Needle Tart

If I'm not knitting or sewing something, I must be cooking something!

Monday, October 04, 2010

Socks of the Year

Sorry to be gone so long, it's been a long hot summer and I didn't do much more than knit socks. Twelve socks in my own Self-Imposed Sock of the Month club. Stephanie started it and naturally I just joined in. So far I have knit (Sorry, no pictures. I'm just too lazy to set it up):
1. Back to Basic socks. Toe-up from Knitty Nice knit and the yarn has a little bamboo in it. It leaves the sock nice and silky.
2. (and 3) Scheherazade socks from Pink Lemon Twist(scroll down). I wore these to the pool just after I finished them and one of the other swimmers hired me to knit a pair for her daughter. Whee! Income.
4. A pair of vanilla socks knit at school. Space dyed cheap yarn.
5. "Ribbon Candy" socks. I named these. They are knit from "Hot Flash" from STR and the pattern is from Charlaine Schurch's sock book.
6. Baroque socks. These were a real challenge. I didn't quite finish them in one month. Beautiful socks.
7. Cotton ankle socks. Also from Charlaine Schurch. Love, love, love them.
8. Best Girlfriend socks from KnitPicks. These are the first socks I knit from the sock blanks I dyed last summer. I was surprised how tweedy they came out. I was sure there was plenty of dye in the pot. Still. Pretty.
9. Another pair of vanilla socks from the purse. My travel knitting. The yarn was some grey space dyed stuff from the stash (then again all the yarn is from my stash, and isn't that the point?).
10. Ribbons of Hope socks for a Cancer survivor at the pool. Wonderful pattern I got on Ravelry. Terrific directions. Knit from Violet's Pink Ribbon and the whole L&V thing? Just another reason to be depressed. Sigh. Had to get that yarn out of the house.
11. Hope socks (well, wouldn't you know? I met another Cancer survivor.) from Janet Laidman's book "The Eclectic Sole". I would like to say I love this book. I bought it because I liked at least four or five of the patterns in it. Seriously. I have knit three patterns from this book and all of them have corrections (at least from the first edition, I waited to buy it and got the second edition. I must say, the corrections are all up to date). That being said, each and every sock I have knit from this book calls for one of two things I really don't like to do. Wrapped stitches (Yuk! Nearly as bad as bobbles and that's saying a lot), or directions that don't add up (19 sts in the heel, pick up 9 stitches on each side of the heel flap, now you have 45 stitches. Really? I added that up and got 37 stitches. Where did the other eight stitches come from? Or go to?).
12. The chart for Hypnosis is making me nuts. I hunted all over the state for peacock looking yarn, and then. The only way to follow it is to put the sticky note below the line you are working on. Otherwise the stitches just don't line up. Quite frustrating. There are three more patterns I would like to try in this book. Maybe later when my frustration level is a little lower.
Well, there are the dozen socks I have knit since March. I packed up thirteen different socks patterns (what we call around here a "Baker's Dozen". Being a baker it seemed obvious). So far so good. I am over half way and I even knit some socks for other people. Wow! What a sweetie I am. I just re-read that and realized that I have already knit 12 socks, so how can I have five more socks to knit? Well, I didn't count the second pair of Scheherazade, the second pair of pink ribbon socks, or the two pairs of vanilla socks.
Why have I been gone so long? Mostly a combination of empty nesting, heat, not enough work and therefore not really enough money, and new Doctor who wants to take away the happy pills because I "don't really need them that often." Yeah. Looking for a new Doctor.
Nice to see you. Maybe next time I'll add some pictures.

Labels: , , ,