SAM3 - Final two

I managed to get two pairs of socks off the needles this month.

I've been working on the blue ones for what? Four months? Five months? I dunno. They've been sitting beside my desk and I would just pick them up and knit a few rounds every now and then. It's Regia No. F2025, a ragg yarn with two strands of dark blue and one each of light blue and beige.

The ribbing at the top is different because I tried to do a pattern, but it was totally obscurbed the the colours in the yarn. I gave up and went plain. I think they took so long because they were kind of boring but, in the end, I'll probably get a lot of wear out of them just because they are plain and boring. Funny how that works, eh.

On the other hand ...

... these ones just flew off the needles.

It's the Winter's End colourway in Ball and Skein. Totally yummy.

I loved watching the colours mingle and play.



I'm glad I've got some more of this in stash. She has some wonderful semi-solids and muted multis. Good stuff, indeed.

That's the end of SAM3. I won't be doing SAM4, because I have other things I want to do, including several UFOs that need to be Fd. Problem is, I just don't feel like doing them right now ... it's too hot and muggy. I tried to cast on some socks last night, but it just felt sticky. Maybe I need to go back to the cotton for a while.

SAM3 - June - done!

Many thanks to everyone who suggested various options for my mis-matched Spunky Pink Elephant yarn. You came up with a lot of really good ideas! Some of my favourites included the Stash Buster Spiral pattern, which has been on my to-do list for a while; going with dark leg and light heel and toe on one sock and light leg and dark heel and toe on another, which I may try some time because it sounds interesting; and mixing them up with another skein, possibly doing a stranded or mosaic pattern. Many of you suggested various forms of striping, either alternating several rounds or (gulp) alternating single rounds. I know that can be done, because Pat has done it with some Koigu, shown in the top entry here , and near as I can tell she's still quite sane. :-) But, it really sounds like more work than I'm prepared to do for a sock, so I took the other piece of advice that popped up quite often -- put it aside and use it for something else.

Instead, I decided to make some new black socks.

Or rather, some socks using my New Black yarn.

Spunky Eclectic fingering weight, all in one hank, and the colour is consistent throughout.

I admit, though, that I was quite surprised to see the taupey colour come out, because it wasn't at all evident in the hank. I guess it got over-powered by all that pink.

I like it! They look quite snazzy with my new runners. :-)

So, back to the Pink Elephant. I decided to knit them up a bit to see just how different they were. Turns out they were as different knit up as they were in the ball.

The pattern is Elvis the Elephant and a lot of fun. Although the pattern calls for the trunk to be knit up separately and then sewn to the head, I just made an extra increase round and carried on with the body instructions. These are each knit with one strand from each ball on 2.5 mm needles. And because they're babies, I figured they needed a mommy.

She's knit double-stranded, using one strand from each ball, on 5 mm needles. I left out the tusks on the babies and didn't bother with the mouth pieces.

I can now go make first post to the Knitted Toys KAL, which I joined eons ago but haven't knit any toys since then.

SAM3 - May done!

Regia 4-ply Tweed in Colour No. 52.


It's totally smokin' in the Smokin' Socks pattern, designed by the amazingly creative Anne.

Knit as writ, in the 72-stitch version, except I put in a flap heel instead of a short-row, 'cause I wanted more of the pattern to show on the foot and when I do a short-row heel I have to use two-thirds of the stitches in order to make then fit. And also 'cause I'm sometimes ornery that way. The pattern could easily be adjusted to have the smoke rising in different directions on each foot, but I left them the same.

If I were the type to wax poetic, I'd go on and on about how the little tweedy bits float through the rising wafts ... I'll spare you that, though.

Except they are pretty darn cool.

Unstretched, on the right, the pattern just about looks like cables. On the blocker, on the left, it's a curling, spiralling rib that hugs the leg.

An easy-peasey pattern that I'm sure I'll do again. Thanks, Anne, for another great pattern!

In the Other News Department: From some of the comments in my last past, you'd think none of you had ever received a nail in the mail before.

Of course this was a special nail. Here's the flip side.

I'm just wondering what they replaced all the nails with ... Crazy Glue?

SAM3 - April done!

Ooops, long time no post. Sorry, didn't mean to fall off the face of the earth. Blame it on a combination of busyness at work, a nasty spring-time cold, and new glasses.

Not much knitting got done, but my April socks did get finished.



These are based on the Kansas Harvest pattern from the Townsend Knitting group. The original pattern is written for DK weight yarn, but I re-worked the numbers to use fingering weight and to fit my foot.

The pattern calls for a bunch of 1-over-1 cables. I decided I wanted to use twisted stitches instead of cables for both the grain heads and the stems.



Although the pattern calls for K1-P1 ribbing at the top, the picture shows K2-P2. I decided to use twisted stitches in the ribbing as well. As written this would have resulted in the ribbing not aligning nicely with the pattern. By starting the pattern stitches on Round 11, I was able to have them flow smoothly together.



I decided to use the eye of partridge heel flap instead of heel stitch.



One thing I really liked about the pattern as written was how the rib stitches flowed down from the leg into the instep. Of course, that's the part of the pattern I misread. I should have carried the twisted rib from the previous pattern instead of starting a new one. (sigh) The way I did it, it looks clunky.



But the yarn I used is nice and sproingy ...

... and the ribbing helps the sock conform to the foot.


No, my foot doesn't have that weird hump in it. That's my hand holding it open a bit to show the ribs.

I really like this pattern stitch. It looks great up close and personal, but you do have to get up close and personal to see it properly. In the future, I may try something similar but simplified a bit.



The light today is kind of funny - sometimes bright, sometimes subdued. I'm quite smitten with the effect it is having. Some of my photos came out sharp and warm ...



... and others cool and velvety.


I'm loving the play between the pattern stitches and the plain stitches on the bottom of the foot.

I'm also loving the total randomness of the colours in this yarn.




Oh, did I mention the yarn? Hand-dyed, expertly and exquisitely, by Jessie and available at A Piece of Vermont -- if you can beat me to it.

That's been the sum total of my knitting this month. I've not even started on my scarf for the ISE. Gotta get going on that. Yikes.

Oh, and there's a winner in the contest in my last post, but I haven't yet written them to so advise. The actual answer is that it's a dying blank. You paint on the colours you want, then unravel it and knit it up. What a great way to make stripes or gradual gradations! Which answer entertained me the most? Guess you'll have to wait just a bit longer to find out. :-)

SAM3 - March - done!

It`s been a busy month, with not much time for fibery fun, but I did manage to get my March socks finished, thanks to a couple of DVDs last evening.

I used a new-to-me yarn, and it's Canadian! Similar to another well-known Canadian yarn, this has short bursts of colour.

This is the Winter`s Dawn colourway.

The unusual fibre content initially caused me a little bit of grief gauge-wise. My first attempt was too large, as the yarn doesn`t really scrootch down as much as an all-wool yarn would. My second attempt was too small, as the yarn doesn`t really stretch as much as an all-wool yarn would. But my third attempt -- just right!

Although I found the yarn to be a little bit splitty in places, and a little bit underspun in other places, I love -- LOVE! -- how the colours came out.

The fabric feels absolutely scrumptious and has a terrific sheen to it.

I haven`t had a chance to wash them yet, but it will be interesting to see if the yarn blooms at all, given the mohair content. And, with the mohair, silk and nylon, I fully expect these to last a long, long, long time.

In the Other News Department, I had originally planned to do a nice, thick, cabled, wool scarf for the International Scarf Exchange 4 . Then I got my partner`s info, and she lives in a climate that probably wouldn`t really warrant such a beast. Time to revamp. I`m thinking I`ll try something with these.

SAM3 - March done!

During the grey days of February, I just had to do something with colour, so I got a head start on my March socks.

It's the December selection from Spunky Eclectic -- a colourway called Good Morning.

Here's the pair.

As I was knitting along on the first sock, I noted how the colours came in nice short bursts. It reminded me of Koigu. The colours were indeed very much like a beautiful winter sunrise.

I love it when hand-paints come out just the way you hope they will -- love it, I say.

And then ... as I wound the second skein, I noticed that the colours didn't seem to look the same as in the first skein. There were longer lighter sections, and the colours didn't seem quite so bright. Crap! What to do? I was in totally smitten with the first sock, but alarms bells were ringing in my head.

It seemed that one end of ball two was a little lighter than the other, so I re-wound it so I'd be working from the darker end. Since the part of the sock that I see the most is the toe and foot, I started with the leftovers from the first ball and went toe up. I didn't get all that far. The ends sticking out show where I had to connect the second hank.

You can see it coming, just like a train barrelling down the tracks toward you at 100 kph. I know that when working with hand-paints, you should work with both balls, alternating the strands. Frankly, for socks, that's just frustration up with which I am not prepared to put.

Lesson learned, though.

Sock 1:

Sock 2:

Well, for a short while it was on the way to becoming one of my favourite pairs of socks.