His and Hers socks

These are his and hers socks, complete with matching contrasting toe on one sock! The yarn for both of these socks is a ‘fingering’ weight, but his (the green ones) is much thicker, and the combination of thicker yarn and bigger feet meant that I ran out. But I’d already sewn up the toe on the first sock, and I really didn’t want to have to rip out the toe just to redo it in blue so that the two socks matched, so he got one sock with a green toe and one sock with a blue toe. He didn’t seem fully convinced (the asymmetry apparently bothers him more than the toe being a different color), so I promised that when I finished the matching pair I made for myself, I’d put a green toe on the second sock.

The pattern is one I made up, but I’m planning on writing it up, because I’m very happy with how it turned out. I did decreases down the leg, though they’re probably not necessary given that the cables act like ribbing, so I’m planning on writing up the pattern both with and without the decreases. I need to come up with a good name for it though. Since these two pairs were knit in different weight yarns, I actually used the same number of pattern repeats overall, and the same number of stitches, even though his foot/leg are about 1” bigger around than mine. Gauge does make a difference, as much as I’d like to ignore it…

The thicker fingering (mainly green socks) is Forbidden Fiber Co’s Gluttony sock base, colorway Central Park. The sparkly fingering (mainly blue socks, and thinner than the green) is Forbiddn Fiber Co’s pride base, in colorway Frozen. Both yarns were a joy to work with. The gluttony base is super squishy, and I really like teh subtle sparkly of the pride base.

Celery socks

The past two years I’ve had a garden plot at work. I’ve had great success there with my basil, hot peppers and marigolds, and some mixed success with other plants. This past summer my mom was kind enough to volunteer to plant my garden, since she was in town at the right time. That meant that she got to influence the plants in it, and one of the plants she picked out for me was celery. Not that I don’t like celery, I do, but I don’t eat that much of it, and home grown celery is so much more flavorful than store bought celery. I’m not sure flavor is exactly what I’m looking for when I eat celery. A source of water? A vehicle for hummus or dressing? Either way, I had way more celery this summer than I could use, so I harvested some and brought it to the local yarn store, along with my overabundance of basil and hot peppers. Turns out that the mom of one of the people there loves celery, particularly the home grown flavorful stuff, and was thrilled to be able to use all my celery for juicing. I was happy to find a good home for it, where it wouldn’t’ go to waste. As a thank-you for the celery, I received this yarn, which is why these are my celery socks.

The yarn is an opal sock yarn, and the pattern is pretty much exactly what I did for the Cornell socks, complete with the decreases down the back of the leg. They actually fit me really well, so I’m trying to decide if I want to keep them for myself after all. They aren’t really as blue as the socks I normally make for myself, so we’ll see.

Merino sock yarn

This yarn has been in progress since last summer, when I was doing all the spinning directly from fleeces, although since my mom dyed the roving for me, I suppose one could say it’s been in progress for a lot longer. I just finished up spinning the whole pound of roving, and plied the first skein. I’m planning on plying a few more skeins in slightly different configurations, to play around with what works best for sock yarns. The roving is 100% merino, so I wanted to make sure I spun it in a way to make it last.

I ended up breaking the roving up into 6 different pieces, because that was how many times the colors repeated. Then each 1/6th got it’s own bobbin, with a little extra floof of blue roving going on its own bobbin. (I really love having all the bobbins in the world, and three different lazy kates that together give me 11 bobbins worth of storage. It makes spinning yarns with lots of plies so much easier!) The singles are pictured here first, and you can see that they’re quite fine.

For this skein, I took two singles and over plied them a lot. Then I took that 2 ply, and Navajo plied it, resulting in a 6 ply cabled sock yarn.

the over-plied 2 ply yarn

finished yarn

I’m really happy with how the cabled yarn turned out. It’s a bit harsher than one might expect for merino, but I expect it will soften with washing and wear, and I’m really hoping that it won’t wear out quickly because of this structure. I’m also really happy with how I was able to get the colors to line up when plying the two singles together, and I’m really looking forward to knitting it up into socks.

First finished project of 2020!

I made this sweater as a shop sample for Knit Locally, my local yarn store. It’s from Titus, by Baa Ram Ewe, a British yarn brand. Titus is a blend of British alpaca and longwool. I’ve used it before for lace shawls and I’ve really enjoyed it. I think it likes a bit tighter of a gauge than I used in this sweater, but I think the sweater turned out well anyway!

I made this sweater for a shop sample for the local yarn store, and they went to Vogue Knitting Live in NYC. I only barely finished it in time, and I laid it out for blocking the same morning that I needed to give it to them to pack! It was still a bit damp when I handed it off, so I didn’t have great finished object pictures of it until just a few days ago, when I saw it on display at the shop!

Last socks of 2019

My last pair of socks from 2019 were these lace socks, and I didn’t quite have them done in time for gifting! Only one sock was wrapped up, with the second one on the needles. I finished the second sock the next day, but we ended up having to ship it. I remembered when making these socks how much I enjoy making lace socks. It’s a relatively simple lace pattern, but I think they look so elegant when done.

In 2019 I made:

  • 72 pairs of socks

  • 1 tea cozy

  • 6 hats (2 adult, 4 preemie)

  • 9 shawls

  • 1 sweater

and I spun yarn for at least 3 pairs of socks.

Cornell socks

While these may look like standard Christmas socks, or candycane colored socks, they are instead Cornell socks! They were a Christmas present for a very proud Cornell alumni. My mum had made him socks in the past that were red and white striped, and looked very ‘where’s Waldo’, so I decided to stick with only the cuffs, toes and heels in the red. It turns out that was a very good decision as the red yarn and the white were very different weights, which resulted in a very squishy toe and heel that should stand up extra well to wear. To compensate for the change in weights in the cuff, I increased 1 stitch in every 4 when switching from red to white. I then had a humongous number of stitches, so I did decreases all down the back of the leg. I was really happy with how the decreases worked out, and the socks ended up fitting perfectly!

More bee socks

I’m planning on making a few more pairs of these bee socks, because I apparently have lots of friends in my life who either keep bees or just love them. These were a Christmas present for a beekeeper, and I was really pleased with how they turned out! I found this colorwork bee pattern in a book my mum gave me, and right away knew I was going to have to use it on socks.

The dark yarn is from knitpicks, and that perfect golden yellow color is called spicy caramel from ND yarn company.

I'm back!

Things have been a bit hectic with me (to put it mildly) for the past few months, but are beginning to calm down now, thankfully. First there was a flurry of holiday knitting that was eating up every last second of my time (except for when we stopped to build a snowman! He was taller than I am!), and since then it’s been a combination of work, travel, and job interviews (!!!) that have kept me super busy. I’ve hardly finished any items since Jan 1!

So, I’m going to start with posts about the holiday knitting projects, and this post will feature lace bee socks. They were a commission for a friend who loves bees, and she picked out the pattern and the yarn-both were fun to work with, though the pattern was toe up, which is not my favorite. The sock fits fine on my foot model, but it pulls at the heel when on my foot. This is why I really like a long heel flap on my feet…

The socks feature a bee on the tip of the toe (garter butt, lace wings and antenna, and stockinette head), with a honeycomb lace pattern up the top of the foot and cuff.

The yarn is from Forbbiden Fiber co, on their ‘pride’ sock base. It’s very subtly sparkly (particularly in this grey color), which I love. I think the subtle sparkles are very nice. I made some modifications to the pattern, in particular how the increases are done going up the leg, but overall I think it was a good pattern as was. It’s Bee Socks by Vint Hill Knits.

zig-zag slipped stitch socks

This is the next in the series of ‘let’s try a simple pattern on the cuff and see what happens’. With these socks I slipped one out of every 6 stitches, with the yarn in front, so that if you look very closely you can see a zig-zag pattern of bars vertically along the sock. I keep being amazed at how such a small thing can really change how the yarn looks, and really break up any horizontal striping. I think this one worked really well!

The yarn is a new one for me-it’s from lolodidit. It was quite nice, and overall these socks knit up super quickly! Since the yarn came with a mini skein for the contrasting bits, I wasn’t quite sure how long I would be able to knit the cuff without running out of yarn, so I ended up doing a provisional cast on, knitting the entire sock (minus the cuff), and then coming back to knit the cuffs once I’d finished everything else on both socks. I started the cuffs with 8.5 g, and I have a tiny bit of the contrasting color left, so it all worked out perfectly!

Mosaic 40: llamas doing yoga?

It’s holiday knitting season here, and I’ve been frantically trying to get all the projects done in time, so I have all sorts of projects on the needles right now, and keep failing to remember to take pictures. Particularly since pictures really need a nice sunny day, and those have been in short supply.

The first step in my holiday knitting was to get these socks off the needles! They’re the next installment in the mosaic series, pattern number 40 from Barbara Walker’s mosaic book. I’m told that, if you look at the light space (not the black) you can see llamas, or people doing yoga. I haven’t quite managed to see them, but people have been very insistent about this, so I guess I’ll have to take their word for it?

I decided to go with a reinforced bottom for this pair of socks, so I continued the k1,s1 from the heel all the way down the bottom of the foot. This time I also tried doing it on the bottom of the toe-I’m not quite sure that I like it, but I’m glad I tried it. It makes the toe look more pointed, as the slipped stitches pull the bottom tighter than the top. It seems to fit fine when put on.

The colorful yarn is my prize skein from socks on vacay! It is Knitted Wit’s Unicorn Giggles, and I think it works really well with the solid black opal yarn, which I’ve finally used up! My mum gave me a whole cone of the stuff, and it’s gone! Now I’ll have to use something else for my contrast color. I think the next several pairs of mosaics will be trying to use up a cone of white sock yarn she gave me…