Tag Archives: socks

2020 Hindsight

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Like how could I not use that title for my recap post. I am as I frequently am.. rather behind on my blog posts. It has been a not great year, but then I think that’s also true for a number of people. Though all the home time did mean I finished or moved along several crafting projects.

On the quilting front I did pretty good. I’ve discovered I greatly enjoy the piecing part more than the quilting part though. I found a backing for my Anniversary quilt top, Quilted my Contours kit, Made a Rainy quilt top, a Patriotic Bargello Flag top, and coming in hot of the machine a Warmth in our Stars is just needing some borders.

Obviously I kept knitting… I did finish all of my Stash busting projects which included four sweaters! My November one was a lace weight lace cardigan and means I finished out my Neighborhood Fiber Company Sweater club from 2017 yarns. I finished 20 pairs of socks! And managed to squeeze in 3 scarves, 2 hats a pair of mittens and a shawl! I knit over 14,506 yards which is well over 8 miles!

In retrospect with it all laid out its a bit impressive. Just the same I’d rather have had more sunshine and less craft time.

I”ll be back soon (I hope!) for my plans that are still brewing for 2021.

Getting caught up and carried away

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You are not going to believe this but… I’m actually on pace with even my October Mystery Stash KAL goals right now! Of course I completely spaced out on updating in September so there is that…

Yes, that means I finished my third sweater of the year (August). I opted for a Hinterland by Jennifer Steingass to use up a portion of the camel blends I’ve picked up across a couple years with the goal of wearing it and as granny used to say “feel like a real rich bitch”

My September project was a pair of Pixel Stitch socks for Ben, but I also managed to fit in a pair of special request shorty socks for my nephew Gus. Gus let me trace his feet the last time I saw him, and I told him he would need to be patient but I’d send them via the mail. His mom said he’d been saying he was getting socks in the mail and kept asking to go check for them. So I may need to find time to make him a second pair for Christmas or something.

I then spent the rest of the month playing catching up on that one Christmas gift project that I had started back in October of 2018 and put on my list of annual goals to catch up on. Well I’m half way through the charts at least! But I could use another month or two between now and December I think.

For October I had some Kid Seta Pearl I got for Christmas in 2016 to use up. I picked a simple texture keyhole scarf that I figured I’d use up the three balls making. Well it used two, so then I figured I’d add a beret with yarn held double and yet when I finished that there was still just a bit left so I made some mitten cuffs with a third yarn for the main body of the mittens and well now its a third of the month gone. I guess I got a bit carried away!

So now its back to Holiday gift making until next month, which should be a lace weight sweater.

It’s OK if your toes don’t match

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Sometimes you just have to take life as it comes at you. Sometimes its big things, and sometimes its just annoying things, and sometimes it feels like all the things all at the same time. This year has devolved a bit into one of those years for me. And while it might not be the most healthy approach to dealing with it, I tend to fall back on to just getting things done. They don’t have to be perfect but they need to move into the done pile and can’t linger in the projects in progress that weighs like an obligation.

So there I was approaching the end of July still working on my socks from June and sweater from May with a pair of socks still yet unstarted for my actual July project and… I ran out of yarn on the second toe. So I made the choice to sub in a scrap bit of yarn on toe two. Its ok, the socks are functional. I still chased down a matching scrap from a fellow Raveler but in the mean time… its ok the toes don’t match. They are done and beautiful.

I also managed to finish up the sweater AND the two pair of Anniversary socks. The sweater is my second one out of the stash of vintage black crepe yarn I picked up at a thrift store. It doesn’t photograph so well and it could use some buttons but again… its done!

I really like being able to finish things and not have them linger. So I also finished up the quilting on my Contours quilt kit, which I’d had pin basted for about six months and just didn’t feel very confident in my abilities on the quilting it kind of fancy. So I quilted it with scribbles and wavy lines and enjoyed every minute of the binding even if the quilting wasn’t so grand.

Now personally I am having a significant number of feelings about patriotism these days. But I came up with the idea for this quilt top back when I had more optimism as a thank you for some friends of ours that sometimes invite us to their July 4th celebrations. The final dimensions ended up at a very optimistic 54 x 40.

And once again… look at all the things we got done because we just needed a tick in the win column and it didn’t matter that the toes didn’t match.

Its been forever and nothing got done…

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There are certainly times it feels like its been so much longer and so little finished I’d have nothing to say.  Usually I have to start out flipping back through photos to figure out if I did actually manage to finish things and sure enough there is.

So first up let’s finish off Sock Madness… the Mobius madness socks knocked me out since its fairly easy to twist something any which way once but figuring out how to flip it the other way was just not in my wheelhouse.  Plus I had real trouble reading the twist as I was knitting it until I was several rows in because of how you knit it.

The next sock was a three color sock and its beautiful but I’ve not yet gotten even the first one done.  Normally this is where I toss in the towel on socks but they were rather cool looking and the pattern at the end was the very last BBK pattern which includes beads or as she would call them… bling.  So I used up nearly the last of my fingering weight from Neighborhood Fiber Co to knit those.. and then managed to use the absolute last of it making the last Lacy not Lazy so I’d have a matching pair.

In the midst of all this sock knitting it was also kitten season… which for me meant kitten hunting season.  You may recall from the prior post that Conan turned 17 this year.  He has health issues and our other cat, Kaylee, has bonded rather closely with him but was incredibly under socialized when we first got her.  So last winter we decided this spring we would keep an eye out and look to adopt a new kitten so she would have some time to bond with another friend as well.  Finally on May 28, we managed to make an appointment at a shelter and adopted this guy into our home…. he’s called Balex.  And he has a lot to learn about knitting FO photography.  And yes… this does mean we have three orange cats, but that’s just because the orange ones are so awesome!

So you’d think after all those socks I’d be back onto the second sweater but… nope! I circled back to my April Mystery Stash KAL and finished a pair of Hermoine’s Everyday Socks in April Showers.  June’s project was to make some Coffee Cantata socks and I’ve got half a leg done… but opening the July bin… its time to make our semi-matchy anniversary socks in Rainbow and Grey.

Hopefully July will get me caught up to at least the things I have planned… but life has been coming pretty fast lately.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle & Repair

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So as someone with a not so tiny fabric and yarn stash, I’m doing alright at crafting in a time of Staying Home for Covid.  It certainly doesn’t hurt that its also Sock Madness time so for brief bits of time I have specific projects to occupy my time.  This year I made it into Round 5, and we came up against a rather technical sock and I didn’t make it into the Final Five round Six, but I’m still plenty pleased with how I did since to me its all for learning skills and making socks. This year there was a significant portion of colorwork socks in their various forms. Here’s a few including the vibrant yellow of a warm up pair but just one of the three teal & aqua I ended up making with a fourth planned for someday soon.  But at least I have reduced some of my yarn stash right?

April was slated to be a pair of Hermoine’s Everyday Socks in my Mystery Stash Bust along… but the timing felt like I’d be running into other Madness rounds so I substituted in a pair of Morrison socks which were a DK weight.  Theses were on a yarn dyed by Black Trillium whom sadly is getting out of yarn dying. So I may have partook in the going out of business sale and this is also partially why I have such a stash.  In my defense… the socks and a couple of the skeins are for Ben so….

May is also Conan’s 17th birthday month.  So to tackle his gift it was decided to make him a heated car bed.  You can buy a basic heating mat to place under the cushion in a traditional store bought bed, but you can’t just expect a cat that regularly sleeps on Stargate beds to sleep on something from the store… so into the fabric stash I dove.  I will admit I am a fan of some of the novelty cat prints and came up with a cat and mouse design that seemed big enough for the project.  I quilted the cat fabric through two batting remnants into a fabric that back in my much younger days started out as a sink skirt in an apartment with almost no storage. (Reuse!)  Then I added bolsters with more cat fabric on the interior and a durable Sunbrella fabric on the exterior.  At the bottom I made a pillow of some fleece remnants and stuffed that with overlapping edges and scraps of fleece batting and pillow stuffing.

The heating mat slides between this pillow bottom and the quilted topper.  The bed was a pretty big hit and is large enough for at least two snuggling orange cats. Conan is pretty good about sharing with Kaylee

Quite some time ago in 2015, I picked up several Row by Row quilt kits and even went so far as to assemble an umbrellas and a rain boots set of rows.

umbrellas and boots

And that was as far as I got but with me trying to organize my stash and use up… I found fabrics a couple years back that also exemplified the rain and with a bit of pondering and math I decided I could make something of them if I turned those rows back into blocks. (Recycle!) So I pulled the seams and did a bit more math and am able to present at least the center of a Rainy Day quilt top!

Sadly while I do have enough of the Rain drops trim, I am mostly out of the Umbrella tops fabric (and the novelty toss) which I think would be an ideal border so its going to probably sit a bit longer until shops re-open or my online wandering find a new solution.

Which finally brings us to the repair portion.  This happens with socks… sometimes far sooner and more often than I would hope for, but there it is. I know I have posted before about the use of duplicate stitching and making patches to fix them, but my husband presented me with a unique problem recently in his Bamboo socks I had just made up last October.  He wore BOTH the toe soles out of them!

img_3497So I decided it would be best just to take out that portion of the toes and reknit them back from the yarn I still had in my partial balls stash.  (I’d like to say this is the reason I keep them but honestly its that I rarely make up scraps projects)

Step one is pretty easy, you just snip out the toe and then start unraveling like you were unhappy with it, until you end up with a row of loop stitches.  Then thread your needles through the loops, join your yarn and reknit back down the toe.  Be sure to look carefully which way your yarn is on your needle as I find I tend to pick up twisted and then need to knit the first row through the back of the loops to get it to untwist.

Now, yes there is some color variation due to wear, but a few washes along and it will even out a bit more.  You can also (I did this on one of them) use the yarn that you pulled out of the toe and duplicate stitch reinforce that area where the hole formed to give it a bit more sturdy of fabric.

Whew…. that was quite a lot going on in April and early May… and I didn’t even get into the next sweater of the year… guess I’ll save that for next time. 🙂

The Knit Goes On

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So February exited rather dramatically here on in the Pacific NorthWest, and of course now its spread much farther.  For many people that means a bit more crafting time.  Not that many of us will actually achieve our imagination’s ability to dream up all those things we could finish if we only had the time, but maybe a bit more than some.

Spring In Her Path

For me, I was impressed with myself on being able to actually knit a fingering weight sweater in one month as I managed to finish my February Stash KAL project, the Spring in Her Path sweater.

This actually means I’m three quarters of the way through my sweater club sweaters.  Previously I made the worsted weight Nutmeg Ginger, and the sport weight Waterfall Cardigan.  It still a bit cold here, but I might have tried to give it a blog debut with a first of the year cone to match up with a last of the year cone of the Nutmeg Ginger sweater, but alas the Tulip Festival has been recently cancelled, and so too our usual plans for a long drive and waiting in line for a monster ice cream.  I’ll just have to delay the satisfaction.

I managed to sneak in a pair of fingerless mitts from a KAL.  I’ve decided they shall be my driving gloves for when its a little too chilly in the mornings on the way to the pool… next fall.

March brought with it the start of Sock Madness, and my next Mystery Stash KAL project which turned out to be a cabled and lace scarf.  Followed up with the first round of Madness… which I’ve managed to finish in time to move on when the round ends.

March was supposed to bring a trip to Vogue Knitting Live, but its since been postponed to some later as yet unannounced date.  This was originally intended to be the major yarn shopping event for my year.  So I did a little virtual shopping to make up for it.  The bottom is from a local yarn dyer I particularly like called Hazel Knits.  The other two are also local-ish dyers that I am trying out.

Expect more socks… maybe even a few with these very yarns in the next update.  Until then.. stay safe everyone!

Winding Up Some Finishes

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Ok its that time of year… when one registers for speed sock knitting and attempts to finish up projects in time for Sock Madness! This year I added finishing one of my double knit mittens project that has been on the needles to the “must free the needles” list.  BUT I can safely say that the past month or so has been dedicated to two pair of knock out drop down nearly too pretty to put on your feet socks.

file-5First up the gorgeously beaded Bling! pair designed by Adrienne Fong who sadly passed away this past September and chose to gift all her patterns free.  She was a wonderfully fun person met through Sock Madness and you could count on her to support your wildest beaded sock dreams.

I am happy to report the materials list is out for Sock Madness and one designer does have a sock with beads so that will be fun to look forward to. (There are also quite a few multi-color socks so… hmmm.

Next up are a pair of Artic Blizzard snowflake socks.    These were originally available for the 2018 season of Tour de Sock which was my first year participating and I have adored the pattern because of my love of snowflakes in general. (Seriously snowflakes are amazingly beautiful arts of nature and I could go on a whole rant about how it peeves me that people use it as a term to belittle people, but I won’t… yet.)  It took me a bit to find an appropriately stellina sparkled pale grey/white yarn to pair with my tonal blue so I didn’t finish during the competition but they were so worth the wait! file-6

Both of those sock knitting competitions are great fun and if you think you might like spending your spring knitting all the socks I totally suggest giving one or both a try.  Sock Madness is free to join and so long as you put in a reasonable effort then you will get all the patterns (this year there are 15 patterns!), even if you aren’t the speediest.  It is a good way to learn techniques that may be new to you as well and there are prizes awarded throughout the competition that are not just speed or skill based.  The Tour does have an entry fee, but the majority of this fee is going to the charity Doctors Without Borders.  You compete both as an individual or on a team if you want to bring along some sock knitting friends, get sock patterns, and give to charity all in one.  As a general rule, the Tour tends to start just as Sock Madness is winding down.

file-4Whew!  now… as to my Mystery Stash project, in January I completed a Petra Lace Scarf.  This yarn was a special gift from my husband in a matching set of two skeins each for both my mother-in-law and myself back in 2015 when we visited the local(ish) Abundant Earth Fiber mill.  My mother-in-law chose the pattern and the plan was to KAL the scarf together, but over time she’s had difficulties both for her husband and herself and she’s just not knitting anymore.  So when it came time to pick projects, I looked at some of my “elder stash” and decided I’d finish one scarf, and then perhaps swap her a completed scarf for her yarn.  The deep plum doesn’t photograph too well, but strangely enough I think it matches coats we now both own.  This scarf is knit in two pieces and joined with kitchener stitch so that the lace flows the same way down from the center back.

And so now we are on to February and the first sweater of the year.  I cast on my Spring in Her Path sweater with some yarn from my last sweater club yesterday.  Its a fingering weight sweater but if I’ve estimated my yardage right I should have some yarn left for a nice pair of socks too!

 

2019 In Review

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In 2019 I managed to finish 2 quilts (3rd is ready for quilting and a fourth has the top done), as well as 3 sweaters and 2 shawls.  Seen here for the first time is the late finish on my NakniSweMo (National Knit a Sweater Month) Anne of Cleves sweater joined by my other large projects of the year.

Back before 2014 I swore I’d never be a sock knitter because the second sock every was just sooooo boring.  Well… I finished 11 pair last year.  ¬.¬

There were a few other notable projects worth mentioning also… I tackled one of my oldest stashed yarns (recorded in Ravelry during the great yarn stash recording of 2013) by knitting it into a drop leaf scarf!  I made my first yarn bowl and my first tea cozy.

There was quite a bit of travel for me this year and one larger unfinished gift that ate into my craft time, so overall I am rather pleased with how it all sorted out.

Back on top!

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Boy I have really fallen behind on updating.  Not quite as far behind as I am on finishing my wedding quilt since we’ve been married now for four years, but still…

Speaking of wedding quilt… mistakes were definitely made, but the top itself is now DONE!  I’ve actually completed all four of the quilt tops for my four quilts goal this year!  I need to get backing for two, piece the backing for the other two then sandwich and do the actual quilting bits… but there is absolutely progress happening.

The wedding quilt is certainly far from perfect.  I adapted a block from The Quilter’s Cache called a posy chain.  Between signers getting into the seams and my poor measuring the points leave a lot to be desired and based on how things were coming together I decided to add the smaller flowers into the chain in order to space the main blocks out and help hide how the main blocks would have met together. It turned out to be about a queen sized quilt.  The three on the left are all throw sized.  The top one does have an additional border now, and was an experiment in learning how to paper piece.  The middle was also a quilt and my lesson on how to sew curved seams.

And speaking of tops, I also managed to finish my second sweater this year, which is also the 2 of 4 for the Neighborhood Fiber Co 2017-2018 sweater club.  (The first being the Waterfall cardigan)  This design is Nutmeg Ginger by Alicia Plummer which I picked because I wanted a bit of texture but not so much to lose the rich chestnut and cool teal from my yarn.

This was actually a project where unlike my photo poses, I attempted to be a full grown knitter and actually alternate skeins as they suggest you do with hand dyed yarn.  Usually I just eyeball and give it a close enough shrug and it works out, but this time I could tell that the balls had some distinct differences. One of the 4 balls was more muted in the chestnut and one ball had larger bits of teal than the others.  So I started out working the hem in one of the true chestnut balls, then swapped to an every other row with the more muted ball through the body and into the texture area.  I used the larger teals ball for the texture and collar.   Here is a close up of my swatch and a comparison of the two balls so you can see why I decided to go that route.

Now I just need to finish up the fingering weight (pattern selected) and navy lace weight (still undecided) before the next sweater club rolls around so I can justify my yarn expenses.  (HA! HA!)

So let’s round up all the other projects I managed to squeak out since the last time we updated… such as the 2 pair of matching anniversary socks, a replacement market bag, a pair of sideways knit zig-zaggy brown socks and a pair of very orange socks (to go with the very orange shawl I presume).  Whew!

Currently on the needles.. the second sock of a pair for Ben, and a very large, very lace project I am doing on 000 needles.

 

Bad decisions and more socks

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So the Finished project I am featuring today took me nearly a year to complete and not a single bit of it was the fault of the pattern.  So let’s just jump in to how I made some poor decisions that still ended up looking amazing!

I found this amazing flame orange tonal yarn with gold sparkle thread in it at the yarn stores sales bin (yes, I am still thrifty).  There were two skeins; one perfectly presentable and one more of a loose almost tangle. It was color saturation love.  Check this out:

file-3

Inspired by the gold I decided the ideal choice was finding some solid gold colored beads.  I looked high and low and there were lots of options in semi-transparent golden beads and I bought some but still…. this needed the solid gold bling and I went online and found some metal seed beads and based on the listed hole dimension I thought they were roughly a 6/0 bead.  They were not.  They were more like an 8/0 bead and that made putting them on a heavier than fingering weight yarn was a significant challenge… as in get out your beading pliers and pull your wired yarn loop through the hole at times challenging.  So when I found I’d made a mistake in a beaded row… the project spent some time in the WIP pile to think about what it had done.  I mean really?!

On the plus side when I did go back to restart my project I had apparently forgotten that before I put it in time out, I’d apparently pulled back the bad row and so I didn’t have to do that when I restarted.  YAY!

But wait!  There is more.  Beads are sold by weight and so what I thought was a reasonable quantity based on my prior experience buying glass seed beads turned out to be about 3+ times as many as I actually needed, and so in eyeballing the bind off options… I liked the bubbled version and figured I had enough beads I might as well bead my bubbled bind off.  Of course I forgot all about how long picot style bind offs actually take and so by the end of day one binding off I was rather far more ready to be done than actually done!  So without further ado… here’s some beauty shots of my version of Bubbles and Baubles which based on the color I called Pele’s Bauble.

And yes.. I did say there were more socks.  Which is the round three from Sock Madness pair (yes I was out but I finished these before Round Four pattern showed up so its a win in my book) and my between rounds Günter from the Op-Art socks book. I’m now at pair 5 of the 19 patterns completed.