36 posts tagged “socks”
I noticed something odd today when I was taking my hand knit socks off of the drying rack.
Perhaps I should knit up my green mill-dyed Sock Candy next just to throw a wrench in the works.
I'm not focusing very well on my NaNoSweMo sweater. I started a new project today, a chemo cap for my friend because no one had gotten a chance to finish one for her yet. She starts chemo tomorrow and I know her hair won't fall out instantly but I think if it were me I'd take it off before it had the chance to fall out bit by bit. I have no idea how quickly it all progresses, really, but I want her to have a hat in her possession, darnit! Anyway, I picked a pattern that calls for worsted weight yarn so it's a quick knit. If I write this post fast enough I may even get to the top decreases tonight. I thought maybe I could finish it but that's not happening.
So, now that I've figured out that I can export my photos from iPhoto in a roundabout way, my card reader won't recognize my flash card so I can't get photos off of my camera. I seem to have whatever is opposite of the Midas touch with mechanical and electronic devices these days. I took a couple of iPhone photos of my faded socks instead. I know it's not great but I think you can see what is going on in this one.
The sock on the left has faded less than the sock on the right but it is still faded and pretty dull looking. The ball of yarn between my feet is the leftover yarn that hasn't been washed. This is from one wash. In cold water and Soak. Here's the photo of them freshly knitted and not at all faded, for reference.
It turned out that I needed to knit a few more rows before I could bindoff on my socks so I did that last night and didn't end up knitting on my sweater at all. I have a cool new pair of socks though. I love them so far. I am curious to see how this yarn holds up because I have definitely durability issues with some cotton sock yarns. Time will tell!
These are the Upstream Master pattern from Cat Bordhi's New Pathways book 1. I think it might be my favorite architecture. The increases happen on the sole and there's something about it that makes a sock that hugs my foot well.
I also finished a woven scarf today. I started it waaaaay back in May when I first got my loom and just kind of lost my oomph. I will be teaching the kids at Niels' school how to weave this week, though, so I need my loom for the class and had to finish off the project that was on it.
My sweater continues to grow. I have started the waist decreases but the edges of the fronts continue to increase more rapidly so the quantity of stitches is still growing fairly quickly. I can take it though. I'm tough like that.
We got a Scholastic order from school today which included a copy of The Invention of Hugo Cabret. I had been considering buying it and thought it was a bargain in the catalog. I see now that it's 39 cents cheaper on Amazon but this way we earned points for our teacher to get more books for class! I feel a bit guilty buying books like this because I feel like I am trying to turn Niels into the same kind of reader I am: the kind who also enjoys comics and graphic novels. This book is half pictures, if not more. I haven't started reading it yet but I flipped through it and it looks really interesting. He already likes comics, of course, but this will help that along too.
I was running around all day so far and the only knitting I did was on the ribbing of my stripey socks. I'm done and am going to bind them off as soon as I finish posting this, which doesn't help me reach my sweater goal, of course, but gives me a fun new pair of socks to wear tomorrow! I will probably knit a bit on the sweater too. I want to watch yesterday's episode of V before I go to bed, even though the things I've read so far have not been terribly positive. It could get better! Right? Right!
I left someone out! My holey socks. The name of the pattern is Bosnian Toes and Turkish heels from one of the old issue's of Knitter's that my aunt gave me. I will always call them my holey socks, though. I was ready to post about them last week with this photo.
They're a little slouchy around the ankle but I think if they weren't in this yarn they'd never fit over my heel. I might try this pattern again in Fixation at a smaller size. I'm not sure what Fixation would do to those holes though. We might see, some day.
Last year I dyed some yarn. This week I tried to use it. I knew I was going to have to wash the item afterwards because the yarn never rinsed clear but I didn't realize just how much I was going to have to wash it. I washed it in the sink with textile detergent (the Dharma version of Synthrapol) then I soaked it in vinegar and washed it in the machine with hot water and the textile detergent. It's still bleeding. On everything. I'm very frustrated. Dyers out there, any suggestions on setting this crap? It's procion fiber reactive dye on a cotton/rayon yarn. It's frustrating because I think the color is pretty and I loved how it looked in this pattern (the darkside cowl - Rav link).
Last, but very much not least, a pair of socks in the self-patterning cotton sock yarn I got at Sock Summit.
Like many other knitters, I was at Sock Summit this past weekend. I drove up with my whole family and we stayed with some friends just outside of Portland so my trip was a mix of Sock Summit stuff and visiting friends and family. I don't feel like I got as submerged in Sock Summit as some.
I took "Knitting without Wool" with Amy Singer. I got to see a bunch of socks knit with nonwool yarns that I had heard of but never seen. Wick, for one. I'm glad now that I never tried it for socks because it is very thick and I like my socks to be on the thinner side. We also learned a stretchy bind-off that will be in an article in the next Knitty. Ironically, the socks I was working on at Sock Summit and the pair I started on the drive home are both top-down. Generally, I knit all of my socks toe-up! I'll have to do a pair next to try that bind-off.
I didn't take many photos at Sock Summit, but here's one of the cool pendulum in the convention center, of Freecia at lunch with a giant pita at Nicholas Restaurant and of the luminary panel.
On Sunday before the panel I walked around the marketplace a bit with Cookie and Anne Hanson, who I had never met before and who was very nice. She was working on some gorgeous orange socks (seen in her most recent blog post) that were making me sad that I can't knit with wool. Ah, cootton, why can't you take color like wool? I did do a bit of shopping, but not much. Like Stitches, the nonwool, nonlace options are few and far between.
Anabel told me that she tired the square circular needles in size 0 and she wasn't crazy about them for reasons that totally sounded like I wouldn't like them either. In the heat of the moment at the marketplace I forgot that and bought the exact same needles and am having the exact same problem: the cord is too flexible and the join too bumpy for magic loop. The actual knitting is fine but when it comes time to pushing the stitches back up to the tip of the needle to work on them it's incredibly time consuming and a big pain. I am considering emailing the store where I got them and asking if I can trade them for something larger with a shorter cord because I think they'd be great for actually knitting in the round. I haven't tried the hook yet, but I have a couple of their square hooks in larger sizes (this one is an F) so I expect to like it.
The yarns are, from left to right, Sockina, Kollage Luscious and BMFA Sock Candy. They're all cotton blends. Luscious and Sock Candy both just have elastic and Sockina has Polyamide and Acrylic. i'm looking forward to knitting with all of them but have to settle on a pattern, and finish the sock I started on the trip home!
That would be the Bosnian Toes & Turkish Heels sock by Lucy Neatby (Ravelry link) from Knitter's Magazine. I usually just get Interweave unless I see something I really want to make in one of the other magazines. My aunt, however, gets Interweave, Knitters and Knit n Style and has decided that she doesn't like any of them. She gave me a big stack of Knittters and Knit n Style and a book she doesn't want any more!
I need to go through them, decide which ones have stuff I want to make, read the articles I want to read and then I will probably be sharing the wealth at BobaKnit.
I was considering calculating my stash number again but I think it's a bad idea. I have been mostly working on gift projects with yarn that came from outside of the stash so I don't think I've taken much out of the stash recently. The Lucy Neatby socks are going quickly, though, so that yarn should be taken out soon. I don't think I'm going to make my goal this year of using up 5 more miles of yarn. That sounds ludicrous to me right now since I just bought yarn and Linda destashed some cotton and silks to me. Oops.
Just over six months after starting them, I finished my Woven Ridges socks yesterday. I am not sure why these took me so long. A severe case of second sock syndrome, I suppose! I wore them all day and I love them already.
I have been a bad blogger. Part of the reason for that is that I now have an abundance of projects on the needles and I am not being monogamous with any one project, therefore nothing is getting finished. So, we are going to have a parade of WIPs. First up is the project I started first, my Woven Ridge socks. I started them (and completed the first one) while we were in the Netherlands in the summer. I cast on right away for the second one but it's been languishing ever since.
Next up in the WIP parade is Niels' sweater. I finished the front and back and started the first sleeve but then I got distracted because I need to recalculate the decreases. His arms are much longer than the pattern size and I don't want to have all the decreases before the elbow and then the whole top straight or something. It's getting close, though! Other than all the ends to weave in, of course. Maybe I should focus on finishing it for Christmas. Maybe.
Also, the farther I get into the more the thought of having to kitchener stitch the front to the back looms over my head. That's 110 stitches of each color! I don't generally mind kitchener stitch, I have to say. I think that comes from having started my knitting career on diaper soakers. Theresa and Pam helped me to cut my teeth on knitting in a small, managable format. Theresa, by having very clear instructions in her patterns and Pam by being my friend and encouraging me as well as including me in all of her classes on her forums. I wouldn't be the knitter I am today if it weren't for them. Anyway, when you knit a soaker you have to kitchener the crotch closed. Luckily, though, you use large yarn and it's generally not very many stitches. I'm not sure I'd be so comfortable with the technique if I had started on sock toes with their tiny tiny yarn. This yarn is fairly tiny but it's the sheer volume of stitches to be sewn together that really makes me nervous. I should stop worrying and just knit, right? I'm only on row 20 and I have to do 64 rows of chart and then a few plain rows before the finishing starts.
So, since I got new yarn and have finished at least one project I thought I'd check my stash totals. I am currently up to 60889.6 yards of yarn or 34.6 miles. Um. Oops. That's up a mile since last time I calculated. I haven't purchased any yarn, it's just been finding me. Does that make it better? I didn't think so either. In the interest of decreasing the stash, I put my Regal Silk into my Sell or Trade Stash on Ravelry. I have five hanks of it that I was going to use to make a silk corset for myself. I've basically decided that if I do end up making the silk corset, It's not going to be out of variegated yarn. It's really pretty yarn, though, but I don't know else to do with it. I'm asking for $75 for the whole lot, plus shipping. You know you want to give this gorgeous yarn a home, right? If not, you must have a friend who does, of course. (Please buy my yarn.)
I finished the socks for my niece. They turned out as anklets, but I think they are cute. I hope she likes them. They are the Rushing Rivulet socks from New Pathways for Sock knitters. (Ravelry details)
