So Close!!

My Husbands Pats socks are soooooo close!

  
We took a last minute three day weekend not so long ago and I got some really good car knitting in. I finished the first sock and plowed through the second one. It’s Jan 30th and I have until Feb 7th (the Super Bowl) to get these done for the #dcspigskinparty2015 KAL.

Seriously it’s like 4 more inches of ribbing and done! Fingers crossed!!

A Question of Leftovers

I’m starting to get quite a stash of leftover sock yarn and worsted weight. None of it is enough to make much of a project in and of itself. So I’ve been toying with the idea of a leftover blanket. A nice mashup of my leftovers woven into a nice memory project. 

For my sock scraps I’ve always eyed the The Beekeepers Quilt by tiny owl knits. This project has the awesome portability and quick gratification of socks. But the offset is a TON of seaming at the end. There are also a ton of mitered square blankets on Ravelry that would eliminate seaming but the project would be much less portable over time. I just can’t decide!

And the worsted scraps also present a unique challenge. They are mostly acrylic from my early knits. My inner wild child says to just cast on a bunch of stitches and work a crazy garter stitch blanket with random scraps. It might be ugly but it would be my memories keeping me warm!

What are your thoughts on scrap patterns and uses?

WIP Wednesday: Go Patriots! Socks 

I have made progress on the Hubby’s Go Patriots! Socks but alas it’s become eminently clear that these won’t make the #dcspigskinparty2015 KAL deadline of the Super Bowl. But no worries I’ll still get a cute FO regardless!

  
As you can see I’m finished with the heel of the first sock. I had a brainstorm while working the foot that these are just the first few socks I’ve knit for the husband. (I have just finished the Heritage Vanilla socks for the hubby and they used a 60% afterthought heel.) Now I know what kinds of heels I like in my socks but the hubby doesn’t (and maybe won’t care). Anyhow I’ve decided to do a gusset heel for this pair. That way he has a pair of each and can tell me which is more comfortable after wearing for awhile.

We will see but for the time being I need to get knitting!

Casu Cowl Rebooted

I managed to rip back my Casu Cowl blunder and start again with the correct pattern. 

  
I completed the set up and two pattern repeats. The patter is pretty straight forward and should be easy to memorize. The problem is that this yarn doesn’t sing to me. Therefore the project as a whole doesn’t get my mojo going. I don’t hate it….but given other options I always pick something else. I have a car trip coming up and the short back and forth rows should be good car knitting. I may just pack this project and only this project to get it off the needles.

This is definitely a case where I want the FO but I’m struggling with the actually knitting if it, lol.

Happy Knitting!

FO Friday: Not Quite Tube Socks

I have been collecting sock leftovers in a nice neat bag and in my 2016 Wishlist I wanted to knit Jellybean some tube socks. I have been mulling using Jasmin from the Knitmore Girls Genevieve’s Tube Socks. I had the yarn and the needles and took off. I pulled the Saki Bamboo from my  Conference Vanilla Socks in crayon box. I had 20 grams left and divided it in half.

  
At first blush they look fine…

  
They are waaaay to short! My baby had big feet and these “socks” are only 6 inches long. They don’t even cover his heels! The width is fine but they need to be twice as long. In other words I need at least 40 grams of sock yarn leftovers.

Oh well, we’ve repurposed them as gloves!

  
Happy Knitting!

WIP Wednesday: Go Patriots! Socks

Just a quick flyby up date on my Go Patriots! Socks.

  
This is A LOT of tiny stitches. I really want these to be done by the Super Bowl to count for the #dcspigskinparty2015. But I’m not sure I’ll get there. I don’t want rush so much that I stress myself out. This yarn from Berry Colorful Yarning is to die for! And the stripes are just so….stripey!

I’m still not sold on the black toes but my husband likes it. Pretty sure I will continue to complain about it until these are off my needles, lol. What’s a knitter to do but to keep knitting! 

Happy Knitting!

Fantastic Find

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!

FO Friday: Heritage Vanilla Socks

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!

To Alpaca or Not To Alpaca….

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….