The lonely sock....

As many of you know, I seem to fall victim to the deadly second sock syndrome on a regular basis :) I can race through one sock but fail to muster enough oomph to continue onto the second. I enjoy the challenge of the new pattern or technique but not the repetition of it - hence a lot of single socks, gloves, mitts and armwarmers are hibernating all over the place in their incomplete state, making me feel guilty every time I rediscover one.

So last friday, when I was looking around for an easy knit in the evening, I stumbled across this poor, lonely single 2x4 rib sock I started. No specific pattern for this one as I just knitted a basic toe-up sock with a short row heel and added a simple rib to compliment the busy hand painted yarn.  The yarn isn't one of my dyed yarns:), it's from Zitron Trekking's hand art range. I've had it for quite a while and it's been tried out with a few sock patterns with little success. I love the randomness of the colour drifts but it always fights even the simpler patterns so rib it was destined to be.

Because this is for a gift, I increased my stitch count to 66 sts instead of my customary 60 to fit a large womans/small mans sock size. (If you needed to decrease or increase the size, just work with a multiple of 6 and knit as long as you need to the heel.) The sole is smooth, the top is ribbed and after the heel shaping, the rib is continued in the round for as high as you want to make them. The cuff is a nice stretchy 1x1 rib and the bind off is extra loose. I remind myself every time and still I always have to unpick the bind off. I think I'm knitting it soooo loose and then when you try and get the damn thing on it gets stuck at the heel :)) So, for me loose means looooose!

So, progress so far on the second sock? You will be proud of my staying power! I knitted all friday, saturday and a little of sunday night and I have raced through the cast on, zoomed up the sole, conquered the heel and am now on the home straight up to the cuff. Wooo! See what I can do when I just get past that second sock syndrome? :)

So now the lonely sock might actually become a matching pair after all :)

Happy, happy:)

There has been a little bit of christmas knitting going on over the last few days  - yummy stripey armwarmer gloves:) I love these so much its going to be hard to part with them! But I can console myself with the fact I still have another ball of Wendy's lovely 'happy' bamboo yarn - colourway capricorn - stashed away that I can knit up for me another time!

This yarn is a soft 4ply/fingering weight bamboo mix - 75% bamboo/25% nylon - with a lovely sheen to it and it is knitting up very nicely indeed. The bamboo doesn't have as much elasticity as wool and although it's looking fine on 2.5mm needles, I think it would have been slightly better on 2.25mm's with my tension.

As an experiment, I tried a row using the continental knitting style against my usual method of 'throwing' and the tension was much tighter but knitted up a lot quicker. Hmmmm. Knitting whole lengths of stocking stitch in the round for these gloves would certainly go a lot faster this way although I still haven't spent enough time mastering all the stitches K2tog, SSK's etc. yet. But the second glove isn't the time to experiment unless I want varying tensions and sizes of glove:)))

So far, I'm onto the fingers of glove one but I'm shortening the colour runs of the self stripe sock yarn a bit as I want jazzy odd fingers - of course! I'm using an adaptation of Brigids Hearth's armwarmers pattern which you can find here. It's only designed to be long mitts from elbow to just over the thumb, but I like gloves and if you're going to warm your arm, it's a shame to leave the fingers out!! It's a quick knit though and perfect for self-striping yarns.

Actually, this would be a brilliant pattern to use up those leftover small balls of sock yarn and much more personalised too. Shame most of my stash is DK or bigger;) I'll have to hunt out another pattern or modify this one. Do you think Christmas is going to end up being on a theme of gloves?? Wasn't intended to be but it's an idea ....... ;))) 

Little minx

Well, at last the DIY is finished for the week and I can put my feet up and relax - and knit:-) And first up on the needles is these lovely twisted rib stitch toe-up socks called 'Little Minx' designed by Karen Scott  (designer of those lovely cabley cornflower cowls and socks I knitted.) This is another test knit and I need to get my ass in gear for Karen:-)) So don't worry Karen, they are doing and I hope to have made a huge dent in them over the weekend, if not even finished the first sock.

I was knitting away fine, enjoying the twists of the pattern but the more I knitted in this yarn, the more I felt unhappy. The yarn is Trekking's hand art, a lovely skein in itself but it is fighting the textures of this lovely pattern - sigh. So, I've decided to switch yarns. I'm sure this yarn will look lovely knitted as something else but its not doing my sock any favours!

The wrong side of the sock which is in St st shows the strong colour variegations of the yarns nicely. I really like this side:-) But it's just too busy to handle a complex texture on top - see?

The red banding is taking over completely in this close-up of the right side and the twists verticals are getting lost. So bye, bye, trekking and hello.... Zauberball!!!

Almond

Cranberry

Yup. I'm thinking of using a tonal colourway rather than the high contrasting ones though. Something like almond or cranberry going up and down the tonal scale s-l-o-w-l-y so we have colour variation but it won't interfere with the lovely twists. What do you think?

Knitting testers

I've just finished knitting up the little yarn testers to show you.  Did you think this was how they would knit up? For some reason, I thought there would be more room between the stripes so I'll show you bigger bands next tester session:-) I always think it's amazing how so highly contrasting colours like the purple with the coral and orange can knit into something much more subtle - contrasting stripes but overall they blend well.

The one pinky/orange semi-solid I knitted using the cornflower cable pattern from Karen's cowl pattern I've been knitting. I'm due to test knit this pattern as socks so I thought I could have a tester here first. Now I just want to carry on and make me some bright pink cabley socks - yum!! So now I'll have to get some more yummy yarn dyed for me to use.

I also promised to show you the two skeins of silk I dyed as well. These were dyed with the same tones as the supersock yarns but they have come out a lot paler with more subtle colour variations. Despite that, I do like them but I think I'll need to practice with the silk base a bit more to get a feel for the yarn as well as getting the colours I intended:-)

You may have noticed a few blogless days here this week but I'm glad to say it's all been towards a very good cause - electrics in the shed:-)))) How happy has this made me? Happy, happy dance!! We have spent the last two days working on this and I now have power and lights - well, one light but another two to come soon as we ran out of natural light to get the job finished today. And we were so lucky to get two dry days in a row too. But we are all soooo tired!! Running a cable the full length of the garden wall and having to remove years worth of clinging ivy is NOT a fun job. But, it's all worth it, it really is:-) Now I can get the inside of the shed properly dry again after the flood and seal the floor and the walls. So not quite finished but a huge step in the right direction!!

I'll also be able to set up my hot plates and get some kettle dyeing done too! Oh, it's all exciting:-)

I've also finished a few projects - gasp! - and I've started some more spinning too so I'll tell you  all about it this week. Just need some decent light for pictures!!

Coral pinwheel flowers:-)

I've been up in my shed doing a little dyeing of testers and these cute little mini-skeins are the result from yesterday. Yesterday was a coral pink day. Since I've been asked for a skein of coral yarn, I thought I'd investigate and play with this colour - who knew coral pink could have so many tones? I love pink but I tend towards the magenta/purple pinks myself so this was an exploration into pastures new:-) If you type coral pink into google images, you get the full gamut of orangey pinks to pinkier coral tones, from pales to deep rich colourations.

So if you asked me to dye you a coral pink yarn, which tone would you mean?! My first impressions of what colour to dye just widened dramatically!! The world of colour seems to grow the more I really study it - it's fascinating and I'm glad I've moved out of my colour comfort zone to explore a new palette of colour.

I'm loving this rose - look at the tones of pinks and orangey pinks, just lovely. I'm wanting some of these for my garden now - although I didn't think I was a rose girl personally. But then since I've had a garden of my own, I've discovered I tend towards big and blowsy flowers like Dalias and Peonies:-) So this one is very much in keeping - and it's very bright and in your face!!

My first attempt at coral went a lot orangier than I wanted so I overdyed with a pinkier tone to get this deep orangy coral. It matches the heart of the rose perfectly! And it definitely comes under the coral colour umbrella;-) But is it the right tone of coral for my request?

I also dyed a test skein of 100% silk worsted weight using the same dye colour which came out a lovely soft crab pink/coral - you can see it at the bottom of the pinwheel garden pic at the top! But the light failed today as I was photographing so it would be best if I waited to do the yarn justice - it's just so gorgeous and soft with a lovely sheen - yum! Hopefully I can capture it in better light tomorrow.

I used the mini-samples to explore the differing tones of coral, from orange tints to more pinkier tones in a cross range of semi-solids, subtle and strong variegateds. So, now I'm going to knit them up and see how they turn out and maybe they will make it into my shop as a new colourway - we'll have to wait and see.

All the reds

This weekend, we have some dyeing going on! Using those reds I was playing about with over the last week or so, we have a scarf blank called 'All the reds' especially commissioned for EJ. I would like to thank EJ for being so understanding this month with me being unwell which has delayed her receiving her especially commissioned yarn. But at long last, it is dyed, rewound into a skein and ready to go.

I really love these colours -very intense but still with the feel of Autumn. This blank is painted from light to dark in the middle back to light again at the other end. Very similar visually to the calm horizons in the giveaway last month.

I dyed a couple more skeins, one semi solid and one variegated, in cranberries, plums and purples but they are still drying so photos soon - well, depending whether it stops raining and I get some decent light!

On a shed note, the water has mostly dried out and doesn't seem to be flooding again even after a full day of rain. I think it must have been a flash flood after a month of dry weather hardening the ground so the water ran off the hill instead of soaking in. But, just to be on the safe side, the shed is getting a waterproofing inside. Haven't quite figured out quite how yet or just how expensive that will be but I think it is definitely necessary to stop everything getting ruined once I move in all my work stuff if it happens again.

Got a bit of startitis for a few new projects too so more this week as they progress.... Happy knitting!

The story of the plummy red yarn.....

I've been playing around with the red dyes a bit more this week and spent a bit of time trying to get subtle tones of mid to dark red. They don't look the same on paper as they do on the yarn but if you give them a coat of PVA glue they come up a treat! The brush can drag the dye as well though so a spray varnish would probably be a better idea next time.

I've been keeping colour notes as I go along to go in my dyeing notebook - see, getting organised:-) And having fun playing with tones on a colourwheel too. There are so many online charts you can work with - this tonal version is from Itten's book on colour. Simple and clear tones, easy to read and use. I like this one for its clarity.

And this much more complex version if you really want very subtle gradations of colour. Its a shame my printer has run out of ink as this one is pretty comprehensive to work with. I need to laminate a copy and stick it on my workshop wall - when the shed is ready, that is.

So after my foray into colour, I narrowed my colours down to three tones of reds and three tones of plum purples. Then played with colourwashes:-) The red wash was a lot more subtle before I killed it with glue - sigh! I also had an idea to stop the colour varying on paper and yarn by using thin mini test blanks. You would have had some lovely pictures as they painted up beautifully. It's just a shame I set fire to them in the microwave -BIG sigh!

So, how did I manage that, you ask? Um, well, I chopped up a long knitted length and stapled card on the ends to stop the yarn unravelling before dyeing. What's wrong with that, you ask? Didn't dawn on me that the staples are of course metal until I saw the flames:-) Luckily the microwave still works - god knows how! - if a bit smelly for the next few uses but its all fine now. It took longer getting the burnt smell out the house. Luckily I still have the blowers that are drying the floor in the living room - still! don't get me started on that subject:-) I'm ignoring the fact that the water leak has taken over a month to dry out so far... But the blowers came in handy to shift the burnt smell! (NB - I only use this microwave for dyeing! I never use it for food, so don't worry:-)

But it was worth it as I got a lovely plummy red skein of variegated yarn ready to go. No idea what I want to make from it, I'm just living with it for a while till the right project comes up....

Commission your own yarn

Today being the final prize in my giveaway month, I have something a little different for you. Yes, it's a blank skein of sock yarn, just waiting for the winner to tell me what colours they'd love to have this dyed in, and how they would like it dyed - sock blank, scarf blank, variegated, big or small stripes etc.

Over the past month we've had strong variegated yarns like tootiefruitie and deep fuschia, stripes like the emerald green and the firestarter socks as well as semi solids and more subtle variegations like lavendar blue. You may have a specific colourway in mind or maybe you would like one similar to those that have been up for offer this month.

This skein is the end of a cone so there is a little extra yarn - about 116gms in total -which is perfect for that extra little bit you wish you had when you are getting to the end of a big shawl or scarf :-) I wish I'd had that last night - I got to the edging of my nightingale shawl and read on ravelry that this section needs about 24gms. Weighed my yarn left - 24gms. It's going to be verrrry tight!

So, if you have a small project in mind from all our wonderful pattern suggestions this week, maybe you can win your own commissioned hand dyed yarn to knit it with. I look forward to hearing your suggestions!

ETA: competition closed.

Calm horizons

Running with my landscape theme I wanted to try out a less busy pattern and have strong areas of pure colour blending in to one another. I removed the purples and concentrated solely on a monochromatic colour palette running from dark to lights. I didn't go too light though to keep the contrast from being too extreme when knitted up. So this runs from darks to mid tones of blues.

This is the blank painted, it's slightly darker than the final colours as its still wet but you can get a very good visual idea how this will knit up. If you want a long rectangular scarf, it will run from light to dark to light blue again - light blue tips and dark around the neck. If you want a narrower scarf than the width of this blank - 5ocms - then you will just get slightly longer sections of colour before it moves on to the next tone. There is something so calming about simple gradations of colour - simple, no busyness, just calm and floaty. It looks like deep blue layers in the sky as the sun is going down, before any red creeps in there.

I have seen some lovely shawls knitted up with simple colour gradations and they look just like butterfly wings - gorgeous. What a lovely way to add character and colour without killing the pattern. Or maybe a small stripey bag like this one? You can imagine the colours drifting into each other easily for this pattern - although I think fingering weight may be a little light for a tote bag:-) But it would look great!

So thinking larger bands of colour, what do you think this yarn would knit up best as?

Look forward to hearing all your suggestions and see you tomorrow for our final giveaway.

After the storm

Today we have had the most torrential rain with blustery winds, blowing at us horizontally in sheet after sheet of never ending rain. The sky was so dark at lunchtime that it looked like dusk. Sadly this heralds the end of summer and the change of seasons, but after the storm, everything smells fresh and alive and vibrant. Yes, the flowers are dying and the blooms are falling off one by one but there is something about the coming of Autumn that makes me feel alive. I always enjoy Autumn, even the wind and rain:-) as the weather seems in its right place - please, mother nature - NOT so much of it in summertime, please!! And I like being able to pull out the warmer jumpers and knee socks with big boots, wrapped up ready for whatever the weather decides to throw at us. The colours we wear suddenly move away from lighter tones of lilac, pale blues and greens to deeper shades as if we are mentally and visually preparing for the change of season and packing away our summer colours and clothes.

As I was considering what colours to dye today, I think that subconscious part of me was talking very loudly! I have started to move into deeper tones, rich and comforting palettes that want now to be explored. The weather today suggested this new yarn - After the storm. Okay, the landscape out my window wasn't quite so intensely coloured but the idea of bands of colours from sunsets and landscapes reminded me a lot of the work of Mark Rothko's colour field studies and it also reminded me that I'd been thinking of using yarn blanks as a canvas.

So I started to play around mixing dyes and experimenting with some colour palettes using fields of colour. The knitted blanks I am trying out today are slightly different from the sock blanks - I think I'll call them scarf blanks:-). Using only one thread, I knitted up an 100gm blank twice as wide as the socks, so I could literally 'see' how a scarf would look over the full length. If I paint from dark to light, the scarf will knit up exactly the same. I find this much easier to visualise than painting a very long skein. Each blank will be unique and I can have no colour repeats at all - a one-off painting.

So, today I painted my landscape of the stormy sky based on my little colourwash. I randomly changed the tonal values as I went. I find this method really lets you get much subtler detail in the colours and you can blend as you go. I wanted to let you see this as a blank first so you can imagine just how this will knit up if you are planning a long rectangular scarf. If you are thinking socks, then this will give you a similar stripe pattern to my aquaviolet cable socks that I'm knitting from my purply/blue/green sock blank.

So, what do you think this one-off scarf skein would look nice knitted up as?

Tuesday giveaway

Today's yarn giveaway is called 'Butterscotch' - 100gms of fingering weight supersock yarn 75% merino 25% nylon. I was thinking more of an autumn feel - richer, warmer colours that were close enough tonally to be used for a complex lace shawl as well as socks or gloves. Its also more of a unisex colour so is more flexible overall.

I think some rich, deep socks would be lovely with this - cookie A's designs especially. Or maybe a so-called scarf like my sunflower one to let the variegated pattern meander across the surface of the knitting.

Sunflower scarf

There have been some lovely suggestions already so please have a look at some of the pattern links. The nereid fingerless gloves based on Cookie A's pomatomus socks look lovely or you could knit the pomatomus socks instead:-) There would be enough for a small shawl or scarf like these lace scarf suggestions - Madeira Cascade and the checkerboard lace scarf.

my small magenta Ishbel shawl

Or if you feel up to a more complex lace challenge, you could get a small Ishbel shawl designed by Ysolda out of one skein, but you have to pay for that pattern, or knit up a gail aka nightsong shawl - like the one I'm presently working on over on the sidebar - but you have to be in ravelry to access that one but its free.

I've not finished my nightsong shawl yet but you can have sneek peek:-) I just love this pattern!

I'm getting into the swing of it now so it shouldn't take me that long to finish! Just got to remember not to knit this when I'm tired as I spend more time taking back my mistakes than actually knitting the lace!!

Good luck for today's competition and in answer to a query, you don't have to add a link to your entry, only if you had a specific pattern in mind. But it's very interesting to have a look at all the pattern ideas that are coming in from everyone - lots of knitting ideas to add to our to-do lists:-)

See you tomorrow!

Grande Final giveaway!

Well, we have arrived at the last week of the giveaways and this week is going to be slightly different - a grande giveaway:-) ie, lots of prizes for you to win! So many of you have entered my competitions and have given such thoughtful answers, thank you, and I feel bad that only a few can win, so this week I am giving away 5 prizes so there is a much better chance of everyone winning something!!

But more on that in a minute. First, let's announce the winners from last weeks competition, picked totally at random by John from the textile blog:

The winner of the Aquamarine semi solid yarn is..... Kate!

And the winner of the Deep Orchid is..... Purple-power!

Well done to you both and if you could contact me at labellehelene@btinternet.com with your contact details, I will get the yarns off to you in the post as soon as possible.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So, this weeks competition is going to run a bit differently. Instead of everything being listed today, the 5 prizes will be listed one a day from this monday to friday so you can leave a comment on all or just the ones you want to enter. If you want to enter all, please leave a comment on all. As this will mean a lot more comments, I have kept the question simple for this week. All you need to say is what you think each particular yarn would look nice knitted up as - or woven, crocheted, etc, - and maybe a link to a pattern? That's all.

'Peacock Blue'

And today's yarn is called 'Peacock Blue' - 100gms of fingering supersock yarn 75% merino, 25% nylon. This is a rich mix of deeper blues and greens that will knit up in a much softer variegated yarn. With the tones being so similar, there will be less tonal contrast of lights and darks with this yarn but the colours will blend nicely, drifting from blues to greens and back again.

This would be lovely as a rich wrap or shawl, like Ysolda's new Damson shawl or the Feather Duster shawl by Susan Lawrence - who designed the forest canopy shawl I'm still knitting:-) My personal favourite is the Peacock shawl designed by Jae Koscierzynski - just lovely but requires an awful lot of yarn to make and I imagine you would need a lot of free time too! Gorgeous though and well worth it! It's on my to-do list - sometime!!

I've also been meaning to try the lovely glove patterns by Julia Mueller such as Gordian, Entangled stitches, and Glows. Somehow a deeper, richer colour for Autumn seems more appropriate as the weather changes.

'Gordian' by Julia Mueller

Although I just love the red, I can imagine these in a lovely petrol or peacock blue too - all that complexity of the cables - mmm! Yes, another one for my to-do list! You can see the subtle tones in the reds so a semi-solid or subtle variegated would work well for this. Maybe the peacock would be a little too strong in variation but maybe not. It all comes down to personal taste:-)

All this weeks competitions finish on sunday night - 6th September - and I will draw all the final winners first thing monday morning. You can enter all or as many as you like, remember, so good luck to everyone!

Horizontal stripes sock blank

Been trying out some more dyeing using the sock blanks. This time, I've painted some horizontal stripes rather than vertical ones to compare the difference. It's meant to give a more broken colour effect as each colour stripe is only about an inch/2.5cm wide. It would be cool if this knitted stripes going 'up' instead of around:-)

I tried to keep all the colours in the same family of warm tones with some plummy purple as a contrast. It dried a bit lighter than I expected but I still like the tones so its all good.

So what to make with this one? If this yarn is a bit more subtle than the other 'stripeys' then this should work well with a more complex sock pattern. Maybe some more cables or even a lace pattern? I still have my Cookie A book of lovely sock designs to work through so maybe I should take on a new technique and learn to knit socks from the top down:-) I know its not hard, I think I'm just used to short row heels and prefer the magic cast on to grafting the toes at the end. But that might have something to do with my bumpy intro to kitchener stitch:-) Even though I've got the hang of it now.

I do think the subtle colours would make a lovely lace shawl too. Maybe I'll knit a full 100gms sock blank with only one thread and dye shawl yarn with wider stripes and subtlties that way. I love variegated yarns but I really don't like how they can kill a delicate lace shawl pattern turning it into a fight between colour v's pattern with neither winning - or commonly known as a right dogs dinner:-) I can see more shawl yarn experiments on the horizon......

I thought I'd show you how the yarn rips back - crinkly! A good soak and dried under tension really does the trick but you do need quite a lot of weight for maximum de-crinkle. I used a hammer to weigh the ends of the two skeins down - hey, I was improvising ;-) and it worked a treat. I did check up about steaming and apparently you can steam the kinks out of the skein using a steam iron but don't let the iron touch the yarn. Haven't tried it yet as the other method works fine and I can go away and get some knitting done while its drying!

So, two de-crinkled skeins all ready to knit into matching socks. Now, just need to find a pattern.....