I’ve finished a good chunk of the second sock for my Mom’s Christmas socks.
I zoomed up the foot and turned the heel. It’s now October so I’m anxious to get these finished so I can enter them in the Pigskin Party KAL, the Double Dip KAL and the Carolina Fiber Girls Socktober KAL!
Must keep knitting!!
My Downpour Socks have been niggling at me from the back of my brain. While I was folding laundry downstairs this past weekend I pulled this WIP out of storage. And it hit me….I cast these on in the WRONG NUMBER OF STITCHES. I was in Colorado when I did it…I’m going to blame the altitude.
So these beauties are headed to the frog pond. I guess the silver lining is that a) I’ll have socks that actually fit me and I won’t be forced to gift them and b) I can restart them and they will count for the #dcspigskinparty17 KAL.
Le Sigh….more knitting I guess!
Jellybean is now officially three. We had a blowout family bash that was totally spooky and Halloween themed. Literally my kid has not stopped talking about Halloween since last Halloween so we just kinda leaned into the theme for his birthday.
Well birthday party meant quality grandparent time which then correlates into mommy free time. I had been thinking more and more about the Daunt Cowl. The only thing holding me back was the lack of a good neutral in my stash. All my sock stash is highly variegated or self-striping. So I tip-toed over to my LYS and found a neutral sock yarn…..Plymouth Yarn Happy Feet 100 Splash in the Autumn color….
So while Jellybean was showing Papa around the local Zoo…I culled my sock scraps and found a rainbow’s worth. That’s 24 minis that go from grey/pink through the rainbow and back to grey. I made a pattern page here and you can see what my scraps are.
I painstakingly weighed and wound according to the directions and look what beauty I got!
Isn’t this about the best thing you have ever seen? My ball winder JUST barely was able to wind this bad-boy. It’s over 1,000 yards because some of my scraps were over the 5 gram suggested allotment. I wanted to use up as much as possible plus this now counts as a Blitz project for the #pigskinparty17 KAL!
I’m going to cast on as soon as my Reyna is finished 😉
Happy Knitting!!
It’s confession time….I’m ADDICTED to this project. My Reyna is now over halfway done!
I literally wake up in the middle of the night and seriously consider knitting on this project. I’ve been knitting during meetings, over my lunch, every spare minute I’m not in charge of Jellybean. The pattern is just so intuitive and the fact that the pattern has neat little boxes to tick off your row progress is heaven. I just can’t wait to cross off more squares! I haven’t knit a stitch on anything else since I cast this on.
And *knock on wood* I haven’t made any serious mistakes that I couldn’t fix. All my eyelets are lining up and my center spine is straight! I’m hoping that maybe, just maybe I can finish this by Friday…..we’ll see!
Happy Knitting!!
With some personal perseverance and some Knitflixing, I finished the leg of the first sock for my Mom’s Christmas Socks!
I am using size 2 needles and my mom wears a size 8/8.5 US women’s shoe. I cast on and worked 66 stitches for the foot to get the circumference where I needed it. Right before the heel I decreased away two stitches to get the count to 64 to make the heel turn work. And then after the heel I went back to 66 stitches for the leg. And finally before the cuff I increased up to 68 stitches for both roominess and to make by 2×2 rib work. I’m just so please with this sock! I managed the whole sock in roughly a week and a week that involved a lot of sleep deprivation!
The sock fits me nicely as well. I’m a size longer than my mother but my foot is not a wide. So I feel like the fabric is very forgiving will conform to the foot very well. Now I just need to make sure I cast on the second sock and get a cooking. I’m hoping to get this finished so I can enter into the 12monthstoXmas KAL, the Pigskin Party KAL, and possibly the Double Dip KAL by the Bede Sisters Podcast.
Happy Knitting!!
During my tomato madness last weekend I decided to pull a project from my Pigskin Party KAL prep. I cast on for the Reyna Shawl by Noora Laivola.
I had some beautiful speckled Hawthorn Speckle Handpaint in the Cosmic Speckle in my stash. This yarn told me it needed to be something squishy in garter stitch. I’m loving how the pops of color are popping up!
This pattern is just so amazing. It’s a free pattern and has been knit over 5,000 times. I’m probably the last person on Ravelry to stumble on this one, lol. The pattern fits on one page, it’s well written, and you guys it has a row tracker check box thingy! With as much as I have to pick up and put down my knitting this is a life saver! I completed the cast on, one garter section and one lace section in one sitting.
I can quickly feel this project becoming addicting!! This yarn is just so yummy I can’t wait to see the finished product. I was thinking this was going to go into the gift box…but I may not be able to part with it!!
Happy Knitting!!
As I mentioned before the hubby took Jellybean for the weekend this past weekend and I was FREE! I also happened to have a weekend get-together with some coworkers at a local vineyard winery. My coworkers know I’m weird and if they didn’t know….they do now! I took my Mom’s Christmas Socks with me because I had just literally turned the heel the night before. You guys….I got almost four inches of leg done despite partaking in Wine Slushes and generous sampling! It was just so amazingly soul restoring to laugh, knit and just enjoy the company of others. I definitely don’t do that enough!
My coworkers were so gobsmacked that I could knit without looking. And they thought I was counting and manually making the pattern appear. (I did break that illusion by showing them the yarn ball but they were still duly impressed.) These print yarns from Cascade Heritage are just my favorite go-to gift knit yarns. The patterns are amazing, the fabric is pleasing and they are easy care for non-knitters! I hoping to knock out the rest of the leg and cuff this week. Stay tuned!
Happy Knitting!!
During a recent visit to my parents, my Aunt Barb pulled me aside and said that my mom was bummed that she was the only one in our immediate family who hadn’t received any hand knit socks. Well, what knitter can resist the sirens call of that kind of request!
I pulled some Cascade Heritage Prints in the Christmas colorway from my stash and some size 2 needles and immediately cast on. Now she is roughly a size 7/7.5 US women’s shoe. So I’m pretty certain I’m going to work a 64 stitch sock but I’m not sure how much length she needs. I kind of want this to be a Christmas surprise so I need to find a way to steal a peak at her favorite shoes….
Happy Knitting!
Today I bring you the last installment of all the WIPs going into hibernation because of the Pigskin Party KAL.
Today we have Mitred Square Memory Blanket. These past couple of months I have really been able to bust out a lot of new squares. I’m happy that I purchased sharper metal tipped needles. The join still catches once in awhile but I can live with that. I really just can’t get over how crazy pretty the mix of all these yarns are. This will be the WIP I miss the most…
Today I bring you the second WIP going into hibernation due to the Pigskin Party KAL. These are my Vacation Vanilla socks. I finally made myself make a decision about where to place the cuff and finished the first sock.
I have to admit this project was created sort of on the fly. I was on vacation this summer and needed another project on the needles after finishing the one that I had packed. So I had the yarn shop wind this right up and I cast on a vanilla sock with the needles I had on hand. They are size 0s which are not what I usually make socks on. But this yarn seemed on the lighter side of fingering and I went up to 72 stitches to compensate. But as I was knitting those niggling thoughts kept creeping in that this sock looked very skinny for my big girl feet.
Well turns out I skated through by the skin of my teeth. The foot fits beautifully as does the heel. But the leg is a wee bit snug. These will not fall down for sure. I did increase three stitches every inch or so as I went up the leg. You can sort of see my increases in the photo above. I’m so glad I did and honestly it could have stood a couple more. The fabric is really stretched at the top of the leg and cuff.
But if anyone is that close to my foot so as to notice that detail of the fabric they are going to get a foot to the face, lol. As with my Drunken Watermelon socks I did go ahead and cast on the toe of the second sock and get started in the round. These will be my “emergency movie theatre or spontaneous car trip knitting” if I happen to need an easy vanilla project.
Happy Knitting!!
Michele plays with yarn, food, and music in Portland
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