.

I have one more set of sock needles available; I just need to decide what pair to cast on, and who they’ll be for!

Socks, Finished and Unfinished

Nov18

I have a new FO: I finished my Basket Weave Rib socks last night and I love them quite a lot. They are delightfully thick and squishy and soft, and the rib pattern is unusual without overpowering the yarn. These are for my gift pile, and I really hope they fit the recipient!

But yesterday I also got new sock yarn, thanks to the big sale at Knit Picks. I want to make some Christmas socks, but didn’t have a lot of sock yarn to choose from, and definitely not much in colors other than purple. I came home to a lovely box full of yarn:

Who doesn’t love those mail days, right? I dug right in, excited because I’m trying some Felici for the first time. I’ve seen socks made with it, and I love how it looks and feels. One color is for a gift, the other is for me (but mine will probably have to wait until after Christmas).

Now my challenge is to figure out how many sets of sock needles I’ve got, so I can cast on as many socks as possible. I know I have at least three, maybe four. Hm, maybe I should add more sock yarn needles to my Christmas wish list!

Scrappy Cowl

Nov15

I’ve got a new project on my needles, a scrappy cowl. I needed something completely and totally mindless, something I could knit without looking at 95% of the time. Sometimes at work I go to seminars and talks, and I’m listening but my hands are free, and I wanted a project that I could work on without people thinking I’m not paying attention. Thus, my scrappy cowl idea!

I don’t have enough sock yarn scraps yet to do one in fingering weight, so I decided worsted weight would be my base. I pulled out my bins of yarn balls and started sorting, and it was so much fun. This is going to be like a memory quilt of beloved yarns and projects! It is probably 75% worsted weight, with some Aran weight thrown in, and then I decided I could do a few DK and light bulky yarns too.

The one pattern I looked at suggested tying them all your scraps together to make a yarn ball, but I don’t have the patience for that. I’ll just tie them together as I go, and randomly pull balls from the project bag when I need a new one. I want it to be as random as possible, because it’s really hard for me to relinquish control, even over something as simple as color order. Some of my scraps are bigger than I’d like, so I might not use them all at once. I haven’t really decided yet. I know for sure I’d like to use up all the little scraps, because what else am I going to do with them?

There’s no complicated pattern here. I did a provisional cast on of 56 stitches on 16″ size 8 needles, joined in the round, and started knitting. I’ll knit until it’s long enough to wrap twice or I run out of yarn, whichever comes first. No, that’s not true. If I don’t get it long enough to wrap twice, I’ll just leave it unfinished and add to it as I finish other projects. And someday I’ll have a weirdly beautiful cowl that will go with everything and nothing! img_5097-1

Sock Fixation

Nov12

It’s so weird how my knitting changes. Like, what I want to knit changes based on what’s happening in my life. Right now, things feel hectic and overwhelming and stressful, and all I’ve been knitting is socks. I have two socks on my needles, and they’re making me so happy. I even have fancy yarn picked out for fancy shawls, and it’s beautiful yarn and I can’t wait to knit with it…but I’m not ready yet. I just need socks right now. My current obsession is this Basket Weave Rib Sock.

The yarn is Schaefer Yarn Nichole, which is labeled fingering, but it feels like a heavy fingering. So when I knit it up with my size 1 needles, it’s all thick and squishy and I can tell these socks are going to be heaven to wear. I love the look of the pattern too; it’s a great design for a variegated yarn, letting both the stitches and the colors play nicely together. This is also the first time I’ve made socks for someone else, so I’m really hoping I estimate well on the foot length.

My other sock is another pair of Petty Harbor socks. These are for me, in Knit Picks Stroll Glimmer in “foxglove and kestrel”, AKA purple and gray.

Obviously it’s been taking a backseat to the blue sock. This is like my backup sock. But that’s okay, it’s perfectly happy waiting patiently for its turn.

It’s a gray, rainy Sunday here, and my errands are few and short, so I see plenty of knitting in the forecast. Hope your Sunday is equally pleasant!

Sick Day Knitting

Nov6

I made two hats today. Yep, two in one day. Thanks to my son, who doesn’t know to stay away from his friends when they’re sick, I’ve been fighting a lovely cold, and today I woke up with a heck of a cough and decided to stay home rather than risk infecting everyone else in my office (especially the ones who have young babies at home). After a long, restful day, I feel almost human again, and two of my daughter’s friends have new hats. The Devil Wears Prada and The Vow got me through the first one.

Pattern is Squarshy Hat, one of my faves, and yarn is Cascade 128 Superwash. I knit the body until about 5.75″ before starting decreases.

Next up was Moulin Rouge. It served me well, and I got the second hat almost done by the time the credits were done rolling. This one is Swirling Beanie, and I changed things up a bit. I did a twisted rib brim on smaller needles, and used a bigger needle for the body. Also, I only knit to about 5.5″, and I wish I’d gone another quarter of an inch. But it should still fit fine. It’s also Cascade 128 Superwash.

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The purple one looks a lot smaller but it’s got a lot of stretch in that swirling pattern. Both were done with just one skein, including the pompom. I think I satisfied my hat-knitting urge for now!

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Gift Knitting

Nov6

I had SO much knitting time this weekend! We spent the entire day Saturday (I’m talking about nine hours) at a local high school for District Band auditions (the girl made it into the band for the 4th year, and earned 2nd chair flute!). Thankfully, I knew what I was getting into and planned accordingly by taking three knitting projects with me. The first got done quickly: the second half of a bobble hat. The bobbles had already been done so it was just knitting in the round and then decreasing. Piece of cake, Bobble Hat done!

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I took a short break to rest my hands and stretch before moving on to Bobble Hat 2. These will be Christmas gifts, so there wasn’t a rush, but it’s always better to get things done early, right? By early afternoon, I was finishing Bobble Hat 2.

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These aren’t my favorite hats. I hate making the bobbles. I don’t think they’re that cute. And yet they grew on me, and I confess I kind of like them. At least once they’re done. If you want more details, you can see the Ravelry page here.

My hats were done but the waiting wasn’t, so I turned to my last knitting option, and cast on for a fingerless glove in blue. These will be another gift for a friend, and I’ve done this pattern so often that it’s almost second nature. This glove practically flew off the needles.

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The pattern is 75 Yard Malabrigo Fingerless Mitts and I used Mochi Plus in a beautiful sapphire blue. My only modification to the pattern was to go down a needle size, to make them for women’s hands instead of men’s. I should be able to knock out the second glove quickly…if I can resist casting on one of the other four projects I’ve got waiting for me!

Rainbow Warrior

Nov3

I have another finished shawl! This week I bound off my Rainbow Warrior shawl, all 440+ stitches in a beautiful picot edge. As tedious as a picot bind-off is, I do so love the look, and it was the perfect finish for this shawl.

I’d wanted to make this shawl for months, but I wanted to do it just like the original, which meant waiting until I could justify buying the Miss Babs yarn. And a couple of times I tried, but the Perfectly Wreckless color was sold out, and I had to wait for that yarn. I just couldn’t make it with another color, I loved the pink variegated with the gray so much. Finally, I had two skeins of Yummy 2-ply in my hands: Perfectly Wreckless and Thunderstorm.

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This was so much fun to knit. I loved balancing the garter stitch with the slipped stitch sections, how there was repetition that soothed me but also some variation to keep me interested. I loved seeing the colors pop out through the gray slipped stitches. My skein of Perfectly Wreckless had more black than I would have chosen, but overall I’m still delighted with it. I loved watching it grow each time I got to an increase row, until near the end when it was all squished together on the needles. I knew it was going to be quite large, but I couldn’t quite get a sense of how large, because I couldn’t spread it out enough.

Another thing I love about this pattern: it looks awesome on both sides. The “right” side shows off the slipped stitches and is more subtle with the colors, but the “wrong” side is just as delightful, with the colors on full display.

The pattern calls for eight slipped-stitch sections, but as I got near the end of the seventh, I realized my contrasting color was getting alarmingly low. I really didn’t want to play yarn chicken and have to frog back, and I could tell the shawl was already big enough to be wearable, so I ended with the seventh section. Since I still had plenty of gray left, I did the first two rows of the MC in section eight before starting the bind-off, to give a bigger, more defined final edge. I love this shawl. It’s exactly what I wanted it to be.

This is a pattern I’d love to make again, as soon as I decide on another color combination. The possibilities are endless! Have you made one yet?

Wonder Woman Wrap

Oct28

It’s done it’s done it’s DONE! My beautiful Wonder Woman wrap took about six weeks to make, mostly because I had to take breaks from the long stretches of garter stitch toward the end. The pattern is the fantastic free Wonder Woman Wrap by Carissa Browning, and I used Malabrigo Sock in colors Ravelry Red and Ochre.

This was my first adventure with wrap and turn short rows, and I was apprehensive at first. But once I started doing it, I realized they’re actually super simple. (Seems like that’s true for all the things in knitting I think are scary.) Somehow I did end up with wrong stitch counts after each short row section, but it wasn’t enough to mess up the pattern. The first time it happened, I adjusted with an extra KFB or two, but after that I just kind of rolled with it.

Earlier this week I made it to the end of the last yellow stripe and realized how close I was to the end, and that gave me the push I needed to power through. Yesterday I took a sick day from work (remember I mentioned poison ivy? It’s all over my chin and it was oozing and hideous, and I was miserable and needed to go to the doctor anyway to get steroids to make it stop. It’s even on my FINGERS. Thankfully it’s just a few tiny spots and the steroid cream I got helped control the itch there so I could keep knitting.) and in between loads of laundry to get rid of all the poison ivy plague, I sat and knit, all day long. By the time the husband got home from work, I was binding off.

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This wasn’t my favorite thing to knit. I still don’t love short rows, and the long rows of garter stitch got a bit tedious. But then it’s done and it’s so beautiful. I love it so much. I want to wear it tonight when we go to the symphony. And every day after that. Forever. This will be my Halloween costume.

Gloves and Flowers

Oct22

As expected, I finished the blue and gray fingerless gloves yesterday during our drive to the band competition. With an hour and a half, I even had time to weave in all the ends, so they’re ready to go to their new owner today. The base pattern is the 75 Yard Malabrigo Mitts, but I added the design element of the Twinkly Lights Cowl.

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It was a good thing I finished them before I got there, too, because once we got there, I didn’t really want to be distracted. The girl is a senior, you see, and this was her last marching band competition. She was a featured soloist in their show, a siren standing atop a pirate ship, and I’m always amazed and proud of her, but last night the finality hit me a little hard. Of course I’m so excited for the next part of her journey, but I can’t help but be sad that this part is almost over. I wasn’t a band geek in high school; I was a theatre geek. They’re actually pretty similar crowds, and I love the collaboration and camaraderie and commitment that I’ve seen in her bands. They’re good kids. She’s a good kid. Plus, I’ve discovered I love band music. I love watching marching band shows. Thank goodness I still have three years to watch the boy in marching band! Anyway, it was a lovely, emotional night, and the band did well, winning lots of awards, including Grand Champions in the field show category.

With the gloves done, I wanted to finish up another small project before returning to my bigger WIPs. The knitting group at work makes bouquets of flowers for friends who have lost loved ones, and we had a couple to make recently. They’re a beautiful variety of flowers: some people make felt flowers, some ribbon flowers. I chose my favorite crochet flower pattern, added a green pipe cleaner, wrapped the stems with floral tape, and finished each one off with a pretty button. I think they’ll make a nice addition to the bouquet.

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Now that I’ve finished two projects for others, I think I’m justified in going back to some selfish knitting today. I was clever and did the grocery shopping yesterday, so today I can relax with my tea and yarn. Happy Sunday, friends!

New Gloves, Blue Gloves

Oct21

The problem with having a lot of WIPs is that it takes longer to have a FO. I’ve been knitting, maybe not obsessively, all week, and didn’t finish a single project. I did cast on a new one. Counter-productive, I know. I made a hat and glove set as a donation for a silent auction fundraiser, and one of the fundraiser coordinators liked the gloves enough that she asked me to make a pair for her, so that’s mostly what I’ve been working on.

They’re Aran weight on size 8 needles so they’re going pretty quickly. We have a band competition an hour and a half away today, so with any luck, I’ll finish the second glove today!

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