Rick socks

The last time you saw these socks I had barely made any progress.

Not much has changed.

Probably because I've been two-timing Rick with Kai-Mei.

Ahhh, soothing 3x3 rib.

Lace Scarf

There is a little project that has been hanging around on my needles since April, which I've never blogged about mainly because it's in a holding pattern.

For any of this to make sense, you should know that floating around in my brain is this mental image of myself when I'm all put together.  I can see myself were my hair is styled and I accessorize.  I look like I just walked of the page of a fashion magazine and my wallet and closet are big enough to handle my style.  It's always fall in my head.  I wear a lot of layers.  So I took my wardrobe into my own hands and cast on my only skein of lace weight....

I got this far before screwing up.

Click for detail

It's a far cry from the finished product (rav), but I am hoping that the new cold weather will inspire my inner fashionista to knit it up.

Sock Blanket Saturday

My friend Amy gave me a skein of trekking to wind for her and in return her let me knit up a square for my sock blanket.  I've never knit with trekking before, so it was fun.  

 

This particular yarn is Trekking hand art in colorway  'Karibik,' #503 for those of you who want to know.  At quite a normal blend (75% wool & 25% nylon) for fingering yarn, it knitted up to a 4.25 x 4.25 square which is a pretty normal size.  Still there was something about it that feel like a skinnier than normal yarn.  That's not a complaint, just an observation.

I haven't posted a group picture of my squares in a while, so here you go-straight from my bed this morning before Mr. Turbo realized I was awake and handed Lil Turbo over to me.

I love my knitted color wheel.

Sock Blanket Saturday

I purchased two 50 gram balls of stroll multi.  One you read about glanced at a picture of last week and the other you'll play Where's Waldo with in the following photo.  They call the colorway "sunset multi,"  I like to think of if more as "pine blonde."

I think the one thing that this square confirms to me, besides the fact that I will never be a professional photographer, is that I will never be a designer.  I've like to say that I'm as chic as they get, but my track record just provides too much evidence to the contrary.  I will be forever doomed to knit camouflage.  OH well, at least everything will match.

Sock Blanket Saturday

Amy and I recently made a joint purchase from kn!tp!icks online.  I picked up a couple of cheap variegated

yarns in their stoll multi line and stoll tonal lines.  I'll be covering them one at a time, just to drag out the blogging foder.  ;)  This one is the "pansy multi" colorway. 

It knits up pretty much how you'd expect a 75% superwash merino and 25% nylon skein of yarn to knit up.  It's nice, but not niiice-if you know what I mean.  However, I am happy about other attributes.   Such as the fact that it's just $3.99 for a 50 gram ball.  I didn't plan on making any socks out of this stuff (too rough), so I didn't want a whole lot of leftovers.  I also really like the color.  I like that it's mainly dark purple with just a speckling of light purple, and though you can't see it in the above photo, an additional dark red purple. 

Now I just have to figure out what to knit with the remaining 40 grams to clear it out of the stash.

Sock Blanket Saturday

I feel like these Saturday posts are getting a like dull.  I mean what else can you say about a  4 inch by 4 inch garter stitch square?  Especially one that looks a lot like my April 2nd Rowan 4ply.

Anywho, today's square is a cotton/bamboo blend with a lost tag, so I can't tell you who made it.  This combo gives it a lovely fluid drape and makes it lighter weight than my other squares.  These two factors put it on my I-don't-hate-you-completely cotton list.  However, It's eight strands make it a touch on the splitty side.  My kn!tp!cks needles didn't have a sharp enough point for this ply, but my addi lace needles weren't in the right size.  If you had them I'd recommend you break them out for this yarn.  That is if you can figure out the brand...

On my monitor it looks like a hot pink, but it's more magenta in real life.
 

Sock Blanket Saturday

My friend, Amy, has traded me some new colors of sock yarn.  (She seems to have a lot of pink yarn as well.)  She has been most generous to me.  She let me knit with this electric Ms. Babs yarn before she finished the second sock, which has given me a few more Sock Blanket Saturdays.  Thank you Amy.

You can't see it from the monitor, but this yarn is eye popping pink.  Acid dye pink.  And slippery, sproingy wonderful to knit with.  I believe that this particular sock yarn is part bamboo, hence the slippery bit.  As always I love knitting with Ms. Babs yarn.  It's never treated me wrongly.  What about y'all?  Have a yarn that just floats your boat every time you knit with it in every breed, weight or color you use?

Mustang Sally

The sock sabbatical I have been on since the beginning of April is over.  I finally cast on my Kitchen Sink Dyeworks cashmere blend for a pair of socks.

I've been drooling over the Rick socks in Cookie A's Sock Innovation since the book came out in 2009.   I wanted to perfect yarn to knit it, which I found last October at SAFF.   However,  I had other socks on the needles at the time and didn't want to cheat on them with any new socks.

Sock Blanket Saturday

I recently signed up for a group BlankieMania on Ravelry.  They often do lots of swaps for blanket yarns.  I thought I'd get in on this, but often they offer 5 grams mini skeins.  The problem with this is that my lightest square is 7grams and the heaviest is an astonishing 14 grams!  (All squares weighed after knitting.)  And it makes me wonder if my 4x4 squares are so much larger than everyone else's?

Purple CCH             3/8 oz;     9 g
Aubergine Rowan    1/4 oz;     7 g
Snapdragon              5/8 oz;    8 g
Hot pink Louet         1/2 oz;    14 g
Light Pink Louet       1/2 oz;    13 g
Deuce's Pink            1/4 oz;    9 g
Pink Lemonade        1/4 oz;    8 g
Scarlett Rite             1/4 oz;    7 g
French Marigold       3/8 oz;    10 g
Autumn Oak            1/4 oz;    8 g
Hunter's Orange       1/4 oz;    8 g
Squash Blossom       3/8 oz;    10 g
Lemonade                1/4 oz;    8 g
Buttery Peeps          1/4 oz;    8 g
Lime                        1/4 oz;    8 g
Green Veggies         1/4 oz;    9 g
Green Apple            3/8 oz;    9 g
River Rock              1/4 oz;    8 g
Teal CCH                1/4 oz;    10 g
Aqua KSD              1/4 oz;    9 g
Blue home dye         1/4 oz;    8 g
Light Blue Louet      1/2 oz;    13 g
Blue Striped             1/4 oz;    9 g
Dragon Fly              1/4 oz;    8 g

Sock Blanket Saturday

This Saturday's post is a double since I forgot to post last weekend.  After all the rain that has been coming to us a weekend with gorgeous weather meant we were out in it!  There have been pretty days here and there scattered about tempting us, but an entire weekend of nice weather?  *sing it with me now*  WoNdEr~FuL! 

I dug through the stash of washable sock-weight yarns and came up with the leftovers from this (rav) still unused project (but now seamed).  Yea, I'm getting a little low on yarn for squares....

These are so stiff.  I knitted a sport weight yarn on size US 1/1.25mm needles.  The last time I knit with this yarn I used a size US 4/3.5mm.  They are solid.  They have no drape.  You could used these babies to protect a 4"x4.25" square of your body during a nuclear attack and nothing would get through.  

I'm not really worried about it though, because I don't see it affecting the overall blanket.

WIP Wednesday

Finishing up my last sweater has left me craving for more sweater knits.  I've been lusting over Strikkefrenzy's Garden Pesto (rav) a Drops pattern.  I picked out colors and bought yarns and well-It all kind of fell apart from there.  Begin the long hard search for a pattern in the right gauge.

Nothing seemed quite right.  Every pattern I found was too "geometrical" or too "Nordic-y"or not the right gauge again.

So get this I was so enamored by this pattern that I swatched just to see if I could rework all the math and get the sweater I adored. Crazy right?

The front.

The back.

The read area is what would actually be the yoke of the sweater and the rest would be grey.  I'm still loving this pattern.  I think I will go overboard and try to regauge an entire Drops Design just to use this yarn.  What y'all think?  I'm crazy right?

Stash Resuscitation

It occurred to me after finishing my sweater and socks left me with nothing on my needles.  (Well, nothing that I can make progress on.  The sock blanket requires me to knit more socks and PoPo's sweater requires me to buy more yarn.)  I quickly remedied that with some stash busting.  At first I thought that I might take the plunge with another sweater and pull out one of my two Kuni graduated yarns to work on one of the gorgeous fair isle pieces in my rav que.  But simplicity was calling my name and I grabbed my only lace wight yarn in the entire stash.  Please don't laugh about the irony of simple lace you'll jinx me.

Dragonfly Fibers 'Dragon Lace' in Holly Berry.  870yds/4oz

I purchased this at SAFF two years ago at the same time I purchased the yarn for Tree Duo.  It seemed fitting to continue clearing out the event's yarn with the mojo I got by finishing a project with it.  Believe it or not, I am actually knitting the project I had in mind when I bought this yarn the Myrtle Leaf Shawl with willow border (rav link) from Victorian Lace Today. 

Though it's turning out considerably small than intended.  Oh well, no big loss.  I'm not into shawls anyway, and am suited for a scarf.

Sock Blanket Saturday

We now continue our weekend series of which yarn.  We've covered some of the more popular animal fibers.  Let's move onto the plant fibers.  Introducing Cotton, Rowan Cotton. (Sorry about the bad Bond joke.)

Originally, I purchased a skein of Rowan 4ply cotton for a pair of ubercute baby booties, while I was going through my bootie phase.  You know the phase I had right before getting knocked up with Lil Bit.

Anyway, as you know Lil Bit turned out not to be a girl.  Also I am lacking the other color necessary for them, and it's a now discontinued line.  So overcoming my hoarding tendencies, I decided to destash and knit with it.  The horrors!
 

I don't have a lot of experience with Rowan yarns, but this yarn behaved like most cottons do.  It was smooth and unyielding.  The tiny 50g skein was so tightly wound that I yanked out a clump of yarn which broke while trying to find the end of the strand.

That's not a complaint.  It's simply a sign of my brute strength.

Sock Blanket Saturday

Question.  Can a sock blanket contain more than just sock yarn?

I have some leftover Ms. Babs from my Lady February (rav).  Nine grams leftover yarn or 0.375 ounces to be exact.  It enough to knit up a square in a lovely shade of gold and it's machine washable.  But will it look funny in a different gauge than the rest of the blanket?

Sock Blanket Saturday

We are up to 20 squares in 17 weeks.

That's not including the two squares I will only use in an emergency such as a shortage of sock yarn worldwide.  Introducing Thing 1 and Thing 2.

There's nothing really wrong with these squares.  Thing 1 has a lovely shade of aqua.

And Thing 2 is mainly in the same color family.

But looking through my rainbow colored glasses where do you place these squares?  Put Thing 1 in with the purples and the red all sticks out.  Stick it in the reds and the purple over rules everything.  I'm not even going to try placing it in the green or blues where it would most definitely be a sore thumb.   And Thing 2 knitted second, slightly overcomes those issues, but that pink just throws a monkey wrench in to everything.

I'm holding these squares out until the very end, wouldn't you?

Sock Blanket Saturday

The cashmere square.

After last week's interesting experience with alpaca, and I thought I'd talk about my run in with cashmere sock yarn.  I picked up a skein of Kitchen Sink Dyeworks Luxe Merino Fine (rav) with 80% Merino, 10% Nylon and 10% Cashmere fiber content from the stash.

In colorway Irie.

It was all that you imagined.  Cashmere heaven.  I am so glad that I broke my rule about knitting with sock yarn leftovers.  I was saving this to knit up a pair of Rick (rav) socks.  If my current sock project is any gauge, I would be waiting a long time to knit with this.  I did the math too, I should still have enough to knit up a pair with at least three yards margin of error.

This will work.  I just know it.

"Oh boy more of my favorite hobby!"

Not for the first time EZ's writing struck a chord with me.  But I can say this is the first time I have been happy to knit the same sweater twice.

I get to fix all the errors that I was willing to live with last time, but makes for a much better sweater this time.

• Like raglan increases.  I have discovered with my small, but long frame that it is much better to stop increases before separating the arms from the body and throw in a few regular round to keep the size small and the length long.
• And sleeve decreases.  Even doing the above doesn't quite make up for twiggy arms.  I can decrease at each end of the row about 4 or 5 times to get a close fit on my arms.  YAY!
• Waist shaping.  Every sweater needs it.  You know that and so do I.

 

Now back to knitting.

Saturday Sock Blanket

I broke my rule about using leftover sock yarn and I dove into a new skein before I even knit any socks out of it.  Now I am worried that I won't have enough yarn for my Kai-Mei's (rav).  I seem to breaking every rule I set about this sock blanket.

This square is knit out of  Paca-Peds Semi-Solid by The Alpaca Yarn Company (rav).  I purchased this yarn at my LYS, which is rare for me as I buy most of the bulk of my yarn stash online.  However, this yarn was nicely squishy in the skein with just  the slightest halo from the alpaca content.  The label reads 20% alpaca, 65% superwash wool and 15% nylon.

Knitting with it was another experience all together.  The yarn didn't feel like it had as much give as some other yarns.  I'm leaning towards the fact that it contains nylon, but I don't believe that to be the only reason.  Perhaps it was the quality of wool.  The majority of what I knit with is merino and this wool is unspecified.  This might make it less sproingy.

I also had a little bit of trouble with my needles splitting the yarn plys.  The individual plys remind me more of thread than any thing else.  I was using my fixed Options needles by knitpicks, but I expect a blunter pair of needles would do the trick.

Now I am off to weigh my remaining yarn on my new scale to see if I've ruined a perfectly good pair of unknit socks.

The Land of Ugh

Keeping in line with one of my previous posts, I have another ugh moment to share with you.  Let's face it knitting isn't always sunshine, lollipops and fabulous FOs.  Sometimes it's less of a hobby and more of a chore.

Enter my Hourglass sock (rav) stage left.  This sock will be my undoing.  It not incredibly hard, but it's just so not me.  I've been fighting this fact since August 2010 when I cast it on.  In fact, it seems that I have had such a rough relationship with them I've only made two very small references to them ever on this blog. First here by name and at the very bottom of this post in passing.  Now a sock and a half later, I will bow my head and trudge forward, because at this point I just want them done.

The only picture I have of these socks is the first sock partially completed and posted to rav.  Apparently, I could not be bothered with putting it on a sock blocker and composing a shot.  That could have be foreshadowing what was to come, but I remained oblivious.

There are some WIPs-mainly sweaters, but a few socks too-that I have frogged when I came to this realization.  Mostly I feel comfortable ripping back at the start of a project.  But a sock with just a second foot left to go, even with it's eleventy billion stitches, seems too small a project to abandon.  What about y'all? Have you ever just gritted your teeth and bared it?

Progress

This is how far one skein of Ms. Babs Yowza-Whatta Skein will get you on a size XS, and really long Tree Jacket.  The remnant is just 5 grams.

This is what 5 grams of yarn knits up as a gauge swatch in pattern.

This is the size of the pattern around the neck.  It's much wider between the yarn over's than the pattern suggested for the body.  I am not sure how I feel about this.

This just because I love a good yarn cake.

Admire the yarn cakey goodness and ignore my dust.