Thick Blue Cabled Socks

I'm working on a big list of Christmas knitting links. I hope to post them by the end of the week because I found some possibilities for last minute holiday knitting.

Here's a quick FO in my continuing efforts to knit more of the free Drops patterns for thick socks. These socks were a nice mindless knit but cables at that weight were a bit tough on the hands. The pattern specifies bulky yarn but I used two strands of Wool of the Andes and size 8 (US) dpns. I originally intended these for DH but he thought they were too girly?? It was for the best since I only had four skeins (two of each color blue) and I would have run out of yarn if I was trying to make them for him.

Christmas Knitting

I am not doing much in the way of holiday knitting this year but I did make a few items for DH. I'm planning a backpacking themed Christmas stocking for him this year. I bought a little firestarter, a tiny battery-operated reading light, and a fleece neck gaiter.  I'm going to make him some homemade trail mix and energy bars. Above you can see the knitted items I'm adding to the stocking. I did some worsted weight socks (Valley Yarns Northampton) with the requested 10 inches of ribbing (snore) and also made some fingerless mitts. They look strange but he has a pretty wide thumb angle so I think they'll fit him well. Actually it turns out I have a bit of yarn left so I might add a quick ribbed headband in the same yarn.

Bubbles would like to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving! As usual she's starving and hopes her Thanksgiving feast starts as soon as possible.

Color Fun

2 new colorways! One breezy, the other dramatic...

And the Winner is....

Thank you so much for your comments, and suggestions. Thank you for all the lovely names. I have the really hard task of picking one now. I expect the pattern will be ready by this Saturday.

Now for the winner of the giveaway...

corycoakley said...
I left this open all day because I couldn't think of the flower this reminded me of...columbine was the one! of course, a few others beat me to the punch. But columbine, totally.

Congratulations corycoakley! Use the contact me button on the right side of the page and send me your full name and your address. I will send you the supplies by mail, and will email you a copy of the pdf pattern by Saturday!

Now it's off to homeschooling for me!

New Furry Baby!

Every Monday, the boys and I host an animation group for teens at our house. Yesterday, one of the mothers brought 2 little rescue kittens with her, wondering if someone wanted one of them.
My motherly instinct kicked in right away, and so within minutes "Mittens" became our baby.

Welcome home Mittens!

Doll Play

A little doll fun for today.
Meet Wednesday, Betsy McCall's dark, spirited twin sister!

A Pixie Hat Story, and a Giveaway!

When I went to Little Miss SockPixie's girlscout meeting on Thursday, I packed a ball of Ella Rae Classic wool in a lovely lavender color with the idea of knitting a hat.

As I sat in a corner of the room, I sketched a hat. Maybe it was because of the laughter of the girls, and their little screams of excitement as they buzzed around the room... I felt like pixies were everywhere. I  envisioned a pointed hat, warm, soft, felted wool, and flowers, all in cheerful colors.

After a few calculations, I started the hat. By Friday it was finished. I stood impatiently next to the washing machine as I was felting it. I anxiously pulled it out. It was love at first sight! It was just the hat I had dreamed.

I knit the body of the hat with the lavender ball of Ella Rae Classic, and added a simple edge of mauve grey to frame the face and give the hat a well defined edge. I knit the strap of the same grey.

For the flowers and leaves, I picked through all my little left over "yarn walnuts". I needed less than 7 yards of each color!

I placed little aqua flower buttons at the center of the tiny blue buds for contrast and texture.

Who knew a hat could make someone so happy!

I will be offering the pattern as a pdf later this week. But there is one little thing I need your help with: a name for my little hat. "Pixie Hat" just does not seem enough for it.

Leave a comment in this post with your suggestion of a name by Tuesday November 16, 10 p.m. Eastern Time, and I will pick one comment at random using a random number generator. The lucky comment will receive all the necessary supplies to make the hat as well as a copy of the pattern!

November Color Knitting Links

An FO from years ago - Turkish socks from the Zilboorg book

November Color Knitting Links

Bea Ellis Knitwear, one of my favorite sources for Norwegian patterns and yarns, seems to be gone for good now; previously there was just a message on the web site that they'd return Oct 2010.

Two Swans Yarns is now offering color cards for Jamieson's Shetland yarns. 

Jamieson & Smith, the other purveyors of Shetland wool, have an interesting blog. Check out the winners of the Shetland sheep photo contest.

I like to have a simple colorwork project going at all times, one that is easily memorized, to balance out the more complicated stuff. This Sandnes unisex pullover looks like it would fit the bill without a lot of solid color knitting.

I was alerted to the fun Night of the Lepus socks in my comments - you have to join the Google Super Sock Scarefest to get the free pattern - but they are a good project for those of us who are owned by bunnies.

Anne Carroll Gilmour, who wrote the Happy Trails sock book, offers a free pattern for Ring-Toss Stash Busting Scrap Socks that look like a lot of fun. If I can hunt down enough colors, I plan to make these for the December Stashbuster Sockdown challenge in Ravelry's Sock Knitter's Anonymous group. Also, I am thrilled to find out she has the pattern for her incredible cabled Teampall Breachain hat available on Ravelry. I think I'll tackle the hat after the holidays.

I just started the La Joie du Printemps mittens in alpaca when I also fell in love with Heather Desserud's Moulin Rouge mittens. She's such a talented designer!

Drops is offering a Christmas workshop by putting all their free holiday patterns in one place. Most of the patterns look like nice quick knits for last-minute holiday knitting.

I may have linked to this before but I love the free pattern for the children's Starry Nights sweater so much it is worth mentioning twice. There's an informal KAL for it HERE.

With the much-awaited re-release of Poetry in Stitches, Nordic Fiber Arts is offering yarn packs for each of the sweaters in the book.

I just discovered the Just Batty Knee Socks - the bat design would work for Halloween or if, like me, you just like bats.

My favorite recent Ravelry project is ableramm's Adult Charms and Amulet Jacket - an interpretation of Debbie New's Tam Jacket in a zillion colors. Beautiful!!

It looks like there are some upcoming books I can look forward to - Favorite Sock Patterns from Around the World featuring patterns by Nancy Bush and Anna Zilboorg to name a few and Kathleen Taylor's Fearless Fair Isle Knitting.

Book Review: Mastering Color Knitting by Melissa Leapman

Mastering Color Knitting: Simple Instructions for Stranded, Intarsia, and Double Knitting by Melissa Leapman (available 11/09, Potter Craft)

Previously I've purchased all the books I've reviewed on my blog but I specifically asked for a review copy of this one. I'm thrilled there are more books available to help knitters learn the joy of knitting with more than one color.
 

One thing I keep learning from Ravelry's Stranded forum is that color knitters have about a million different ways to arrive at the same end result. I've linked before to Ixtab's unique method of knitting 2 or 3 strands inside out with the yarns tensioned around her neck. One of the Stranded forum's moderators, an advanced traditional Fair Isle knitter, prefers to (gasp!) knot her yarn ends. And I've heard from dozens of knitters who insist the traditional yarn dominance rules do not apply to them. (I talked about this previously HERE.)

If you are new to color knitting learning all the different methods can be overwhelming and most knitters will prefer to just learn one way to do things at first to get their feet wet. The section on stranding in Mastering Color Knitting is geared for beginners with simple instructions and includes many graphs and diagrams that are clear and easy to read.

The methods Melissa Leapman teaches in the book and in her knitting workshops involve weaving all floats over 1" long, securing her yarn ends as she knits, and avoiding using three colors per row. Personally I try to avoid weaving floats, I secure my yarn ends during finishing using reverse duplicate stitch, and I occasionally use 3 and 4 color rows (they're usually in Dale of Norway designs) but her advice is very helpful for beginners. The book has a nice reassuring tone for those who find color knitting daunting. She shows several different ways to hold the yarns and talks a lot about reading charts. She even includes a two-page section on designing stranded patterns.

Hat Pattern from the Stranded Section

My personal favorite parts of the book are her discussions on intarsia in the round (she offers three methods) and the section on various types of steeks. Mastering Color Knitting includes 12 projects along with the technique info.

Beautiful Intarsia Coat

I think this book shines in the third section on reversible two-color double knitting as frankly I haven't seen that many other books in print that discuss this fun technique other than the M'Lou Baber book which focuses on jackets and coats.

 

Double Knit Two-Color Hat

I especially recommend this book for beginners in any of the techniques as she does manage to keep the instructions simple as stated in the title. I was originally going to give the book away to a knitting student but I am keeping it so I can try some more two-color double knitting.

While I'm at it, I thought I'd list some other color knitting books I recommend.

Color by Kristin by Kristin Nicholas - I never reviewed this one but it is one of my faves. I think of her designs as exuberant and her passion for the subject is incredible. Plus she shows a new-to-me way of dealing with floats!

Elizabeth Lovick's Fair Isle Workbook - I love how she frequently emphasizes that there are no right or wrong ways to do Fair Isle knitting. Plus it is the only technique book I've ever seen that shows how to fix mistakes in stranding!. My review of this excellent ebook is HERE.

Alice Starmore's Fair Isle Knitting - I don't even do traditional Fair Isle knitting but I think this book is spectacular, especially the section where she takes nature photos and interprets them with her knitting. It has recently been reprinted so you have no excuse not to buy it.

Intarsia: A Workshop for Hand and Machine Knitting by Sherry and Keely Stuever - Rich in technique (and diagrams and photos), this self-published book (available at Elann I think) is a must-have if you're doing intarsia. Their method of dealing with the yarn ends to achieve beautiful stitches on the end of each block of color is pure genius. (I showed this method in the intarsia sock  photo on my blog post HERE.)

Sheila McGregor's Traditional Fair Isle Knitting and Traditional Scandinavian Knitting. These two Dover reprints have hands-down my favorite color design charts, all helpfully divided by stitch count/multiples.

New Yarns

I worked in my studio yesterday, and created some new colorways. I let myself create freely, just playing with colors, and techniques as well as materials.
My inpsirations ranged from  flowers to Madame Bovary to seashells, the matericals from Merino, to Tencel blends, to cahmere.

I have added these skeins to my Etsy store! I hope you will enjoy them.

Three Pairs of Socks

I finished these socks during the World Series. I am trying to find more patterns for thicker socks and I'm hoping to make more of the lovely free Drops patterns 

The first pair are 116-42 Socks with a Pattern in Karisma and some Elann Highland Peruvian sport weight. I did an afterthought heel and added some corrugated ribbing.

The second pair are 0-566 Socks with Christmas Pattern. The original pattern used just the red and white colors and I wish I hadn't added the green. Oh well. I did my usual heel and an abbreviated toe.

For these socks I was trying to see if I could get away with just two balls of Elann's Peruvian Highland Wool (worsted) for some hiking socks for DH. Apparently not as he said he prefers 10 inches of ribbing. Also, looking at this photo I realized I need to make the heel flap longer for his socks next time. I used size 4 dpns and 48 sts and went from there.

How about a Little Knitting: Sashiko Mittens

I am an eclectic crafter. I love knitting but also so many other crafts. I love crochet. I love spinning, I love needlepoint and I love embroidery. I am particularly fond of Sashiko Embroidery. I have delighted in the embroidery of the organic, peaceful geometric shapes with oatmeal thread on indigo grounds.

I was so inspired by Sashiko, that I wanted to translate and reinterpret it into knitting. With winter coming, Sashiko mittens seemed like the perfect choice.

I chose 2 worsted weight yarns from my stash. One with a lovely indigo tone, the other a soft oatmeal.

I first knit a little swatch to decide on tension and fairisle pattern. I wanted the oatmeal design to be present but not crowd the mitten. This was my first sample, interlocking circular shapes on size 5 needles.

I loved the contrast of the colors, but decided the gauge should be tighter. The circular shapes appealed to me, but the interlocking made the pattern overwhelming. I switched to size 3, and after drafting a simplified pattern evocative of honeycombs, I started on the mittens.

I am really excited about these Sashiko mittens. These test ones will be for me. I am writing the pattern and will be offering it as a pdf as soon as the pattern is written, tested and edited. I should leave you now, and go work on them...

Hello World!

Hi everyone! I am so happy to be back. I want to thank all of you for your well wishes for Little Miss SockPixie. These last few weeks have been difficult for her and of course for the whole family. I think we are finally on the right track.

I thought it would only be appropriate to start my first post in more than a month with Little Miss SockPixie.

A few weeks ago, we gave her a vintage SmithCorona typewriter as a gift. She had been dreaming of owning one for a long time. We told her a computer was in many ways more practical to use for writing but I guess she had already imagined herself writing novels on a typewriter like the great writers of the past, like the heroes of her favorite movies, like Hubbel Gardner in the Way we Were!(Odd movie I know for a nine year old!)

Little Miss SockPixie, her typewriter and her stories have been inseparable ever since. I could not resist taking pictures of her today. It was so wonderful  to see her expressions as she wrote. I had to capture them.

Pensive at times...

Looking for inspiration or for that perfect word ...

Bursting with frustration with every typo...

Furiously typing away...

And most of all enjoying every minute of it...

Thanks Little Miss SockPixie. You and your stories made my day!

Lots of New Project Ideas

I apologize for not promptly answering some questions in the comments but I've been battling the flu. Snoopy asked about the perfect first project for colorwork and I suggested a hat knit in the round. Here is a thread on Ravelry's Stranded forum with some pattern suggestions.

Good Pattern for a Beginner?

Also, my free pattern for the Ankara Headband is a good choice for your first project and it only takes a few hours to knit.

Needledancer asked about sport weight cotton/wool yarn blends that come in a lot of colors to knit a lighter weight Dale Norwegian sweater. I don't know of any - if any of you have any suggestions, please let me know in the comments. If I've forgotten any questions, please ask me again. Thanks!

Here is the new yarn. I'm very fond of the Valley Yarn Northampton worsted wool from Webs. It really is soft and lovely and will be perfect for thick socks. I'm definitely buying more even if it is no longer at the sale price.

 

The Cascade 220 sport is the usual beautiful rich saturated colors but is much more textured than the worsted Cascade 220. I'm not sure if I will like it for colorwork or not. I'll try using it for something soon and see what I think.

 

Because I already have quite enough yarn (and boy do I ever!!!) to make myself feel less quilty I chose a specific project for the new yarns I purchased.

The red Northampton yarn is for Susan Pierce Lawrence's Quickie Socks from the Joy of Sox.

The periwinkle Northampton is for the Cyber Flirt cabled socks from the Joy of Sox.

The heathered green Northampton is for some really long ribbed socks for DH (he usually insists on at least 10" of straight K2P2 rib... sigh)

The Cascade 220 sport is for the Convertible A Go-Go socks in Think Outside the Sox. I can't decide between making them in the green (the cables will be much more noticeable) or the purple (more my style). I think I'll add the buttons if I can find any the right size. Whatever is leftover I'll use for colorwork.

I have three FOs to show you as soon as I can get them photographed and also a review of a brand new book on color knitting.