FO Friday- Hufflepuff socks

Yes, the monstrous socks of unnatural size have been finished! And I had plenty of yarn left over to add to my current scrap blanket 🙂 Which I will show you all next Wednesday.

But today’s focus is on the finished Hufflepuff socks. You can only see one there, but they are both there! Here, have another pic of them, spread out this time!

I really hope that my friend likes them! (And that they fit…) It is surprisingly stressful making socks for someone for the first time!!! I guess that if they don’t fit, I can always make more and improve…

Right, I need to go and pack for a quick (ha!) 50 mile cycle trip to Salisbury tomorrow…should be fun 🙂

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WIP Wednesday- fish socks edition

Another Wednesday, another pair of socks on the needles. This is the second of my fish socks (for no sensible reason really, the name just came into my head).

I think that I’m finally getting the hang of not combining a complicated yarn with a complicated pattern! The yarn is very pretty and is the main attraction here, but the knitting pattern gives a bit more ‘oh la la’ to it.

The pattern is from ‘Socktopus’, which contains 17 sock patterns (including a vanilla pair). This is the second pair of socks I’ve made from it, and I’ll probably make a couple more (I probably wouldn’t’ve bought this book for myself, it was a birthday present from my sister).

WIP Wednesday- giant socks edition

So, err, hi again! *waves awkwardly!* Radio silence for over a month! Wow. So much stuff has gone on here since then! I am now working for the University of Bristol, and have somewhere to live. The commute is somewhat annoying (have you seen how hilly Bristol is??? Scary.), but apart from that, life is pretty good. I’m still getting the hang of working life and everything, so I haven’t been doing much else. Although I have found a new knitting group that meets on the first and third Wednesdays of the month (I’m writing this yesterday, on Tuesday), and a bike volunteering project starting next Tuesday to go to, so I’m starting to do more things.

I have still been working on Christmas presents, in particular a pair of very nice patterned socks, which I (naturally) paired with a far too busy yarn for the pattern.

Ahh well, it all looks good. My friend is a very happy Hufflepuff, so naturally I found the closest yarn to yellow and brown I could find. And then because she has giant feet (note to self: only befriend people with small feet from now on, they’re much easier to knit socks for!) I did the ribbing in blue (because I am totally a ravenclaw).

If I’d been thinking properly, I would’ve done the toes and heel in blue as well, but I didn’t think about that. So far one sock is done, and I’ve just finished past the heel on the second sock. Why do large socks have to take so long to knit?????

(Re-)start it Sunday

So, having finished my bedroom desk project, it’s now time to start a new one!

And what better thing to do than un-earth an ancient UFO and give it some more TLC? (By ancient: the last time I showed progress on this cross stitch was April 2015!!! Has anyone here even followed me for that long???)

But here it is: Stained Glass (round of applause please!)

This was originally designed as a SAL, judging from the layout of the pattern I have, but I doubt very much that I ever even attempted to keep up with it! Then we got the last 4 pages all together because the shop was shutting down. I still have a few other patterns from LoveThy Thread to do…*whistles innocently*! Maybe when this one gets done!

There is also a second half to this post, because I promised MrsCraft more stash acquisition photos (and because I rather maughtily started a new project…). When I bought the buttons which will hopefully be used for my cardigan, my mum suggested I pop upstairs to have a look at the sock yarn. How could I say no to such an offer???

So, naturally, I bought some sock yarn. Two zauberballs, and a skein of Head over Heels (Stylecraft).

 

And then, when I got the zauberballs home, one of them jumped stright onto my needles (after glancing through my sock books and settling rather forcibly on a pattern). And really, who am I to say no to such an insistend baby pair of socks??? (These are now being called fish socks for reasons I have yet to figure…)

The head over heels yarn may or may not become the reindeer cowl from twistedyarn…I am as yet completely undecided about that. It’s a very pretty pattern, but I already have one cowl I pretty much wear all the time and I’m not sure that I’d ever use it. We’ll see. At the moment it’s content to sit on my desk and be petted every once in a while!

FO Friday- Rohan scarf AND some more socks!!!

Well, firstly the Rohan scarf. It was finished just in time for my dad’s birthday, so yay for that! Not just-just, it was finished and wrapped up on Sunday, and given to him on Monday, but still!

I stopped keeping track of how many hours I sunk into this project, but wow it’s a lot! At the half way point it was 28.5 hours work. So about 60 all together probably (maybe more, when I got home I wasn’t speeding along as fast as I could on it, but then again I’d mastered the double knitting part of it, so that was probably quicker, but then again the finishing…). This is slightly more than I expected (I think I was expecting about 50 hours,) but useful for future refernce!

Finishing double knitting involves kitchener stitch. *lesigh* If I’d known that from the beginning…well, I probably would’e procrastinated more about knitting the last few bits, resulting in finishing it after the deadline, so probably a good thing I guess! But because kitchener stitch adds a row of whatever colour you’re using, I was a bit sneaky. You have to split the stitches up into front and back, so I knitted another row (of the cream) while I did that, and then did the kitchener stich in the brown, so there are three plain rows of each colour at both ends. Yay for logic!

I really want one for myself now, which is slightly problematic since I’ve started cincentrating of Christmas presents (and the one more birthday present I need to do…) I’ll probably get over it, I don’t really wear scarves all that much. And I have some pretty yarn earmarked for a cowl, so hopefully that will scratch that itch!

And I also finished my bluetit socks 😀

These are really cosy (and my mum really likes the colourscheme, so now I need to see whether I have enough left to do her a pair of similar socks, or whether I’d need to get another ball of yarn…).

Well, they’re all my finished objects 🙂 Better get back to crafting I guess!

Sock Sunday

I am, quite frankly, amazed that I’ve managed to do any knitting at all this week. Deciding to blow my Friday evening and knit at KnitSoc was a major contributor to this, although I am kinda regretting it now…ahh well. The maths is nearly finished…

The bluetit socks have been my main focus (easy, portable and technically a deadline before the scarf (oh my word don’t ask me about the scarf…)), although I have slowed down quite significantly on them due to stress related neck/right shoulder pain. I’m assuming stress related because otherwise I’ve done something really bad to to my neck/shoulder muscles and I really don’t want that. Either way, the best course of action is probably less stress and try not to use the muscles too much, especially when they get really sore. So less knitting. Hey ho.

But anyway, the first of the bluetit socks is nearly finished.

The heel is eye of the partridge, which I actaully really like the look of (although knitting it was really awkward- any tips on keeping tracking of which row it is???). There are small holes on either side of the heel flap though, which is somewhat annoying, but that’s the teething problems of being a test knitter I guess! I have a potential solution to try on the next sock. 🙂

Sock, err, Monday

So I had this amazing idea to have a Sock Sunday post, where I talk about the socks I’m currently knitting, but then yesterday I got sidetracked with a picnic which only ended at half 9, so you’re getting a Sock Monday post instead!

I currently have 2 pairs of socks on the needles…*whistles innocently*. It was completely accidental, I swear!

So I’ve had these socks started for a while

I’m using a pattern from ‘Socktopus’, a book with 17 patterns in (well, 16 and a vanilla pattern). The pattern is technically top down, but I’m just following the pattern toe up instead. I’m using an afterthought heel as well. It took a while to figure out what the chart was telling me about the leg chart (no written instructions, just a chart…), but I managed to figure it, so it’s full steam ahead now.

Then the other day I agreed to test knit a sock pattern with contrasting toe/heel ribbing, so I have a second sock on a different needle. Meet my blue-tit socks:

These are temprarily on hold while the designer works out some kinks about the heel, but so far it’s been fun knitting a different pattern.

I clearly need to get more sock knitting needles (and project bags…)! Having multiple pairs of socks on the go is such fun!