October’s Socks

One of October’s challenges was a new-to-you-designer. And in my arbitrary sock knitting decision making I was able to find a pattern in my Favourites that fit that category. The designer is Imawale and I am pleased that I am knitting one of her patterns as she had been active in Sock Knitters Anonymous group and it is nice to see sock knitters turn designers.

The sock pattern I chose used two colours. I could have used two leftovers but opted for one left over and one new skein. Although, technically, that new skein was a left over as it was a skein that was not needed for my Aureed cardigan. The left over skein was from this shawl. I always felt that this particular colour – Fuchsia – was meant to be socks, although the pattern it ended up being used in does not show the full beauty of the yarn and colour.

The pattern is Faux Cables Socks available for free on Ravelry. It is a slipped stitch and twisted stitch pattern; there is a slipped stitch pattern on the sole which you can just see in my photos but is obvious on the pattern page as the designer used white as her main colour. I like to make my two colour socks fraternal but keep the cuffs, heels and toes the same.

I was not interested in the choices for Novembers knit along which gave me longer to finish these socks. I am very pleased with the finished project.

 

Third Finish

It’s amazing how quickly you can finish something if you work on just one project at a time. Although I do have a pair of socks on the needles so I have something else to work on when I cannot always work on the WIP.

This finished item is a crochet project that I started at the beginning of the year. I didn’t get very far, just a few rows, before it was set aside. The yarn had been given to me for my birthday last year and I really wanted to get it on the needles. This is something I am good at – starting projects so that yarn is not forgotten even if I will not work on it very much.

The pattern is Waroo and I first made it in 2021 with yarn I bought in a sale specifically to make this pattern.

The yarn I used this time was a set of 6 minis, each weighing 25g. I followed the stitch pattern but not the directions for changing yarn colour. Each mini was changed at the end of a row when I ran out of yarn. I was surprised at how little yarn I had left as I was expecting to have great lengths of yarn that weren’t enough for a full row, but maybe 2/3rds. I ended up with 5g of yarn in total not used. This immediately went into my crochet scrap blanket.

 

 

Having finished project no. 3, I immediately picked up no. 4. This is a blanket I am making with the yarn from last year’s swap. I have made 20 squares from the yarn and joined them all. All that is needed now is some sort of border. On Saturday I picked up a load of stitches around the edge using the yarn I purchased at Vista Fiber Fiesta and am working around in garter stitch until I have used the whole skein of yarn. Then I will decide if I want a bigger border or just to bind off. This is easy, albeit heavy, knitting, so I can work on it at any time. It would be nice to finish this before the end of this month but that does depend on how much yarn I keep adding to it.

A Familiar Tale

I don’t know how many times I have written about projects where I have yarn, purchase more yarn to go with it and then make something with the later purchased yarn, leaving the original yarn in stash.

This happened with my latest finished project. In 2015 I received a beautiful skein of yarn in a subscription box. It was just over 500 metres of DK weight yarn in a lovely shade of red. I loved it, but didn’t know what I would make with just one skein so I ordered another from the same source. Imagine my surprise when what turned up was quite different from the original. The photo shows the difference. Now I had two skeins that I didn’t know what to do with. 

 

As skeins came up on destash, I purchased two more skeins. Here are the four skeins I ended up with, as you can see, two are very similar and the other two are quite different.

 

But what to make with them? I could use just the two similar colours in one project or use them all in one project but I felt the lusciousness of the original skein would be muted if I used it with the other skeins. In the end I went with a project that would use about three skeins. The pattern I made was Kerrera. This is a paid-for pattern, but I still made changes to it. The first being that I didn’t get gauge, so I had to make allowances for that. It is worked from the bottom up with decreases worked from the top of the hips to the waist. Although I agreed that this would give a nice shape to the garment, I wasn’t convinced of a good fit on the top part, so I added increases after the waist. The sleeves are picked up from the armhole edge and worked downwards. I wasn’t convinced that with this yarn the pick up would look good, so I worked from the cuff up and sewed in the sleeves. The original jacket is done up with three loop buttonholes at the top, as mine is made with 100% alpaca, I thought that buttons all the way down would be a better idea. I had decided to do that before I started the jacket but I wish I had thought it through before actually starting the bands as I would have put the buttonholes in the front band. Instead I had a finished garment that I somehow had to add button loops to and I wanted the bands to overlap. This was the biggest delay in finishing the jacket. The pattern has simple chain loops but I didn’t think they would be strong enough, so I had grand ideas of using rat’s tail – a satin string – that didn’t work out either. One of the problems was that the buttons I chose, although appropriate for the jacket were big and needed big loops, which weren’t sturdy or very neat. A friend bought me some buttons which I was worried were small but with a chained loop have worked fine. Yes, you read that correctly, chained loop; although I worked it as a single crochet foundation chain for some thickness. Also, I have quite a bit of yarn left over so if any of the loops wear through I can easily make more.

I started this project at the beginning of August last year. All the knitting was finished by the end of November and everything was sewn together by the end of January, when the great button delay started. Although to be fair to me, I couldn’t see any rush to finish it as it would not be worn until it got cold again and I really wanted the buttons and loops to be right. And here we are with winter just around the corner and the WIP KAL as an incentive and I have a finished garment that I look forward to wearing.