I was killing time in Micheals (a tough job, I know) after Christmas waiting for my aunt to finish her shopping. I wandered into the Christmas clearance isle and spotted this…
A coffee cup with a cable and stockinette design! This puppy was $9.99 on sale for $1.99! How could I not buy this as a knitter!?
My husband would kill me if I brought more coffee cups in the house so this cup went straight to work to be pretty and functional on my desk. 😄
Happy Knitting!
The Heritage Vanilla Socks for the hubby are done! They weren’t without their trials but for heavens sake they are finished! 
Pattern: A 72 stitch toe up vanilla sock with 60% afterthought heel
Yarn: Cascade Yarns Heritage Prints
Needles: Size 2 US 9″ circulars
Size: US Mens Size 12 shoe (give or take)
I managed to snap a few photos last night while the hubby was playing video games. (Sorry for the lighting…best I could do). They fit okay. Due to some epic memory loss and lack of note taking…one sock is has an 11 inch sole and the other 10 1/2 inch sole. I can totally tell the difference and my husband says one is tighter than the other. He won’t let me fix it. And I’ve decided to let him have them as is. I’m considering it an experiment to see which level of snugness her prefers.
This was a single skein of 100 gram yarn. I knit the first sock until my skein weighed 50 grams and then bound off. Reason would dictate that I was at half my yarn, right? Wrong…I knit the second sock to the same measurements as the first (save the 1/2 I missed in the foot) and I still have 34 grams of yarn left in the skein!! Now it’s possible the skein was a bit heavier than 100 grams as I didn’t weight it before I started. But still 34 grams seems a bit excessive to have left over after two almost identical socks…
I’m going to ball up the remainder and save in case the husband decides he would like them taller. I can just undo the cuff bind on and keep knitting. For now…these are done!
Happy Knitting!
I’ve made the leap into Craftsy and joined my first class. It’s Lucy Neatby’s Knit-Along 2016: Socks and over the coming year we will learn a whole heap of new techniques and have three new pairs of socks!
Who wants to join me?
I was lured by the softness of alpaca yarn during my 2015 Central KS Yarn hop stop at Alpacas of Wildcat Hollow.
I love the softness but the drape the yarn has sort of limits its use for me. And I only had one skein of worsted weight in a pink/green colorway. I did some Ravelry perusing through my queue and a quick pattern search and I found the Casu Cowl by Galia Lael. A lovely worsted weight grafted cowl.
When I caked up this skein of yarn I found a lot of veg matter as that something accompanies small batch milled yarn such as this. I also found the yarn to be very loosely plied and quite a bit thinner than worsted weight in my opinion. In a fit of productivity I had this yarn paired with printed pattern and needles in a project bag ready to go a few weeks back.
I cast on according to the instruction and knit one pattern repeat. But it was looking nothing like the pattern page…and then it hit me. I had put the wrong printed instructions in this project bag and was in fact knitting an entirely different project…the The Darn Kinetic Cowl. Insert forehead smack here….
In a way I’m a little glad I found this mistake because I hated the yarn/pattern combo with the Kinetic cowl. So now I need to rip this out, print the correct instructions, and start knitting again.
Le sigh….
I’m an accountant by trade and I love me some spreadsheets. So of course I have a knitting spreadsheet. I’ve blogged about it before. Below is a screenshot from my 2015 Ravelry projects tab.
This year I completed 35 projects for a total 13,112 yards of yarn. So basically I knit 7.45 miles of yarn. Not to shabby for having a wee one making my life crazy. But I also consider the flip side of my knitting. I added 12,064 yards or roughly 6.85 miles of yarn to my stash through stash acquisition and enhancement. The good news is I knit more than I added! I came out on the net out side of 1,047 feet or just over half of a mile! This is the first year in a long time I ended in a net out position.
Fingers crossed for the same luck in 2016!
Happy Knitting!
My Flying North socks hit the FO pile last week and I didn’t let the needles sit bare for long! I pulled the Dream in Color Smooshy with cashmere from my Central KS yarn hop from Unwind in Manhattan, KS.
This is the Lucky Stone color way. It’s a deep rich green with bits of black running through. It’s very hard to photograph but totally worth it. This yarn is SOFT!!! I toyed with using a patterned toe up sock but quickly rejected that given the dark color. I don’t want to squint at these socks, so vanilla it is!
I’ve completed the toe on sock #1!
I’m chalking up some more points for the 2015 Pigskin Party KAL! The Flying North Socks are done! I actually managed to squeak this in on December 31st for my final project of 2015.
I’m rubbish at photographing these. The dark neutral color is hard to capture and it’s just too close to my carpet, lol. But trust me it’s very lovely in person!
Pattern: Flying North Sock by Maria Montzka
Yarn: Plucky Feet in Medieval (Won in the 2014 #sockswithsarah KAL)
Needles: US 1s
Size: 70 stitches total
Mods: none
These are just so squishy and amazing. Their is subtle color variation in the yarn. The points that line up make my OCD heart sing. I cannot wait to wear these! And now I need to start another pair of socks while the needles are still warm!!
Happy Knitting
I’ve been on something of sock binge lately. And I’m using some lovely brilliant colors from a variety of dyers and brands. I’ve also been catching up on my Podcasts and due to some epic coincidental timing I’ve been hearing about fading and loss of color on sock yarn. Luckily the Knitmore Girls have a solution….a citric acid soak to set the dye/color! They do a lovely job explaining so I won’t bother repeating what they so eloquently wrote, just follow the hyperlink above.
But I will show you some photos of my supplies and process!
 I found this huge container of Citric Acid at the local Natural Grocer for something like $13. That works out to $0.02 per gram. This should last me for a TON of socks since you only have to do this process once per pair of socks.
 (Checkerboard Socks with yarn from Across the Yarniverse)
 (Neon Vanilla Socks in Flourmania)
 (Modified Sand Dune Socks in KnitCircus gradient)
These puppies are drying as we speak and now I won’t feel so jumpy about washing them when they come up in sock wearing rotation! I will say I didn’t notice any fading in my socks before this and I didn’t have any excess dye wash out during the process. I just would rather be safe than sorry!
Happy Knitting!
I wore my Very Berry Vanilla Socks to work the other day with a pair of snuggly boots during our first snow this winter season.
I thought the heels felt a little small so I took them off to investigate what I should have done differently….and then I saw it….a dropped stitch laddering it’s way down. See it there? In the pink stripe in the middle of the sock?
 Well I pulled out my mending card for this pair and found a darning needle and a crochet hook! I laddered the stitch back up and used a spare piece of yarn to catch it. You can see my spare yarn below before I pulled it tight.
Then I just wove in the ends on the inside and my socks are ready to ride again!
I admit I feel a bit smart for fixing these pair and know exactly where my supplies were. We shall see how this system maintains itself over the years, lol!
Happy Knitting!
After some success with my husband’s Heritage Vanilla Socks I decided to start a second pair for him without finishing the first pair. I pulled the Berry Colorful Yarning Pats color way from my 2016 Sock Experiment and got to work!
I’ve divided and wound the yarn into tw cakes. This will be a 72 stitch vanilla socks on size US 2 nine inch circs with a 60% afterthought heel. The hubby requested tighter running around the ankle so I may take the ribbed cuff down to 68 stitches to see how he likes that.
As I wound this yarn I was also careful to make each ball start with in same portion of the stripes. This way these babies will match. I lost a tiny bit of yardage due to this. After consulting the hubby we decided on contrasting heels and toes to make up the difference. He chose some Serenity Sock weight by Deborah Norville from my stash…in black. Not my choice but these are his socks, lol.
This project also helps me with my 2015 Pigskin Party KAL points total. I get bonus points for using a KAL sponsor product! Now I just have to get these knit before the super bowl…
Happy Knitting!
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