Knits as they are known: Shur'tugal socks

Still cold enough for socks around here.  So this week's edition of knits as they are known is also a pair of socks.  According to my Ravelry notes, this took about a year to knit, and they just turned 4.

NOW

THEN

Pattern: Shur'tugal 

by Alice Yu

This used to be a free pattern, but it's not anymore.

Yarn:

Socks that Rock Lightweight  by Blue Moon Fiber Arts in color "Princess Plummy"

My Thoughts: According to my notes, I didn't Love the knitting process on these, although I do love the yarn.  As far as sock yarns go, however, I find the finished produce to be a little thick.  I actually can't tell too much difference between these and a pair I knit out of medium weight STR.  The end result of that is that they don't always fit in most shoes, but they are very thick and comfy. THey really only fit in my Halflinger clogs (specifically these). As a result and they really become hanging around the house and weekend socks.  Which is a good thing, because this particular pair has fallen victim to some unknown misfortune:

Sad sock hole.

That, however, is mostly OK. It speaks to the quality of the yarn and/or pattern. That hole has been there for *cough* several *cough* years, and at least half a dozen machine wash and dry cycles.  It seems to just be the way it is.  It doesn't grow, it doesn't get worse, and when they are worn it looks just normal:

Yes the hole is still there, just hidden during normal wear

  I'm too lazy to darn it as I should.

Final assessment: socks that rock does indeed rock and live up to the hype, although it is a little thicker then one might want for socks in the South.

Knits as they are known : Pillar Socks

The other day, it got cold and I had to wear socks.  Yes, where I live it is possible to avoid wearing socks until December. Yes, I still knit wool socks.  It's a contradiction, I know, but if I keep knitting, and keep living here, I could possibly knit enough socks so I never have to wear a store bought pair again.* It's a life goal.  Aim high I say.  Anyways, I digress.  It was cold. I wore socks.  Specifically, I wore the first pair of socks I ever knit in the round.  More specifically, I wore a hand knit pair of socks that are more than a decade old.  They still fit, they still bring me joy. I will not be Kondo-ing  them away anytime soon.

It got me thinking about the destiny of all the things we knit. We knitters of the Internet love to knit things and love to show them off.  We carefully pose a freshly knit and perfectly blocked FO to show it (and our skills) off to the world. Sometimes we tell a little story about why we knit it, what inspired us, the tribulations we went through while doing it, etc.  We follow trends, and sometimes we all knit the same thing.  Patterns come and go. More recent converts to the knitting world may not even know the February lady sweater craze of 2008, or the monkeys, oh the monkeys, and how can we ever forget the clapotis Seriously, 22000+ projects and I'm still not even sure how to say that word out loud.

Pretty knits are shown off, and pressed into to service by their new owners, and forgotten to time. When was  the last time you saw a picture of handknit socks years after they came off the needles? Well today I remedy this.  I'm going to try my best to start documenting,  the full life of my knits.  How do they wear? how do they work? how do they wash?  Where they really worth what was put into them? It is these burning issues, understudied in the knittingverse, that I will attempt to address. 

So in that spirit, here are the socks I wore today:

 

 And here they are when I first knit them (and blogged them):

Pattern: Pillars by Lisa Stichweh
Yarn: Knitpicks Stroll Tonal, I think the color was called Sunflower. 
Knit 2011/2012: I knit these mostly on airplanes.  I don't remember finishing, but I do remember starting them on a trip to Seattle.

4 years of service and they have held up well.  I was pleasantly surprised with the relatively in-expensive yarn in both the knitting and wearing process.  They still fit, they are still soft and comfy, the go through the wash fairly regularly.  I've been mostly good about keeping them out of the dryer, but I know they've been through at least a couple of times.  There is always some fuzz on them, but it makes them all the more beautiful to me.    Good pattern, great yarn, happy results. 

*I might still buy happy socks, because they are pretty damn comfy. Comfy and cotton. 

Enter the sock

Near the end of the summer, hub flew back to take care of all our stuff and there was some confusion on his flights. The first time we were quite lucky that I had come into the airport with him because he had to come back with me and stay an extra few days.  The second time I dropped him off, and I was ~10 miles away from the airport when he called to say he wasn't entirely sure if he had a seat on the plane.  So I pulled into the nearest yarn shop to kill some time.  A few hours later he was in the air, and I was on my way to a concert with a good friend and a new pair of socks on a new pair of needles.  Sometimes I have no self restraint.

In any case, they became my traveling companion socks and were finished up on my plane ride home to visit my family and go to Rhinebeck.



The yarn is from libertyfibers an independant dyer who sells on etsy and it was very soft and squishy to knit with.

I'm really quite happy with them, and it is just becoming sock weather here in the south so I'm happy to have a new pair to wear.

Pyroclastic Fantastic

I have a sock rotation. There are a select group of people for whom I make socks and I just rotate through them.  Mom, Sister, Hub, Me, wash, rinse, repeat.  It works out pretty well with everyone getting a new pair of socks about once a year or so.  Sometimes there are random pairs thrown in just because I felt like it, or occasionally on request from Hub's uncle. But in general socks get finished in that order.

So, the last socks I had finished were for myself, meaning it was Mom's turn.  I had the yarn and pattern all picked out and ready to go, but for whatever reason hadn't cast on.  One day mid-spring, my phone rang.  My pregnant sister was very sad because she had worn a hole through her favorite socks and could I fix them?  I mention she was pregnant because I think that a hole in a sock might not have been such an emergency in a non-hormonal state.

She really didn't know what to do and she was really sad about it.  Which made me sad, because she's a good sister and a good mother and deserves comfy feet.  So, I dug through the bucket of sock yarn scraps and found  the leftover Artyarns Ultramerino4 and tossed in in my knitting bag.  I knew I was headed home soon and we would see what we could do then.I was, however, not hopeful that the socks could be saved and sis had really thought she would bring them to the hospital with her when she had the baby. 

In the meantime, I thought I might try to eek out a new pair before baby arrival.  So, I grilled her a bit on what exactly was it about those socks that made them her "favorite". The short-row heel? The short-row toe?  (I really hoped not, I hate doing those) The stitch pattern? The yarn texture?  After a lot of "I don't know, they just are", I finally established that a) she really liked the color and b) she thought the cables were beautiful.  I was a bit confused on that second point because they didn't have any cables, and my sister knows that  I don't really like to knit cables and I definitely don't do them on socks.

So there I was with the mission to recreate these socks.  Easy peasy right?  Not quite: That yarn was purchased in late 2007.  That color is long discontinued, plus, since they wore out so quickly,  I had some misgivings about using the yarn again.

The hunt began.

I spent many hours searching the internet and LYSs for something that could be a suitable replacement.  I tough job, I know, but for my sister I'd bear the burden.  ;) I finally settled on Cascade heritage paints in the colorway wild roses (9883).  It's not quite as bright, but I thought it was pretty close.  Plus, the nylon content would make it more durable.

Then I set out to find a pattern.  I wanted to recreate the original socks as much as possible, but I hate knitting things more than once.  I finally decided on Pyroclastic from Knitty.  It had that same cabled look, without the cabling and a neat arch construction that I thought would be fun to try.

It turns out that the stitch pattern for pyroclastic and that for nutkin are identical except that pyroclastic eliminates three plain rows between each repeat.  A little ways into the cuff I realized that the knitting was very familiar and dug out the old pattern.  Sure enough pretty much the same.  It seemed to be a lucky guess on my part. 

In any case, I did mange to finish them up before both her birthday an the baby's slightly early arrival.  Both are doing fine and she was wearing the socks when we video chatted this morning.  She loves them, but the verdict on the arch shaping, which was kind of a pain in the butt, was that she didn't notice enough of a difference.

Here you have, the fantastic pyroclatics:



The yarn was nice to work with, and if these hold up well, it will likely become a go to sock yarn in the future.

So there you have it, the knitting emergency that put me from a  sane-knitter-with-a-reasonable-number-of-projects to a crazy-out-of-control-ADD-knitter.

A sucessful start to the summer knitting if I do say so myself. On to the baby blanket....

The cankle socks

The final sock fail of 2009.

The cankle socks.

I don't mean to be mean in any way. The socks just look like they have no ankles, so in our house they have been dubbed the cankle socks. Really, they are the Butterflies and Berries Socks from a long-ago purchased kit. This is some of the first "real" sock yarn I purchased. Back when I was crocheting socks rather than knitting them. Back when I was hording yarn for some reason. Back before the blog was anonymous and went under a different name. Back in 2005 to be exact. As one of my knitting friends is fond of saying, "yarn is like wine, you need to age it". Well, this was good and aged.

I bought the yarn with the intentions of crocheting some socks for myself, it was on sale (cheaper than it's listed now I'm sure) and I figured that the pattern was just something I'd keep or pass onto a friend who did knit socks. Well, I conquered DPNs and have long abandoned crocheted socks*.

Technically, there is nothing wrong with these socks. They are a really fun knit, and the yarn is very nice. The pattern is easy enough to follow, memorize, etc. Everything I'm looking for in a sock.

Here's the but you all knew was coming: The foot portion is just too large in circumference. Hence the cankle designation. The pattern calls for size 2 dpns. I usually knit socks on a size 1 or smaller. For this design, the stranded butterfly stitch doesn't have the give that a normal knitted fabric would have, actually it pulls in some, so going up a needle size is prudent. It all works out fine on the calf portion. But keeping with the larger size on the eyelet portion is a mistake. Eyelets are lace and make a knit fabric stretch even more than it would normally. So we have the following formula:

normal knitting + extra eyelet stretch + bigger needles = cankles [eqn.1]

To correct this, I would perform a simple modification:

normal knitting + extra eyelet stretch + smaller needles = good fit [eqn 2]

You see, by a simple change of needle size we solve the problem. Theoretically, that is, I have not tested this theory on a second pair of socks. Although I have enough yarn leftover that I just might. I would simply just switch to smaller needles before the heel flap portion and I think all would be well.

In any case, here are the stats.

Pattern: Butterflies and Berries Socks by Debbie O'Neill available from The Knitter as a kit.
Yarn: Mountain Colors Bearfoot in Wild Raspberry. I have alot leftover. I like the yarn. It shed some color in blocking. The mohair content gives it a little fuzz that I enjoy.
Needles: size 2 bamboo dpns
Mods: I found the little shell rib to be pretty, but annoying to work, so I only did 3 repeats of it instead of the five. Similarly I reduced the number of pattern repeats in the ankle portion. I did 6 instead of 8. Also in the foot, fewer reps because I have small feet, which also required I eliminate some rows in the toe.

The end result is some warm and fuzzy house socks, which was nice since we had a freeze here and it was unpleasantly cold.

Like I said, 2009 was a bad year for socks.

*For making, not wearing that is. Hub has a vintage '05 on his feet right now. They hold up let me tell you.

Navy Toes the Line

Last Fall (2008). I started a pair of socks for Hub. He likes socks and has unlimited patience when it comes to my long-time projects.

This is what they looked like circa October 2008.

I know the first one was finished before the end of 2008 as I alluded to an unfinished pair in my sock wrap up. Why the second one sat for so long I don't really know. For a while it was buried in the bottom of my knit-night knitting bag, below the Anastasia's and a Clapotis (Yes, I tried again. Don't ask.) Then it moved into the house for a while and just mocked me. It came to Germany in October, in the car to New Orleans in November, to Texas in November, and finally a finishing kick took over when I was sick mid-December.

Behold the shooting sock. Really that's it's name.

Pattern: Gentleman's Shooting Stockings with Fluted Pattern by Nancy Bush from Knitting Vintage Socks. My favorite sock book ever, this is my 4th pattern from it.
Yarn: Regia 4-ply sock. Color 1042, 2 balls, plus a little Brown Sheep Wildfoote).
Needles: US size 0 (maybe that's why they took so long!)

The pattern has good calf shaping and the little triangles continue down the heel flap. That is really the only difficult part of the whole thing. Other than that it's a classic well-written fun to knit pattern.

But wait, a successful pair of socks in 2009??? Wrong. Look a little closer:

Notice anything? That's right, toe number 2 is a different color. I ran out of yarn with 14 rounds left. 14 blipping rounds. The first sock took exactly one ball. The second one took some extra Brown Sheep Wildefoote that came from deep in the sock yarn leftovers bucket. There isn't a noticeable difference in size, so I don't think it was a gauge issue, but in a year of socks like last one, who knows.

Oh well, hub is happy and it feels good to wipe this one off the WIP list.

Twisted Sister

So as you probably figured, there were no socks for Shelly's birthday. I was, however, determined to knit her some socks this year. So I ordered some yarn*.

Enter, Pomatomus, and the wonderful Online Supersocke 100. Ahh, finally a sock yarn like a sock yarn should be, soft, sturdy, perfect gauge, classic. This is going to be great. Well, once I get past this twisted rib cuff. It is a little annoying, but it looks nice and it's just the cuff.....

WRONG! Those damn twisted stitches are what make the pattern pop so nicely, and they run the WHOLE LENGTH OF THE SOCK, even on the heel flap!

Oh well, I'm flying alot for the summer, the pattern has a bit of a rhythm to it. I'll suck it up, because they are soft and they look soooo pretty.

Sock # 1 stalled somewhere mid-gusset because the ink on the copy of the pattern I had been dragging all over the country had worn thin on the crease and I could no longer read the chart. By the time I picked them up again it was late November and I thought I'd finish them up by Christmas. I boldly cast on for the second one and just read the chart, not the pattern. I didn't remember that you need to move stiches around between each reapeat of the chart and after the first rep, I just couldn't ever get it right. Like a blind fool I just fudged it all along. To the end.


These have the distinction of having the most mistakes in any FO I've ever called done. It's been that kind of sock year. Luckily you can't really tell and I hope Shelly will love them anyways. I got sick right before the holiday so they didn't make it in the mail until New Year's Eve.

Pattern: Pomatomus by Cookie A. from Knitty
Yarn: OnLine Supersocke 100, florida colors, color 1128 (I have alot left), purchased from the Woolery, where the customer service was top-notch.
Mods: My own fixing as I went
Needles: Size 1 DPNS

And for my northern blog-reading contingent, photo date December 20, 2009. Roses in my backyard. Take that!

*Well, that's not really how it happened. I needed some more bobbins for my wheel and the yarn was on sale and it would make the free shipping minimum and well, my sock knitting clearly needed a kick in the butt.

It was a bad year for socks...

This is the time of year I do my sock round up. It's a little harder this year. Here's why.

The other day I cast off a sock, showed it to my husband and said: "what do you think?"

He replied: "It looks like a sock for cankles"

Which was a very appropriate end to my year in socks. It's just been one of those years.

First, there were the Anastasia Socks. They were my third and final attempt at toe-up socks. I'll try any technique three times, usually it becomes part of my knitting repertoire because it takes more than once to really love it (DPN's fell into this category). Toe-up=hate. I know many people love to do socks this way, you'll never run out of yarn, try them on as you go, etc. etc. I have small feet, I never rarely run out of yarn. One time, I made a toe up sock and used every last bit of the skein, just to see how far it would go:

For the record, that is ~2.5 inches short of my knee, I added ALOT of shaping, and this picture was taken on August 20, 2007. According to my ravelry notebook, I turned the heel on the second sock in January of 2008, it's still not done.

Anyways, the Anastasias. My knitting group was doing a knit-a-long to start off the year and I joined in. I had at least one more go at toe-ups in me before the true hate, and I thought it would be fun. It was fun, but...the socks came out two different sizes! I knit them one right after the other, finished in about two months, which is my average knitting time and my gauge changed so much that they are noticeably different sizes. I wear them around the house, but the two different sizes are uncomfortable in shoes. 2009, sock fail #1:

Pattern: Anastasia Socks from Minty Fresh
Yarn: The Painted Tiger Tiger Cub, purchased on Etsy.
Color: Cool as a Cucumber
Needles: US size 1 DPN

Other than the gauge thing, which was totally on me, and of course the finicky-ness of short row toes and heels, the knit was pretty fun. More so, because for some reason this color and the yarn texture itself had a very odd sense memory for me. The yarn is 20% nylon and has a vague acrylic feel to it. Not so much that I didn't want to knit with it, but more so than other similar content yarns I've worked with. It completely reminds me of mittens my mom had when I was a kid, which I'm sure were hand knit by my grandmother, or maybe even my mom herself ~30 years ago. But the color and feel was almost the same. The whole time I was knitting these I was recalling fond memories of snowmen, snow forts and skiing back home. BTW, they machine wash beautifully and I can't get them to shrink at all. Trust me, I tried in an attempt to make them the same size.

Then, in March, when I finished these, I cast on for my sister's next pair of socks, you see it was her turn and I thought I would have them done in time for her birthday. I knit an entire sock. Rather quickly as I recall, from some Claudia's Handpaints fingering that's been kicking around my stash for >3 years or so waiting to be socks for Shelly. It was the color "roasted chilies". The pattern was Spring Forward and technically there was nothing wrong with the sock. I just didn't like it. Somewhere along the line I decided that the texture of the yarn wasn't quite right for socks, particualarly in the stockinette portion of the sole. I kept knitting anyways, like a fool. Got to the toe, let the sock sit on my dresser for a week, and then frogged the whole thing. A whole sock, just like that, gone. Sock fail #2:

That was June-ish. Just not a good year for socks.

knitting

I've got some finished stuff to show off. It took me a while to get some pictures so some are little old, but better late than never. Last week the knitting gals got together and did a little photoshoot. Thanks very much to ashpags for taking all the pictures for us. These are just a few shots, it was so hard to pick from all of the beautiful ones she took.


This sweater got done the night before we took of for home in December. Good thing too because I wore it almost everyday since it was so cold and snowy up there. You can see it already has the fuzz of a well loved comfy sweater.

Pattern: Petra from Cocoknits
Yarn: Classic Elite Two.Two. from Webs. The very first time I ever went there. It's discontinued, and this is it's second life as a sweater. One horribly bad crocheted nightmare was frogged before the move and this is a much better use of this very bulky yarn.



This is the hat I knit a few weekends ago. I am so in love with it, I can't explain it. The yarn is divine. Also from Webs, maybe summer sale of 2007? I'm doing a little stash-busting in light of the failing economy and that (still unsold) second house.

Patttern: Lace Grace Beret from Loop.
Yarn: Grace from Louisa Harding in dark teal. 1 ball and little bit of a second one.

I used different needle sizes because I couldn't locate a size 9 16" circular anywhere, so I used size 8 for the body, I stuck with size 6 or the ribbing. It seemed to work out fine. The pattern is easy to follow and quick to knit. The yarn is lucious and a joy to work with. I'm making some fingerless mitts to complement the hat. This was the first time I've ever done a tubular cast on and it was a neat trick with a pleasing result.

Since I don't think I have any knitting lovelies to show off anytime soon, and I want to make the pretty photographs last as long as possible, I just give you a tease of the other project. Remember that last pair of socks I promised. Well I'm still writing up the pattern, but this should give you something to think about:

Under the wire

Hi! Welcome to the New Year. I have many random tidbits that will be posted over the next few weeks in the truely random fashion that my brain works in.

First up: Socks. Remember those 6 pairs of socks I was going to make in 2008? Well I did it, just under the wire the last toe was kitchnered and the ends were woven in on December 30. Just shy of my personal deadline. I actually knit 15 individual socks this year, but three are still mateless.

Here's the skinny on two of them. The third is waiting for a photoshoot and possibly a full pattern release type thing.

Andalusion Socks. I'm calling them that because I based them off of the stitch pattern I found here. This were for my dear husband who love his socks more than he really needs to. He was quite sad when the first half of the year was producing socks for everyone but him, but he was pretty happy with the results. I didn't follow a pattern for this, just shoved the stitch pattern onto a 72 stitch standard top down sock on size 1 needles. I started off with about an inch of 1x1 rib. The yarn is my favorite workhouse sock yarn Trekking XXL, which was accidently* purchased at Webs sometime 2007.

I finished them sometime in July. The first I distinctly remember finishing when I briefly saw my husband in Florida in May for the fitting. They were mostly knit on airplanes. I thought about doing the whole pattern write up thing, which is why it's taken so long for them to make an appearance on the blog. I found it a really fun pattern to work up, not as boring at straight stockinette stitch, but super easy to remember. Just enough visual interest for a funky psuedo-striping yarn like this one. But, then as they saw more wear, I don't think they fit as well as they should and although hub denys it, they fall down, so I decided that it's not really a worthy "pattern" in that sense. If you like it just make a regular plain vanilla sock like the YH does but do a knit one purl one on every 4th round.

Fancy Silk Sock for a Child of 5 or 6 years. From my favorite sock book. There is just something so cool about these old patterns finding new life. Sometimes I think I have an old soul and that's why I like the old stuff. Sometimes I think I like the connection with the past it reminds me of all the history that forms a person (family, culture, etc.). Anyways, this is the the 3rd pattern I've made from this book and I'm working on my fourth now. These were my mom's pair for this year. She had previously expressed that her other "woolies" were a bit warm for everyday wear so they didn't see the light of day as often as they might, so I opted for this lace pattern, to give a little more breathing room. Although I think that in my mind these were picked out for mom the minute I saw them in the book. I used some Valley Yarns Franklin in color blueberry. Loved the yarn and loved the pattern, although the scallopy edge was bit finicky to start with, but it's only for a few rows so it's not a big deal. I eliminated the double decrease thingy on the foot section because I thought it might be uncomfortable in shoes.

While I was home for the holidays I also got mom to do a photo shoot with the original "woolies" as she calls them since they never had blog time when I made them two years ago.
They are the Handpaint Highlights pattern from 101 One Skein Wonders (the original one), with Fyberspates Sock Yarn in color "Foxglove". I don't think you can get this yarn anymore, it was when she was just new and it's not even superwash.


So there you have it, the 2008 sock round up. Now it's time to start the sock queue up again for 09. Sis you're up next!

*The scene in the checkout line with my friend was something like this. Friend: do you think my BF would wear socks made out of this or is it too wild. Me: why not? My husband would. Friend: but BF is quite picky. Me: Well then I don't know what to tell you. Friend (as my yarn is ringing up): Well if you're husband will wear it you should buy it. Bleep bleep, it's in my bag.

Halfway there, or "I do still knit"

Just not that much. It's been kind of busy, and I've been away from home, so my craftiness has been on the back burner for awhile. Plus, my husband is not here and there is no TV here. Since I do most of my knitting a) on weekends while hub makes breakfast or b) in front of the tube, I have not been knitting as much.

Somehow (I think a couple or a dozen airplanes where involved) I did manage to make it halfway through my sock-knitting plans for the year. I never posted my goals for this year, but one of them included making and/or completing 6 pairs of socks. 1 pair for each of my loyal sock wearers (my sister, my mother, my husband and my husband's uncle), and 2 pairs for me. I've decided to be a little more selfish in my knitting. I enjoy it more and life is too short to not enjoy what you choose to do. Anyways, back to that first goal, the 12 socks. I am happy to announce that 6 are complete:

First up we have the nutkin socks, that I made from artyarns ultramerino4 color 111, purchased from pickup sticks. These are a bit behind on their blog reporting, as I finished them before I left on this trip, somewhere in the neighborhood of Feb 20th or so. Originally, I intended to keep these for myself, but working on them while hanging out with my sister negated all those thoughts immediately. She fell in love with the colors, they're really her colors anyways, and since she has worn the pair of jaywalkers I knit her in 06, just about every time I've seen her since then (even brought them to the hospital to have her baby) she got bumped to the top of the list. This pattern was fun to knit, it does bias a little as some on Rav have mentioned, but it doesn't seem to bother sis as they were on her feet the last time I saw her. She also hinted that she doesn't own enough hand-knitted socks, but I don't think I can increase my output rate to more than one pair per sock wearer a year.

Next, we have some bordello sea socks made from Fleece Artist Sea Wool, purchased from the same sale at pickup sticks. The color is woodland. This was my first time working with this fiber, and I like it, I like it a lot. I started these in January, finished the first the first week of February and left them at home for most of my trip. I picked them back up when I was home three weeks ago, and finished them on the plane back last week. I wore them twice while I was home, and I'm pretty happy with them. You may notice some ladders. I don't know how they got there. This is the first time I have ever experienced ladders when knitting in the round. At first I thought it was the plastic pony pearl needles I was using, as I am a die hard bamboo gal, but couldn't find bamboos in the right size. But, I saw some other folks on ravelry have ladders too, so I think it may be a side effect of the increases and decreases happening on the ends of the needles.

Finally, we have some so square socks from knitspot. These are for Hub's uncle, who holds the dubious distinction of being the only person who had ever requested knitting from me and had that request granted happily. If you ever met unc's you'd understand why I broke my not knitting on demand rule for him. He's not the kind of guy to ask for much, and the socks that I knit him for Xmas 05 are the only gift we have given him that he has ever made use of. When I say ever, I mean he has gifts still in the boxes circa the mid-eighties. So when he said the socks were wearing a little thin, I went yarn shopping. I finished them just in time for his birthday, which is today. I dropped them by the post office this morning and they will happily arrive in time for his birthday dinner this weekend. These socks also hold the distinction of seeing more places than anything else I've knit. These socks have been knit in 7 different states. Yup, 7. The knitspot pattern was good, but I did have to make a few alterations to make it work right for the 70 stitch size, which I will list in my ravelery notebook for those interested in the details.

A finished sock...

Well, as promised after one finished "large" knitting project, I finished a sock....which conveniently finished a pair. Just in time for hubby's defense next week. I told him I knitted in extra luck just for him.

These are his first pair of "real" socks. He has four previous pairs, which he wears and wears. One was crocheted, one was knitting before I learned how to use dpn's so they were from the two needle sock pattern and have seams in them, and the other two were dpn practice socks out of worsted weight so they are pretty thick. The pattern is Gentelman's Fancy Sock from Nancy Bush's Knitting Vintage Socks. They are by far the best socks I've made to date. They also have the distinction of the pair to be on the needle's longest. Almost a year. I started these last November. I put them aside to complete Christmas knitting last year, and then I finished the first sock sometime in January or February. Then for a while they were my car knitting, and I cast on and knit the first 10 rounds or so of the second sock. This was Marchish. Then the size 0 brittany birch needles snapped in the e-break of my car. Then I ordered and waited for new size 0 bamboo needles because I couldn't find any locally. Then I transferred the stiches and knit the next 10 rounds. Then I needed to pay attention to the pattern which meant either a)bringing the socks in from the car, or b) bringing the pattern book out to the car. Which just never happened. Then it was May and we bought a new car, which meant everything that was in the old car, knitting included, got thrown in a paper grocery bag to be sorted at some later date. That bag is still on the floor in our office btw. Then I made my knitting promise, and after I finished the last pair of socks it was time to get another sock off the needles. So it was tossed in the knitting basket and then I started working on it after the front of Thalia was complete. I did quite a few rows during my sick day last week, more than I thought actually, turned the heel sunday morning and bam, by Monday night. A complete sock. Last night I kitchnered my way to complete sock freedom. Now there are only two in progress pairs to tackle.

Flying needles

A bit of craftiness today.

I have a project that I've been working on but couldn't blog about because it was a gift. Yes, it was one of the many pairs of in progress socks. Since, I'm me and can't do anything simply. These socks became a PROJECT. The yarn and a pattern were a bit of an impulse buy, but perfect for my sister. She has some type of allergy to most tights and therefore can't wear tall boots and skirts. Being a very fashion forward individual, she finds this disturbing. Being a fan of the boots and skirt combo myself I emphasize. So when this kit went on sale at kpixie. I bought it. That soft alpaca...yum...knitting heaven.

So I knit, it's one of those nifty patterns that changes needle size to change gauge. I had the first two sizes, but not the 3rd. So when I got to that point, I ordered some new ones. They came. I knit. They had splinters. They snagged the yarn. I got a splinter in my finger. I sanded. I knit. :) I was well on my way to having these socks done WAY before her birthday. Then DH decided to vacuum. I was sitting across the room and suddenly, knitting needles were flying everywhere! Somehow, the yarn between the sock and the rest of the ball had gotten caught, and it ripped the two apart. :(

A problem yes, but fixable, just like joining a new ball, no problem. Until we discovered this:

Yes, that is about 90% of the remaining yarn, wrapped around the brush in our vacuum cleaner. After a lot of "oh no, oh no, oh no" we got it all off and mostly saved. Enough to finish the sock at least. What a mess! But as repayment DH wove in all the ends (now that there were extra I was a little cranky)


The end result was mostly pretty socks: