skein

Fratello socks

These are my October SolidSocks (ravelry group), which suited this month's colour - brown.  Not one of my favourite colours, but the Wollmeise yarn is such a lovely shade of brown.

Started: 5th October
Finished: 25th October
Pattern: Fratello by Yarnissima
Yarn: Wollmeise merino, part of the kit, which was a Christmas gift from Yvonne last year. Thanks Yvonne, a great gift!

Modifications :  Just one.  The toe is reverse stocking stitch, with a short row toe, and however I knit it, it looked terrible (the short rows).  So I started using this turkish cast on, purling instead of knitting the rounds.  I found it much easier, and if you want to convert to toe ups, this is a great cast on, not as awkward as the figure 8 cast on.

I made a few mistakes, misreading the pattern!  Just silly things,  such as doing a purl increase instead of a knit increase when starting the gusset increases. 

Now for more photos.  Hey, it was sunny and I wasn't at work!

This is a fairly simple pattern, with just a little bit of patterning on the front of the sock.  Check out the gusset, very neat!

The fronts.

I'm saving my other pair of (plain) socks  for November, as I'm definitely going to do NaBloPoMo - a post a day for the whole of November.  A real challenge as I usually do about 10 posts a month.  I think it might be a month of small accessories!

I'm back from my holidays

and have hardly any knitting to show!

We had a great time - the worst part was taking a coach trip from Calais in France, to Germany.  Long trip.  We took a quick cruise from Rudesheim in Germany to Strasbourg in France.    I didn't take all of my knitting, yet only managed to knit 2 whole socks - one plain and one patterned, and half of another patterned sock, plus a third of my garter stitch mini shawl!

I'm toying with joining NaBloPoMo again for November - that's a whole month of daily posts, so I need to keep photos for then!

However, we have a few travelling sock photos for you.

Rudesheim in Germany.  We had a great wine tasting here, large glasses of wine, a very funny German man and four samples!

Kaffe Fasset Design lines, plain socks.

Black forest, at the top (yikes, no-one told me that I'd be going up high and having to come down on winding roads).  This was a resevoir at the top. Pity you can't see the heights.

That's Chris's arm, btw!
Another one in the Black Fores

That's as far as I dared lean over!

On the boat

That's Fratello.

Having a beer.

I found a yarn shop (didn't really look for one, but this one was in the high street)
Increased the sock stash a little bit.  Socks for me, socks for my brother, two pairs of socks for Chris, plus some sock bottoms.

We can't forget Chris' waistcoat; he wore it every day and received lots of compliments.  Here it is in all its glory in the Black Forest region.

He did enjoy himself!

Holiday packing

I'm not talking about clothes packing, I'm talking about knitting packing!  This is much more important.    I haven't even started thinking about clothing, though I have lists!  As I acquire more gadgets, I need to keep a list of what I need to do before we go anywhere - all the downloads and syncing!

The entire afternoon has been sucked up with yarn and ravelry, how does this happen?!

The Plan
1) Take the current sock projects as holiday knitting.  That's a plain sock, Komet and Fratello.

2) go through the sock stash next to  my chair (not the main sock stash) for emergency sock knitting.

You'll notice more solid colours in this pile - that's because these are my shortlist for SolidSocks knitalong (ravelry link)
and here's the chosen yarn for my holiday sock knitting - both pattern.

Easy knits sock flats - bought at the I knit london day, and some Lorna's Laces, called Fandango, Get Knitted's August sock club. 
I like this colour, but I can't say that I'm enamoured by this month's colour (though Chris might like it). 
Irish Jig:

That's the sock yarn.

3) But of course I'm going to take other stuff! 
I fancy doing a bit of lace, or scarf.

So, the lace/scarf/oddball stash came out.

 

3 boxes, a few packmate bags.  I do, of course, have other oddball stashes.  There's a big vacuum pack of 4 ply yarns, and another big pack of odd cottons, mainly Rowan, but in this instance I'm not rooting around in my main stash when there's ample in the boxed stash!

The chosen ones:

 

Left to right:  Malabrigo lace weight, Knitwitches cashmere & silk (a 4ply thickness, I think)  Dream in Color classy (worsted)  and Wollmee (4 ply).  

A few hours on ravelry, checking out the patterns, and I've allocated each yarn to a pattern.

Malabrigo laceweight will be for Flutter.  Ravelry link here. 

Knitwitches will be Rivolo, ravelry link here.

Dream in Color Classy is set for some fingerless mitts/arm warmers.  Silly Dawn bought herself a new winter coat, with 3/4 length sleeves!  I like Dashing, ravelry link here. 

Wollmeise isn't allocated yet.  I'm veering towards Evelyn Clark's Deciduous Lace shawl, ravelry link here.   I rather like triangular shawls with that have wings - great for sitting on the shoulders, and for tying.

As if that isn't enough, I remembered the Weaver's wool mini shawl!  Ravelry link here.   It's dk weight, a very quick knit. 

Out come two possibilities:

Manos silk blend on the right, Artisano alpaca on the right.

That's about 3000 yards worth of knitting in a week!  Oh dear. I'll be lucky to knit half of this! Anyone else ever do this? Take away far too many projects?  I think my problem is that whenever I start searching the stash, a million yarns start crying out 'knit me! knit me!' and then I go onto ravelry and another million patterns cry out 'use me! use me!'   I have no willpower.  Off to wind up some skeins.

Drop Stitch Scarf

Just what I needed after sock and blanket knitting, a fast, easy, portable knit.

Pattern: Drop Stitch Scarf
Started: 28th September
Finished: 11th October
Yarn: Manos Silk Blend, colour 9332, 100g (300yds)
Needles: 4.5mm straights.

This was a fast knit.  I worked on other things in this time frame, it didn't take me 2 weeks!

I knitted until I ran out of yarn.  It's such a simple pattern, adaptable for different widths.  It's multiples of 10 plus 6.  I cast on 36sts.  Fully reversible.

Here's a good shot of the texture.

With dark mornings and evenings, I'm having to take my camera and knitting into work to take photos!  Today was overcast and wet, very gloomy. I'm leaving sock blockers at work for the socks from now on!

I'm not through with scarves; I've lots of suitable odd balls in stash, and I feel a few more coming on in the next few months.

In the country - mystery blanket unveiled!

This is the final month of Debbie Abraham's Mystery Blanket knitalong.  I've thoroughly enjoyed it, getting a little parcel each month, with 5 squares to knit.  I think that's why I've lingered over the last few squares!

There are 2 choices for border - one is a stocking stitch central area with bobbles, the other is garter stitch.  I've chosen garter stitch, the thought of more ends to darn in leaves me cold.  I also think that the garter stitch looks nicer with the squares.

I decided to knit the side borders first, whilst the blanket is in two bits, less bulk, and here they are:

(they're looking a bit wobbly here, not so noticeable in real life)

This morning I darned the last few ends and it's finished!

Now I have 3 photos here, I think Chris was attempting to peek over the top...

 

 

 

 

Here's a selection of squares (not very blocked, I hasten to add!)

Intarsia, my lease favourite.

I preferred knitting the pig and cow, but I like the cow and sheep best.

 

A selection of texture - I liked most of these, except one version of the bottom left, kept making mistakes!

 

and a selection of colour.  The two on the left were my favourites.

 

Overall, a brilliant way to knit a blanket!  I can't wait for next years, which should be even more fun as I'll have finished the Picnic blanket, and will be just working on one.

Fratello

Another Yarnissima pattern!

These ones are for the SolidSocks October knitalong - the colour this month is brown,  and I doubt one could get a more luscious brown than this Wollmeise shade.

These are toe up, and I've had a few false starts. This toe is a short row heel toe, but it's reverse stocking stitch. Try hiding the wraps!

As written, I didn't like the knitted up wraps at all. No photos, as I frogged it and reknitted the toe, with wraps, but I left them as was and didn't pick up to knit or purl.  These were slightly less obvious, but still I didn't like the way they showed up so much.

Back to the frogpond.

Third attempt is not a short row heel - its a Turkish cast on, but instead of knitting the rounds I'm purling them, and as you can see, the toe seam is virtually invisible.

I'm doing increases on the bar between stitches - still visible, but less so (and the inside is very neat, too!)

 

When it's stretched out (as on a foot) it's even less obvious.

I've had to press the toe as it was curling up as if it was inside out (which it is, I suppose) and this is the process so far.  I'm just up to the start of the gusset shaping. 

Apologies for the photo - it was taken before work today when it wasn't quite light enough.  I had to turn the flash off to capture the pattern. The colour's truer in the first lot of photos of the toe - brown!  I'll try to get a daylight one next time (yes, it looks like it's proper daylight but it wasn't, it was before lights off this morning) but as the days get shorter it's too dark when I get home to take photos. The only option is to bring camera and wip to work, then look like a pratt outside the office trying to take photos before the pub's punters arrive for the day!

This is a fairly easy yarnissima design, just a little bit of chart action.  The gussets and heel need doing, but as this is my third pattern I'm fairly confident that this won't be a problem. 

PS anyone having problems with Typepad?  For the past week or so it's been terribly slow to type up my post.  And I don't think it's pinging (bloglines at least).

Komet

I've finally cast on my October socks for SKA (ravelry link to Sock Knitter's Anonymous group).

The choice was either a holiday stocking (one huge sock for a holiday of your choice) or any design by Steffi Linden.  I chose the latter, but have wasted a precious 4 days dithering between patterns.

My initially thought I'd knit either Lizzie, Livia (from twist collective) or HoneyBee socks.

 
1st October - I cast on for Livia with some pale green yarn, but I realised after a few inches that I didn't like the yarn/pattern together.
2nd October - decided to do Komet (not one of my original top 3 choices) in the same yarn.  I found the pattern awkward and the yarn didn't seem to suit the pattern well.  I looked at other people's Komets and they looked different, somehow. Hmmm, wonder why?
3rd October - changed yarn and pattern.  This time it's Lizzie in some raspberry Fleece Artist merino sock.  Loved it, except that I'm doing Fratello for SollidSocks, and that's another one with lots of purl stitches, and I like a bit of variety in the knitting.
4th October - success!  Back to Komet, but using the raspberry yarn and discovering that I can't take knitting for granted, even after about 40 yrs of knitting!  Yes, I didn't read the chart properly, and it's only charted for every other row, not every row. That's why I found the pattern awkward and my socks didn't look like the photos!

Green socks, pattern followed (incorrectly) every row

Raspberry socks, pattern followed (correctly) every other row.

 

So much nicer to knit! The colour is much more saturated than shown.

Although I have a plain sock on the needles, I think that I'll have this one as commuter / work knitting this week, see if I can't finish it by Friday.

September knitting achievements and October knitting plans.

1) Finish Horcrux socks.   Done!

2) Start and finish a pair of SKA socks for September. Done!

3) Start and finish a pair of orange socks using my Yarn Yard orange yarn.  NOT done.

4) Knit July's Debbie Abrahams Mystery Blanket   Done!

5) Knit August's Mystery Blanket  Done!

6) Knit September's Mystery Blanket Done!

7) Knit 6 Picnic squares (leaving just 12 to go!)   Done!

8) Put away sock yarns not used in SOS and stash the new socks yarns I've bought since the start of SOS08.  Done! 

9) Update my flickr stash photos to load the new acquisitions and remove the knitted skeins.  Done!

10) Sort out the year's sock yarns for SKA and SolidSocks, but it might not work so well with SKA, as I haven't decided on what I'm knitting yet.   Done (sort of)

I'm very pleased with my progress. The only thing I didn't do was knit another pair of orange socks, but I'm not too bothered about that one.  Instead, I joined two more Mystery Blanket strips, joined the 7th strip of Picnic to the rest and darned in a million ends and knitted another 1.75 squares - 10.25 to go!  I've knitted half of a plain sock too, just haven't blogged or ravelled it yet.  Oh, cast on for a scarf too, just not the one I intended knitting last Sunday night.

October goals.

I'm not sure I can do a lot of knitting this month, as we're going to try to take a late holiday and I'm not sure how much knitting I can do when away, but certainly, the two big blankets will not be going away with me, which limits my goals (unless I can finish them before I go? Challenge??)

1) Knit the last four squares of the Mystery Blanket.  I hear the central square is special!

2) Knit the border of the Mystery Blanket, which is a mystery as I have no idea how big it is!

3) Start and finish my socks for SolidSocks on ravelry. I've decided to knit my Yarnissima Fratello socks.  I can't get enough of patterned socks at the moment.  The colour this month is brown.

4) Start and finish my socks for SKA on ravelry  This month's theme is Steffi Linden or Holiday socks (one of those big Christmas style socks, for pressies).  I'm opting for Steffi Linden, and the choice is between Honey Bee, Livia and Lizzy.  

5) Finish the plain socks I'm knitting at the moment.  It's a Kaffe Fasset Regia yarn, plain, top down, no photos yet.  Half a sock done.

6) Finish the scarf I started at the weekend.  No photos yet, but it's Manos Silk Blend, a mixture of pinky red, cream and black. 

7) work another 4.25 squares of Picnic - leaving just 6 squares and the border to do!

8) There's no 8, but I have ordered some yarn for a knitted jacket! Can I resist casting on, I wonder?