fraxknits’ blog

I know, posts are like buses around here...

Well I just wanted to do a final post to write about what I am currently knitting.

Firstly I am knitting the Elegant Ribbed Stockings by Ann Budd from Favourite Socks (still on my odyssey to knit everything in the book).  These are particularly special though because I am using the Cascade 220 I overdyed.  So this is the first thing I have knitted from my own hand dyed yarn.  They are a surprisingly quick knit for being knee high socks, probably because the gauge is so huge.

Elegant Ribbed Stockings

In order to counteract the huge gauge on this, I decided to go the other way on the other socks I am currently knitting.  after much recommending I am finally knitting the Coriolis Socks in New Pathways for Socks Knitters by Cat Bordhi and they really do not disappoint, they are a really interesting construction and lots of fun.  However in my wisdom I decided to try knitting them on 2.00mm needles because Cat's Master Numbers will allow me to do this.  They are understandably going slowly but the resulting fabric is so smooth and fine (for a handknit) that it is worth it.  I wouldn't want to have to knit like this all the time though.  I am using purple bfl sock yarn had painted by Knitwitches.  I bought this nearly two years ago and i has sat in my stash waiting for the perfect project because the colours are so good.  I gave up waiting in the end and I am very pleased that I did.

Coriolis Socks

Most people in the UK will probably know about this already but In Trafalgar Square in London there are plinths with statues on them and the 4th Plinth is empty.  Various things have filled it over the years and for this summer the great artist Antony Gormley (who was responsible for the fabulous Angel of the North statute) has filled the plinth.  He has chosen to fill it with ordinary people chosen by lottery who get to do anything they like (as long as it is legal) for one hour.  The project is called One and Other and there is someone on the plinth 24 hours a day every day and yesterday between 1pm and 2pm Brenda Dayne of Cast On was on the plinth!

Brenda Dayne Knitting on the Plinth

I finished the Komet Socks for a friend for Christmas and I am so pleased with the way they turned out.  I think that they look gorgeous and they were great fun to knit.  I shall definitely be knitting more of Stephanie Van Der Linden's patterns, free and paid since it was interesting and really well written.  It looks really complicated and yet I was still able to memorise the pattern quickly which was precisely the sort of knit I was looking for.  I think that the mixture of cables and lace makes the cables pop out even more.

Komet Socks 1

Komet Socks 2

I realised very late that Indigo Moon, the yarn I used, which whilst absolutely beautiful in terms of colour is probably the louet gems base yarn which is just not my favourite really and that was a shame.  On the up side these are a gift so I won't be wearing them if that is a problem for me.

I also completed them during the blue phase of Project Spectrum.  I haven't been following Project Spectrum much in my knitting this year.  I think I got put off because it started with a colour I really didn't like and my knitting never got back in sync after that.

Wow - it is so long since I have posted.  I did lose some mojo for a while and coupled with the dodgy typing on my laptop it has curtailed my desire to blog so much but I am going to try and make up for that now.

The first project I completed is the nearly fated Titania socks.  I started these in some Natural Dye Studio yarn in rosebud which pooled in a very ugly way and didn't work at all.  Then I lost the patter for about 2 years then I found the pattern and eventually tried it out with some Blue Moon Fibre Arts Socks that Rock in Thraven from the raven series of yarns overdyed in black.  It was dark and gothic and gorgeous (despite it being nearly 10 years I am still a recovering goth!) and became the Dark Titania's Revenge socks.  They are a little bit big for me (but my other pair of STR have felted a little bit so I am figuring that this might just reduce them to a perfect fit over time) and because of warm(ish) weather I have only been able to wear them a couple of times since finishing them.  But I love them and I can't wait to wear them lots in Winter.

Titania's Dark Revenge 1

Titania's Dark Revenge 2

The pattern was lots of fun but it was hard to decrease the lace part over the top of the foot and make it look nice.  There aren't great instructions for this so it was sort of a case of making it up as you go along which is fine but they haven't come out quite as well as I would have liked.  Only I will ever know that though so I am not too worried but I would probably try and fix this if I was knitting these socks a second time in a lighter yarn where it would be more obvious.

Socks that Rock Mediumweight yarn is ok but a little bit on the thick side for my preference.  I have 2 skeins of mediumweight left though and I like it, just in future will probably prefer to buy lightweight.

Wow - I appear to have completely forgotten to blog my last yarn purchase.

Ok I have a much smaller yarn budget these days because J and I are trying to pay off our mortgage early.  Far from being despondent though I am treating this as a great opportunity to really get to know my modest but pretty decent stash.  Not counting a big pile of leftovers just waiting to be turned into something new and exciting (see the earlier shawl) I have enough yarn to knit at my current speed for a year and half before I run out.  Obviously in this time I can keep the tank topped up with the occasional purchase but I am looking at yarn with a much more critical eye than buying things because they are pretty.

I did buy one new yarn though, it was a little bit reduced and will be used to make a Christmas present so it will pay for itself twice over which is a good thing and I do find I treasure my purchases a little more now they are less frequent.

This is the muse base yarn from Violet Green (80% merino, 10% nylon and 10% cashmere) and it does feel softer than most other yarns (this MCN blend being incredibly popular amongst all sorts of dyers and knitters at the moment).  It is the Magus colourway which is a sort of deep chocolatey brown and will make great socks for my Dad for Xmas.

The Magus Sock Yarn

I still occasionally catch myself panicking I am running out of yarn (not true in the slightest) since I am knitting it faster than I am buying it at the moment and then I remember that it is there to be used up and I relax and enjoy it again!

So far I am doing well on the Christmas Knitting.  I have 3 pairs of socks finished, 1 pair almost finished and a 2nd pair in progress and 1 cowl of my own design finished.

This means there is only 2.5 pairs of socks (ish) left to knit and I am done for Christmas Yay!

But I wanted to do a little post with some of the work in progress for that.

Firstly the completed socks from my father out-law now named A Sky full of Bees for obvious reasons (although J insists they are called a sky full of bananas).

Sky full of Bees Socks

These are the simple trekking socks pattern by Miriam Felton which I have used before and is simple and fun.  It was a good match for the yarn because it didn't compete with the crazy pooling.  I wasn't sure about these socks when I first finished them but they really grown on you and now I am going to find it hard to part with them!

Secondly I am working on some Komet socks for T.  This is a free pattern by Stephanie Van Der Linden from her Sockenkreativliste.  There were several amazing patterns put out on this list which I was dying to try and this is the first time I have finally managed to cast one on.  The pattern is interesting and intricate but not horribly complicated (although it looks it to people who don't knit!).  I am knitting it in Indigo Moon merino yarn which is nice.  The yarn is in a blue semi solid which is perfect for the pattern and it sort of plumps up during the knitting process which is great. It has a nice sheen and twist on it and is soft. This was part of the haul I bought at Socktopus back in the spring.  I would probably buy more of this yarn if the right colour came along but since I am trying to save money these days that won't be for a while.

Komet up Klose

Komet Socks 1

I shall definitely be trying out more of Stephanie's patterns in the future!

I keep all my yarn leftovers.  Sometimes I use them to hold stitches or make temporary stitch markers but in my mind I am keeping them for some Magnus Opus as yet undetermined.  Also it is because I have so many gorgeous yarns and I don't want to be done with them yet.  So far I have tried blankets but it hasn't really floated my boat I think that it wasn't long before I wasn't keen on the way the blanket was turning out and then I stopped because I felt like I was wasting my precious leftovers (after all it takes a long time to accumulate a decent leftover stash).

Then one day I really needed a simple knitting project to take with me somewhere and all my projects OTN were too complex.  So I remembered something Miss Violet once said.  She said that she had taken all her lengths of handspun and made them into a very simple triangular shawl (increasing 4 stitches every knit row and just carried on until all the handspun ran out.  This created a large, warm and comfortable shawl which looked lovely.

So I collected together all my purple leftovers.  It is a real mix of sock and aran and bulky yarns in all sorts of plies, fibres etc and I am just knitting a shawl.  Occasionally I throw in a garter stitch row or a single aran row for interest but mostly I am knitting and purling sock weight purple (ish) yarn. I will have a lovely warm shawl for the Winter (as this will take months to complete - because of needing to save up the left overs) and a great reminder of all the great yarns I have knitted with.  As a bonus I get the pleasure of knitting with stuff I really enjoyed knitting with before.  In particular I have become gloriously reacquainted with Mirasol Sulka yarn and Fyberspates Merino/Tencel.  Another side effect is that I get a garment which contains yarns for socks I gave away.  I always loved the Lisa Souza Mars Quake sock yarn but the socks went to Josh and have now faded a lot.  I now I have 3 wide bands of this yarn in my shawl and I am loving the way it looks.  An experience which I thought I had lost.

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Once the body is done I hope to knit on a lace border (now that Victorian Lace Today has shown me how).  In a single complimentary yarn to really set it off.  I haven't picked a border yet but then I won't need to pick one for ages yet.

I have now completed my first pair of socks from my Cat Bordhi Book New Pathways for Sock Knitters. I have decided that this is the perfect book for variegated yarn because it is mostly about structure not fancy patterns that will get lost in fancy colours.  To this end I picked my Hazel Knits yarn in a green and blue combination and set about trying Bartholomew's socks. This book is all about putting the instep increases in strange and wonderful knew places and this pattern puts them in a V shape starting at about the anklebone point on the front of the ankle and running them down either side of the foot to the sole.  It also incorporates a great linen stitch which I love.  This is like offset slip one knit one but on the slip stitch you carry the yarn in front.  This creates a sort of woven look which breaks up variegated yarns in amazing and interesting ways.  The fabric created can be quite stiff but this didn't create an issue in this pattern.

I decided that these socks would be for J and followed his measurements in the pattern. There is a master numbers thing going on here to help you customise any pattern to fit.  I have quite worked this out yet so that is my next thing to do with this book.

Here are the finished socks.

Bartholomew's Socks 1

NB - J says that the heel is a little bit loose on these.  I haven't yet work out why though.  I shall need to consider this before I make them again though and I wonder if it because of the placement of the increases? Being opposite the heel where normally they are not?

Bartholomew's Socks 2

This is my most successful lace project to date (almost).  As soon as I bought Victorian Lace Today my eye instantly fell on this pattern.  It has a very fun stitch - the melon stitch which was really fast and it was also my first time knitting on a border which turned out to be something incredibly enjoyable.

I chose 2 skeins of The Knittery - Merino Cashmere yarn (bought when I visited Socktopus) for this project in Passionfruit.  A sort of muted purple colour which was very attractive.  The yarn was incredibly soft and squishy and a little thicker than my usual sockweight.  The Knittery yarns are produced by a very talented dyer in Australia who has very sadly stopped dyeing due to moving to the States and it is not clear it she will resume.  Still this was very beautiful yarn and the melon stitch shawl would show it off to perfect.  You may be wondering what went wrong after all this eulogising.

Well the yarn and pattern were perfect, it was fun to knit and knitting on borders became one of my favourite things.  However I carefully calculated my yardage according to gauge and had quite a lot left over to comfortably finish. Except I discovered that Victorian Lace Today is renowned for underestimating yardage requirements! (a bit of a cardinal sin for a knitting book) and this pattern was no exception.  Herein started my problem…the yarn was amazing and understandably this colour had sold out at Socktopus.  Socktopus were the only UK stockists (Alice was really helpful and very sympathetic over the phone but not a miracle worker sadly).  The Dyer was not selling it on her website anymore because she has stopped dyeing.  So I turned to Ravelry and started to post on the boards begging for leftovers.  Eventually one kinds person in Australia said that they would sell me their skein and I jumped at the chance.  The yarn cost a great deal more to obtain then I would normally have paid and the dye lot was not a match but it was worth it to finish the shawl (I just couldn't bear to have frogged all my elegant hard work) and the dye lot change whilst obvious isn't in an obvious place on the shawl when worn.  It isn't exactly how I imagined it but I am pretty pleased with it all things considered.  I mean I might never have found even vaguely matching yarn which would have been a disaster.

Anyway it is blocked and put away to wear when the wear gets really really cold.

Melon Stitch Shawl

This left me with a huge cake of leftover passionfruit yarn and this yarn really is too good to have as just socks.  The subtle colours deserve to be shown off and the texture is so soft it really need to be around the neck.  My sister commented on how much she liked the Melon stitch shawl and so I decided to use the leftovers to make her a Christmas present (no way I could have parted with the shawl at that point!).  I designed a simple cowl to get the most out of the yardage and while once again I ended up knitting on fumes and finishing it off with 6 stitches of similar but slightly different yarn I think it looks great.

I cast on x stitches in the round and knitted the following pattern with a 4.5mm needle.

Row 1 purl
Row 2 knit
Row 3 purl
Row 4 knit
Row 5 purl
Row 6 - 20 knit 3 purl 1 (rpt)

Then I repeated the sequence until I was happy it was long enough.  Then I just purled and knitted alternate rows until I ran out of yarn .

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Very simple but I think it looks really elegant and it is buttery soft and very warm.

This weekend was a big festival of yarn and fibre goodness all in my house with my two fellow knitters J and Triskellian.  I had bought 4 pots of dye (black, purple, violet and teal) from the internets ages ago and had a huge stash of yarn to dye but I wanted the moral support of some friends and hope that by bribing them with a space in my dye pots they would come and help me.  They did and now we have successfully dyed our first yarns with acid dyes.

My To Dye list looked like this.

1.5kg of undyed aran weight shetland wool (for my Wisteria jumper)
200g undyed organic merino sportweight wool from Cold Harbour Mill.
200g Hipknits merino in a sort of clown barf colour which I hated.
230g of Cascade 220 in Chartreuse - leftovers from the Durrow Jumper which I wanted to overdye a little darker and turn into a pair of Elegant Ribbed Socks for me.

I had enough dye for about 15kg so plenty for the extra wool that J and Triskellian wanted to throw in the pot.

Dyeing started out very traumatically when the first dye pot I proposed we use which I "found" in my shed turned out to have enough holes in it to leak 4 litres of teal water all over my oven top.  After I finished cleaning it up, it was late and I wanted to sleep on it.  Next morning things worked like a dream.  I went to the hardware shop really early in the morning (before 9.00) and bought two galvanised steel buckets which the shopowner assured me could be heated.  We used up the remaining teal dye on our first batch and I anxiously watched for drips.  I cannot believe how smoothly the process seems to go after this.  Each dye bath on the stove took roughly one episode of Battlestar Galactica with people periodically popping out to give it a little stir or make sure that there was no boiling happening.  We managed 4 batches in one morning and by the end of lunchtime they were all drying outside in the sun which had magically appeared after weeks of constant rain.  Nothing was felted and whilst our first yarn dye attempts were useable we had got much better at colour distribution by the end and it was pleasing to see how much we had progressed over the course of the morning.  In the end I left 500g of shetland wool undyed for a later project because between me and Triskellian we worked out that 1kg of the Shetland wool would be enough with change to make Wisteria.

I am very happy with the results and we had a really fun time sorting it out.  I was so pleased how quickly the yarn dried out in the sun and will be putting it into cakes tonight.  I am hopeful that Wisteria will be swatched and ready to go by the end of the week even if I don't start it straight away.

The weekend was also filled with much talk about patterns, yarn winding, showing off completed projects - I was especially interested in Trisk's Tomten jacket as I am also making one at the moment.  Triskellian spent Sat evening spinning whilst J and I knitted and that was very cool all three of us relaxing and knitting and it is so helpful to have other knitters around to ask questions of and get advice from.  I am really pleased that I didn't try to do the dyeing on my own.

This is also another 101 things in 1001 days ticked off the list which is good.  I have now officially learned to "dye my own yarn".  I will probably do this again when I have a pile of yarn accumulated but it is definitely something I would want to do over a whole weekend with a lot of yarn to dye to make the set up and fiddling around worth it.

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