Mosaic 30: pretzels!

This pattern reminds me of those rectangular pretzels, sometimes served on airplanes where these socks were mostly knit. The bright yarn is Unplanned Peacock's Peacock sock in colorway Arthur, while the black is an Opal sock yarn. While it isn’t my favorite pattern ever, the way the pattern is designed, with lots of k1 s1, leads to a squishy fabric, which I do like. Same heel and bottom as on the past two mosaic pairs-I really like being able to have a reinforced bottom, and I think this method of decreases works really well. I’m decreasing every other row, which means the decreases happen fairly quickly, so I made the heel flap a bit longer. That extends the point where the decreases stop further out into the foot.

Diadem scarves

I recently finished weaving a batch of six scarves from knitpicks diadem: 50% Baby Alpaca, 50% Mulberry Silk. They feel beautiful, but were a bit of a pain to weave as the yarn isn’t all that sturdy, so I had to be fairly careful to not abrade the yarn too much and break it. Five of the scarves were all the same basic twill, just with different colored wefts, while the final scarf (the pink one) I did with a tabby shot, allowing me to weave lozenges instead of diamonds. I’m really pleased with the result-they feel (and look) lovely. I don’t seem to have taken any finished pictures, so here are some in progress shots of the three I did remember to take pictures of:

Mosaic 29: pinwheels

These socks use up the last of my Oink pigments Targhee sock yarn. I really have enjoyed the feel of this yarn-it’s super springy and the socks feel really soft and cushy. I did the same style of after the heel decreases as for mosaic 28, and the same reinforced bottom. I think this combo of decreases and bottom works really well together.

Mosaic 28: candies

This pattern is very similar, yet distinct, from mosaic 27. I’m even using the same yarn! (Albeit with a different main color. The yarn is Oink Pigments Targhee sock yarn.) To make sure they had something obviously different, I decided to have a striped, reinforced bottom. Between the inherent squishyness of this yarn and the reinforced bottom, the sock should have lots of cushioning!

In terms of actual heel shaping, I made sure to turn the heel in such a way that it was 24 stitches after turning. These 24 stitches became the bottom of the sock, and the stitches I picked up along the side became pattern stitches. It isn’t super obvious with this pattern, but then what I did was to decrease at the border of pattern and bottom. I did a slower decrease than I’ve been doing on the small little reinforced heel triangle of the previous sock (#27). Here I decreased every four rows, i.e. the first black row of a black row stripe (in mosaic knitting you do two rows with one color before switching out for the other color). The foot is a bit big on me, but I think my feet are also on the small side in terms of circumference, so I think they should fit someone else really well.

Mosaic 27: Swimming turtles

If you look carefully, you can see turtles swimming along with their heads and tails tucked in, and a pretty design on the back of their shell.

The yarn here is from Oink Pigments in their Targhee Sock base. The yarn is super squishy and really has been fun to knit with. This pair of socks felt like they knit up extraordinarily quickly-I’d been planning on making them smaller, but when I stopped to check I’d done half a pattern more than I’d intended!

The heel I did on this pair is one I’ve been developing throughout all these socks, but I think it works really well for this. It has a reinforced bottom that extends the whole length of the gusset, which I like because if I wear my socks at the bottom of the heel it rarely is within that heel-turn area. With this heel I get to have the whole bottom of the heel reinforced. Also, I like the fit and how the sock looks like a foot even when it’s not being worn.

Mosaic 26: Parasols/Umbrellas

We’re back to the mosaic patterns from the book! This one is number 26, and Barbara entitles it ‘parasols’. I couldn’t decide whether to do the pattern as printed in the book, in which case the pattern would show up as right-side up umbrellas for the wearer, or if I should knit the pattern so that the umbrellas were right-side up for the viewer. I decided on this compromise, where one is right side up, and the other is upside down. I’m pleased with how they turned out, though many people didn’t seem sure when I was knitting them.

The blue yarn is Holiday Yarns Mittenacht, in flocksock, that I’ve used before, and the white is Knitpicks stroll glimmer.

White wool blanket

I made this blanket as a gift for some friends. They saved some fur from their dog, and I then spun it into a yarn, and used that yarn as an interest yarn in a blanket.

The dog hair was fairly short, and not super soft. I decided that it would do well as an occasional yarn in a larger project, and that a wool lap blanket would be nice. That way I could use a softer wool for the majority of the blanket, but the dog hair could still be part of it.

In spinning the yarn I had several considerations. Mainly I wanted to make sure that my yarn didn’t shed. I also wanted to use some angora bunny fur to help with the softness. What I ended up doing was to spin two medium/fine singles of dog and a single of angora, both with a Z twist. I also spun a medium/thick (all on my scale of such things, and keep in mind that I typically spin for lace projects) S twist single of shetland wool. Each of the Z twist singles were overplied against a thread (S twist), and then those three single+thread combinations were plied (Z twist) along with the wool. The plan is that the finer single and thread will help to bind the dog and angora into the yarn, so that the yarn doesn’t shed, while the wool helped to provide some bulk and elasticity. I’m really pleased with how the yarn turned out, and I really like how it looks. I’m planning on doing this again, only with two strands of bunny (and no dog) for interest yarns in other projects. This time I used a light blue thread to ply the bunny against, and next time I think I’ll mix that aspect up with more/brighter colors. If you look carefully you can see the blue occasionally in the pictures of the yarn below.

The yarn turned out to be a heavy worsted weight.

After spinning the yarn, I then travelled home to use my mother’s 8 shaft floor loom. I wanted a good sized blanket, and I’d never done double weave before, so I decided that this was a good excuse to learn a new technique. Using my mom’s 8 shaft (instead of my own 4 shaft) allowed me to still do a twill (plus I don’t own a reed with a low enough number of dents per inch). I filled out the blanket with some Leicester Longwool from Seven Sister’s farm, a big spool of wool my mom picked up in Ireland while we were on a family trip (it was super cheap and pretty looking, though I’m glad I didn’t use it as the warp all by itself as it also was not very strong, as it turns out), along with a wool cotton blend from the Green Mountain Spinnery (the grey you see is their yarn, and there is also some white of theirs in the blanket as well).

Double weave, the way I did it, means that for a weaving width of 10 inches the final blanket ends up being 20 inches, i.e. I wove two layers at once. I chose to do a twill because twills drape better than tabby. At each dog and grey yarn I changed the direction of the twill in the warp, so that I could weave zig-zags instead of diagonals. If I’d been really ambitious I would have woven diamonds, but I decided that a double weave twill was complicated enough, particularly since I was working under some time pressure in that I wanted to get the blanket woven in a single visit to the folks.

The pattern ended up being a dog interest yarn, then 6 strands of alternating longwool and unknown irish wool, followed by a strand of the cotton/wool blend, then five strands of alternating longwool and irish wool, followed by two strands (treated as one) of grey cotton/wool blend. Mirror that and repeat for around 20 repeats, and that was the warp. Ideally the weft followed that pattern as well, but I did have some trouble at times keeping all those yarns straight for the weft.

The finished blanket is around 2 yards by 2 yards, and has lovely twisted fringe (not pictured here, as these pictures were all from before we got in the car to drive to the airport to go back home, and the fringe was twisted on the drive). I am very pleased with how it turned out. The fold was not as obvious as it could have been, and I think with a washing it will start to disappear. I don’t think my mistakes or lack of consistency in beating are at all obvious, and it is a nice weight lap blanket, big enough for two people. I also got it woven (winding the warp to taking it off the loom) in less than one week!

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

These socks were inspired by the tour-de-sock stage 4. The main differences between the two socks are that these ones are cuff down instead of toe up, and they’re mosaic. This is my first time designing such a large pattern, and some of the snowflakes are too big. I also originally made the pattern way too long-this is modified from my original pattern. Next time I design a whole sock mosaic it should go much more smoothly. I’m really happy with how the heel worked though-I think it fits quite well.

The blue yarn is Masquerade yarn (80% Bluefaced Leicaster, 20% silk) from Lattes & Llamas, in the color Kasterborous, and the white yarn is knitpicks stroll glimmer.

Entrelac Monet

I had leftover yarn from the cabled socks, so here’s the rest of those skeins! With TDS there was always a lot of speculation before a pattern came out as to what it would involve. A few times different people mentioned entrelac socks, and I decided I should make a pair. I figured that entrelac would help this yarn pool nicely, instead of creating stripes, so I went for it, though I was lazy and did a standard foot. At some point I will have to do another pair of entrelac socks-I’ve started having ideas of how I can incorporate the heel in without breaking the entrelac nature of it, and I will have to try it out at some point… I decreased after the cuff, before starting the entrelac, but in retrospect I should have decreased more, as it does actually get wider. Happily there is plenty of stretch in entrelac to hide some of that, unless the wearer likes having puffs at their ankles!

Cabled Monet

I took a break recently from my mosaic project, to be distracted by this cashmere sock yarn. The colorful yarn is the Sophia MCN sock yarn from Primrose Yarn Co, in the color ‘space suit’. The purple is also a merino/cahsmere/nylon blend (both are 80/10/10), but it’s from Willow Tree Yarns and the color is called ‘Regency’.

I knew that I didn’t want to knit up the main color in a plain knit, because I was worried the colors would lose some of their interest, so I decided to go with cables. I did four stitch cables, separated by a single purl stitch, and every other cable goes the opposite direction. I also offset the cables to maintain some stretch. I am very pleased with how these socks turned out-I really like how the texture of the cables breaks up the streaks of color, as compared to the bottom of the sock where I did plain knitting.