The Last Socks of 2015

I think it's safe to say that I'm giving up on the new incarnation of Red Heat Heart and Sole. I didn't have nearly as many trouble with the Lakehouse socks as I did with the Bayou pair, but this stuff just isn't as nice to knit with as the other craft store sock yarns I've used. (Heart and Sole with Aloe is different stuff. I love knitting with it, but I've only got one color left in my stash.)

I usually use one skein for each sock so that whatever yarn I'm left with is evenly divided for my next project. This time, I finished the first sock while watching TV with my hubby and didn't want to get up and dig out the second one. The whole time I was knitting that second foot, I was wondering if joining a new skein would throw off those spiraling stripes. I solved the problem (or maybe there wasn't one) by switching to the new yarn just before starting the short row heel. It seems to have worked.

Between socks, I've been doing some reading...

A Head Full of Ghostsby Paul Tremblay takes place fifteen years after the exorcism of Marjorie Barrett, whose story became a reality television sensation. Now a journalist is interviewing Merry, who was only eight years old when the tragedy unfolded.  At first the book seemed to have a lot in common with The Exorcist and every other exorcism book or movie I've read and watched, but there are other things going on in this story. I enjoyed this one.

This post is linked to Patchwork Times and Yarn Along. The book came from the library.

The Fly

Can you see the flies with their lacy wings and bobble eyes?

I'm thrilled that this pair of socks is done -- and that they fit! I don't know how much I'll actually wear them, since the bobbles go all the way down to the heel. That's okay with me. I have no problem with pretty projects that are carefully tucked away for special occasions.  

The pattern, The Fly, is from the Super Scary Sock group on Ravelry.  I didn't get my pair done in time to count towards the knitalong, let alone start the second pattern (the Wicker Socks) that I'd fallen in love with. It just wasn't the right time for me to try competitive sock knitting, at least not when the project required 36 bobbles...

I'm linking up to Flash Your Finishes, Tuesdays With a Twist

Rustic Stripes

This is the pair of socks that made it all better.

Same pattern, same size, same needles and techniques... but a different brand of yarn. After my misadventure with the last pair, I cast on with some Patons Kroy. I can't remember which day I cast on, but these socks knit up fast.

 I'm not sure I love this particular striping pattern (what's with that white?) but the way the yarn works up is just wonderful and makes thick comfy socks that I love. And if it keeps my toes warm, even better!

I Knit A Shrunken Head

I love the things that short rows can do!

The facial features of this little bag are formed with short rows and a couple of strategically placed cables. I couldn't for the life of me figure out the embossed stitches that form the lips, so I improvised and placed a couple of stitches to hold them into position.  That works, although I wish I could've figured it out the way the pattern was written. I'm still debating whether to tie the lips with twine. 

Tsanta is a free pattern I found on Ravelry. The yarn is Red Heart Super Saver left over from other things. 

Youngest Son has claimed the bag and is keeping cheat codes for his Nintendo games in it.  It's fun and morbid, in a whole Ripley's Believe it or Not sort of way.  I'm trying to tell myself that all of those shrunken heads we saw at Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe and Marsh's Museum last summer were probably fake anyway. And wondering if I could knit a Fiji mermaid. 

Third Time's the Charm!

I'm so glad to be done with these socks! I loved the colors in the skein, and the way they were knitting up....until I saw took a picture of them outside and saw the wide stripes. After that, even though I hadn't noticed them while knitting indoors, I couldn't not see the way they looked in the picture.

The stripes weren't the biggest problem. The problem was when I got halfway through the short row heel on the second sock and nothing lined up. Thirty-seven pairs of socks in the last two years and as stressed out as I was then, none of my heels came out that badly. I unraveled it back to the foot and tried to pick up the stockinette stitches, but I couldn't manage it. So I ripped it out and started over.

It wasn't until I made it through the toe on my second attempt at the second sock, set it down for just a moment, and dropped more stitches than I could pick up, that I really started to hate this project.

On my third attempt, I was so careful not to drop any stitches or mess up the heels that it sucked every bit of joy out of the knitting process.

I'm happy they're done and looking forward to casting on in any yarn but this one.

I'm linking up to Crazy Mom Quilts and Patchwork Times.

Cozy Socks for My Youngest

I finished the second sock of the pair that I was using for the Let's Knit a Pair of Socks tutorials. They took a little less than a skein of Wool-Ease and fit my nine-year-old perfectly. And he's thrilled with them.  I didn't expect that reaction, since they're socks, but if he's happy  I'm happy....and wondering if I should go dig out some more orphan skeins and make more pairs.

This post is linked to Crazy Mom Quilts.

Eagle's Flight Socks

There's a school of thought that goes along the lines of "if you haven't started (or finished) that by now, you're never going to do it." I usually don't know what I'm going to do or when I'm going to do it and, unless I've got a specific deadline, the last thing I'm worried about is how long it's been since I got the idea or bought the supplies.

When I added the Eagle's Flight pattern to my Ravelry queue back in 2007, I had a specific yarn in mind. The whole reason I wanted to make those socks was because I had yarn in my stash similar to the one that designer had used and I loved  the way the feathers looked in that mottled brown.  I finally cast on back in September and wound up using a different (but equally old) yarn from my stash. The yarns are similar and it took me a while to realize that I'd changed my original plan.

Because I don't think it matters if my feathery stitch pattern is angled up or down, I switched to toe up and used my usual short row heel. The yarn is Patons Stretch Socks in Taffy. On Black Friday in 2008 it was $2.62 a skein and I bought it in every color they had in stock. This year, I'm happily using it up. Sock yarn doesn't have an expiration date and it was waiting for me to need it.

This post is linked to Crazy Mom Quilts and Patchwork Times.

Stick a Needle in My Eye

Isn't it amazing what some people can design with just a little bit of felt and some embroidery floss? 

I found the tutorial for this freaky little pincushion last Halloween...or maybe it was the year before that. The embroidered eyelashes and the detail around the iris are just too neat for works. Click over and look at the ones she made, which are amazing.

It's just the perfect size for jabbing on needle into while I look for the next color of embroidery floss. This may be the one pincushion I wind up actually using on a regular basis!

This post is linked to Idea Box Thursday, Share Your Cup,

Patons Kroy Spring Leaf Stripes

I'm running a bit late with this week's finish. (If you're looking for the Let's Make Baby Quilts Linky, it was posted an hour ago, here.)

When I finished the first sock, I was thrilled with how perfectly the colors were positioned on the heel. And then I started wondering if I could mirror the socks, with the yellow and grey stripes on the other heel...

I made my best guess at the right spot to start the color repeat and cast on. And, somehow, when I hit the heel I was at the right spot in the yarn. That was while I was knitting my way through the Retro Gaming Expo last weekend, which somehow made it more fun and will definitely ensure that these socks are memorable for more than just their stripes.  I did cut the yarn at the end of the short row heel so I wouldn't have a single row of yellow stitches cutting across the front of the sock. That might have been cheating.

To start the toe at the right point, I sacrificed a few yards of yarn. I lost another two or three when I rejoined if after the heel. Towards the end of the cuff, I was wondering if I'd have to use the little bit of yarn left from the first sock or the yarn from the toe of this one and if either of those scraps of yarn would be the colors I needed at that point. As long as the heels did what I wanted, I was willing to compromise on my leg stripes.

Here's what I had left after binding off --

The yarn is Patons Kroy Spring Leaf Stripe. I'm wondering if it was named by the same person who came up with Fern Rose and where they live that their ferns and roses and spring leaves are these colors.

This post is linked to Crazy Mom Quilts.

More Bright Stripes

How is it that those multi-colored stripes come so close to matching up when the toes and heels absolutely don't? This yarn would drive matchy-matchy sock knitters nuts! But I'm of the deliberately mismatched school of stripes, so I'm perfectly happy with them. And I'll have warm toes, which is becoming more and more of a priority.

Jo Kramer gifted me the yarn. This post is linked to Crazy Mom Quilts, Frontier Dreams, and Patchwork Times.

What's the Difference Between a Doll Quilt and a Baby Quilt?

For me, it's whether or not I plan on keeping it for myself. This little black and white cutie is destined for the sewing room wall. It would've  made a perfectly good baby quilt if I hadn't backed it with white muslin, but since I knew I wanted to hang on to it I went for the least expensive option.

I was in the mood to sew and grabbed the left over black from the nail polish quilt and my bolt of white muslin. The original plan was to make it smaller, but I wasn't in the mood to work with one inch strips, so I cut them wider...  Have you noticed that I don't put a lot of  careful planning into my quilts?

I'll  be linking this post to Crazy Mom Quilts.

{Yarn Along} Jo's Pink Socks

Actually they're my socks, but I knitted them with the yarn that Jo sent me and they need a name so I can keep my finishes straight. This yarn is wonderful to work with, but I don't think knitters who want their stripes to match up would enjoy it. That's a LONG repeat! 

As soon as I was done with the pink pair, I cast on with the next skein. 

Along with the knitting, I've been reading...

The Child Garden by Catriona McPherson intrigued me with its cover description of an "alternative school for happy children" that closed in disgrace, but the most interesting bits (a rocking stone that supposedly holds the devil trapped inside and cursed bridges) are hidden in the pages of the book. The former school is now a care home and Gloria Harkness lives in a small cottage on the grounds, close enough to look in on her fifteen-year-old son, who is a patient there, every evening. When a childhood friend appears on her doorstep and asks for her help, Gloria is quick to offer it because she fears for her son's future if  the murder on the grounds causes problems for the care home. The students who attended the alternative school thirty years ago have been dying one by one over the years, the most recent in a small building on the grounds. I didn't love this book, mostly because I couldn't get myself to like Gloria all that much.

For more pretty knitting projects to drool over, check out On the Needles at Patchwork Times.

    
Disclosure -- the publishers provided me with ARCs.

Catnip Socks

Someday soon, I'll appreciate all of these wool socks I've been knitting. I usually wear my sandals into October or November, but the blood thinners make me so cold I may have to dig out some real shoes sooner than I'd like. Honestly, my feet are the least of my worries. It's not even close to cold yet and our down comforter and heated waterbed aren't keeping me warm enough to sleep through the night.

This latest pair is Catnip Socks, a free Ravelry download by Wendy D. Johnson. They were the perfect way to use up a pair of mismatched skeins of  yarn. I'd been hung up on the idea that I'd have to alternate skeins until I saw this pattern and wanted green yarn for it and realized that I could do contrasting heels and toes.

That was so much easier than juggling two skeins every other row would have been. And now I've got a half a skein of the darker green to play with. I'm thinking that Barbie may need some handknits, and there are plenty of possibilities on Ravelry.

This post is linked to Crazy Mom Quilts and Patchwork Times.

Back to School Socks

My vacation socks were a bit of a disappointment. I'd been saving the yarn for a big trip. Trips were planned and cancelled and I kept my hands off of the yarn because it was a special treat to be saved for road knitting. (I've got specific criteria for road knitting yarn. The really special stuff gets savored at home. The stuff that's pretty but not suited for anything but self striping stockinette makes good trip knitting.) 

When we hit the road and I cast on, the yarn was much brighter than it looked in the skein, not at all what the color name "fern rose" had conjured up in my head. It took me most of the first sock to come to terms with the fact that my socks were bright crayon colors and not delicate garden colors.

I've renamed them my Back to School Socks. With their bold colors that name fits them better, and there will be lots more pairs of vacation socks in my future.

Update -- Teenage Daughter may have complained about her owl embossed ankles, but she's not willing to give up the socks. And my friends on the knitting lists tell me that cabled socks tend to do that, especially with boots. I'm glad to hear that I'm not cutting off the circulation to her feet!

And I've decided to go ahead with the sock knit along based on my sock pattern that isn't a pattern. They'll be toe up, knit on double pointed needles (this would be a great project for learning DPNs, since you aren't joining a bunch of stitches and worrying about twisting them), and I'll include instructions for both fingering and worsted weight yarn. I won't be ready to start for a while (I want to have all of the steps written out and double check my math before I post the first step) but I'll have the details for you this weekend.

This post is linked to Finish it Up Friday, Show and Share

Hayride Socks

I finished these socks right before the trip and was hoping that once we got home I could find a bale of hay to photograph them on. I'm glad the socks were in my knitting bag, because the resort had a couple of bales of hay stacked next to the pool, all staged with a kerosene lantern and coil of rope.

What more could I ask for? Teenage Daughter was even willing to run down and take the pictures for me.

I love the way the yarn (Stroll Handpaints from Knitpicks, in the Hayride colorway) makes these pretty narrow stripes. And my non-existent sock pattern is pretty foolproof at this point.

Is anyone interested in doing a knitalong with me and learning how to do these? They're toe up, knit on double pointed needles (this would be a great project for learning DPNs, since you aren't joining a bunch of stitches and worrying about twisting them), and we can do it with fingering or worsted weight yarn. Anyone want to play with me?

This post is linked to Finish it Up Friday and Patchwork Times.

Le Manoir du Diable Socks

My thirteenth pair of socks for the year, and they're appropriately spooky. The pattern, Le Manoir du Diable (free Ravelry download) is named after a silent movie from 1896, believed to be the first horror movie. You can find it on YouTube. It's only three minutes long, but I don't have the patience  to sit through the whole thing.

I made a couple of mistakes with this pair. The yarn is too busy to show off the stitch pattern...but they weren't hard to knit and I would've wanted more than just plain stockinette and ribbing for this yarn anyway. The eyelets are supposed to go all the way down the foot, but I got distracted and stopped paying attention to the chart.

This post is linked to Finish it Up Friday.

Rock Candy Socks

I'm still working my way through the Sock-Ease that's been in my stash for a while and still really having fun with it. I've made the Lemon Drop Socks and the Red Hot Socks and these, the Rock Candy Socks. I think there's one skein of Sock-Ease left in my stash. (And another skein of solid pink, but that's something else entirely. I think it wants to be a scarf or shawl.)

Fischernetze

I was looking for another challenging pair of socks to knit. Fischernetze didn't turn out to be complicated at all, not once I got the stitch pattern established and dug out my magnetic chart holder. Once in a while there's a cable to cross. Every other row, there are a couple of k2togethers and yarn overs. The rest is knit the knit stitches and purl the purl stitches.

But doesn't it look a lot harder than that?

The pattern isn't a full pattern. Charts are provided for two different sizes and you're left to your own devices for the heels and toes. That's fine by me, since I usually wind up doing my own thing anyway. I started toe up with the medium size and then added stitches to the back after turning the heel. In hindsight, they'd fit better if I'd added  purl stitches in the front, too. Now that it's done, I can see how I could have made that happen without interrupting the stitch pattern. I did remember to center the pattern on the top of the foot, which I've forgotten before, proof that I'm getting better at this.

Red Hot Socks

If I'd known what pretty socks this yarn (Sock-Ease Red Hots) would make, I'd have cast on with it a long time ago! I wish this yarn came in more colors. I've used up my skein of Lemon Drop and now I'm happily knitting up my skein of Rock Candy.



The Truth and Other Lies by Sascha Arango sounded right up my alley.  A best-selling author wants to leave his wife for his mistress, but his wife is the one who actually wrote all of  his books....
It's an interesting story, a bit different from anything I've been reading lately. The reader is kept distant from the characters, kind of like in an episode of that old radio show, The Whisperer, and the author interrupts the story with comments addressed to the reader. I wasn't too anxious to find out what happened, maybe because of that distance.

For more pretty knitting projects to drool over, check out On the Needles at Patchwork Times.

Owlie Socks

I've just finished the most intricate pair of socks I've ever tackled. (Owlie Socks by Julie Elswick Suchomel, a free Ravelry download) They have cables that go all the way down to the tips of the toes. They're top down with heel flaps, both techniques I rarely use.

There are owls on the heel flaps!

And they don't fit. All is not completely lost because they fit Teenage Daughter and she likes owls, but I hate that they don't fit. I should have made the larger size. I know that cables pull in and make things tighter. But sometimes you just plunge on knowing that you're headed down the wrong route. 

I like this pattern, but not enough to do it again right now. If I ever do make another pair of Owlie socks, I'm doing them a little bit differently. For now, I'm already halfway done with another pair of socks that I like even better and I'm sure I've tweaked the patterns just enough that they'll fit me even if they do have cables. 

This post is linked to Finish it Up Friday and Can I get a Whoop Whoop.