Grapes anklets

As promised, I had just enough handspun yarn left from my ‘cluster of grapes’ braid from Three Waters Fibers to make these cute little anklet socks. I’m an expert at yarn chicken, and had less than 3 feet of yarn left over!

This rainbow roving (colorway ‘cluster of grapes’ ) was from Three Waters Farm. I spun it super fine, and plied it against a grey blend of shetland wool, alpaca and nylon that my mom had blended up for me to make socks from. The two singles were plied, and then I did a three-ply cable thing to make the overall six ply yarn. I love the texture of this finished yarn, and the depth that adding that grey ply added. I think the yarn does a great job of providing enough visual interest of its own, without a complicated pattern.

End of summer updates

Oh my, what an eventful summer! All good things, and lots of them, but they’ve kept me busy! I am now an engaged, home-owning, tenure track professor, and just a month ago I was none of those things! It doesn’t mean my knitting will stop though, and now that things are beginning to settle down (first day of class is officially over!), I’m hoping to get back to regular blog updates for all of you readers. And for myself. Turns out having documentation on each project can be really helpful when I want to know the fiber content 6 months to a few years down the road…

So, since you clearly came here to see pictures of knitting, I will oblige with these pictures of a sock in progress. The socks have been long since finished and gifted, but I apparently never took pictures of them done…. They’re very similar to the Jupiter socks I did earlier this year, using the same yarns from Jaggerspun on their Kokadjo base in the colors ‘Secret Sunset’ and ‘Sangria’. For this pair the cuffs, heels and toes are all in the solid ‘sangria’ color, but for the leg and foot I used the spiral knitting technique to alternate between the two colors. I’m really a fan of the spiral knitting, as compared to switching colors at a fixed point on each row, since it doesn’t have that step up look and it doesn’t feel any different to knitting straight with one color.

Cluster of grapes socks

I don’t want to admit to how long these socks were on the needles-it was way too long. I got the first sock and most of the second sock done fairly quickly. In fact, I was almost at the toe when I noticed that my gauge was different between the two socks. Not enormously, but… the yarn is my handspun, and I was knitting them from opposite ends of the ball, with the hope that the colors would all line up. Apparently I need to work more on my quality control, as the first sock had thinner yarn and the second sock thicker. So the project went into time out, and sat there until I was willing to face it again. I decided to just make the two socks the same length, and pretend the whole thing never happened.

This is one of the hazards of using handspun yarn, and it shows up clearly on socks. I really like using handspun for shawls, or in weaving, where any variations aren’t as critical. In a shawl you can claim it as a design feature if the bottom is thicker/thinner than the top, and in weaving you can alternate from different parts of the skein to minimize the impact of any variations. However, I knit socks. It’s in the name of the website. So, if I want to actually use my yarn instead of just watching it accumulate, I should spin for socks. And I need to work on my consistency.

Otherwise, I’m really happy with this pair. I love the colors, particularly the muted rainbow. The bright rainbow of the initial roving (colorway ‘cluster of grapes’ by ThreeWatersFarm, hence the sock name) was also beautiful, but I couldn’t see myself wearing those colors. Petting them, enjoying playing with them, yes, but wearing them? I also love the texture of this finished yarn, and the depth that adding that grey ply added. (For those who don’t hang on my every blog post, this is a six ply handspun where half is a brightly colored roving, and the other half is a grey blend of shetland wool, alpaca and nylon. The two singles were plied, and then I did a three-ply cable thing to make the overall six ply yarn.) I think the yarn does a great job of providing enough visual interest of its own, without a complicated pattern-I just love how the foot looks. I have enough yarn left for a short little anklet pair, so that’ll be next!

Jaggerspun spiral sherbert socks

When I went to visit Jaggerspun mills, they had a whole bunch of grab bags with about 100g of their Kokadjo yarn in various colors. I used two of the colors for the Jupiter socks, but these used the remaining colors from the brights packs I got. They remind me of rainbow sherbert…

I really like the spiral knitting technique for combining colors like this, particularly with the foot gusset. Pre-dyed striped yarn sometimes looks weird after the heel, since there are so many more stitches which changes how quickly self striping yarn stripes. With spiral knitting I’m able to control that, and you get one stripe of each color all the way around on the whole sock.

Jaggerspun Jupiter socks

My mum’s been longing to visit Jaggerspun mill for years. She really loves their sock yarn, though it was their alpaca silk blend we met first, as a weaving yarn. I finally made the trek to their store (though mom wasn’t able to come along). I ended up walking out with two large boxes of fiber, most in plain white for her to dye, but also some fun colors for me to play with. These bright colors called me first-it’s their Kokadjo, a 4-ply fingering weight yarn thats a blend of 90% superwash treated wool and 10% silk. I picked out the variegated and dark purple for my first pair, not paying much attention to how much yarn was on each spool. Turns out that there wasn’t quite enough of the variegated yarn, so for the last bit of the sock before the toe I supplemented with the purple, doing helical knitting to alternate a row of the variegated and a row of the purple. I think I got away with it! I actually really like the effect of the combined variegated and purple section, but I wouldn’t have had enough of the purple to do the whole sock that way. As it is the second cone of purple is running low!

In retrospect maybe I should have weighed the amount of yarn on each cone first, and come up with a more comprehensive plan, but it was kind of fun trying to decide what to do on the fly. I’m hoping to get two more pairs of socks from this yarn, with some supplemental black as contrasting yarn.

In the background of the sock pictures, you can see my new spinning wheel! I’ve been using it mostly for decoration, but every once in a while I’ll go spin a bit on it. It’s a great wheel, or walking wheel, made by Lyle Wheeler. My wheel is the one he shows on his website! As for my other wheels… I have a double drive ashford traditional (currently living with my parents) that we bought new for me, as my very first spinning wheel. My second wheel is also an Ashford traditional (single drive), at least we think it is, bought on Ebay for cheap because it was missing the flyer assembly. This allowed us to instal the super-duper high speed ashford flyer kit, which has a ridiculously high ratio. Because of that ratio, this is my go to wheel for most of my spinning. I’ve had both of my ashfords for a long time, and they went to college and grad school with me. The next additions were a small electric EEW wheel from Dreaming Robots and a Country Craftsman, that is my go to plying wheel, in part because it has lovely large bobbins. This great wheel is my most recent acquisition, and I think it rounds out the family nicely.

Green Sweetness socks

I was so excited to start playing with my handspun, and then I went and left it at my Aunt and Uncle’s house when I was staying with them. I visit them for about a week every 1.5 months, and spend my time working in the lab all day. It’s the way I can justify being up north for the rest of my time, and it beats any of the alternatives. However, I have to be careful not to leave my next project in the wrong place…

This is a six ply homespun, where half of the plies are grey (shetland/alpaca/nylon blend) and the other half are a polwarth/silk blend dyed by Three Waters Farm. I am super pleased with how these socks turned out. They are plain, but perfectly matched right up until the toe. In spinning, I split the roving lengthwise, and then spun it such that the colors would be symmetrical from the two ends. Then when knitting the socks, I knit the first one from the outside of the ball, and the second pair from the inside. I was not expecting the colors to line up anywhere near this well, in part because I wasn’t super careful for this roving about making sure the sections were of equal weight.

Instead of using my plastic foot model, I had my mum help me model these socks! As a reward for taking such fine pictures, I let her keep the second half of the skein. I think she plans to pair it with some of her own grey homespun yarn.

blue/teal/pink handspun socks

I talked about making this yarn before, as well as the first pair of socks from it (the ones with diamonds made from traveling stitches). I managed to get another four pairs (five in total), using every last scrap (plus a bit of an additional skein). The second pair had cuffs, heel and toe in the contrasting grey, in an effort to use up all of the remaining grey yarn (I hate wasting my handspun!). Since I wasn’t sure how much I had, I started with the colorful yarn and a provisional cast on, knit the whole sock and then came back to do the grey ribbing at the top. I ended up with less than a foot after I finished casting off both cuffs! The third pair was a variation on the second, but all in the blue yarn. Unfortunately I don’t seem to have taken finished pictures of this pair, and they’re now at my mums…. I was super pleased at how well I got the colors to match on this pair! At this point I decided it was time for a mindless pair, so I knit a plain pair (ribbing along the whole cuff, plain knitting for the foot). The colors don’t match well, but I know that the two socks came from the same roving, and that’s what counts right? I wasn’t expecting to have any yarn left over, but I still had some. Since I really don’t like wasting my handspun, I decided to do a pair of short, small socks. I ended up needing to use a bit of my next handspun skein (I lost at yarn chicken…), but it blends in fairly well

The grey is a blend of 40% aplaca (named Serious), 40% shetland wool (sheep’s name is Treysa), and 20% black nylon, while the colorful is a commercially prepared merino roving that my mum dyed.

Handspun socks!

I just finished knitting up these socks from my handspun merino sock yarn. I’m really pleased with how they turned out, and I think they’ll be super durable (at least, I hope). I like the visual effect of the plying, and I think the colors are similar enough that it’s obvious that these two are a pair. I’m also fairly pleased with my spinning, as the yarn felt fairly even when I was knitting with it-there’s a bit of a thinner area around the dark blue heel on the second (more mottled) sock, but other than that I think the yarn was fairly consistent.

Now I just have to figure out what I want to do with the remaining 44g!

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.

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!