Koi Pond Socks

A long long time ago, I bought a bunch of variegated sock yarns from Blue Moon Fiber Arts.  Over the years, I've used up most of them, but it's always a challenge to find patterns that will look good with some of the crazier colour combos.  I recently came across a free pattern on Ravelry called Harvest Dew, which has a really cute slipped stitch pattern that helps to break up pooling in these types of yarns.  I paired it up with a skein called Koi Koi and whipped up a pair of socks.

The stitch pattern itself is very easy to memorize (like, once through the pattern and you have it down) and also very quick, so the socks don't take much longer to knit than a simple stockingette sock would.  I knew it would eat up the yarn more than stockingette, so I did have to shorten the leg a bit, to make up for my big ol' feet.  If I used a yarn with a little more yardage in the skein, I could probably have made a taller leg, too.

End result: fun-to-knit, cute, comfy socks in one of my favourite yarns ever.  Sweet!

Canopy Socks

I finished these socks a while ago -- they have actually been through the wash a few times, already -- but somehow they got missed in the blog.


They were one of the last couple of pairs from the 2010 Rockin' Sock Club, and when I recently got an urge for a simple but satisfying sock, this one came to mind.

I made a few changes from the original design (Ravelry), since that's the kind of girl I am. I did a garter stitch cuff rather than the picot hem from the original -- this was partly about saving yarn and also because a garter stitch cuff will fit my wide calf better than folded hems generally do. Then I shortened the leg a bit, since the pattern suggests that a large size sock may take two skeins of yarn rather than one. I obviously wanted to get by with one skein, so I made it a little shorter. Then I changed the toe from the lacy leafy toe of the original to a plain stockingette standard toe. I'm very happy with the end result, overall.


The funny thing about these socks is that I actually used four needle sizes to make them. I started out with a 3.00 mm needle, thinking it was a 2.75 mm. After a bit, I realized my mistake, but rather than starting over, just went down to the intended needle size. After knitting part of the leg at that size, I decided it was still too big, and went down to 2.50 mm. By the foot, I actually went down to a 2.25 mm needle, to get a nice snug fit. It's pretty ridiculous, when you think about it, especially having to do it all over again for the second one. The good thing is that they fit nicely, since my calves are large and could use the extra room, anyway.

The fingerless mitts I mentioned last time are done, too -- I just need some photos. And I am down to the last quarter of the lace border on the rarely-mentioned Bridgewater Shawl. I have even sketched out plans for a new pattern or two of my own, to stretch my design muscles. Things are going well, here. How about you?

Monkey Socks

Though we are still living out of boxes, mostly, I did manage to find my camera, and now that I'm back online, you get to see my finished Monkeys.

I am really happy with how they turned out -- they fit really nicely, despite being the medium size. The yarnovers give the stitch pattern a lot of stretch, and leave the socks pleasantly snug. I could have knit them in the large size, but it required many more stitches in a tighter gauge, which wouldn't have worked with the lovely yarn I had chosen, so I gambled that the medium would fit my wide feet -- and won.


The yarn is Socks that Rock in a colour called Sweet Pea. It was the May Rockin' Sock Club yarn, and while I wasn't inspired to knit either of the patterns that came with it, I was definitely inspired by the subtle variegation of this yarn. It is mostly off-white, with some soft grassy green and a barely-there peach which is only visible in the right lighting. Perfect for a cute little stitch pattern like Monkey.

As I mentioned before, I am planning another pair of Monkeys, but using SpillyJane's variation of staggering the stitch pattern. Soon, soon, my pretties...

Slip Jig Socks

Well, I know I've been a bad monkey and haven't been posting very much -- I finished my Aeolian Shawl, like, a week ago, but haven't been able to coordinate with my photographer to get some photos. Today I finished my Slip Jig socks, and I can manage photos of those, myself, so here we are.


This yarn and pattern come from the second Rockin' Sock Club kit of 2010. Again, there were two pattern options with the yarn, and these socks were the ones that cried out to me. A very simple pattern to knit (and to memorize) -- but that doesn't mean that there weren't a couple of bumps in the road.

I chose the large size, of course (because of my much-bemoaned amply-sized feet) and the leg is nice and roomy. The foot, however, turned out too large. As I mentioned previously, I had to rip it back to the heel flap and make the heel flap shorter, then do a handful of decreases to make the gusset circumference a bit smaller. After that, they fit pretty good. If I did these socks again, I would probably do a few decreases in the leg portion, just before the gusset, to go from a Large to a Medium. Then I would knit the foot in the smaller size.


At the toe, I moved the toe decreases one stitch over -- the original pattern has the decreases in the stitch next to the little cable pattern. I liked the look better when it was the cable itself that ate up the stitches next to it. It was a little fiddly (particularly on the slipped-stitch rounds) but I think it is more aesthetically pleasing.

If you are worried that I've finished all my knitting projects, don't. I have two more on the go that I haven't even gotten around to showing off, yet.

Flabella Socks

Right on the heels of my Frog Stripe socks, I finished the Flabella socks. (Okay, not right on the literal heels -- that would make some weird and useless socks.)

As I mentioned many times before, these ones are from the second pattern in the January Rockin' Sock Club, and this time using the actual yarn that came with the kit -- a bright and happy pink (called Happy Go Lucky) which made them so much fun to knit.

I actually really wanted to knit the Cascadia (my Tooth and Claw socks) out of this yarn, too, but since there was only enough yarn for one pair, I had to choose. Something about the bobbles on the Flabella screamed out for this colour, and then I thought of the dragon coloured tosh sock for the Cascadia, and it was all settled.


The pattern was actually a lot of fun to knit (even though there is a lot of ribbing and bobbles and purls) and is somewhat out of my standard sock zone. Bobbles are not something I am normally drawn to, but they were fun and make for a cute sock. Something about the top of this sock reminds me of a crown with little jewels. The ribbing makes it fit well, too, which I was more than a little concerned about.


The reason I was concerned is because of having to play around with the sizing a little bit. Seems that if you knit the large size sock, as written, you are likely to run out of yarn. They suggested knitting the medium size on a bigger needle, to avoid that. I did, and it worked well -- I had some yarn left over -- but I have to admit that I am a bit worried that the fabric won't wear as well, since the stitches are a smidgen looser. I'm sure it'll be fine. I'll just have to wear them to find out. (Psst -- I am.)

My Vampire Boyfriend

In plenty of time for Valentine's Day, I finished the socks last night -- the second one practically flew off the needles. I suspect that it was just because I'd run through the pattern once on the first sock, and got more comfortable with it, and with keeping track of where I was. (Also, because I'm so ready to start the two patterns that came with January's Rockin' Sock Club, one of which I am about to cast on in mere moments.)


The yarn was so beautiful to knit with; I just love the colours. I can see in these photos that the variegation really does take away from the cable pattern, but I still don't think I'm going to overdye it again to even it out. After all, I'm the only one that will see them, for the most part, and I like them like this. Perhaps I'm also rationalizing, but I also think the cables are more apparent in person than the photo would imply.


I also wanted to give a close-up of the cable that goes up the sides of the sock -- in the pattern, she refers to it as the Bitemark Cable, since it has two little bite holes within every little twist (hence the Vampire part of the Vampire Boyfriend.) I know I mentioned before that it was a bit of a pain, since it had a seven-row repeat, which made it a bit trickier to keep track of doing both patterns at once, but of course the payoff is worth it, since it is a really cute detail for the socks.

Love.

More Bloody Socks

Just so you get a chance to see how nicely my overdyed yarn is knitting up, here is a shot of the lovely variegated yarn on the sole of my Vampire Boyfriend sock. Purdy, ain't it? Perhaps it seems sacrilegious to overdye Socks that Rock, but I'm sure that Tina would approve of a little experimentation in dyeing, even if it's over one of her creations.


The socks are still moving along -- I am nearing the finish of the first one. The pattern takes some brain power, however, since the cables along the side are on a 7-row repeat, and the larger heart pattern in the middle is a 20-row repeat. Thank goodness I know how to read my knitting, for those pesky moments when I forget what row I'm on, on either/both of them.

Knock wood, I should finish the first one tomorrow night. I hope so, anyway; I am already chomping at the bit to cast on both patterns from this month's Rockin' Sock Club shipment. So many socks -- so little time.

I Vant to Drink Your Blood

I have started the new sock project -- My Vampire Boyfriend socks from Knitty -- and I am loving how the yarn is knitting up. The less-dyed spots are pretty sporadic, and really add some extra depth to the variegated red. Almost like spots where the blood got drained dry...

The only question remains... does my vampire boyfriend have dark hair, or blond?

Raven Swirl Socks

This pair has enchanted me from the moment I first saw them: from the colourway to the pattern, I really enjoyed them from start to finish.

The colourway is nice and dark -- I have it in some really good lighting to get these shots. It is so saturated, in fact, that I had dye marks on my hands from knitting with it. These socks will be getting a nice long soak before I wear them, I think. This colourway is called Blackbird, so that beautiful song by The Beatles has been in my head for weeks, and it has certainly flavoured the way I look at the socks.


The pattern is by Cookie A, so you knew right away it was going to be spectacular. There is a lovely feather-like lace that swoops around the leg before running down either side of the foot (and back through the heel, though you can't see it in these photos.) My only quibble with the pattern is that the placing of the heel flap is such that I was only able to make a very short swirl along the leg, since my foot was the larger size. I didn't have a lot of yarn left over, though, so I suppose a longer leg wasn't in the cards, anyway.

So there you have it: my last finished object of 2009, but there are plenty more on the way for next year. I hope you have just the sort of celebration you enjoy, tonight. Me? I'll be cozy under a blanket with some varied knitting and a marathon of Guy Ritchie movies. A great start to a new year.

Crabby McHappysocks

If you have been curious about the name of my latest socks, perhaps you have forgotten that one of my purchases at Sock Summit was a skein of Blue Moon Socks that Rock in the colourway Crabby McHappypants. The colours are glorious and the name is hysterical, so obviously I had to buy it. It's been sitting here since then, in a basket hanging above my bed, and recently I decided that it would be a good skein for me to use to learn a new sock architecture with. I chose Cat Bordhi's Simple Coriolis pattern for it, and dug in.


I showed you the moccasin toe, previously, and the rest of the sock was pretty smooth sailing (other than my being distracted by making various other much-needed wooly projects in the meantime.) As you can see, there is a little band that travels across the foot -- it is made by cleverly-placed increases and decreases, which make the foot bigger as it goes from toe to ankle (much like your own foot becomes bigger in that area.)

As I knit the first sock, I became more and more convinced that it would never fit me properly, especially as I tried it on.
I decided I would knit it past the heel and try it one last time, so I could figure out exactly where the problem is and rip it back to reknit it. I have to learn to trust Cat, though, since once I had knit the heel, it magically fit right. That lady knows what she's doing.

I had seen other socks knit in this colourway, and they had lovely fat spiraling stripes, which I love. As you can see, with the structure of this sock, the stripes went from really skinny to nice and fat, then a big pool of colour and slowly skinnier as I made my way to the heel, then nice and broad again on the leg. Somehow they even ended up fairly matchy between the two. Magic.

Waste No Time

Why wait to cast on a new pair of socks, when I have so many ideas and so much yarn?


I decided to try another of Cat Bordhi's ingenious designs, next -- her Coriolis pattern (ravelry) and started out by making a type of toe that I've never tried before. She calls this the Moccasin toe and it's pretty darn comfy. Hopefully the rest of the sock will follow suit.

Knetted Socks

For some reason, these seemed to take forever. It's not that they were hard, because they weren't -- just a simple slip stitch diamond pattern that was really easy to remember, with a few wrapped stitches here and there to break up the pooling. And it's not that they were boring, since the yarn is so beautiful and the design is so unique. Somehow I just kept getting distracted (or catching a cold) and not knitting them. Once I was halfway through the second sock, I caught a second wind and finished them off in no time flat.


These socks are designed by Cat Bordhi, which you know means you're in for an experiment. They are knit from the top down, but without a standard heel flap. You do some increases to make them wider, so they fit over your heel and partly over the top of your foot, all the way to the floor. Then you do her 'underheel' which involves a heel turn and then a bunch of twisted stitches that sit under your heel. Then a pretty standard stockingette foot, followed by a funky circular toe. Crazy, right?

They fit well, albeit a bit baggy at the ankle. And you can see that I had some pooling on the foot of one, but the other one only has stripes. Unique and beautiful, just as they should be.

Limbo

I am in a strange state, right now, where I feel like I'm making no progress with all the various things I've been working on. I've been reading the same books for ages, and working on the same projects. In fact, it might be the sheer number of them that is keeping me from getting anywhere with any in particular.


Take my knitting, for example. I am still working on the leg of the second Knetted sock, as you can see on bottom left. I have doubled the amount of completed ribbing for the Honeybee Cardigan but still haven't quite felt motivated to start the more-complicated lace pattern. The best progress I've made is on the little stripey mohair scarf -- that piece you see is the second half of the scarf, for the record. The two halves get grafted together in the middle when the knitting is done, to allow the lace at either end to be identical.

Then there's the sleeves for the black yoke pullover. They are truly the black hole of my knitting. Not only have I been working on them forever, but now, as I finally near the underarm seam (the point where I can put them aside on stitch holders until I knit the body of the sweater and then join everything together) they are somehow making no progress at all. I tried them on a few nights ago, and decided they were about 10 rows from the underarm. No matter how many times I knit 5 rows and try it on again, they are always 10 rows from the underarm. They are defying the laws of physics. Maybe just 5 more rows will do it...

In Season Socks

I finished knitting a really cute pair of stripey stockingette socks last night, and realized that I haven't even gotten around to blogging the pair that I finished at Sock Summit!


These ones are the fourth pair for this years Rockin Sock Club from Blue Moon. When I wound this one up to make a gauge swatch, I discovered that it made a great little plaid pattern! Love it. The colourway was inspired by summer gardens, vegetables, heirloom tomatoes... I find that the red is more pink than I have ever seen a tomato, so I think of it more as a garden of melons: watermelon pink, green honeydew, orangey cantaloupes.


The pattern was for a cute little pair of anklets. Not my favourite socks to knit, since there is a sort of woven stitch (just a panel of traveling stitches, really) on the front and back of the leg that made for some really tight knitting. There were enough traveling stitches crowded together that the row would get so tight. I tried to compensate by knitting the rows between a bit looser, but I could only do so much, really.


There is also a lot of ribbing, which makes a sock so nice and snug, but gets to be really tedious after a while. On both socks, I was so thankful to get to the stockingette at the toe. Okay, and the turned purl hem at the cuff isn't the nicest cuff for a girl with cankles. 'Nuff said.

I did get a little bit of pooling, much worse on one sock than on the other. One sock has a big yellow blob on the side, and a darker plum/evergreen blob on the other. I am not terribly bothered by it, though -- I still think they are a pretty cute pair.

Rogue Roses Socks

For the second shipment of the Rockin' Sock Club, we got a pattern by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee and a skein of mediumweight Socks that Rock in a colour called Gertrude Skein (ha ha.) I have to admit that I didn't take to the colour right away -- on certain days, in certain light, I loved it, with its nice rosy shades. On other days, and in other light, it looked like muddy greens and orangey oranges. Not my favourites. One of the great things about the Rockin' Sock Club is that it can get you out of the comfort zone of only working with the same colours all the time. I kept an open mind and just looked at it on my coffee table for a month or so while I worked on other projects, and once I finished my Red Ruffle shawl, I cast on for the socks.


They went very quickly (maybe because it's a mediumweight sock yarn, or maybe because I had just finished a project with 2200 stitches on the needles, so 64 stitches is like chump change.) The first night, I did the cute little hem at the top with its adorable picot edge. In a day and a half, I was three-quarters of the way through one sock. Then I realized that the foot was not as snug as I'd like, so I ripped it back through the heel flap and used a smaller needle (US2 instead of US3) for the heel flap and foot. Much better.


Despite that setback, it still took me just over a week to finish the socks. It could be because it was fun to do the Rogue Roses stitch, which you can see makes little rosebuds every now and then. Added benefit of the rosebuds: they break up pooling that the yarn was trying really hard to do, especially in the foot of the sock. I could see as I went that if it weren't for that stitch using up yarn every six rows, I would have had some serious colour pooling and striping in the foot. Yay for funky stitch patterns!

Queen of Cups

Friday morning before work, I finished my Rockin' Sock Club socks. The pattern is actually named Queen of Beads, but as I was knitting them, I was always reminded of the Queen of Cups from tarot decks. I suppose it's because of the colour (since Cups are the water suit) and the stitch pattern (since the lattice reminds me of royal garb) and also the beads (because a beaded sock seems so impractical and extravagant.)

The socks actually came together without a hitch -- the pattern was easy enough yet interesting; the beads are fun and flashy. The only anxiety came as I neared the finish and began to worry that I was going to run out of yarn. I finished them with about 13 metres left over. Yikes.

Whenever I see a photo of a completed project that isn't being modelled, I always worry that it fits poorly and that's why the knitter doesn't want to show it off while wearing it. Lest you think that about the socks, here is a half-arsed photo of my feet in them.
They are totally cozy and warm and squishy and fit very well. I used a needle one size up for the leg (i.e. US2) and then switched down (to US1) at the heel flap and foot. It worked perfectly: the leg isn't too tight and the foot is nice and snug.

Another happy knitter.

Socks that Really Rock

So this year I decided to treat myself and join the Rockin' Sock Club over at Blue Moon Fiber Arts. Basically what happens is that every two months, they send me some of their amazing yarn and a pattern by an amazing sock designer. It's all a mystery until it arrives. The yarn and pattern are exclusive to the sock club, and are unavailable to anyone else all year. For me, it's the surprise-package-in-the-mail aspect of it much more than the exclusivity. I have been wanting to join this club for ages, so this year I finally took the plunge.

My first package arrived just prior to the distraction of my Noro Silk Garden scarf, right as I was finishing up the sweater. Not only was there some incredible yarn inside (all shades of blues and teals and lavender) there was also a little bag of opalescent beads and a beautiful pattern by Sivia Harding to bring them all together. I dug a little deeper and found a sticker and a lapel pin and a keychain... honestly, this is the best sock club ever.


Having finished my other works in progress, I swatched and started the socks the other day. The yarn is gorgeous, variegated but solid enough to really let the pattern shine. It is lightweight sock yarn, but still very round and even. The pattern is simple but ingenious. Squishy and lovely and snuggly socks, coming right up.