Tag Archive | knitting

Sock It To Me Monday

I’m starting to think ahead to March, when I’ll be casting on a Water shawl (Rav link) in a knit-along with Alissa and a few others here in Blogville. It’s a two-skein shawl that might have a trick or two up its sleeve, so to get it done by the end of March, I know I’ll need to focus on it quite a bit. Though I know I can’t finish all my WIPs before then, I decided I needed to at least finish the boy’s gray socks, which have been lingering for far too long. If I don’t finish them soon, I’m afraid they’ll get lost forever! After working on it most of the weekend, I got all the way past the heel turn.

That’s a very long leg, I’ll have you know! And the foot will be equally long, I believe, or very close. So this week I just need to watch some good TV and movies and zip through this foot. What about you, are you hoping to finish a WIP or two by the end of the month?

FO Friday: Purple Lemonade Socks

Feb19

This might be the fastest pair of socks I have ever knit, and the only reason is because I love the yarn so much. I used my favorite Vanilla Latte sock pattern, so they were simple and easy to knit during work meetings, which might have helped. These took less than a week!

And they are already being put to use! We have sunshine and temps in the upper twenties, so I can wear my handknit socks again. When it was so bitter cold, I had to wear thinner dress socks with thick boot socks over to keep my feet warm. It feels so good to have just one layer of sock again, and to see such cheerful colors. I ended up with a good-sized ball left over, so I’ll knit some socks from the grey skein like this and then do a pair of shorties from the two balls of leftovers. I do love it when a plan comes together.

Happy Friday, friends!

WIP Wednesday: Walls

Feb17

Many moons ago I wound yarn for something like five new projects. Of those, maybe three got cast on at the time. Apparently five is too many for me to deal with at once. So this shawl didn’t get started until a week or so ago, and then I got bored with the garter stitch and set it aside to make all the hats. When I finally picked it up again, I was able to push through to the eyelet section and now I’ve even gotten to the second color!

It is a very subtle gradient, so the color change is hard to see here, especially since I haven’t done a whole lot with the new color. I’m thinking this is going to be one of those projects that I don’t love to knit but will love once it’s done. And getting it done might be hard, since I keep getting distracted. Yesterday was a happy mail day and I got my Capitol Rainbow mini skein set from Marianated Yarns.

But I have to figure out what to make first! Not socks — I already have self-striping ordered from Desert Vista Dyeworks — but maybe a simple cowl? This is why mini skeins are not my favorite things to knit with. I’m also tempted to add in a tiny bit of black, just a thin stripe between each color. What do you think, should I?

FO Friday: Another Hinterland Hat

Feb12

I just can’t stop making these hats. I have a finished one that I think will be a gift, even if it is a beautiful beautiful purple hat. The red one might also be a gift, since I don’t wear red with my purple hair.

The purple is Malabrigo worsted that I rescued from another project a while back. I think it was another hat that I frogged? I don’t remember, but I’m glad I did because it’s so good for this pattern. And the red is… hmm, it might be from Show Me Yarn? It was already wound and the tag is somewhere still on the shelf in the stash. I’ll find it at some point. Anyway, the red might be my last Hinterland for a while. I think I’m ready to get back to all my WIPs.

Grace is feeling a bit peaky and the dishwasher is broken and the temperatures are going to be in the single digits for another few days, so that’s all super. But let’s look on the bright side: the repairman is coming today and I took Grace to the vet and should get bloodwork results today or tomorrow, and I have flannel sheets and Cuddl Duds. And aside from milk, I don’t know that we need much from the grocery store this weekend, so I might just continue hibernating with knitting and blankets and dogs. I know it’s been pretty cold in a lot of places, so I hope you all are staying warm!

Mistake? What mistake?

Feb9

No, I’m not even talking about yesterday’s mistake! I was working on a cabled hat on Sunday and realized my cables were messed up. Like, four out of five cables around the hat were wrong. Argh, right? How many of you would have frogged back, or gone super crazy and dropped the stitches down to fix the cables?

Yeah, not me. I decided the brim would cover most of the bad cables and just moved on. I am nowhere near advanced enough to want to attempt dropping cables back, and it just wasn’t worth it to frog and reknit. It’s a hat for me, and I know I’m never going to look at at sadly and say, “Ohhh, too bad I messed those cables up.” Especially since it ended up looking darn good!

My cable-novice brain is suggesting that I must have done a back cable as a front, see down there by the brim? But then the rest of the hat is good and it fits well and it will be colorful and cozy… if I ever need to go outside in these crazy single-digit temperatures.

Pattern is Hinterland Hat (Rav link), my new favorite, and yarn is Malabrigo Rios, my old favorite. I don’t think I’m done making these hats. They’re so good. Do you have a hat you knit repeatedly?

Sock It To Me, Monday

Feb8

Oh, Monday. I was on a Zoom call this morning, one where I didn’t have much to contribute, so I had a little bit of sock knitting with me. I’d brought up the second gray sock for the boy and I did three or four rounds before pulling out the first sock to check the cuff length. This is what I found.

It might be hard to tell for sure, but no, those cuffs do not match. My typical cuff is 2×2 rib so apparently when I cast on, I did that without thinking. And without remembering that I’d done 1×1 rib on the first sock! I know what you’re thinking: would the boy care? Would he even notice? The answer to both is probably not, but I frogged and started over anyway. If I’d been further along, I might not have, but I like ribbing, so having to re-knit this isn’t a big hardship.

I do have a positive sock update to share, though. I finally finished the first Sorry Not Sorry sock late last week and cast on the second.

I’m not completely convinced I have enough of my contrast yarn for both a heel and a toe, but I’ll worry about that later. I still have about five inches of ribbing to think about that. I really want to cast on some new socks, though. There’s something about solid-color socks that bores me. I’m ready for some stripes or speckles or something more exciting…like this:

This is Doors of January by Mint Rain Yarns. It’s inspired by The 10,000 Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow and if you haven’t read it, definitely check it out! It was one of the recent books from my book group and it’s unusual and strange and I loved it so much. I ordered the black mini-skein to represent doorways at the heels/toes; it’s not a perfect match for the black in the main yarn but it’ll work. I’m telling myself I need to finish my pink sock before starting this one. I wonder if I’ll make it!

New Cast-ons

Feb7

Are you cold too? It seems like Mother Nature just all of a sudden decided we needed a good blast of winter, so now we’ve got snow and highs in the single digits, and we’re luckier than the states farther north of us. It’s ridiculous. Tell me again why I don’t live somewhere with mild winters? Oh right, because then I wouldn’t have as much need for knitwear! My four donation hats have been washed and are drying, and I think I got a little addicted to casting on because I’ve since started two new projects.

For my own Hinterland Hat, I decided to go with teal and pulled out an already-wound skein of Malabrigo Rios. I think the color is Reflecting Pool? My other new project is a shawl I’ve been planning for months. The yarn is a five-skein Shades of Lilac gradient from Neighborhood Fiber Company that I bought at Yarn Social the first time I took Sarah there. It stayed in the stash for a while until I found the Walls (Circus) wrap on Ravelry, which seemed like the perfect fit. I wound the yarn at least three or four months ago but just never cast on, until now. This first garter section is a little boring but it’ll get a lot more interesting very soon.

Since it’s so stupid cold, today is a good day to just pull out all the WIPs and work a little bit on each one! No, I will NOT be watching football while I do it.

No socks today

Feb1

My recent obsession with hat-knitting means very little progress on socks. I need to change that, I think. Although I also recently did my sock laundry, which drove home how many pairs of handknit socks I have! I’d say you can’t have too many, except I’m running out of drawer space for them. It’s a problem.

Anyway, no sock, but a hat. I started a green hat last week and got halfway through before it hit me that I was running much lower on yarn than I expected. I checked my stash notes in Ravelry and realized I’d used half the skein for another hat and it was unlikely I had enough left for an adult-sized hat. So a few inches of ribbing were frogged, no big loss, and instead I made another Hinterland Hat. This one used up a skein of Berroco Vintage.

I think I need to make a Hinterland Hat for myself. Hm, what color?

A busy weekend

Jan30

Guys, I got some really lovely comments on my last post. Thank you! It was so nice to connect in that small way. I meant to post again sooner but the last two days have been just bonkers enough at work that my brain was too tired to blog in the evenings, and I wanted to make sure I had time to appreciate and respond to the comments. Now I’m all caught up with that, plus kind of caught up on my blog-reading.

I also thought I would have pretty photos to show of my new shawl, but between work and rain, I do not. Instead I’ll show you what I’ve been knitting this week. I think I mentioned that I was starting some donation hats. Well, I love knitting hats, I like getting older yarn out of my stash, and I like knowing these hats will go to people who need them. So I’ve just been knitting hats this week. The red is the Hinterland Hat (Rav link) in Rowan Pure Wool and the purple/green is the Charlie Hat (Rav Link) in Malabrigo Worsted. Right now I’ve got some green worsted on the needles for a Duality hat (Rav link). It’s fun picking a different pattern each time!

But my knitting time will be a little limited this weekend. We used our stimulus check to finally do something we’ve talked about pretty much ever since we got Duncan over three years ago: we got bookcases with doors on them. Duncan really enjoys eating books, the older and more valuable the better. I kept thinking he was getting better, but it happened again a couple of months ago so we’re just going to assume it’s always a possibility. I’m a hard-core book nerd, the kind who cares a lot about first editions and dust jackets and condition, so I’m thrilled to be protecting my collection now.

These are just Billy bookcases from IKEA, but the books and the doors dress them up so nicely and make them look fancy! We made a good start last night but this morning my view has a lot of cardboard, so we’ve still got some work to do. Maybe I’ll get to do some knitting tomorrow?

It’s a new day

Jan26

Okay, so guess what? Snow is better than rain! It was starting to snow before I went to bed and we had a lovely gentle ground cover when I got up this morning. I don’t think we’ll be getting much more, and that’s okay, just this is fine for now. There’s a rumor of temps near 50 this weekend, so maybe that will include sunshine too!

And last night I bound off my We Belong Together shawl. It needs ends woven and a good blocking, but I’m delighted with it. (I’ve been watching too much British TV: I really wanted to say “I’m quite chuffed!”) This might be my fastest shawl ever too. It took just six days, well, seven if you count the weaving and blocking I’ll be doing today. Apparently DK weight knits up much faster than fingering weight. Shocker, I know.

Oh, and look, I made a mistake. See that one small teal lace section? Yeah, that was supposed to be as big as the purple one. I only did the lace pattern once instead of twice but didn’t figure it out until the end of the stripe section after it. So not worth frogging back. I didn’t use up as much of the teal because of that, but I think it’s still going to be a wearable length.

I’ve also realized that I need to adjust the position of my sewing machine. I spent Saturday sewing more masks and by that night, I had a catch in one shoulder. The machine is kind of angled because the cord is too short, and every time I use it for very long, this happens. Note to self: get an extension cord for the silly thing before you use it again! It’s just painful enough to be annoying, and I think that helped exacerbate my crabbiness yesterday. I might try a heating pad today and see how that goes. So, happy Tuesday. Hope it’s a good one for you!