One Month In

 

I wouldn’t usually give an update on plans and WIPs in the second month of the year, but as I was making a note of all my projects in progress at the beginning of this month, one thing hit me – I had no active projects. Which sounds strange as I have five projects on the go. But those projects are all long term projects – four blankets and a car project. I had no project which is my main, relatively easy project.

Of course this had to be rectified and I cast on a pair of socks. But this didn’t completely solve the problem of having a mostly easy project on the go as they have areas of colourwork, and a few days later I cast on some slippers. This latter project is back up for when both the socks and the mitred square blanket are not at easy stages.

A quick update on the blanket. The squares have all been joined into six strips of five squares and now I am edging those strips. Which gives me long rows of garter stitch to work on; definitely non-concentrating knitting.

Of course, I don’t want to have loads of new projects on the needles but these two cast ons fill a need to always have pick up and go knitting.

First Socks of 2025

 

In my last post of the finished mittens, I didn’t title it my first finish of 2025 as most of the knitting was done in 2024. And in the same way I feel it is cheating a little to call these my first socks of 2025 as 80% of the knitting was done in 2024.

I showed these socks in this post as I was working them separately but from one ball of yarn. The reason for doing this was I wanted to ensure I did not run out of yarn as I was using leftovers. And I still ended up with 4 grams left because I did not want to make the rib tops any longer. Writing about it now, I could have pulled out all the rib and worked the pattern for a few more rows and then worked the rib.

The pattern is Down the Rabbit-Hole and is ideal for self-striping yarn but does not qualify for the self-striping challenge, so I was very happy to make them for the literature challenge. The original pattern is written top down, I changed it to toe up and worked a short row heel. I tried a different way to work the short rows. Basically there is no wrapping or manipulating of stitches. The end stitches are all knit and then picked up when increasing stitches. I am not a fan of the end result but it was interesting to try. The other change I made to the pattern was to change the number of stitches on each leg so I could just work the pattern round and round and not have to think about working one extra or one less stitch at the start of the round to line up the pattern.

The yarn is leftover from these socks and the yarn for the heels and toes was from this sock. I am not a fan of working cuffs, heels, and toes in the same contrast colour and will pick two elements to work in contrast but for this pair I worked a couple of rows of stocking stitch in the contrast colour at the top of the rib before binding off.