Good Mood Socks

When I was a kid, I never went to summer camp.  I would always read stories about kids who went, or watch movies where it was such a universal experience, but I never got to go, myself.  Fast forward a couple of decades (okay, a few) and a favourite online yarn shop of mine, The Loopy Ewe, is making me feel better about the whole thing.  Every summer they put on a virtual summer camp for knitters, which means no mosquitos, no bears, and lots of wool!

There will be a challenge for each of the three months of camp - June's challenge was to knit a project using one skein, in a yarn you haven't used before.  After searching through their yarns for a while, I chose some String Theory Bluestocking, which is a beautifully dyed BFL wool.  I've knit with BFL once before, in Sweet Georgia's yarns, and I loved the slightly haloey glossy wool, so I was looking forward to doing it again.  String Theory has some amazing colours, and the one I chose is called Nectar, a blend of pinks with a bit of coral and lavender mixed in.

The pattern I matched it up with was a pair of socks that I've had in my queue for quite a while, Hunter Hammersen's Mood socks (ravelry) from her book Silk Road Socks.  I was surprised to see that the pattern was only written in one size, so I altered it a bit, adding 8 stitches to the circumference to upsize it, and then casting on and knitting the leg with a larger needle than the foot.

In the end, the socks are amazingly beautiful, and I am really happy with this project.  Next month, a spectacular lace shawl in some dazzling Madelinetosh!

Name Draft Towels

I love weaving for many reasons, but one of the cool things about it is that it's pretty easy for even a beginner to make up original designs and play around to make something new and interesting.

One fun way for a weaver to personalize a design is something called a name draft.  You can use a name or phrase of some sort and assign blocks to each letter (i.e. some of the letters of the alphabet will end up a blue block, some will end up a white block in this example.)  Then when you repeat the letter blocks across the width and length of the piece, it will hopefully make a pleasing design.

The story for these particular towels starts with a friend of mine that I've known for a couple of decades (yes, I'm that old.)  When I reconnected with him two months ago, he was in a real transition period in his life, just settling into a new place and starting anew.  I thought it might be a nice idea to make him a little housewarming gift, and wrote up a draft for these towels.  It took a while to get the appropriate yarn in the mail, but once I did, I started them right away.  A bit of a hiatus while I was away in Jasper, and while I was working on more time-sensitive stuff, meant that they didn't get finished as quickly as they could have.  I had them off the loom a few days ago, and hand sewed the hems down.  Tonight I finally managed to get them washed and ironed and photographed so they're ready to go.  By the time he gets them, he'll be well-settled into his new place, but hopefully he'll like them, nevertheless.

The towels are woven from soft and strong Aurora Earth, an unmercerized cotton from Cotton Clouds, and I really enjoyed weaving with it.  It's not shiny and smooth like a mercerized cotton would be, but it's really tough, and the colours are saturated.  I'm pretty pleased with the end result, and I'm glad to have a bit of leftover yarn, so I can use these colours to play again.

Porcellana Cowl

I saw this cute little cowl pattern on KnitPicks a while ago, and thought it looked like a quick and easy little lace project.  Their Shadow lace yarn is a lovely heathered wool, so I ordered some in a nice deep red, to try it out.

Of course I can never let things be simple, so I decided to swap out one of the lace motifs (a zig zag that I didn't really like) for a different lace motif (a sort of leaf or petal design) and rewrote the chart by hand with that substitution.  It turned out to be a bit of a complicated pattern, with one motif containing lace on both sides (i.e. no rest rows on the wrong side) and several different motifs across the width, so I never managed to memorize certain parts of it and needed to refer to the chart the whole time.

After listening to about a million podcasts on my brand spankin' new iPad, I discovered that I'd finished the knitting, so last night I blocked it out on the living room floor, and today I grafted the two ends together to make a lovely long cowl.

The website suggests that you can wear it long "for a chic look" but I didn't feel particularly chic with it like that.  Maybe it's just me.  Of course, one little twist and doubling it up makes a pretty and featherweight cowl that sits like a cloud around the neck and looks lovely, too.

That's one more in the "completed" column.

I Got the Blues

We had our girls' trip to Jasper last week, with lots of food and relaxation and swimming to be had.  We saw some wildlife and gazed at the mountains and generally recharged our batteries.  I took the remainder of my Hue Shift Afghan with me, intending to finish the final quadrant of it, the blues and greens and yellow - very tranquil.  Alas, on the drive home, with only a few squares to go, I ran out of the dark blue yarn and ended up setting the rest aside until I got home.  I dug out the violet which I'm using for the border and did the last few stripes of that square with it, since it's a fairly close match to the blue.  If I hadn't told you, you might not have even noticed.

So, having finished the four quadrants, I'm sitting down now to seam them together, and then I can pick up the border for some easy garter stitch finishing.  Of course I've also started a new project (and soon enough I'll make that two) with deadlines, so I'm feeling no rush on finishing this one.  I'll just keep plugging away at it when I need something mindless, and eventually it'll be done.

Springtime IPA

As part of my birthday gift this year, my HLM gave me some really cute pint glasses to enjoy my homebrew.  The lighting might make it hard to see that they say "Special Brew" on them and have some hops and barley in the image.

Today I decided to try my latest brew in them, a seasonal IPA that the fine people at Mr Beer put out for the spring.  It's pretty hoppy (as one would expect from an IPA) and pretty heady and about a 6.5% abv, which is making me pretty happy on my day off work.  And it tastes even better in my birthday glass, while sitting out on the balcony with my feet up.

The New Weaving Project

I finally got my loom Miss Bennet warped for my new weaving project, and did some sampling yesterday to make sure it was going to work out all right.  All was well, so I did the hem (the blue stripe at the bottom) and then started the weaving proper today.

It's a set of dishtowels, three in total.  A nice deep royal blue for the warp, and the weft will be a different colour for each of the three.  This one might look fairly white in the photo, but it's actually a baby blue.

So far it's going pretty well - I have the beat figured out so it's turning out nice and square, and the pattern is showing up just as I'd hoped.  One repeat done, with six repeats per towel.  A good beginning, with a long and enjoyable weaving road ahead.

Lil' Punkin

When I recently saw a friend of mine, who is about to have a baby, my mind went where a knitter's mind invariably would: wee little baby knits!

Since she is due in a week or two, I didn't have time for something big like a blanket, so I settled for something adorable.  EZ's Baby Surprise Jacket is one of my standards, because it is so quick and simple to knit and ends up so darn cute.

I chose a semisolid black (technically Victorian Gothic) for this one because of the mom's style, and also her colouring (which one can assume will have an effect on the baby's colouring.)  I went with Madelinetosh Sport, rather than a fingering weight, because I wanted the jacket to be a bit bigger - unlikely a sweater will get a ton of wear over Edmonton's hot summers, so hopefully it will still fit the baby in the fall.  Unfortunately I ran out of the yarn with only two rows and the bindoff row left to go.  Sigh.  Thank goodness I had some Sweet Georgia DK in Charcoal left over, which was a very close match.  Finished and seamed it and topped it off with five very cute pumpkin buttons, to commemorate the parent's wedding, which took place in a pumpkin patch.

Maybe it looks a bit Hallowe'eney, but that's ok, too.

Unicorn Mermaid Socks

I think it must be springtime, because I have a hankering to start a million new projects, while established ones are languishing on the back burner.  I have new knitting, new weaving, and even new cross-stitchery (!) on the go, with plans for much much more, but never fear, even old projects are getting some time dedicated to them, including my ongoing stockingette sock series.

This is some beautiful Koigu KPPPM that I've had for about as long as I've been knitting (I'd say about three apartments ago.)  Another example of one so beautiful that I just couldn't imagine what would do it justice.  I bit the bullet and cast on the stockingette socks and once again was so enchanted by the perfect little stripes that appeared.  I do love knitting with Koigu, so these ones were a joy from start to finish.  And the colours... to dye for.

Striped Cotton Hat, Redux

Many years ago, I saw a hat pattern by British designer Kim Hargreaves, which was a little reverse-stockingette striped slouchy hat, in cotton yarn.  Even as a new knitter, I knew it wasn't worth buying the $30 pattern book for it, so I just went out and got some cotton yarn in natural and charcoal and faked it.

The hat turned out super cute, but the band (since it was also in reverse-stockingette) curled like crazy.  It made it really hard to wear, since it tended to want to curl up my forehead and disappear.  Despite loving the hat, I barely ever tried to wear it because it was kind of frustrating to try to make it work.

Flash forward to yesterday, when I saw the hat sitting in the closet, all cute and springtimey, and was sad (again) that I don't wear it much.  Then I had an insight - knit a lining for the hat band so it won't be able to curl anymore!  A couple of hours and a bit of knitting later, and my hat band has a lining and actually works as a functional hat!

This one will be getting a lot of wear this spring & summer, to make up for all those years it was neglected.

(p.s. upon taking another look at the Ravelry pattern page, it appears that she has re-released this hat pattern, in bright colours and in regular stockingette, rather than reverse (which I feel takes away a bit of the charm but hey) and it mentions that the band is in garter stitch, which obviously wouldn't curl.  So if you decide to fake this hat, too, do the band in garter stitch and save yourself some heartache.  Just remember to go down a needle size (or two) since garter stitch is wider than stockingette.)

Hopey Changey Socks

As part of my ongoing project to knit up all my variegated sock yarn into plain and simple stockingette socks, I found another skein that's been in my stash for five years or so.  I got this one in a sock yarn club way back then, and while I liked the colours, I assumed it would knit up as a crazy variegated blobby mess.  Imagine my delight when I started to knit it up and realized it was going to make stripes, instead!  All those years of wondering what to do with it and it worked out perfectly without any effort.  Lesson learned.

This yarn is Zen String Lotus Toes fingering, a thin little superwash merino, and the colourway is called Hope.

Only four more variegated skeins and this little project is finished.