Color Quiz

Sep19

I’m late to the Color Quiz party from Nothing But Knit  but I thought it would be fun to play along anyway!

  • What is your favorite color? How is this color reflected in your crafting?
    Is there anyone reading this who doesn’t know it’s purple? The bulk of my projects are purple, my blog has a purple background, many of my craft accessories are purple…
  • Do you prefer bright colors or more subdued shades?
    Bright colors for sure! Purple, pink, turquoise.
  • Does your color mood shift with the seasons? Do you carry one color all year and just change the accent color?
    I think there is a bit of shifting, with bright, vivid colors for spring/summer and jewel tones for cooler weather, but there’s always some shade of purple in there.
  • Is there a color you avoid? Or maybe it’s underrepresented in your crafting?
    I don’t like yellow at all. I don’t buy yellow yarn unless it’s for a specific project. I’ve used it in a couple of Wonder Woman-themed projects but not on its own for me. And since I dyed my hair purple, I don’t wear red, so I don’t knit with it much.
  • When you pick out your crafting supplies how important is color to you? Is it the first thing you consider or is it a bit further down the list?
    Color is the number one factor, followed by feel. Even if it’s purple, it has to be soft!
  • Do you ever consciously choose a different color palette just for the change?
    Nope. The few times I’ve made things in less-than-favorite colors, the projects drag and I don’t enjoy it as much, so I just embrace the purpleness!

FO Friday: Socks

Sep18

My recent shawl-knitting obsession fell by the wayside the last week or so. I couldn’t resist casting on a new sock with some of my birthday yarn, and this sock practically flew off my needles! I mean, this is obviously a progress shot, but it’s done now. The yarn is Bootheel sock from Show Me Yarn in the color Sonny & Tubbs.

Once I finished the first one, I decided I needed to be good and finish a lingering pair of gift socks. I was partway through the leg of the second sock so I knew it wouldn’t take too long. But here’s the problem with making gift socks: they’re not as addictive if they’re not for me! Especially if I’m doing colors that don’t speak to me. So it’s possible that sock-knitting is primarily a selfish thing for me. Anyway, I finished the second sock and now have a pair ready to mail.

The eagle-eyed among you might notice the socks don’t match exactly. The main yarn is from a 50g skein of Happy Feet. I had two skeins but weighed the first after making the first sock and thought I’d have enough for the second. Well, not quite. I ran out with about 3/4″ left of the foot to knit. That wasn’t enough to make me want to add in the second skein and two more ends to weave in, so I just started the green early. The recipient won’t care a bit, I don’t think. It’s funny how I’m so much a perfectionist in every other area of my life, but in my knitting, it’s all just “Eh, that works!” Maybe that’s just one more benefit that knitting brings to my life!

Happy Friday, friends.

WIP Wednesday

Sep16

Hello. It me. I’m the work in progress today. And every day, actually. I don’t know know why the blogging hasn’t been happening the last several days. I’ve been knitting, I’ve had time. Just no motivation, I suppose. I’ll ease back into it by sharing my birthday goodies from last weekend!

My work team sent me a box to open during a Zoom meeting, which was fun. There was a Wonder Woman theme, which is perfect. My boss even made the cupcakes (and they were delish)!

Saturday was my actual birthday and I made out a like a bandit. The husband picked out five gorgeous skeins of yarn, plus a couple of enamel pins and a wrist ruler. And dog shoes! The boy bought me a LEGO set, which was a fun reversal after us buying him LEGOs for so many years.

But Saturday was also National Local Yarn Store Day! Of course I HAD to visit my favorite LYS, right? I went out to Yarn Social first thing in the morning, all masked up, and had the store to myself for most of the time. Though I didn’t go around petting all the yarn like I used to do, it was still so nice to be back in a comforting, familiar environment, and I came home with more treasures than I’d planned to.

I also got to have a nice phone call with the girl, who’s back at school, and a small socially-distant family party. The weather was beautiful, I had plenty of time to relax and knit, and I couldn’t have asked for much more. Now if only every weekend could be like that!

WIP Thursday

Sep10

I missed WIP Wednesday, so you’ll get the WIP without the alliteration today. Late last week, or maybe last Saturday, I cast on for a new shawl with my new yarn. This is the Hope and Feathers shawl with my Lolodidit Halloween yarn. I really did think this was going to be sock yarn when I ordered it but boy was I wrong, because it’s PERFECT in this pattern.

My zigzags don’t seem as prominent as the ones in the original, but I’m sure that’s just because there’s not as much contrast in my yarns and I still think it looks awesome. And this pattern is seriously addictive. I worked on it all of Saturday and Sunday, until I got distracted by my other projects on Monday. I’m eager to get back to it!

I also got a little bit of happy mail earlier this week, a skein of yarn that I ordered from Bumblebee Acres Farm back in August. It came with a set of mini minis, and I find them adorable but am not quite sure what to do with them.

Any suggestions?

WIP Time

Sep8

No, no, I know it’s not Wednesday, but today I’m talking about my WIPs. Yesterday I had the urge to spread my knitting love to some of my neglected projects. Really, I wanted to knit a little bit on each one, but then I remembered I have like eight WIPs right now and the day was not infinite. I started with a DK-weight cowl and did 14 rows of lace. That’s not very much in DK so it’s not photo-worthy. I knit on a sock, but that was plain ribbing and maybe two inches, and that was fun but I’ll just wait and show you the sock when it’s done. After that, I had the urge to revisit my Mermaid shawl.

I’m using Stephen West’s Sea Swell Shawl pattern, and it’s a lot of garter stitch (yay!) but also a lot of short rows (sigh), so it’s not really mindless knitting. It’s also getting kind of huge and each row takes forever now.

I’m on color four of five, and have five wedges left to knit. It’s equally encouraging and discouraging: I’ve come so far but it still feels like a lot left to go. Now that the weather is starting to cool off, though, I’m getting more eager to wear it, so maybe that will be my motivation to keep knitting. But then I get new sock yarn in the mail, like this new yarn from HaldeCraft, and I get distracted. The mug is hers too; I love her stuff!

Happy Tuesday that feels like Monday!

Sock It To Me Monday

Sep7

This could have been a Friday post just as easily, because today I’m sharing a finished pair of socks. I started these quite a few weeks ago, as soon as the yarn arrived, to be honest. But then they were lace socks and I got distracted by other yarns, so it wasn’t until last week that I really focused on them. Once I did, they knit up pretty quickly.

Here’s what I know now: lace socks are stretchy! I normally cast on 64 stitches for my socks. This pattern offered 60 or 72 stitches, and looking at other projects, it sounded like 60 would be too small, but I knew 72 would be too big. So I thought I’d be clever and just add one lace repeat, and cast on 66. It worked fine for the lace, but the heel flap gave me issues. The first time I did my usual 32, but that messed up the lace pattern plus things got weird at the toe when it was time to decrease and kitchener. So the second time I did 30, with made the lace behave nicely, and would have worked fine at the end if I’d moved the right stitches from one needle to the other.

I was trying to have equal amounts on the top and the bottom, you see, but my brain misbehaved and I ended up decreasing the first three times in the wrong place. I fixed it then and it’s not really noticeable when I wear them. But what is noticeable is that they’re loose — I should have done 60 stitches after all. So now you know: if you want to knit all lace socks, be sure to make the appropriate adjustments for size!

Or just do what I’ll do next time and keep the lace on the leg only! Pattern is Mercury Socks and the Ravelry link is here. The yarn is Show Me Yarn Bootheel in Stained Glass Menagerie, a special edition that came with a matching project bag. It’s no longer available but they have other pretty yarns on their Etsy site.

Oh and today is Duncan’s Gotcha Day! We’ve had him for three years now.

Today is a holiday in the States so I’ll be spending the rest of the day knitting and puttering around. Hope the rest of my US friends have a good holiday as well!

FO Friday: Hundred Acre Wood

Sep4

Today I will share the pretty photos of my latest shawl, the Hundred Acre Wood shawl. I am very glad this shawl is done. This is one of those projects where you look at it and think, “Well, at least the yarn is gorgeous.”

So let’s start with that: the yarn is from Molly Girl Yarn and is a set of Bass Line Minis in Jazz. I love these colors. LOVE them.

And honestly, the pattern was good too! I mean, after the first lace section, I looked at and it was clearly wonky and I thought, huh, I have NO idea what I did wrong. After the second one, I realized I was doing my yarnovers wrong, and on the next row they were sliding to the wrong place and I was knitting them in the wrong order. But I didn’t figure it out until late in the second lace row and by then I just shrugged. Whatever. Little eyelets, nobody around me will know what they’re supposed to look like.

Like I mentioned before, the pattern was nicely marked to show where you should have used certain percentages, so it was easy for me to mark each 20% section for each mini skein. The problem came when I had more yarn than each section called for, and I tried to get creative to use as much as possible. It went fine until the last section, and I tried to use up the pink, and … well, math is not my strongest subject. I added a few simple eyelet rows, all along weighing to make sure I saved enough (5%) for the picot bindoff. It didn’t seem like much but that’s what the pattern said, right?

Wrong. The pattern said 5% of your total yarn, not 5% of that one mini skein. Unfortunately, that light bulb didn’t go on until I had already started the picot bindoff and it was very clear I wouldn’t have enough yarn. ARGH. Of course that’s how this project would end. I unbound my cute little picots and did a normal, plain bind-off, and realized I should have just done a couple of garter rows at the end instead of eyelet rows because now the edge wants to curl even after a good blocking.

Sigh. It’s fine, though, really. Because look that that up there. It’s pretty. No one else will see any of my errors. But just in case you want to see what it’s really supposed to look like, or maybe you want to make your own correct version, here’s the Ravelry pattern link. This is the small size, which does work quite well for mini skeins, if you do it right, that is.

I’ll be casting on a new shawl this weekend; here’s hoping it goes better! Happy Friday, friends!

Oops a new shawl

Sep3

Okay, first things first: this is my first time trying the new WordPress editor and it’s weird. I mean, it’s fine, but it’s different and I’m a little slow trying to figure it all out. Hopefully we’ll get it all done right in the end.

Right, then, shawl? Yes, shawl. Yesterday afternoon my SIL texted me a photo of a shawl pattern she’d found that she was thinking of using with some of her amazing thrift-store yarn. And honestly, my first thought was that it would be perfect for the yarn I just got yesterday!

This is from Lyrical Knits and It’s done with slipped stitches, which I can totally manage, and it’s even free if you sign up for her newsletter. Since I’m trying to find new places to get patterns, I was more than happy to sign up for the newsletter. Follow this link to find links to the pattern on Rav or Payhip or instructions on getting the pattern for free.

Just what I needed, another project to add to my large pile of WIPs!

Happy Mail

Sep2

What even is today, Wednesday? Not close enough to the weekend, that’s all I know. The mail carrier provided a much-needed boost for my day today, delivering a package from LoloDidIt.

img_8593This is Facebook’s fault. Lolo shared a photo of socks made with the variegated, which is a new Halloween colorway called Beetlejuice, and I had to get a skein of coordinating Wonka purple to go with it. I’d planned to do socks but now I’m thinking a sparkly shawl would be lovely too. I mean, we all know it’s just feeding the stash at the moment, but it’s pretty high on my To-Knit list!

Sock It To Me Monday: Special Edition

Aug31

Today’s sock post is special because I’m sharing my feedback on the Saucon Sock yarn from Kraemer Yarns. I was given the chance to review it a couple of months ago, and given my love for sock knitting, I was eager to test a new kind of sock yarn.

Saucon Sock is a cotton/acrylic/nylon blend that is washable and lightweight. There are so many possibilities with this: socks for spring and early summer, easy-care socks for kids or non-knitters (or even knitters, honestly), and socks for people with wool sensitivities. I got to select two colors, so I chose Loganberry for me and Forrest for the boy. He’s a teenager with no time to be fussy or careful with socks, so I knew he’d let me see how the yarn holds up to … rougher handling, shall we say?

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He requested a mid-calf length sock, and I did a simple pattern with some ribbing. For myself, I did a basic Rose City Roller to see how they’d fare in a midwestern summer. When the skeins came, the yarn felt a little stiff at first, and I was unsure if I’d like it, but as I knit with it, it softened up and made the nicest fabric. It’s not soft like wool but it’s smooth, and even feels cool to the touch. There’s no squeakiness that you can sometimes feel with acrylic yarns; the cotton was definitely the dominant feel. It reminded me of knitting with linen, even down to a slight splittiness at times, but I really enjoyed knitting with it. I could knit outside in 80-degree heat and it didn’t bother me a bit.

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How did they wear? Great! The boy reported no sagging or sliding down the leg, even after wearing them all day, so it held its elasticity all day long. I wore mine all day (inside) on an 80-degree day and the socks didn’t stifle my feet at all. They felt very breathable. Again, not soft like wool, but crisp against the skin.

The final test was washing. I had the boy throw his in his laundry, like he washes everything else, so they went through a cotton/normal cycle with warm water along with jeans and t-shirts, then through a cotton/normal warm dryer cycle. Mine were soaked in Eucalan and laid flat to dry. His socks came out softer and cleaner (we have three dogs, and hand-washing doesn’t remove all that dog hair) but they did have some minor pilling. Overall, though, they looked good!

Mine were crisper and had a nice shape, due to being patted into shape and drying flat. I had no pilling, but I still had plenty of dog hair, which is one of my ongoing annoyances with handknit socks. I did use a lint roller on my socks before taking photos.

As you can see, mine look almost fresh off the needles, but I think there’s a happy medium with this yarn. I think I could easily do with machine washing them on a gentler cycle with soft items, and then laying them flat to dry. I could maybe pop them in the dryer for a few minutes at the end to soften them up and pull out a bit more dog hair. Honestly, I’m delighted to have a good easy-care/summer-weight sock yarn available, and hope to add more to my stash.

It’s very affordable at $14.50 per 100 gram/430 yard skein, and it comes in 20 solid colors. It would be easy to mix and match, and in fact, I have enough left over to do a pink pair with green cuffs/heels/toes. And something else really cool: it’s made in the USA! If you’re in the Pennsylvania area, you can even visit their mill.

A special thank you to Stitchcraft Marketing and the folks at Kraemer Yarns who sent me two skeins of Saucon Sock (retail $29). I received no other compensation for this review. All opinions and photos are my own.