Pre-Wash

Here are the 24 little socks on my piano after they were all knitted up but before they were shrink-washed. Oh, 23 little socks, since the prototype one was already washed and down in the work room. This was a fun project. My picture isn't as artistic as Jessica's. Oh well!

Turns Out I AM Awesome

Check out my friend Jessica's blog. She took this fabulous, artistic picture of the socks. I, on the other hand, am the GENIUS who made them. Aren't they SO GREAT?! We took the first sock class together and Jess made a comment about wouldn't it be fun to make 24 little socks from wool and felt them down in hot water, and then string them up for an advent calendar? And you can put little treats in or poems or Christmas activities or whatever you want.

So I did it this summer. Actually, it only took three weeks or so to make all 24. I made them all different, and if I do say so myself, all cute. Since it was worsted weight yarn, it didn't take long to make each one, and I gave them to Jessica as a late birthday/very early christmas gift. The good thing about Jess, is that if I do something that is awesome, she is totally appreciative. She's the girl that will yell out how FABULOUS the gift is, before falling down on the floor praising my handiwork. So, she makes a good friend. It's a good way to get people to make you stuff, too, girl.

I'm not as internetly at Jess, but she tells me this picture of the socks has been adopted into some groups on Flickr or something. So, I guess some things I do turn out to be pretty rad.

Eye Of Partridge

Can you see the pattern on the heel flaps, up top? That's eye-of-partridge and I like it WAY better than your other standard heel stitch, k1 sl1. I think it looks really cool but I have to stop pretty much right there, because I haven't been able to knit long enough at one time to remember where I am in the 3-row pattern. I am petrified that I'll do a pretty good job all along and then at the end of the heel flap I'll do the same front-side row twice or three times in a row and it will look stupid but I'll be too lazy to take it out and fix it. So I'm just going to go ahead and stop right there, at "almost long enough".

My Current Socks

Here's a pair of socks I made and finished a little while ago, like last month at this time maybe. The ones with the purple and orange and green stripes. They're made out of Cascade "Fixation" yarn, which is stretchy. That was actually fun to work with except that I made them both at the same time using the Magic Loop technique, and I didn't tie off the yarn in between stripes. I carried it along the edge, so I had six dang strings dangling out of the needles at all times. That pretty stunk. But anyway, I also just did a short-row heel, instead of a heel-flap, and it's ok. It's not fantastic. I just wanted to make socks that are like regular socks: stretchy and with that diagonal line at the heel. So I did it.

Then the other picture is my most recent sock project. I just cast on for it last week, maybe thursday or Friday, but using the original yarn I bought when I took the Magic Loop socks class at the local yarn store. I had made a sock with the class, but it was terrible. The gauge was all floppy and loose and we hadn't made a ribbing around the top originally, so I went back and added one which would have been fine if there was a way to cast off and make it just as stretchy as a K1, P1 rib, which there's NOT, no matter what they say. I know because I scoured the inter-flipping-net to find that very cast-off and THOUGHT I'd come up with something but after I did it, as loosely as I could possibly cast off, the stinkin' thing STILL didn't fit over my heel, to try it on. So Up That!!! I went ahead and ripped the whole thing out and used the yarn to cast on for this pair of socks and the yarn's already split neatly in half! So yeah! And check that cool K6, P1 rib pattern I added all the way around. Can you see it in the picture? Anyway, I made some super-similar to this for my sister Laurel (see my first post) but with a K7, P1 rib and I wanted it just a little more frequent in this pair that I'm making for myself out of very similar yarn. It's super quick to make them at the same time, and as you can see, not very messy with just TWO yarns coming off the work. They really don't get tangled. I highly recommend this method.

I made socks for Laurel

I made a pair of socks for my sister Laurel's birthday. On Monday, nearly two weeks ago I went and bought the yarn at our local yarn shop where I took my sock-knitting classes. I knit the first one in three or four days, maybe less. Then I started the second one on Wednesday afternoon, getting maybe an inch and a half through the ribbing. I didn't work on it at all on Thursday and then I realized the post office would be closed on Monday for the "holiday." So Friday morning I woke up and began to knit...like the wind. My friend Jessica came over and we knitted a little together. I watched the BBC Pride and Prejudice in the afternoon with Jules and knitted the whole time. Then Seth and I watched a video on the 1997 Broncos and I knitted that whole time. I couldn't believe it at 10:30 pm when I looked down and I was done. I kitchener'ed the toe shut this morning and put them in the mail!! My hands are dang sore.