Way back in February I decided to knit a pair of socks for each month in 2008. I felt that my sock yarn stash was getting entirely out of control and I had just enough skeins to knit 12 pairs of socks.

Well, it’s almost the end of the year and I’m pleased to report that I’m DONE! 12 pairs, finished, ends woven in, mostly blogged. Before we get to the celebration, here’s pair number 12:

Pattern: Spring Forward, Knitty 2008
Yarn: Zen Yarn Garden Bamboolicious in Chocoplum

Yay! Done! These were supposed to be for me, but they turned out a bit small because when I try to “knit loosely”, it never works. They’re going to my mother in law.

The pattern: pretty, but ok in general. I closed my eyes tightly and ignored the fact that the ribbing doesn’t blend into the pattern in any way. I also made the socks symmetrical by starting the second sock on row 12. This is such an easy thing to do that makes the pair look even better!

Ok, time for a sock party!

WOO!

YEAH!

SOCKS!

Statistics:

• One pair is knit with my handspun
• Two pairs are gifts: Marina Piccola and Spring Forward
• Three pairs are designs that were published in Knotions and Knitty: Oak Leaf Socks, Interlocking Leaves, and Hanging Vines
• Eight pairs are lace (well, involve yos)
• Eleven pairs are textured

So did I achieve my original goal, sock yarn reduction? Um, no.

Twelve pairs of sock yarn, all ready for 2009! Just kidding, I’m so very over socks. I thought that I wouldn’t be able to stop knitting them, as they’re the perfect portable project, but somehow I got over that all to easily. I have swatched the blue Wollmeise for a friend, but I’m in no rush to get started. I have a new, epic project waiting in the wings. For next time, sock lovers!

Pattern: Kinetic by Norah Gaughan (on ravelry)
Yarn: Malabrigo merino worsted in Azul Profundo

Poor Rob’s only scarf is my very first knitting project – a two-by-two rib scarf that looks like it’s been around the block. I decided that I needed to remedy this and was on the search for the perfect manscarf. Enter Kinetic, the perfect manscarf!

I really enjoyed knitting this pattern. Large charts don’t frighten me, especially easy knit-purl ones. I used highlighter tape to keep track of my place which worked out perfectly. The pattern as written is more of a shawl, but I only worked the 36 stitch repeat section (plus two garter stitches on each side).

The best thing about the pattern? The wrong side looks pretty damn nice, too. The photo of me wearing the scarf shows both sides – wrong side on the left, right side on the right.

Pattern: Mistake Rib, baby! (on ravelry)
Yarn: Bertagna Filati Perla (the blue), Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran

The bonus is a simple mistake rib scarf for me that I knit over the summer but it never saw any blog time. I’ve been wanting a striped, mistake rib scarf ever since I made the red one a couple of years ago. I did a big stash reorganization (big because my stash! it is too large) and found the perfect yarns for this scarf.

The yarns are similar in weight but couldn’t be more different. The Italian yarn is a highly cabled yarn with a lot of sheen, while the Jo Sharp is a smooshy two ply that’s quite matte. I think that they make an interesting pair, although if anyone else notices then they’re probably standing entirely too close to me!

The scarf is a bit on the short side because each ball of yarn was less than 100 yards (I had two balls of each). Whatever, it’s still pretty and it just happens to match my Target Wave mittens. I am nothing if not predictable, apparently!

It’s the “winter” season here in TX, so time for some fall accessories! We can also call this the blog post about old knits, because two of these were finished ages ago.

Pattern: Trinity Stitch Hat from Craftster
Yarn: Blue Sky Alpaca Hand Dyed Cotton

I started this hat about a year ago using Manos. Imagine my disappointment when I ran out of yarn before I finished the damn thing! I’m too stubborn to buy another skein of spendy yarn for a handful of yards, so I reknit it in the Blue Sky cotton that’s been hanging out in my stash for a while.

I finished this poor hat so long ago that I barely remember the details. I think it involved p3togs? And I changed the stitch count? Everything is fuzzy at this point. Either way, I think it’s pretty and smooshy even though the ribbing is too loose.

Pattern: Selbu Modern by Kate Gagnon
Yarn: Hand Jive Nature’s Palette in Odd Duck #4 (MC), Tess Designer Yarns Super Sock and Baby (CC)

LOVE THIS PATTERN.

That’s all.

Ok, there’s a bit more – I went up two needle sizes based on the notes on ravelry, which means the ribbing is way too loose but the rest of the hat is only a little loose. I think I look quite silly in hats, but I may actually wear this one out of the house once I attack the ribbing with some elastic.

One more thing – most of the light blue was leftover from my Endpaper Mitts. Score!

Pattern: Cashmere Cowl No. 2 – Lace Rib from Purl Soho
Yarn: Fleece Artist Sea Wool in Ocean, held double

Ah, the bonus cowl. I knit this last spring when the cowl rage was happening. I’m kind of on the fence about cowls. I get them and think they can look cute, but if I’m cold I probably need more than a loose tube with gigantic holes in it to keep my neck warm. I might just stick with my old standby, the scarf. It’s not like I don’t have a zillion scarves hanging around competing for my neck’s time!

The yarn is fan-freaking-tastic, though. I swatched a lace pattern with it a while ago, and just might end up axing this cowl for a mini Shetland Triangle, which was my original plan for it.

I held the yarn double in knitting this and used size 9 needles. I think. I know I used way less repeats than the pattern called for because I wanted a snugger fit. I haven’t blocked this yet because I’m a bit afraid it’s going to get all loose and drapey on me.

Knotions launched last weekend and I have a little green pattern in it:

Hanging Vines socks! These might just be my favorites of the three recent sock designs (Oak Leaf and Interlocking Leaves were the other two). They were inspired by the ooodles of jasmine growing along the fence in our backyard. The leaves are long gone, but the vines stay nice and green all year long.

I ripped and reknit the cuff seemingly endless times. I was damn sure to make sure it was perfect before continuing on, because I wasn’t going to do any crazy chop-and-graft action again. I’m still having nightmares about unpicking all those stitches!

The yarn was dyed by Roxanne of Zen Yarn Garden. It’s such a great yellowish green – my photos definitely do not do it justice. Louet is the base yarn, and I really like working with it – it’s the perfect weight for socks and has a nice plump twist.

The only thing I’m unhappy with about these is the photos. I took a boatload of pictures in our backyard near the jasmine, but the lighting was horrible back there and you couldn’t make out the stitch pattern. I resigned myself to doing a photoshoot on our porch, which is where I photographed the Ironwork Socks. The pattern name makes more sense if you look at the socks when the cuff is at the top of the frame – the leaves are actually hanging then, and I think they look even better that way!

This is the last of the sock designs, because I have finished my 12th pair of the sock-a-month plan and am very, very done with socks for now! Socks, you are old news! Berets? Now that’s where it’s at. Even if I look silly in hats. More news next time, dear blog.

Hi blog! It’s been a while, but you know how that goes. I’ve been super swamped with work and we’re “sheltering in place” in preparation for hurricane Ike (we’re in central Houston, so no worries – we’re pretty safely out of harm’s way). I’m dropping in all quick like and tell you about these socks.

A few months ago we made the Squares for Sharron blanket. One of my squares had a stitch pattern that I fell in love with, so I sockified it and made these:

The Interlocking Leaves socks are available in Knitty, Fall 2008!

They’re worked toe-up in one my favorite sock yarns – Tess Super Socks and Baby. Yummy yummy stuff. I worked a toe-up heel flap, sort of Widdershins-esque, but a bit different (more true to top-down construction) in the heel turn. And of course they have an Eye of Partridge heel flap, as is my way!

I hope you like them! I’m still working my way towards the sock-a-month plan, and these are August’s socks, even though I knit them in May and I’m blogging them in September. I haven’t yet blogged July’s socks yet, but the next post will talk about those and September’s pair. I’m on a roll!

Hi! It is hot out. So I’ve been knitting socks!

First off, the Oak Leaf Socks!

The premiere issue of Knotions came out last Monday, and I was lucky enough to have this pair of socks included. Jody did a rocking job with the magazine (I totally understand how much work goes in to creating something like that from scratch) and there’s plenty of interesting patterns to knit. I have my eyes on Theodore for Rob, but I’m a bit short on yarn. Maybe I’ll make a skinnier version. I have some handspun that would be perfect for a manscarf.

Back to the Oak Leaf socks. I really love the zigzag line that happens when you alternate k2tog, yo and yo, ssk. A bit of swatching and travelling stitches led me to the leaves. The pattern includes a pretty transition from the mostly-purl stitch pattern to the knit stitch appearance of the eye of partridge heel. If you like how that looks, you can mirror it in the toe. I didn’t include instructions for handling this in the toe because it would have added a lot of complexity to the pattern (since the sock length can vary).

The socks are knit in Nature’s Palette sock yarn, in the Mallard colorway. I love this yarn. It’s soft and plump and this particular colorway is gorgeous – it very subtly variegates between grass and olive green. I also used this yarn in my Endpaper Mitts, and I just bought more for another pair of socks.

I’ve been slowly catching up to my sock-a-month plan this year. Let’s call these the May socks, since they were actually knit that month.

June’s socks:

Pattern: Marilinda socks
Yarn: Valley Yarns Huntington

I’ve been interested in all of the new yarns appearing in the Valley Yarns line. I used to live thisclose to Webs and tried the Longmeadow yarn at the time, but ended up destashing it because I really didn’t like the texture. The Huntington is a basic non-smooshy sock yarn. It’s 25% nylon but is very soft – it definitely doesn’t have the nylony scratchiness that I’ve been experiencing in recent yarns. It’s a bit splitty, which is most noticeable if you drop a stitch or are cabling without a cable needle.

I’ve been wanting to knit the Marilinda socks since they came out. The pattern is deceptively easy – all of the action (travelling stitches changing directions, cable cross) happens in the same row. I did make a couple of small changes, the most major of which is that I changed the double decreases. The pattern has double decreases where the center stitch is on top, but that center stitch is a purl background stitch that suddenly becomes a knit stitch. I think that changing those stitches to a k3tog on the right half of the chart and sssk on the left is a bit prettier.

One small thing to watch out for with this pattern is that the sizing runs very large. The pattern is worked over 75 stitches in the leg and there’s very little to pull in the pattern – only one four-stitch cable every 14 rows. I had a smaller gauge than the pattern (8.5 sts/in vs the pattern’s 8sts/in) and the sock fits my size 10 foot (9 inch circumference) and large calves perfectly – the pattern as written would have been way too large. Besides that, I’m very happy with the way that these socks turned out!

What do knitters do when one of their kind is pregnant? Well, they knit! Last month, I decided to organize a little square-along for a fellow stitch and bitch-er, Sharron.

These are my squares! We knit everything in Berroco Comfort in the Lavendar Frost colorway. The full-blanket photos show the color best. The good: Soft and machine washable and dryable. The bad: it’s splitty as hell. So, so splitty.

Then my two lonely squares were then joined by 14 others. Square party! In alphabetical order, the hip to be square knitters were: Amy, Esther, Jenny, Katharine, Laura, Liz, Maya, Mo, Meredith, Sarah, and Susan. A few of these fine ladies knit two squares so that the blanket could be a beautiful 4×4 square.

There were a few requirements – the squares had to be 9 inches square, it had to be bordered by one stockinette stitch on all sides, and the ends were to be unwoven for seaming. After that, anything goes. Isn’t this a pretty awesome mix of textures? Yes!

The disadvantage of organizing something like this is that the organizer is in charge of seaming. First, I arranged the squares into columns based on width, seamed them into strips, and then mattress stitched the strips together. The biggest challenge was that each square was a different gauge, so I had to get the maths involved for perfect seaming. Lastly, I picked up stitches around the blanket and did a single crochet border.

Fin! The crochet border curled when I first worked it, but eventually flattened out after the blanket was washed. Sharron is very allergic to cats, so the blanket went into the washing machine and directly into a gift bag, without passing Go or returning into the fur-infested house.

I think she liked it!

Blog, I’ve been neglecting you again. I blame freaking Lost – Rob and I are working our way through seasons 1-3, which always trumps internet time. I’m about four projects behind on updates (if you count handspun), so here’s a little two-for-one sock action.

Pattern: Leyburn Socks
Yarn: Lisa Souza Sock!, the wool/nylon blend one

I’m in a bit of a knitting funk these days, and the only thing I can manage to finish is socks. So socks it is! I’ve had this yarn in my stash forever, because I’ve been stumped as to what to make with it. I really believe that slip-stitch patterns are the perfect thing for variegated yarn. I’ve wanted to knit the Leyburn pattern for a while, too (I swatched it in some Koigu last year), and this is the perfect marriage of yarn and pattern!

I followed the pattern very loosely, as I paired the stitch pattern with a Widdershins-esque toe-up heel flap. My heel turn is a bit different from the Widdershins one, though – for some reason Widdershins heel turn is half the depth of a normal top-down heel flap. I also worked a Magic Cast On for the first time, and it was like magic! Much better than dealing with a short-row toe.

I changed around the Leyburn stitch counts, too – the foot is 34 instep stitches and 31 sole stitches, and leg was 64 stitches. I should have increased some stitches around the heel flap (or worked a longer flap), since the floats are a bit stretched out there.

This was the first time that I’ve used Lisa Souza yarns. I love the non-pooling dye job, but the yarn felt very nylony when I was knitting with it. She also sells a 100% merino sock yarn, which my pampered fingers demand, apparently. I also love the generous 4 ounce put up – I have a sizeable ball of yarn leftover.

I wrote this entire post without mentioning the obvious fraternal nature of the socks, which is really a testament to my diminishing anal retentiveness. It’s part of the beauty of handpainted yarns, right?

I’m in the minority here, but I really prefer knitting socks top-down! I hate, hate, hate working the sewn bindoff for toe-up socks, and I hate even more undoing the sewn bindoff because it’s too tight. Knitting socks toe-up also requires a bit more math before you start, since you need to know your heel depth and the number of stitches before the heel turn to figure out how many gusset increases that must be worked. I probably won’t be working any more toe-up socks, unless I’m really, really afraid of running out of yarn.

In keeping with the sock-a-month theme, the socks above were March’s pair, and these are April’s.

Pattern: None – just a 64 stitch top-down stockinette sock with an afterthought heel
Yarn: My handspun! 3 ply (navajo plied) from some Funky Carolina superwash merino in the Missed colorway

Handspun socks! There’s not much to say about these, except that I spun the yarn! I can’t believe that these turned out so well. The handspun was mostly fingering weight (I used a US 1.5 needle and got 8 stitches/inch), but was a bit thicker for the second sock’s cuff. I think that the thick portion was where I started out spinning, and the uber thin portion was toward the end. I can say that spinning worsted weight yarn goes much, much faster than a 3 ply sock yarn!

My first afterthought heel! I chose the afterthought heel so that the stripes wouldn’t be interrupted, and I heart it. Normal short-row heels don’t fit my massive instep very well, so I worked a few even rounds before decreases to give me some extra ease in that area. The instep stitches are still stretched out, so I’ll try more even rounds next time.

The right sock has very short stripes, so I ended up cutting the yarn in a couple of places on the left sock to keep the stripes from getting too out of control. I also knit the first sock on the short side, since I was afraid of running out of yarn, and I extended it an inch after the second sock was complete. I must have missed this lesson in Knitting 101, but if you pick out the cast on edge to frog the top ribbing, you’ll have to pick out every. single. stitch. No frogging from the cast on edge. I ended up snipping a stitch and cutting off the ribbing, knitting an extra inch, and then grafting the sock back together. I can’t even tell where the graft is, so yay!

Pattern: The charts are a modified version of the Intricate Stag Bag, the general size is sort of based on the We Call Them Pirates hat.
Yarn: Cherry Tree Hill Supersock in Tangerine, Dale of Norway Baby Ull in a charcoal grey

Every Thanksgiving, we visit Rob’s parents in a rural area of Pennsylvania. That’s right before hunting season begins, so we usually don hunter’s orange if we walk around outdoors. I’ve been wanting to make Rob’s dad a stranded hat with a deer motif for years, and when I saw the Intricate Stag Hat pattern, I was sold!

Rob’s parents were in town a couple of weeks ago, so the hat was quickly finished and gifted. It’s a bit large on Rob’s head, but it fits his dad’s 24" melon perfectly.

I modified the chart a bit by moving the trees away from the deer by a few stitches, creating some treetops, and adding a third tree. The pattern repeats on the back of the hat.

I used fingering weight yarns so that I could cram the whole scene onto the hat. I’ve used Dale of Norway Baby Ull before, and I’d use it again in a heartbeat, it’s soft like buttah. This was my first time using Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn – it’s quite tightly plied, but it blocked into a beautifully cohesive fabric.

The biggest challenge with this hat was tensioning the very long floats in the chart. The floats were extremely long at the very top of the hat, so I stopped the stranded knitting and duplicate stitched the top of the trees. I’ve never been much of a duplicate stitch fan, but it’s fairly invisible. It’s difficult for me to tell visually where the stranded knitting ends and the duplicate stitch begins, although the texture of the fabric changes at the duplicate stitch area.

A lining knit with the Baby Ull finished off the hat. Knitting the lining was the same amount of knitting as a sock, what a slog. I’ve offered Rob’s dad a liner replacement if the hat isn’t warm enough – it seemed fine when I was knitting it, but the hat is pretty thin. Overall, I’m happy with the hat, but I’m not yearning to struggle with any super long floats in the near future!

February’s socks are finished! I swear I finished them last month, but have put off posting until I retook the photo. They kind of blend in with the background, no? I suppose I can be stealth kelp in these, at least on my back porch.

Pattern: Child’s First Sock in Shell Pattern, from Knitting Vintage Socks
Yarn: Yarn Botanika Merino/Tencel in colorway Rum Runner

I heart the look of this pattern! Naturally, I made some modifications:

• I changed the top rib to 2×2. I prefer my rib to consistently match (or not match) with the sock patterning, and the 2×1 rib didn’t sync with the pattern repeat.
• I flipped the chart for the second sock.
• I’ve read that the gusset depth is pretty shallow for this pattern, so I extended it to 16 slipped stitches.

The only issue I have with these socks is the yarn dye job. I really wanted a semisolid yarn, but I opened up the skein to find this:

The yarn was tied too tightly before it was dyed and the dye barely penetrated in that spot. There were lots of white flecks in about 75% the skein. The left sock leg was knit with the semisolid portion, and the patterning in the rest of the socks is obscured by all that white. Boo, but I like them anyway!