New Socks

Two new pairs of socks; one pair was knit with Opal 2008 Cotton and the socks are finished. This is the first Opal yarn in which I was somewhat disappointed. The blue and gray colorway is nice, but then at the end of the blue/gray colorway, there appears out of nowhere enough white yarn to knit one row. It is jarring to me and, in my opinion, looks like a mistake in dyeing. The pattern is by Alison Clayton from the Six Sox Knitalong group and is called Amble.

So far, only one sock is done of the second pair, knit with Opal Hundertwasser. I'm in love. Hundertwasser was an Austrian artist whose "original and unruly artistic vision expressed itself in pictorial art, environmentalism, philosophy, and the design of facades, postage stamps," such as the Hundertwasser House in Vienna. Opal has taken the colors he used in his paintings and architecture and has translated them into sock yarn. Here is a picture of the yarn, with a partially finished socks and then the Hundertwasser House in Vienna. The pattern is "Simplicity" from the Eclectic Sole.

Sock Yarn Spree

Boy oh boy (or in my case "woman oh woman" what have you done. I must confess: I spent the rent money on sock yarn this month. Both Patternworks and Little Knits had sales on sock yarn. Patternworks had Lang Jawoll Cotton, Action series, on sale and Little Knits had Opal, Fortissima and Panda Wool on sale. So here are pics of my newly acquired stash.

"Knit on!"

Glorious Sunshine!

We've had two days of glorious sunshine. What a rarity in this part of the country. Spring may be just around the corner; at least I hope so. We've had five months of hard winter; it's been cold and the snow plow man made plenty of money from me.

Along with the sunshine, I had the wonderful experience of knitting a pair of socks for my daughter with her own hand-dyed, hand-spun on a high whorl spindle and Navajo plied Blue Faced Leicester yarn. She calls the colorway "Autumn Splendor." And here is a photo for all the world to see:
Knit on!

Mishaps happen

These past weeks have been fraud with mishaps. Too little yarn for two projects, mice having feasted on other yarn, and Yahoo 360 eating my post. Just like regular life.

I have been knitting socks exclusively. Four more pairs for afghansforAfghans. Nothing fancy, two pairs of the children's socks were knit with the very first sock yarn Knitpicks came out with. The third pair was knit with Sandnes Garn from Norway. In both cases, I used double strands and 3.25mm needles.

Knit with light worsted weight from Sandnes Garn from Norway. My LYS had a good sale on the yarn.

I must say so myself, but I was pretty good in making the stripes come out the same on both socks. This uses a very easy pattern, found on the Internet some time ago which uses a stitch pattern of 4 stitches plus one. *Knit 3 stitches, purl 1* repeat until one stitch remains on last needle. Continue in same pattern which sets off the purl stitch by one each round. This gives the diagonal ribbing.

These are plain old Stinos. For those who aren't familiar with the term, it stands for "stinking normal socks." I call these "fraternal twins." I just couldn't get them to match up. But then I wear fraternal twins most of the time. They're more fun, in my opinion.

These are women's socks for afghansforAfghans. This was an emergency request from a4A. This is the pair where I reached into the bag pulled out a ball of yarn and started kitting with the idea that there was plenty more of this yarn left in the bag. Unfortunately, this ball of yarn had migrated into the wrong bag. So back to the drawing board. Of course the ball did not have a label on it. Even if it had one, I most likely couldn't find the matching batch no. So I went to my local LYS and bought a skein of Cascade 220 for knitting the cuffs, heels and toes. I adapted the pattern from one of Monika Eckert's designs for the Weihnachtsgeheimnis Yahoo group. I omitted the cable. The pattern is simply knit 2, lift one. Then knit a row and repeat the two rows.

These are men's socks, knit with my daughter's hand-dyed yarn. The pattern again comes from Monika Eckert and the group Weihnachtsgeheimnis. It is a nicely patterned purl stitch pattern, ala Gansey. The pattern is a fairly easy knit. In fact this is the second pair I've knit of this pattern.

And finally, one sock of the "Christine" from the "Kleine Hexorei Teststricker Group." Originally I had started the pattern in a green colorway, but, unfortunately as I got further into the skein of yarn, I found little "mieces" had the middle of the skein for a meal. I'm with Sylvester who used to say "I hate those mieces to pieces." These socks are going to be mine, all mine.

"Knit on!"