Socks: January 2006 Archives
Believe it or not, it wasn't all about spinning wheels here over the weekend. I actually hunkered down a bit and finished the second of my Jaywalker socks. And, because I work hard to get the best color rendering possible, I actually sat outside on our upstairs balcony in 35 degree weather to get a natural light photo.
I won't go into too many details about these socks. Lord knows, most of you have probably made a pair yourselves if the popularity of the Jaywalker KAL (hosted by Cara at January One is any indication. I will say that I am happy with the way my socks came out and that I found the pattern easy enough and close enough to my "standard" sock pattern that I will probably consider making these socks again someday. Not only that, but I had a goodly amount of yarn left over, as evidenced by the photo below:
That's actually about 3/4 of an ounce if my scale is to be believed! I'm not sure if that is enough to have made the larger size, but I found that I was good to go with the smaller size for my feet. For, indeed, these socks are a present to me -- probably the last pair of socks I am going to make for myself for a while as I embark on the great "Let Them Wear Handknit Socks!" campaign for my family for the coming year.
And you'll all be proud! As soon as I finished with these socks, I went and found my husband's lonely Trekking XXL sock and the yarn and cast on for the second one of that pair. I gave him a choice on our way home from the Fold. I could either finish up the pair I had started or I could get started right away on a new pair for him out of the Beryl Socks that Rock. Practical guy that he is, he requested that I finish the pair in progress. So back I go to the Trekking socks. After all, a guy who buys me a spinning wheel for my birthday really deserves to have me finish another pair of socks for him.
P.S. I am fascinated by the results of the poll from yesterday. If you haven't checked it out yet, please do! I am also jealous of whomever out there has one of those Golding spinning wheels. I'm hoping to try one of those out while at MS&W this year. And for those of you who checked the "other" box, I'd love to know what other wheels are out there that I missed! Other than that, I'll try to sum up the resuls on Friday!
So I've been thinking about socks. In particular, I've been thinking about what kinds of socks I want to make for my family. So I've been looking through my stash and browsing about the Internet a bit looking to see what I have that I think will fit with the special people in my life.
John, is the first recipient I'm going to tackle. Really, I'm not completely playing fair here, as my goal for him is simply to finish the pair of Trekking XXL 90 socks that I started for him a long time ago. But he's also getting a special scarf this winter, too, so I decided that I could probably get my own personal family sock festival started with something that was already on its way. For anyone looking for interesting but manly sock yarn, I can highly recommend this Trekking colorway. John actually picked it himself out of my yarn stash! Maybe we're beginning to make progress on the whol colored sock issue! (As an aside...John's been asking for a pair of heavier weight socks for winter. Does anyone know of a good yarn in DK to Worsted weight that is suitable for socks? By suitable for socks I mean that it must be machine washable, dryer tolerant, and relatively durable. This means that it needs to have some superwash qualities and probably a little nylon. And, of course, since it's for the husband, it can't be very out there...)
For my mom and dad, I decided to think about the things they liked and liked to do to see if I could come up with sock yarn inspiration. Lucky for me, I'm one of those people who has no problem justifying a sock yarn purchase on the basis of "I think
My mom was a little more challenging. I have a lot of nice Koigu, some lovely Mountain Colors Bearfoot, a bunch of brightly colored Regia and a fair amount of other self-patterning sock yarn that I really like. But for no reason that I could put my finger on, I just couldn't find something in my stash that I really felt called out for my mom. So I started browsing sites looking at sock yarn, hoping for inspiration. Of course, I had to make a stop at the PT Yarns site to take a look at the current Opal offerings (PT Yarns is the US distributor for Opal. I've always regretted not being able to find any of their tiger striped yarn before they discontinued it, since I thought it would be perfect for my cat-loving mother. So you can only imagine my happiness when I discovered the Opal Rainforest collection and found the "Tiger" colorway.
Even better, I found the yarn for sale online at Carodan Farms and they got it to me lickety-split! Definitely a store I'll be ordering from again in the future. And is it just me, or has Opal gotten to be softer and a little thicker in the last year or so?
At any rate, I'm totally excited about getting started with these yarns -- it's going to be really difficult to decide which pair to work on first -- after I finish my Jaywalkers and John's Trekkings. And it definitely gives me motivation to get my current sock projects finished!
It seems that I am at a mid-way point with almost all my projects right now. Perhaps I am dividing my time too much. This weekend I worked on the Backyard Leaves scarf for mom (I've only got four repeats left on the second half of the scarf, so it's beginning to feel like the home stretch), my Morehouse Merino Melody's Shawl (an immense quantity of circular stockinette knitting with lace weight yarn), spun about a bobbin's worth of the silk wool blend from my mom, and finished up one of my Jaywalker socks.
It did take some effort, but I actually got the next sock cast on. All things considered, this is not such a bad pattern. Not to difficult to make it feel like hard work, not just solid stockinette, either. And I think the pattern works well for this yarn.
I know, this is not earth-shatteringly exciting knitting content. Not sure why my knitting life is mostly filled with simple things right now. In some respects, I think it's mostly for practical reasons. Given that it's winter here in Chicago, the handiest items for keeping warm are socks and scarves. These are also the garments that I think are easiest to gift and also know that the recipient will probably be happy using. That, and, while I've liked what I've seen in the recent knitting magazines and books, I really just haven't had a sweater reach out and grab me and demand to be knitted lately. So socks and scarves it is for a bit. I'm looking forward to the scarf I'm going to knit for my aunt -- it's been a while since I've really designed anything and it will be good to work out the creative side of my brain.
One thing that is helping me through all this knitting is a new discovery (for me, at least, clearly many of you already know about it) that I learned of through Marie Irshad's KnitCast podcast. I just love being able to download podcasts via iTunes, because I really enjoy listening to something while I am working on a piece that needs a fair amount of attention. Marie's podcast is great fun, and it was also my introduction to Brenda Dayne's Cast On podcast. I spent the weekend listening through her back recordings. Most of her podcasts are about an hour long and you get a little music, a fair bit of knitting info (not technique, really, more news and discussion of knitting culture) and a little bit about Brenda herself. And I like that. Just like I enjoy getting to know people through their blogs, I find that I also enjoy getting to know people through their podcasts -- in addition to hearing nifty thngs about the knitting world. Brenda and Marie make the perfect complement to getting another pattern interval done on whatever project you're working on.
