Without further ado....
These are the yummy sherbet socks.
They were made from my own hand-dyed louet pearl yarn, on size 3 needles. The size threes were a mistake. i thought the fabric felt fine (not loose), but now that the socks have been worn a couple of times, the stitches have spread out and the fabric is thin. I will be gentle with them. I love them because they are extra long - and I still had lots of yarn left over (rats!) If only I had cast on more stitches to begin with so they would fit over my shapely (and oh-so-pale) calves.
This is a close-up of the fabric, the stitch pattern looks great with the colors of the yarn (if I do say so myself). I read in the current issue of Wool Gathering about a similar stitch, but instead of lifting the bar over the stitches, you make a yarn over and pull that over the stitches.
Meet the Lavender socks!
Close up of the left and right twist. They are not exactly mirror images of each other, but I'll settle for fraternal twins.
Lastly, the ever-popular Eye-of-Partridge heel. It's very subtle on this pair, now I know it probably won't work the way I want it to using Trekking XXL.
My very first darning project! I wish I had gotten the chance to take pictures as I worked, but these will do for now. There are another pair that need some mending.
In all her wisdom, Rena Crockett
does recommend steaming the old yarn so it isn't kinky, in the way, and a little more of a pain to weave in. You're right, and next time I will.The image above was taken at the same time as the previous one, i.e. not quite finished.
The bottom picture shows what it looks like now, after one wearing. The yarn looks a little newer, and the colors don't match up, but it is a pretty good fix. I highly recommend learning how to mend things, although this was a painstaking task that took an entire work day and also a few hours of carefully unpicking stitches and weaving in ends.
In this world, such a thing exists as a darning egg, but I found that a hard rubber street hockey ball worked just as well. A lightbulb wasn't bad either, but I was afraid it was a little delicate, and not safely portable.
It is still cold where I am, so last week I decided I needed fingerless mitts. Actually, I decided that a few weeks ago, but hadn't had any knitting time for them. I wanted to make them out of something very special, and I was sure that I had one skein of something that fit the bill....
And not that Malabrigo isn't special, it wasn't quite what I had in mind.
I pored over Barbara Walker, and after hours of swatching, I fell in love with this eyelet pattern. The actual construction was a little bit of trial and error, since I was making it up as I went along - I knew I needed shaping (decreases in the purl valley's), but I got a bit too excited and knit far too long without decreasing... Resulting in having to frog half the cuff. Thankfully, these babies knit up quite quickly. And yes, for some reason I decided I wanted reverse stockinette thumb gussets. Call me crazy. The bind off I found in Vogue Knitting, it's a cute pico edge without having folded over rows.
And finally,
A pair from more hand-dyed Louet Pearl? And ohhhh what to do. I was thinking of Pomatomus, after seeing some more close-up pictures of the pattern, I think it's quite neat.
Contender #2 - Solid Koigu for mosaic socks?
That would require actually owning the book, which I don't, yet. One day, someday, I am going on a book buying splurge on Amazon and buying that, Favorite Socks, and No Sheep For You (I want that fore more mosaic knitting in Intoxicating).
I guess if I want to tackle the mosaic sweater, I should first cut my teeth on a smaller project to learn the technique.
And I think that is enough pictures/mind-spew.
Back to something important, like video games....
