So, many many moons ago (ok according to ravelry I started them 2 years ago yesterday!), I started some socks. I decided that now would be a good time to drag them back out and have another stab at finishing them.
It’s rather strange knitting a sock from the cuff down after doing so many toe up, but I think I’m liking the challenge!
I somewhat suspect that I’m the opposite of alone in starting all the craft projects right now…at least I won’t be bored (I’m also now working from home, so it’s not all insane free time!)
So, let’s have a bit of a WIPround up:
The Paris jumper. I finished the sleeves and have started the body. That’s coming along at a rate of knots.
I’m knitting it in the round because I’m not a complete idiot this time, which means I won’t have to sew up so much. Woot!
I have the green fluff to knit a scarf with. I’m wildly procrastinating on this one, I want the finished object but I don’t want the terror of knitting with my handspun. Which, now I say that is slightly insane, so there we go… will do a longer post on this later I think!
I started a SAL, which I’ve got with me but I’m not feeling the love atm, so I don’t know how much I’ll get done on it
There’s another cross stitch of a fairy with a unicorn, but I haven’t started it yet.
It’s mosylt blues and greys and white so I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to stand working on it, but I’m hoping to start it later today.
I’m crocheting this (https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/memory-throw) but again, no picture. I’m going down a hook size to get gauge (story of my life!).
The half hexies are continuing (well, I brought them with me to do, I don’t yet know whether they will get done!)
Spinning has also been brought.
Oh, and a sock!
(It’s very lacy and stretchy)
I may have also gone slightly wild with buying things online last night (no pictures of those, obvs yet!). I was going to go to wonderwool, but that was cancelled, so naturally the only thing to do was trawl through the exhibitors list and see what I wanted. I might have a second trawl…who knows at this stage!
Well, kinda. It’s been around for a while, but I recently finished the first sock, so I figured it was as good a time as any to talk about it! I started these in December (I think I was on a train somewhere???) so they’ve been living in my backpack mostly.
Then this weekend in between teaching double knitting part 2 (so much fun! I really do need to start my double knitting project soon…where by soon I mean when I’ve culled my projects a bit…) I decided to focus on the sock. So now the first one is done!
It fits so nicely :D. And now that I’ve got a good size stash of hand knit socks, I’m starting to make some which are longer in the leg- very helpful to hold down long johns in Winter!
As usual, the pattern doesn’t really go well with the yarn, but I really like both and don’t particularly care 🙂
Hetrosockual!
Ahem. Anyway, more socks have been finished! And, somehow, despite all my usual attempts to the contrary, they match! *mutter mutter*
This is a 5 stitch *pkpkp* spiral pattern stuck onto the heel from Triticum (a pattern from a friend of mine I testknitted). It’s very cute and I’ll proabbly do it again, it’s surprisingly easy to remember, even going from needle to needle.
So pretty 🙂 And now they’re finished, my needles were free (for the grand total of about 24 hours bc I was busy), before I started these
There are Hermione’s every day socks and it’ll have the same heel as Triticum (bc I really like a short row heel with some increases apparenty 🙂 ) It took me a while to get into the Hermione pattern, but that’s usual for me (anyone else need a few inches to like it???). For reference, I definitely prefer it to the sole side:
Yarn is from a local indie dyer, I got it last year (iirc, it’s been in my stash for a while). Anyway, I’m off to cut up some lovely fabric I got at the weekend 🙂
I have recently made….2.5 gauge swatches for jumpers. And then a little thing that’s alsmost a gauge swatch but I don’t care about gauge (so just a swatch???). And I finally got around to washing and blocking this gorgeous shawl.
Shawl first!
This is a Manos del Uruguay something (it’s in my ravelry but eh). It was very smooshy when it’s finished and I’m *really* hoping its wash didn’t stop that, but it really needed blocking so I’m kinda on tenterhooks here. It’s white and purple and green and I love it.
Double knitting! One of the members of my spinning group said that she wanted to learn double knitting, so I (foolishly?) piped up to say that I knew and I’d happily teach a class on it. So then I had to relearn how to double knit bc it was a while ago (ravelry says May 2017). It’s an amazing technique and now I’ve done some again I regret having abandoned it for so long (but not that much because I have no immediate plans to do something crazy like a double knit blanket.)
2.5 gauge swatches! The one on the left is for a 4ply jumper (full disclosure- the *pattern* is for a 4ply jumper. The yarn I got is 5 ply according to ravelry, so we shall see…). I swatched on 3.5mm and 3mm needles and I really hope one of them is good for gauge because the idea of knitting sportweight yarn on 2.5mm needles when the pattern says gauge on 3.5mm needles is slightly insane, however much I’m getting sued to the idea that I knit *very* loosely!
The top right swatch is actually this really nice green for a cabled aran weight jumper. That swatch is on 4.5mm, 4mm and 3.5mm needles and I think (measuring the pre-washed swatch) the 3.5mm needles are on gauge.
The bottom is half a swatch- I want to see how this chunky yarn behaves after washing before I continue the swatch. There’s no point carrying on with these needles if I’m wildly out, but it’s currently on 5.5mm needles which is one size down from the suggested needle size so I’m hoping I get gauge on this (or close enough to justify continuing this swatch).
I currently don’t have anything (interesting) on the needles because I only have one set of 3mm needles and I don’t want to tie them up in a project at the moment because so many of them will likely need it (the next shawl I want to do, a different other shawl I want to do, hopefully that 5ply jumper….). Lets cast on a pair of socks, that seems like a good idea 🙂
Ok, fine, I admit it. I’m just feeding the stash beast at this point. But, in my defense, it was a new yarn shop, and you have to support your local, right?
So, firstly, some more sock yarn! This will (theoretically) become Christmas socks, but…
The purple contrast for toes, heels and cuffs is actually this really bright pink, and there are specks of ‘fairy lights’ in the green yarn. Christmas tree socks! Which, knowing me at the moment (knitting has kinda fallen by the wayside…), may get done over the Easter break…
Other theoretically) socks yarn!
However, this stuff has sparkles, so I’m thinking maybe another Age of Brass and Steam. Or some triangular shawl thing I can wear. But I’m not sure how big I want to make it. Which isn’t a problem since those are made up from the middle out. I can always make matching handwarmers with the extra I guess 🙂
And finally: Slytherin fibre!
This is 100g of BFL/bamboo/nylon which I’m currently thinking I’ll spin quite chunky and knit…something. It’s for a friend, so I’ll have a sneak peek through their ravelry and see what they like. And then probably not spin it for another few months…
So yeah, that’s me. Not really crafting at the moment, but still feeding the stash!
Well, not quite. But close 🙂
Firstly, I finished my Socktober socks!!!! Ahead of schedule!
So this pair was a bit of an eye opener. I still had this idea that *of course* I could churn out a pair of socks in a week- after all, I managed 4 days when I was house hunting in York and that had two very long train rides and evenings/mornings completely free. *facepalm*. I now have a social life, and work, and I cycle everywhere rather than get car rides. This comes back to my ‘breathe’ thing. I am wildly optimistic about what I can do, and I have to figure that out for the sake of my sanity.
Secondly I finished another pair of socks.
These were started a long time ago (December 2017 apparently…), but I wasn’t in any rush to finish them- they were convenient as my Uni knitting group project until I reached nearly the end and I didn’t want the kitchener stitch mess in my knitting group so I swpped them out for a different sock project there, and then never actually got around to finishing them. No rush 🙂 Then I took them to my spinning group yesterday and was suddenly reminded how close I actually was to finishing them and churned them out 🙂
And finally, I started a new pair!
After my spinning group I went round a friends house to, err, ‘Netflix and chill’, or rather ‘Netflix and craft’, I was knitting, one friend was knitting and the other friend was cross stitching. So natrally I needed a new pair of socks to take with me! A quick search through my queue (lovely thing, can’t believe it took me as long as it did to actually put in all my stash and find projects for everything on ravely 🙂 ) found this yarn and an easy pattern I didn’t need to print off. So I got a nice easy project to knit while watching tv with people. (Basically, yesterday was amazing and involved a lot of sock knitting and some spinning)
So, we are now (almost) half way through Socktober, and I’m ahead of schedule! Woot! So I finished the first sock…Wednesday, I think it was. And it fits, and I love it, and it’s amazing and the pattern rocks.
Due to an inadvisibly busy social schedule however, I wasn’t able to start the second sock until yesterday, when I was so tired I defaulted to my usual toe and had to throw it out. I did start it again today at my spinning club, and got a decent chunk of the foot done (no pic because it’s dark now, but you can imagine really). IT’s a fun and engaging little knit, and I’ll definitely be doing this heel again if not the pattern (atm I don’t want to redo it, but in the future, we’ll see how things go).
So I got the sock pattern to test knit on Sunday, and I was very well behaved and didn’t start it until Monday. Then I dived right in, and didn’t really surface until today. It’s been a very strange feeling, following someone else’s pattern, with all their indiosyncrasies (John increases for the toe the other way around to literally every other person I know, which was weird and threw me for a loop (I didn’t)), but fascinating to see my own unconscious biases about the ‘correct’ or ‘wrong’ way to do things.
The pattern itself is cute and easily memorised (mostly). So much so, that I accidentally went past where I was supposed to start increasing and had to frog a few rows.
I was supposed to start at 3.25 inches from the back, here I am closer to 3.
And here I am with the heel turned!
I love this heel. It’s a gusset and short row heel, and I had to frog because apparently I am unable to count, but it only involves wraps (or the German replacement I use) on half of the heel, and the other half you just turn and work back again. I was very skeptical, but it works and I think I will continue to use this heel later on in other situations. 🙂 Just not in self-striping yarn bc I absolutely hate the random colour change that results from heels. I’ll keep sticking to afterthought/contrast heels for those.
If you click on the pic for a larger version of this, you’ll probably see the pattern a bit better. It’s a very subtle travelling cable thing. (Very precise, I know 😉 ). I love it, it’s simple enough to really get into it, but interesting enough to keep me entertained (think similar to Hermione’s every day socks).
The only thing I’m not very happy about is how little I’ve managed to do…I remember when I could bust out a pair of socks in a weekend, and here I am pootling along slowly. I kinda want to make these socks longer than normal too, which may involve increases for my thighs…*facepalm*
Ahh well, I’m off to go knit some more.
Two, to be precise.
Firstly, I finally got around to doing the heel on the socks! Go me!
I can now give them to my friend on Tuesday, (assuming she’s there…) If not, they’ll keep I guess. No idea what to do with the left-over yarn, maybe list it for destash on ravelry. I don’t mind it (but it is a bit splitty), but it’s completely different to the rest of my sock yarn so I don’t think it’ll really fit into any of the scrapy blankets I’m doing.
The other project I’m calling done is the pocket.
Peacock feather! But rather than the blue and green normally associated with them I decided to do the whole thing in silver and gold. There was a bit of an explosion with the silver glitter but I sorted it out. It’s also shedding glitter everywhere, but hey ho. That’s what glitter does really 🙂 Now, hopefully I don’t lose my scissors any more…
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