27 posts tagged “cables”
Currently I am knitting J another pair of Orange Socks - I am using the Saxony Pattern (72 stitches on 2.5mm needles) and some great merino cashmere sock yarn from Cariad Yarns in this fabulous bright colour. I am getting a bit of laddering on the needles which is annoying but I think I can block it out in the final product. I have made the heels unusual wide because a) J has strangely high arches and b) I was very worried that the intense cable pattern would make these very hard to get on over the instep. So far they fit him like a dream but the extra yarn has left me panicking I don't have enough to finish them. I am persevering and if the worst comes to it I have some other orange yarn which will have to finish a toe or something.
I am also knitting some red socks for R. I have never knitted socks for R before but I am confident she is someone who truly appreciates knitted gifts and she has dropped several hints over the last couple of years that she would like more knitted socks (I am not her only source of them you see!) I realised that knitting her a pair of socks was probably well overdue and so last Sunday I cast on for a pair of Kai Mai socks from Cookie A's Sock Innovation book (66 stitches on 2.5mm needles). I started out with some Lisa Souza Yarn but the gauge was totally wrong and I ripped out half a sock and then picked another yarn instead. This time I got out the red yarn of Unknown Origin. This is the yarn that Triskellian and I bought together about 3 years ago at Ally Pally. We bought 500g of it for £5! And then eventually split it in half. I already used some of it on the "push me pull me" socks in stripes with plain black yarn (and I happen to think that the PMPM socks are probably some of the most gorgeous and striking I have ever knit for myself) It is lovely stuff and really well dyed and doesn't seem to have lost its colour at all in the PMPM socks. I have now completed 1.5 Kai Mai socks in the red yarn (after having ripped out 3/4 of a foot for getting the second pattern repeat spiralling the wrong way and only realising far too late) and they look great. I will be giving them to R but only because I have a will of iron!
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.
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.
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).
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.
I shall definitely be trying out more of Stephanie's patterns in the future!
The second item I finished early in the holiday was the Heath's socks for J. This was a nice simple pattern which I could knit happily in the car or watching movies etc. The final fit is good and I knit them using Artyarns in Turquiose and Brown. I think that the pattern works well with the varigated yarn and both stand out on their own. I can't believe how fast I knit these up though, they took about a week when they should have taken two!
The yarn was fun to knit with and I hope that it wears well. I don't think it is nicer than other high end yarns and annoyingly it comes in 50g skeins which I dislike since those skeins always seem to end up more expensive somehow. I bought this yarn on sale from purlescence and I might get it again if it was on sale but the other colours didn't really float my boat in the same way as Easyknits or Socks that Rock do.
Shortly into my Lakes holiday I finished the Absinthe Socks in Wollmeise Frosch. I am incredibly pleased with these socks. The pattern was a huge amount of fun, the yarn matched it perfectly! and they look and feel great, a perfect marriage of socks. My only slight complaint is that the cables which sit on the top of the foot where the ankle and foot meet are tight and stretch a little too much. Ii didn't irritate me while I wore them yesterday and I did walk a couple of miles out of town to visit a ruined Roman Fort so they were put through a proper test run.
I don't normally "save" special yarn for a perfect pattern but because this was my last skein of Wollmeise I did this time and I am glad that I did.
Now I have worn and washed these a lot I can attest that they yarn is still very soft and the colour has not faded at all. They truely do live up to the hype - if only it was easier to get.
I have finally finished the Austrian Socks. These are some amazing heavily cabled socks from Favourite Socks which my sister said she really like when she flicked through the book. I have been working on them for her birthday but they have taken me a very long time. I think that it is because they have such a complex pattern that I needed to take the book with me everywhere or knit them at home and they isn't the most convenient type of knitting. There was also an embarrassing ripping back incident when I thought that I had memorised the pattern and was very very wrong about that.
This will tick off part of my challenge to knit every sock in Favourite Socks no. 4 and to give my sister 3 pairs of knitted socks no 69 from 101 things. I really hope she likes them as I chose a delicate pink and green yarn that I thought she would like.
The yarn is Easyknitter's bfl in the Blossom colourway I think and as always was a dream to knit with.
Finally a mere 15 months after I cast it on Durrow is done and being worn by the recipient. I started this jumper because I loved the cables on the sleeves and J didn’t have a jumper knitted by me for him to wear. Then the neck went wrong. I found out afterward on Ravelry that the neck is the big source of weakness in the pattern and that many people have found it problematic. No-one seemed to have posted a good fix though so I ended up knitting and undoing it 7 times. I finally cracked it with a combination of going down a needle size and doing decreases front and back but stopping the back decreases early to preserve enough of the shaping to make it look good.
I then realised that the sleeves we about 2 inches to short. So I unpicked them both from the cast on edge and fixed them.
And now it is done, it is off my queue and it only took about a day’s work fiddling to finish it!
I have finished the Firestarter socks by Yarnissma and J wore them for the first time this weekend.
I am pleased with the way they look but the cable pattern doesn't really show up. I know that these are designed for a busy yarn. Sadly I think that my yarn was too busy even for that. Still J loves the loud socks and these are really very loud. I adore Yarnissma's gusset details. It is a signature of hers and I hope that you can see it in the photos. It was also a very fun knit that I would highly recommend. It was simply enough to do on the train and yet the cabling gave it enough interest that I wasn't going out of my mind with boredom. A great pattern and all the more so because it was free!
The yarn is Plum and Custard by Easyknitter and as always was a joy to use.
My knitting has reached something of a dilemma now. The mystic star shawl is really getting very complicated now. I am nearly at the end of clue three and clue four is out. Clue four is bigger than all previous clues put together and have over 500 stitches per row. I will be working on this for a very very long time and as such need to have another project running alongside for commuter knitting and so that I feel I am making progress. Previously I had said I wanted to finished the shawl before I started test knitting for triskellian but if I do that I won't start the test knitting for a good month or more and I would like to start it sooner than that. So once the baby clothes I am knitting are done (a friend is pregnant and due late March) I will be casting on for the test knitting. I have at least chosen my testing knitting yarns. Black opal and the strange red and pink yarn I bought 500g for £5 at Ally Pally in 2007. They are the same weight and should contrast perfectly.
More on the baby jacket when I have taken some photos.
Sadly there will be no photos of the Mystic Shawl until I have really completely finished it. I can no longer spread it out on the circular needle as I have run out of space.
I wanted a quick knitting hit and Tudora has been in my queue at Ravelry for a few months now. It takes roughly 1 50g ball of aran weight wool and seemed a perfect way to use up some leftover Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran in Wine that I used for my Rogue Hoodie.
Now the DB Cashmerino does not generally wear well and the Rogue is looking decidedly dog eared but I really don't think that this will be a problem for Tudora - and the softness of the yarn will be a real benefit.
In the end it probably took around four hours to knit which was great really (exactly what I wanted) and had the advantage of using up an odd ball and making the yarn in yarn out equation look good in my favour. I have enough DB left for possibly one more Tudora and I think that these would make great gifts. Although I have also considered making a pair of fetching and giving it away as a matching set.
I just need to source a couple of buttons and it will be all done.
I know that there has been a deluge of photos in the last few entries because I finally turned on all the lights, opened the big curtains as far as they would go and tried taking pictures from lots of angles to make sure there was not only enough light but that it didn't turn everything sort of blueish which I hate. Not everything came out exactly the way I wanted it to but I did some fiddling around on Iphoto (which I suppose counts towards challenge 51 on learning how to use Iphoto properly) and adjusted various different slides and dials until I was fairly happy.
This means that I can finally post pictures of my 1st finished Baudelaire sock and my green day cabled vest in purple.
The sock I love, I don't feel I need to say anymore.
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