Persistent Knitter

I finished my pair of monkey socks last night at my knitting group. (Technically when I got home, because I still had to graft the toe). This is what i did to make the pattern complete on the foot:

I try to not do too much gift knitting. I can’t handle the pressure! This year though, we’re under a severe money constraint for Christmas, so I thought I’d do a bit of knitting from the stash. Project number 1 is a pair of ‘Happy Honey Socks’ for my husband:

It’s been a bit of time since I’ve made him a pair of socks. I found this yarn on sale at Webs for a pretty good price. I really like the Regia 6ply yarn. It makes a nice durable sock, and it’s not quite as much knitting as fingering weight socks would be for his big feet.

I had tried a more fiddly pattern, but in the end it turned out too fiddly. This ribbing is the same as you find on the knitty thuja socks; but this yarn isn’t as thick.

For the record, most of the other Christmas knitting is dishcloths.  With the exception of a sweater for my son - I haven’t figured out what pattern to use for him yet, I do have the yarn already for it.

After a few spinning get togethers I finally finished the singles of my BFL roving. I took the time to ply it up the other night from a center pull ball - I always love using up every bit of singles I can. I wound it off on the niddy, and then fulled it using the hot/cold/hot/warm/cold sink washing method, and whacking it against the counter top as many times as I could manage. Here are results!

Yarn on the Niddy:

Closeup:

This is what it looks like when you pop it off the niddy:

Finally, the fulled yarn:

I thought I was adding a ton of ply twist to this, as I hadn’t taken extra care to add a lot of extra twist during the singles phase.  However, once it was fulled and washed it hangs dead straight - so it really balanced itself out.  I also didn’t feel like my singles were very consistent. I kept finding small bits of shorter fiber (second cuts) in the roving, and cursing it as I tried to pick it out. Overall though I’m very pleased with how well this yarn looks in the skein, and I love the richness of the colors.  The colors here are fairly accurate (no touchups on the photos either colorwise), unlike the pictures I took of the roving here.

I am planning on making socks out of this. I was thinking it would be fingering weight while spinning it, but after fulling it looks quite a bit thicker than that. Only knitting a swatch sock will tell what gauge I’m really getting.  I’m planning on doing toe-up so I can use every inch of yarn too. I’m debating splitting the skein into two balls. It weighs exactly 4 ounces - I have no idea how many yards.

I managed to get a copy of the new book by Clara Parkes The Knitter’s Book of Yarn: The Ultimate Guide to Choosing, Using, and Enjoying Yarn. I was pleasantly surprised by the content inside. It feels more like a textbook about my favorite subject than a fluffy pattern book. There are a lot of terms used that spinners will recognize, but I don’t think you’ll need to be a spinner to get the most out of this book. Terms are well explained, there are a TON of color pictures. Many yarns discussed are currently available yarns, but the knowledge you gain from it will apply to any yarn you’d be able to find in the future too.

There are patterns in the book, which is about 2/3rds of the pages in the book, but the other 1/3 is so chock full of really great information about how yarn is made it’s not just a pattern book. The patterns are organized by the number of plies used to create the yarn - and this is unique to any book I’ve seen before. It has a good variety of patterns from simple to intermediate to some lacy things. It’s got some cute sweaters, some others that I wouldn’t make and also some great accessories that are on my to-knit one day list.

It really makes you sit back and think about the yarn you’re using and the project you’re using it for.

I’m glad to have added this one to my library, and I highly recommend to anyone looking for details about how yarn is made and what it might mean to your finished project.

I’m starting up on Alex’s cow/pig/sheep sweater in hopes I can finish it for Christmas. (hahah. Let’s all laugh now). Can you tell that there are no sleeves on it yet? Alex was eating yogurt at the time, and what you can’t see is that he’s holding his spoon in midair waiting for me to finish with the picture.

I had finished the body before, but it wasn’t quite long enough. I added in the 2 inches of corrugated ribbing on the bottom to give it a bit more length. I think it turned out just right.

It’s not done yet, but I’m making slow progress. I’m not knitting much these days because I’ve been busy working on Knit Visualizer 2.0.  See?

There it is in the background!  Excellent progress has been made, but lots of user interface tweaks needed so that it’s easy to use.