FO: Milo Socks

Technical details
Ravelry project page
Pattern: Milo Socks, from Sock Innovation, by Cookie A.
Yarn: Yarn d'Amour Rhea, in the colourway Silverado, dyed specifically for me! Yarn is Cotton & Tencel, sheepless sock yarn.
Needles: 2.75 mm
Notes: I love cables. I love love love cables.
Socks went really fast, and I didn't have too much trouble memorising the cable pattern. Will knit again once these ones wear off (I haven't worn them yet, though).

FO: Diamond socks

The second pair of socks of the year is finished!
(The first pair was another pair of boyfriend socks, which I planned to tell you all about, but didn't. It's easier to take pictures of my own feet than coordinate to take pictures of somebody else's. Maybe one day. If you are good. And send me cookies)

Diamond socks Technical details
Ravelry project page
Pattern: Wanida Socks, from Cookie A's Sock innovation
Yarn: 2 balls of Crystal Palace Panda Cotton in the Lacquer Red colourway (discontinued)
Needles: 2.25mm for the ribbing and 2.5mm for the sock, both bamboo dpns
Notes: I did 13 rounds for the ribbing. The heel flat was 16 groups of purl-knit repeats. For the foot, I completed the chart twice, and then did until row 6. Because I was so close to close the diamond pattern, I did the centre YOs and double-decrease from row 7 in the 1st row of the toe set-up, which I think really helps closing the pattern.



Fluff: I love my socks!
The pattern caught my eye every since I bought the book. I knew I had to pair it with a solid yarn, and that gave me the best excuse to actually buy some Panda Cotton, after which I had been lusting for a while. I was lucky to find a UK supplier, Cafe Knit. I have a little review of the yarn nearly written up, so I will post that when I have had a change to actually wear it. The socks/yarn feel really warm, so I am hoping it will keep my toes from falling off.



The socks were fun to knit, and very quick. I can't help thinking they look like ballet slippers, with the criss-crossing of the diamonds. The pattern is not terribly difficult, but not too easy either. The general feel for the diamond pattern is not difficult to get hold of, although you still need to keep an eye on the chart regularly, so it's not mindless knitting.
One thing that is not so much an errata as a less straight forward instruction is in the change from the leg to the heel flap: the way the instructions are written, it doesn't make a lot of sense. But if you start the heel flap on Row 2 (purl) of the two row repeat, everything suddenly falls fine into place.


I really enjoyed knitting the socks, and am very pleased with the final product.

Books and socks

On the first weekend of the new year, I bravely went into town, to the shopping area (I needed to buy a humidifier!). I went into the bookstore, and left with two books under my arm: The Stainless Steel Rat omnibus (amazon|wiki), and Sock Innovation (amazon|rav).

Of course, after buying Sock Innovation, I spent several days searching the web looking for sheep-less sock yarn. I should have thought about this little problem before buying the book and becoming obsessed with socks, but I could not resist its lure.

I have now found some yarn that works for me, and that is shipped from the UK: Cafe Knit sells some Crystal Palace Panda Cotton, and Martin at yarndamour is dying for me some of his cotton-tencel sock yarn!

The Panda Cotton is here already, and I just need to finish Alex's socks so I can free my 2.75mm needles, and cast on for Wanida!

Then when the new yarn arrives, I can do Milo and Kai-Mei. And Cauchy for Alex. I suddenly love socks.

A trip, a strange car, and some knitting

I returned from my family visit with most of my sanity intact, and some knitting. Hurrah! Pass the champagne!

I find family visits very stressful, as criticism and bickering (or complete silence) are the preferred way of communication, but I think I did quite well this time round. Not *everything* I do was completely wrong! Having my own copy of the Dysfunctional Family Bingo as a lifeline also helped (my own card was based on this one).

I did eat delicious delicious food (although I found myself missing veggies by the end of the 4 day trip), and got lots of knitting done (not counting all the travelling, the 5 hr car trips will do that). And saw strange cars.

On the knitting front, I finished most of Demeter. It needs to be checked for size, though. Demeter's construction, bottom-up with a provisional cast-on, allows for knitting extra if it's too short. I normally knit my tops too short, so I think I may do this from now on with all of them, provided the body is stockinette (see the TECHKnitter's explanation on why only stockinette).


The 5 hour car journey was mainly devoted to knitting socks. I had done the ribbing on the plane, and I managed to do 10 pattern repeats on the car: 2 that I had to rip, and the 8 needed for the leg. We reached our final destination as I was getting to the start of the heel.

This sock is going incredibly fast, and the yarn, cotton sock yarn from YarnAddict, is a dream: one of the softest yarns I've worked with. I'm really enjoying knitting them.

FO: Alex's (finally) socks

Last Thursday, I finally managed to finish another pair of Socks for Alex, the so-called Finally Socks (I'm sure there was a reason for this name). My plan was to finish them for this week, but the knitting gods conspired for me this one time, and finished them ahead of time. Just barely so: they were drying overnight in the sockblockers, and I had to take them (with full sockblocker assembly) into work so they could finish drying. I got some interesting looks!

The socks are made using the Universal Toe-Up Sock Formula (rav), 2.5 mm needles and Zitron Trekking Pro Natura in grey.
The rib pattern is a k3,p1,k1 tbl, p1, over 72 stitches. I started it around the same time as I was working on Bottom's Up, and was loving the tbls, so I decided to incorporate them in the pattern.

I had to knit the cuff of the first sock twice, because it was way too tight the first time (for the cuff pattern, I just turned the middle k in the k3 into a purl). I fixed the problem by knitting 5 rounds of the rib on 2.5mm (as the rest of the body),5 rounds in 2.75mm needles and using a very stretchy bind off, as learnt from making Ishbel (rav) (p2tog, slip stitch back to left needle). This combination of patterns and needles worked very well, giving Alex no problems getting them over the heel, but still staying up.

The k tbl is almost hidden: if you look at the sock, you can mainly see a k4, p1 pattern, but there is a p1, k1 tbl there, I swear! I like that it kind of gives "hidden" stretch. It forms a much tighter rib when it's relatively unstretched, but there is extra hidden there!

Organic Cotton Sock yarn

It's very difficult to find sock yarn when you can't tolerate animal hair. I keep queueing socks, and then not being able to make them because of this. There are some sheepless sock yarns, but normally you have to import them.

Lo and behold, sheepless sock yarn from the UK! My etsy persusals have final yielded fruit, and I now own a skein of YarnAddict's Organic cotton sock yarn (55% organic cotton/45% Tencel) in the Fresh Water colourway. I am being very restrained and not casting on inmediately, but that is mainly because I have only one skein and many sock pattern ideas.

I'll let you know how it knits up (it's very recent, I had to enter the yarn into the Ravelry database), but I'm very very excited about this!

Wish me luck

Because I have apparenly nothing better to do, I have decided to start my first own pattern: socks. I have a mostly clear concept of what I want, so I can post a sketch when I have scanned it (I tried in Paint, and you could barely tell it was a sock).
Here are some things to watch out in the creation of my socks:

Limitations

• As said earlier, it can't be wool. I'm going for cotton, and hopefully I can find something with a bit of synthetic stretch on it.

Concepts

• They have to be warm sock to slip my feet in when I come back from work
• Chunky yarn, so they are warm socks and knit up fas
• To make them fit without the stretch, I'm going to make the leg open, kind of with a cut in the outside, and hold together with buttons.
• In the outside, possibly starting with the leg and continuing down the side of the foot, a cable
• Some thick stitch for the sole, might have to ask knitting for help on this one
  

Things to know

• Never done cables before! You take some stitches out to a cable needle, and then knit the next n stitches, and then the cable needle. The cable slans to one side or the other depending if you take the cable stitches back or front. Then you knit as many plain rows as stitches you cabled, and start again. At least the stitches right before and right after the cable are purls.
• You will finish Tomato, but you ought to finish some of your UFOs too.

This is all.