Vocabulary diamonds

The yarn for these socks is from Vocabulary Yarns, and it’s a bluefaced leicester/nylon sock yarn, which was really nice to work with, and it pooled really well! I’ve been enjoying playing with some textures, and these socks have some small little diamonds.

Bluefaced Leicester is a long wool, so it’s a bit coarser, which should improve the durability of the socks. It also has a lovely luster to it, and shines a bit like silk does. Here’s a picture of some bluefaced Leicesters from the Maryland sheep and wool festival!

Carrot socks

Two socks in one post! I’m told that these socks have exactly the same colors as the carrots we grew last summer, hence the name. I had fun playing with texture on these, something I’ve not done too much of before. The pair with the purple cuff/heel/toe has diamonds made with purl stitches, while the blue cuff/heel/toe pair has a variant on seed stitch.

And here are the home-grown carrots for comparison! We weren’t expecting them to grow anywhere near as well as they did-we ended up having lots of carrots, in all sorts of fun colors (and shapes).

The yarn is Once Upon a Corgi’s Marie Cutie (75% SW Corriedale 25% Nylon). I really enjoyed knitting with it, and since it’s primarily Corriedale wool instead of Merino, the socks should wear much better. Corriedales are a cross between Merino and Lincoln sheep, so their fleece has some of the long wool strength but is softer than many long wools. It was fun yarn to work with, and I also like the way it takes the dye.

These are pairs 18 and 19 for the year!

and some more cables...

I’m really quite fond of this type of pattern, so I end up doing quite a few socks like this. This pair is for the owner of the local yarn shop! The yarn is Kim Dyes Yarn’s sourdough sock base, and it’s very nice to work with.

This is my 16th pair for 2019, so I’m averaging a bit over a pair a week! I feel like the knee high socks should count double though….

Cables round the toe!

The key feature of these socks is that the cable that runs down the ankle loops around at the toe and comes back up the other side. I have no idea how comfortable these will be in shoes, but the yarn is 10% cashmere (80% superwash merino, 10% nylon) from Primrose Yarn company, so they are certainly soft!

pair number 15 for 2019, 575 overall

Aurora borealis socks

These socks are from the same yarn as the laser tag socks: Kim Dyes yarns sugarcookie sock. With this pair I put in a subtle texturing, some zig-zag purled stitches. I also used fewer stitches than on the laser tag socks, so that it wouldn’t pool as much and would stripe more. I was running out of the colorful yarn, so I had it fade into black, which I think matches the aurora borealis name.

And here both the aurora borealis and laser tag socks are being modeled!

Sister's sister socks

When I started the socks for my sister, my first attempt wasn’t big enough to comfortably go around her calf, so I had to start over. I had gotten a fair amount of cuff done though, so I kept it to make into a pair of socks for me, in a similar style. Here they are!

Behind the socks you can see the puzzle we did this weekend! It’s Seascape near Les Saintes Maries de la Mer by Van Gogh, and the puzzle pieces are all sorts of cool shapes, made from wood. The company that makes these wooden puzzles is called Liberty Puzzles, based out of Colorado.

This pair is 12 for this year, 572 overall.

Sister socks

Every once in awhile my sister asks me to knit something for her. She generally gives fairly tight constraints, but then wears the object regularly, so any time she asks my mum and I jump. This time it was knee high socks in a neutral oatmeal color. One of the hardest bits was to find yarn in the correct shade of neutral-neither my mum’s nor my local yarn store stocks it. We did find some online through Baa Ram Ewe eventually.

I really like how traveling stitch socks look, so I decided to design some knee highs. I’m really pleased with how the decreases after the calf look. Better pictures to come eventually, but here’s one of me trying it on to determine foot length.

Leafy socks

These socks are also made from Periwinkle Sheep, and are a nice autumnal burnt orange color, so I decided to put leaves on them. All four of the leaves are slightly different, and I made them all up on the fly-I think they might have benifited from some practice, but I’m still really happy with how they turned out.

In other news, white sheep and grumpy sheep were trying on glasses today.

Cabled socks

It was mid December, and I had, for reasons we shall not go into here, much vacation time to use up before December 31st. Thus I left my fiber stash and my pet sheep in the kindly hands of my sister, and traveled northward, to join with friends and relations for the winter holidays. At this juncture, something sadly not completely unexpected occurred-a government shutdown. I was, as aforementioned, on holiday at the time, so while I sympathized with the plight of my fellows (and complained about the setback this would create in my own work), I thought little of it until the new year. I had planned to return to my sheep and my stash in that first week of the new year, but my sister is a very capable wooden sheep watcher, so I decided I would remain amongst friends in the north until such time as I was required again at work. However, there was something I had failed to take into account in this decision, namely the lack of access to my fiber stash. You see, I had only planned for a trip of two weeks, so I’d brought along enough yarn for only around 8 pairs of socks, a shawl, and three scarves. During the holidays my most excellent mother did help to augment my fiber supply, with some cashmere worsted and a cone of white sock yarn, however what I realized shortly after starting Mosaic 36 was that I did not have any more yarn for mosaic socks. Sure, I still had my scarf, shawl, and other sock yarns, but I didn’t have two yarns with enough contrast that were not already earmarked for a specific project. Imagine the horror! Particularly as I had made it a goal in the new year to use up yarn I already had! This is why, dear reader, I am forced to pause the progress on the mosaic knitting project, and show you pictures of these other socks instead. I’m also hoping to use this as an opportunity to get some of the scarves and shawl finished.

The yarn is Lucky 13 fibers, 75% superwash merino, and 25% merino. The socks are for me!

Pair 4 for 2019, 564 overall.

Cabled Christmas Socks

These socks were made out of Cascade Yarns Heritage 150, which is a sport weight. This is basically the same as the cabled Monet socks, but all in one color and with a slightly different heel stitch (and a different size). This way you can actually see the cables!