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?

Stripey green socks finished!

As I was thinking what to blog about today, I suddenly realised I'd completely forgotten to tell you that these stripey green socks are now finished! After the length of time these have been dragging on, I can't believe I forgot :-) It's like a huge weight has been lifted now these are done and dusted. I do like them, don't get me wrong, but sometimes a project just needs to be finished so you can move on and start something new.

It's my own fault though as I put them away to 'get back to'! I got to the heel of the second sock and look, the stripes don't match. How come one is so much bigger?! Perfect heel though, which I was pleased about but not so pleased that I would have to rip it back to sort out the stripe patterning. So it kind of got sidelined by other projects. But it kept niggling away at me saying 'you've got to fix that heel, you know'. And I'm saying, 'Yes, yes, but the ishbel/albem/beret is nearly finished and I'm on a roll, etc....' And so it went on:-)

But it got to a point where the drip, drip, drip got to me! So out the socks came and what do you know? In about one evening they were past the heel, up the leg, being ribbed and cast off! One evening! I had been sitting with the weight of this unfinished WIP all that time for one evenings work?! Seriously, a big lesson learned!

But they are nice, aren't they? Perfect stripey socks that now match all the way up ;-) I may have to knit the rib on a smaller needle size as they feel a little loose on me but I'll try that on the next pair. Remembering not to experiment with alterations on the second sock so I don't end up having to take it all back to match the first!!

Next up on the sock front? I think the Wendy happy that was going to be stripey gloves may have to revert to socks again. The stripes are so wide that the gloves look very sad and not funky at all. But if the stripes insist on being that wide, I could easily get a very funky pair of knee highs out of the two balls I have of it. That would mean shaping up the calf of the sock - a new thing to learn and master:-))

And the gloves? I do have some Harry Potter Opal 'Tonks' that is much more stripey that would do very well indeed. Well, that's my TV knitting sorted for the next wee while!

Now, where to start? Shawls, gloves, socks, sunflower scarf, unfinished pink beret.....

Green stripey sock - one down, one to go....

At last I have some progress for you on the green stripey socks. One is done and I just need to get into sock knitting mode to start the other one. The toe up worked really well using the magic loop and Judy's magic cast on so I'll be sticking to that from now on. I did notice on Yarn Harlot's sock summit site, Judy is doing a class on the magic heel which has no picking up of wrapped stitches. A super duper way of doing toe-up heels!!! Hopefully she will publish it soon and Cat Bordhi will make a new video and we can all be knitting perfect toes and heels from now on.

Just a simple 1x1 rib for the top of the sock but maybe I should have stopped on the larger green band as the blue/white edge looks a bit messy not being a more solid colour. We knit and learn:-)

I have spent some time today looking at lace wrap and shawl patterns and have added a few to my 'to-do' list! So far, I'm considering the Shadow Scarf, the woodland shawl, Print o' the wave stole (the link is down at the mo) and Jeanie, from knitty's winter 2007 , a lovely double cabled scarf with floats that looks very interesting. I'm going to practice a few samples before launching into something complex though so I will post as and when they are finished. If you have a lace pattern you could recommend, I would love to hear about it - the more the merrier!

Meanwhile, I have another sock to knit before I suffer from second sock syndrome!!

Green stripey socks

This is the yarn I started my sock experiments with yesterday - the green trekking - using the magic cast on with only one circular. The stripes have come out pretty much like it looks in the ball which I like. The random thick and thin lines work well and keep you interested as you knit. Mind you, the picture that went with this online didn't look anything like this. It was more of a blended mixture than definite bands. The label did say 'for best effect, knit with alternate skeins'. Anyone tried this for socks? I tried it on one of my christmas berets and it worked well to stop the pooling of the larger lengths of colour but I would be interested to see what effect it had here on more obvious stripes.

I had to take this back once already as the set amount of stitches for my width of foot seemed overly generous. Hopefully it will be a better fit now. Mind you I am tempted to take it back again as the change from 2 to 4 needles is very obvious and I don't like the line it leaves right down the middle on both sides. Another reason for circulars. This didn't seem so much of a problem with the heavier sock yarns and I know it will probably settle with blocking but still.

Anyway, I can resolve this now as my replacement circular arrived this morning very well padded for the post. Thank you Alison. I'm looking foward to a more pleasureable sock knit now:-)

Film watching whilst knitting the sock: Princess mononoke - you can click the link to watch some clips:-)

I love these forest spirits - although they are meant to be harbingers of a death, probably your own. So back to some sock knitting and maybe on my anime roll, I'll watch 'Spirited Away'. Don't know yet as there's another 2 hour miss marple on tonight :-)

Sock yarn patterning

Now I'm a little more in the land of the living, I just wanted to show you the last of the yarn I ordered. It arrived with my niddy noddy just as the snow descended, and my photos couldn't get away from the white 'glare' from outside. But, they are okay for a little taster! This is the Trekking hand art range from Zitron. In the online shop picture it looked much redder so I wasn't expecting orangey/brown tones - but hey! (It does emphasise the importance of getting the colour right for my own yarns though.)

What I found the most interesting was the actual length of the hank. It measures in the round about 1.25 metres all told and you can clearly see how the colour has been distributed along the length. I like how some sections of colour are diagonal or striped or don't cover every thread - interesting. It will be even more interesting to see how it knits up. I read somewhere on a sock pattern that if you have short stretches of colour, it stops the pattern pooling or 'flashing' - thinking the sundae socks and zigzags!

Out of curiosity, I also unwound a bit of the green trekking yarn to find the length of the repeat in that. About an hour later, a pool of yarn on the floor and with a full page of measurements, I realised the repeat is just over 47 metres long. And there I was worried about 12 metres. Helps to put things in perspective! So, okay, I can't compete with a machine produced yarn but I can have a play and the longer the length, the more variety you can get in the colour variations. But I'm not busting a gut to get 47 metres :-)

So, now I've got all this yarn, I want to get knitting it! But I'll have to finish the black opals first. More on their progress tomorrow. But I have altered the heel construction on the second one so it might mean ripping back the first one to match. But I'm not being hasty, I'll wait and see first.