Threesome

I'm calling this sock week.



From left to right I have RPM socks in Thank Ewe sock yarn, Child's French socks made from Wollmeise and the Zombie socks in Koigu. All of these got finished in the last 7 days.



First were the RPMs. My second pair of them and I'm still in love with the pattern. It's just so perfect for so many of the highly varigated yarns I have. And even though I usually don't like ribbing because I can't get a proper rythm going, I somehow don't have a problem with these.

I used 2.5mm DPNs and Thank Ewe's merino sock yarn. The yarn is probably the softest I have ever worked with. In addition to that the skeins are quite large (~500 yards), her prices are great and she is incredibly nice. In fact, I contacted her to get three more skeins dyed up in a few of her colourways and am looking forward to getting them.



Sock Madness 2 started last Thursday. The Zombie socks are the first pattern and I knitted them in about 2.5 days. Started Thursday at 10.30pm and finished Sunday morning just before 11.

The pattern is a simple ribbing with a few dropped stitches every couple of rows. Very pretty, very easy and quick to knit (and again I enjoyed a ribbed pattern, maybe I should rethink my stand on ribbing? :D) and they are so squishy it's a pleasure to wear them.

The yarn is mostly Koigu in P809. Since the socks are top-down and the leg much longer than I usually make it, I was worried that I wouldn't have enough yarn. I decided to stripe the heel flap with some Wolle Rödel Siena, but then when I was done with the first sock and found that I did have more than enough yarn (about 5gr left), I was thinking about cutting out the heel flap and reknitting it in all Koigu. In the end I decided against that because it seemed a bit too adventurous for my first round of Sock Madness. :)

This is also the first pair I made on wood needles. I fell in love with the colours of the KnitPicks Harmony and ordered a set on a whim. Now I'm very happy I did. The wood needles force me to knit more losely, always a good thing for me and my hands, but they are also only 6in long. I usually use the normal DPNs with 8in length and now when I finished the Child's French socks after the Zombies, I realized how much more handy the shorter needles are. I never believed it before. I might have to get some more sets of those in different sizes.

These are actually the first socks I have finished in Koigu. I started two pairs in a different colourway before, but always felt like I didn't have enough yardage, or the yarn was too thick for my needles or looked too bulky. Now I'm really happy to have found at least one pattern that works because I'm still in love with a lot of Koigu colourways and only resisted buying them because I didn't know if I would ever use the yarn.




The last pair I finished is one I started a couple of weeks back, but then planned to finish in March. So, one goal achieved. :)

The pattern looks great and I love the finished socks, but I somehow couldn't quite get into a rythm with knitting them. The change of the staggerd ribbing and the lace part meant I constantly had to focus on the socks and they didn't go as quickly as they could have. I shortened the leg slightly and lengthend the foot compared to the pattern. I also added six stitches by adding one repeat to each staggered rib section.

The yarn is Wollmeise sock yarn and I'm in love with the yarn. It's soft and squishy and very non-fuzzy. I don't think I even need to talk about the colourways. :) It's a pity that the owner of Wollmeise announced that she won't be doing scheduled updates to her shop anymore since her server can't take it and now it's even more of a hit and miss to get new yarn than before.

Sorry, no links again since I'm on dial-up. All the info is on my Ravelry profile, my nick there is Honey. Link to Sock Madness in the sidebar.

STOP!

Seriously, Sabrina, stop it! Stop buying yarn! Step away from the computer, do not click 'log in' on Paypal and put away your credit card. Go not trawling for new yarn on Ravelry/random blogs/every damn online store you can find.

I don't think I've been this bad in a long time. I bought quite a bit of sock yarn in February, fully intending that to be my last purchase for quite a while. Well, I might have got a slight serious case of yarn deprivation. Or rather fear of yarn buying deprivation.

It started out quite well. I managed for a week and a half and then I started to slip. I sold some Wollmeise, so I thought since the money hadn't made it from my Paypal account to my real account yet, I could just spend it on something. Since, you know, that'd be almost like a trade and trading doesn't count, right?

So, I ordered a lace pattern and two skeins of JoJoLand Melody Superwash at the Knittingzone. That was last week.

Today I went absolutely crazy. Actually, it started last night. I decided I needed to do something with my Elann lace since the Candle Flame Shawl (see Goals post) didn't work out and instead found the absolutely incredible Shetland Shimmer Scarf. The only problem is that it has a k15tog (no, that's not a typo) in it. I was actually glad about the excuse to order more Addi Lace needles. (And some Harmony Birch needles might also have dropped into my shopping cart. Just because they are pretty and I want to try knitting with wooden needles again.)

Then I realised that that shop didn't have the j-shaped needle the pattern was talking about. I googled. And googled some more. And found out that it's talking about the u-shaped cable needle. I have never seen those in a German yarn store. But Clover produces them. And of course I go to the only German online store I know of which has Clover stuff. Notice that so far I haven't really bought any yarn (except for the Melody, and that was trade, remember?), but this store also has a wide selection of Malabrigo. And I need a skein of Malabrigo for SockMadness. So, okay. I can still justifiy one skein as if it's almost for a started project (because buying more yarn for started projects also doesn't count). It's only one skein and I really don't have any other lace weight with the same yardage. And I need it to take part.

So far, still all explainable. Nothing to get excited about. Then I started googling again.

Somehow I wound up with the idea of needing mini sock blockers. I found some very nice ones at the Unique Sheep, for a good price and I even get to try one of their yarns! Then something in my brain just... short-circuited... Because I also ordered two skeins of sock yarn. Absolutely no rationalisation, no justification, no nothing. Just 'I've wanted this yarn for so long and when am I ever going to order from there again?'. (Just fyi, it's the Verve sock yarn in 'Doctors Without Borders' and 'Velvet Teal'.)

But that wasn't the end. I started trolling Etsy. Bought a load of stuff that has nothing (or little) to do with knitting (earrings, envelopes and a zippered bag) and then I looked at the half-finished RPM sock on my table. Knit in the incredibly luscious Thank Ewe yarn. Long story short (ha, as if that's still possible!) I asked her to custom dye three skeins for me.

While all this is going on I'm also still waiting for the Noro sock yarn that should arrive this month (but is already paid for, thank yarn) and a trade I did on Ravelry where I send off some Lorna's Laces DK Swirl and in return get Kauni Effektgarn (450yards out versus 1000-odd in).

And now comes the latest brain fart, the one that prompted this whole post. I was reading Dawn's blog and she talked about some inexpensive wool yarn, which she had got in a very nice colour. Of course I checked it out. And ordered four skeins for two scarves from Knitting New Scarves for which I'd been lookin for a yarn.

And now I'll hopefully stop. And am glad that I'll spend the rest of the month at my parents and won't have to pay for groceries.

And now I'm actually going to bed trying to sleep and hoping that my possible thesis advisor will become my actual thesis advisor tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed.

PS: This whole post isn't made to mean that I don't love overy single yarn I've traded or purchased or commited myself to purchase. It just means that it's... more yarn.

Decisions, decisions...

I'm almost done with the next square for my Log Cabin Blanket and since my goal is to finally start on the centre piece I have to decide what it is supposed to look like. Or rather, I have to decide if the look I was going to do is still the one I want.



The right picture on this is the one I wanted to make, but now I'm not so sure.

• It looks a bit chaotic, since it not only uses five colours, instead of three like the smaller squares, but also because the colours are separated from each other.
• I use different amounts for the colour pairs (I need more lavender than grey and more light red than dark red) and I'm not sure if I'll have enough then to make all the 26 other squares.
  
• It doesn't look very log cabin square-ly. My first smaller square was concipated in a similar manner, with the same colours opposite each other and I very much prefer to have at least two part of the same colour next to each other, so those fields of colour almost create an optical illusion, like the newer squares do. But since this is the center piece and kinda acts as a unfying element with all five colours, shouldn't it also be different from the smaller squares in other ways? I.e. in the distribution of colours?
  

The left one on the other hand is one I just thought up and I'm just not sure if I like it more. Sure it uses them same amount of colour for each colour in the pair and it's not as chaotic, but

• isn't it too non-chaotic? The right one just seems to fit better into the surrounding mishmash of colour.
• I think it might attract too much of the attention to itself, since the colour fields will be so big compared to the smaller squares. In the centre square, the white alone is the size of one of the small squares and the fields surrounding it get progressively bigger.

Hmm, I just managed to confuse myself again. I like the left one better for purely symmetrical reasons. In the middle row the reds come together with their counterparts, whereas in the right on, one is light red/light red, the other light red/dark red.

Not to mention that I'd rather not worry about if I'll have enough yarn (even though that seems kind ridiculous at the moment where I still have mountains of the stuff).

But I simply can't decide if the center square should be more integrated (right) or more of an actual centre piece, that pulls the attention towards it (left).

February and March

February was a bad month for knitting. I had exams in the middle of the month and just didn't get a lot of knitting done before. And since then I've knit quite a bit, but not enough to make up for the first 20 days. However, March should be much better since I'm on holiday and have time to knit. :)

(1) finish Ella
not done
I did a couple more repeats (no photos, sorry) and I'm almost to the decrease rows on the right side panel.

(2) finish Bellatrix
Done!

I started these before Momma Monkey died and felt a bit weird about finishing them afterwards, but then I realized what better way to honour the memory of a designer than by knitting her designs?

And the design is lovely. It looks a bit sloppy on my sock blockers, but on my feet they are great! :) A nice pattern for socks to just wear on those stay-at-home days. And I'm all geeked out about the fact that I knit the pattern in a colourway called Slytherin. So perfect.

(3) 2 more squares for the Log Cabin Blanket
Got 1 done and started another, which gets me to...

5 / 35 squares. 14% done!

(4) finish Felted Tote
finished knitting it and it's in the waching machine as I'm writing. I'm anxious if it works. *bites nails*
Here's the finished bag, with a DVD box for scale.


ETA: Just got it out of the machine and it looks like a success! But it's incredible how much it has shrunk. I can't imagine what the original tote was like which is knit with only 1/3 of the yarn I used.

Another pic while blocking with the DVD box for size comparison. The largest side is just a bit bigger than the DVD box.

(5) start Child's French Sock
Done! In fact, I got the whole first sock done. The yarn is Wollmeise sock yarn in Wilder Mohn (poppy), which is just an incredible yarn. It's so soft and squishy and it comes in 150g skeins, so I don't have to worry about running out of yarn even though this is the first sock I've knit top down in probably a year and a half?


(6) start Candle Flame Shawl
Done, but didn't get very far. I started it in some lace weight from Elann, but it was too thin for my taste. I think this'd be much nicer in some fingering weight or a slightly heavier lace weight, like Malabrigo Lace. For now I returned it to my queue and I'm focussing on other things.

Goals for March:
(1) finish Child's French Sock
(2) finish Ella
(3) 4 parts of the centre square of the Log Cabin Blanket (equivalent to 3 squares)
(4) knit So-Called Scarf in Malabrigo
(5) finish RPM socks (yes, I started another pair :), more in the next days)
(6) finish Felted Tote
(7) knit first Estonian Sock
(8) rip back top of Column of Leaves Hat and make longer