Still Casting On

"I can resist anything except temptation."
Oscar Wilde

The other day, as I was walking to work, I thought of what lovely weather we were (finally) having, and how nice it would be to have a new little project to work on as I walk to and fro in the sun. Once I got home, I grabbed up the two balls of Elann sock yarn I had waiting for just such an occasion. I cast on for my go-to Universal Toe-Up Sock, with my usual 3:1 ratio for a striped sock. As you can see, I really shook things up, this time, by making the darker colour the background, with the lighter colour for toe/heel/cuff/stripes. I know, crazy, right? They are flying off the needles -- the first one is past the halfway point, already -- and then I guess I will pick a slightly more challenging pattern for my next pair of walking socks.


In the meantime, I have made some more progress on the little crocheted hexagons. I haven't even made much of a dent in my sock yarn leftovers, and I already have a couple dozen of these little guys done. Not nearly enough to make a blanket, of course, since each one is only a few inches across, but still, a nice start. They are so squishy and soft and colourful -- makes me so happy to look at that bright little stack!

On Infidelity

Before knitting took over my life, I used to have a lot of hobbies -- I used to read a lot more, and you know, even leave the house from time to time. I also spent a lot of time and money on a lot of different crafts: I embroidered and cross-stitched and made Japanese temari balls and sewed a lot of clothes and tried out paper quilling... You name it, I tried it. One thing that I never really took to was crochet.

It's not that I have an inherent bias against crochet -- okay, yeah, I do. It's not stretchy like knitting, which I find is usually a detriment. There are occasions where the stability would be preferable (if you don't see what I mean, just try to knit a corset) but generally I like my projects to have a little give. That, and I've never really learned it beyond the very basics.

So what happened to me, lately? I seem to have caught a crochet bug this week.


I have been sitting on lots of leftover sock yarn (as I'm sure every sock knitter does) and trying to decide what to do with it. I looked at a lot of little projects and various sock blankets on Ravelry, but for some reason the one that really appealed to me was little crocheted hexagons. Maybe it's the hexagon thing: after all, I am only making thousands of them for a quilt -- what's a few hundred more?

I began with a few from some of the leftover orange and brown yarn from the Fisherman socks.


Then I pulled out some leftover Koigu from my Lindsay socks.

I think I like them. I will continue making them, anyway. They are such a quick little thing (maybe 5 minutes a piece?) that it's easy to squeeze one in, if I don't have time for a repeat or two of knitting.


Then I found a really cute pattern for square shell coasters. Since I was already crocheting the hexagons, why not try this on some leftover hemp yarn I had? It is a little sloppy because of my uneven tension (I finally figured out how to tension the yarn without getting finger cramps -- on the next-to-last round) but I think it's still pretty cute. It's a bit big for a coaster, maybe, at about 5ish inches across, but works well for my big mug of iced coffee, this afternoon. Maybe with a little practice, they will even out enough to use them as gifts for someone, sometime.

Or maybe I'll get distracted right away by some more lovely knitting.