This is the last installment of Socks on Vacay-the end was on Labor Day, and I just managed to finish the second pair of these socks in the Carlsbad Caverns colorway. It’s been a lot of fun, but I will admit that I’m looking forward to knitting some of my own sock patterns again. I think I ended up knitting 26 pairs of socks! This puts me at 59 pairs for this year, and 610 overall.
Socks on Vacay: Mammoth Caves, Joshua Tree and Guadalupe Mountians
Sorry for the long break-I was on vacation, busy knitting my socks on vacay. I got 6 pairs done in the two weeks I was gone, so not quite a sock a day! I also worked on a fingering weight sweater that’s coming along nicely, but is currently just lots of stockinette.
This installment of the socks on vacay covers Knitted Wit’s National Park yarn inspired by three parks: Mammoth Caves, Joshua Tree, and Guadalupe Mountains. I’m going to try and get Carlsbad Caverns done before the end too, at least one pair if not two (since I’ve been knitting two pairs from each skein).
Socks on Vacay thus far
I put things in the county fair!
In other news, this year I entered stuff into the local fair. It was my first time being in a fair, and the main impetus to enter was that all I had to do was leave a bag of potential objects and my contact info at my local yarn shop, and my items were magically taken to the fair, entered, and returned to me. I did stop by the fair, but it was before they’d finished the judging on knitted objects, so I didn’t know how well I’d done until I got back from the beach and picked up everything yesterday. I got 5 first places, 3 second, one fourth and one fifth, so a pretty successful first fair experience.
Socks on Vacay: Sequoia Kings
The next installment of national park yarn, in the same Short Attention Span pattern.
Grumpy sheep was not amused. Not even when I told him that the socks complemented his fleece very nicely! Some sheep are just hard to please.
These are pairs 46 and 47 for this year.
Socks on Vacay: Bryce Canyon
It was requested that I make a big pair of socks from this skein, so to match the big size 13 men’s socks, I made a little pair of socks to match! No yarn left over-I used a very small amount of Grand Teton yarn to finish up the toes on the tiny socks. My total leftovers from the first six skeins of Knitted Wit yarn is less than 5 grams!
Grumpy sheep thinks that the small socks fit him much better than the size of socks I normally make him wear.
This gets me up to 12 pairs of socks on vacay, 43 pairs knit this year, and 603 pairs overall!
Socks on Vacay: Grand Tetons
Another two pairs done! I made both of these pairs the same size, and ended up with about 3 grams left over. I should be able to use it as the tips of toes on some of the future national parks yarns, if I lose at yarn chicken again!
The yarn is Knitted Wit’s Grand Teton National Park inspired sock yarn, and I used Shannon Squire’s Short Attention Span pattern again…
In other news, white sheep now has a hat! Perfect to keep her from getting a sunburn this summer, should she ever go out in the sun…
Socks on Vacay: Great Falls
Another set of socks made from yarn by Knitted Wit, in the Short Attention Span pattern by Shannon Squire. This time I won at yarn chicken!
I’ve now fully adapted the pattern-I typically cast on the number of stitches for the smallest size, but assign more than half of them to the top of the sock, knit a narrow heel flap that’s the longest length specified in the pattern, and decrease down after the heel to either 4 or 8 more stitches than I cast on. I can typically get both a pair that is women’s size 7 and one that’s size 10 out of the same skein.
Socks on Vacay: Wrangell-St. Elias
Another two pairs of socks done! I stuck with Shannon’s pattern Short Attention Span, and the yarn this time is Knitted Wit’s Wrangell-St. Elias National Park yarn. I can’t show you both socks at once, because someone bought the first pair from me before I’d had a chance to finish the second. I stuck with similar pattern modifications as I did with Death Valley-a longer heel flap, an odd number of stitches on the top and bottom of the foot, and fewer stitches on the cuff than for the foot. I lost at yarn chicken on the second pair of socks, and ended up doing the last five rows of both toes in th Virgin Islands yarn. I was going to rip out the toes plus a few rows but everyone at the yarn store told me to just use the second color. Even though the two colors are quite different, it isn’t at all obvious, so I suppose they were right (though I know my mum wouldn’t have given me that advice!).
I borrowed the sock blocker from a friend at the yarn store for these pictures. I think I might need to invest in a pair of my own, because the socks look so nice on them!
Socks on Vacay: Death Valley
My second Knitted Wit skein is Death Valley. I enjoyed the colors on this one, and I find it fascinating how it pools at different numbers of stitches. My cuff pools so that the blues and greens form a stripe, and the pinks and browns form another stripe. In the decreases after the cuff there’s a portion where all the tan lines up, and the brown and green stripe on either side of that with a blue and pink stipe opposite. In the foot the pooling creates a narrow band of repeated stripes, mixing up the colors much more. It is a fun yarn.
I modified the pattern a bit more for these pairs. I found that the smallest cast on fits my ankle just fine, so I cast on with only 54 stitches, but I used 66 on the foot. I used a really narrow heel flap, so that I could have the same number of stitches on either side of the gusset decreases. I also used an odd number of stitches on the heel flap, with the eye of partridge stitch, which is a great combination.
I played yarn chicken again, to get two pairs out of this one skein. I’m getting pretty good at yarn chicken! I had about half as much yarn left after the Death Valley socks than I did after the Virgin Island ones:
The sheep are enjoying their new socks
These are my 35th and 36th pairs for this year!
Socks on Vacay: Virgin Islands
This summer there is no Tour-de-Sock, so clearly I needed to go in search of another sock knitting extravaganza. Socks on Vacay is a very different beast, with a lot more whimsy (at least in the determination of prizes, and really, what else matters? Prizes!). You use yarn from Knitted Wit, knit a sock pattern by Shannon Squire, and post the results on Instagram. I still need to worry about that last step, as I don’t yet have an instagram… My local yarn store is also getting in on the fun, and offering prizes for people, so how could I not support a sock knitting event and my local yarn store?
Knitted Wit is doing a range of national parks yarns this summer, which happens to be the only yarn my store carries from Knitted Wit. If you buy four skeins of the national parks yarns, you get a patch, and if you buy 16, you get an enamel pin. This is my first skein of national park themed yarn, and the park in question is the Virgin Islands.
I picked out a pattern that was an anklet, for two reasons. First, this way I can really use up the entire skein, with next to no leftovers, so long as I don’t try to make pairs for giant size 13 men’s feet or some such. Second, if there might be a prize for the most number of socks, well, these require less knitting for more socks! I knit the smaller pair first, and they are really much to small for me! There’s one picture of me trying to cram my foot into one, and I could only barely get it on. However, I noticed that it fit my lower ankle just fine, before I got to the foot bit. The second pair I made just a bit smaller than my size, and they fit well. I tried to follow the pattern for the first sock, but, well, I started making modifications at the start of the heel flap. Just minor ones! The finished socks still look the same, and really are very similar-I could probably tell looking really closely that they weren’t exactly following the pattern, but I’d have to have a correct and incorrect one in my hands to see any differences. Except in the toe, which I took longer to decrease, and that you might be able to see just based on pictures.
As I was reluctant to actually buy someone else’s pattern (Tour-de-Sock was my first time following sock patterns…), there will be quite a few in this pattern for this project… especially now that I know it well enough that I don’t need to carry it around with me. Expect more discussion on how I modified it…