socks

a little progress

Posted on July 30, 2013August 2, 2013 by bekswhoknits

Apart from the blip that was embroidery, I’ve only knitted on the items which I disclosed last Tuesday.
I had every intention of setting them up next to a ruler to show the progress and taking nice photos of them all.
But we got home later than usual last night, and I found myself at 7:30 unable to keep my eyes open let alone deal with the terrible light in our apartment.

I have found out that a cabled jumper is not the best thing to be knitting during a close game of football, but it was quite good to knit during Little Dorrit. My mum leant me the DVDs so long ago that when I returned them on Sunday she had forgotten she had given them to me. If you haven’t watched it I thoroughly recommend it. It’s a mini-series based on the Charles Dickens novel of the same name (which honestly I had never heard of before I watched it, now I’m reading it – its free on ibooks.) It has a huge cast and at one point I was playing a game of ‘ooh they’re from doctor who’, ‘she’s from hotel babylon’, or ‘he’s from vicar of dibley’.
Parcel is now at the point where I need to figure out how many stitches I have. Because I didn’t follow the pattern (because I didn’t read the instructions properly) I now need to decrease sharply, or do some maths.
I haven’t decided yet.

I’ve turned the heel on my vanilla latte socks. I have a few more rows of the pattern and then I’ll start the ribbing. I really hate the heel on them. I’ll chalk it up to experience and delete the sockcalc app from my ipad.

I’ve been aiming for 2 – 3 rows on mini-mania every night and except for last night I achieved that.
So here’s how long that looks now, using my hand as a guide.
Pretty soon I will have to compare it to a few existing scarfs so I now exactly where I’m aiming for. Otherwise I will get impatient and cast off and then always regret it.

Everything is almost right with the world

Posted on May 24, 2013May 24, 2013 by bekswhoknits

I have now completely my first ever provisional cast on.

I’m not sure it should have taken me 45 minutes and involved scissors, swearing, and cider.

So I have the toe of the sock completed and I’ve learnt something.
If you’re going to try a new technique don’t start with fingering weight.

So I’ve now starting on the foot part of the sock and immediately I feel calmer.
Like there was a something missing before.
This sock was chosen as my Team Bee mascot project. I am loving the pattern. It has one tricky row, and the rest is straight forward, I’ve finished one repeat and have got it down pat.

I am loving this yarn. It’s from yarn vs zombies and it is a dream to work with. It’s flying quickly through my fingers and I have to stop myself from pressing it against my face.

I’m no sure I’m loving the two together though.
I think the pattern is getting lost in the colours.
So I’m not sure what to do.
Do I start again with another yarn?
Do I give the provisional cast on another try?
Do I keep going and wait and see if I fall in love with the complete sock?

So everything is right with the world because I have socks on my needle, but I can’t shake this feeling that it’s not quite the right socks.

FO #11 – British Morning Socks the sequel

Posted on May 10, 2013May 10, 2013 by bekswhoknits

A while ago now I made some bed socks for my most favourite girl in the world.

Since then they have been well loved. As they were so well loved I had no issues with making another pair.

Only problem was I don’t quite know where that pattern book is. Maybe under the couch somewhere, but it’s lost at the moment.
So I did a bit of research and found nothing I really liked.

I did find a really cute mitten pattern which is only in Swedish but I thought I could figure it out and make it into some socks.

Using size 7 needles and Moda Vera Jet bulky yarn I cast on 8 stitches using Judy’s magic cast on
Then increased every second row until it fit my foot.
Then I switched colours and did a few rows of purling, switched colours and did a few rows of knitting.
There was no heel so I just kept trying it on until they were long enough.

Alternating the colours whilst doing two at a time is something I like doing a) because it creates odd socks that match and b) because it means you don’t have to wind the yarn into two balls. You just start with each colour and then swap. You do end up with a lot of ends though.

I’m hoping that with use the heel will magically appear and they’ll look less like woolen condoms.

FO#10 – Summer sky half socks

Posted on May 3, 2013May 3, 2013 by bekswhoknits

It was pointed out to me once that calling these ‘socks’ was a bit misleading.

Calling them yoga socks is also misleading because I’ve never done yoga.

So I’m calling them half socks.

These half socks come in really handy with my tiled floor.
I am a clumsy girl. I usually have unexplained bruises. My bed frame in particular attacks me.
I have sustained injuries from hair ties, cereal boxes, and Nutella jars. (The Nutella jar incident required 8 staples. I still eat Nutella though. I’m such a trooper.)
So walking around my house in slippery socks is a recipe for disaster.
I also have cold feet all the time so I need socks.

These are an OK answer. They still don’t stop my toes getting cold, but it’s better than no socks at all.

I’m counting these as sock 4 in my 13 in 2013 project.

#4KCBWDAY2 – a mascot project

Posted on April 23, 2013April 25, 2013 by bekswhoknits

Think of a bee
You are it’s knees
You waft through me like a summers breeze
Can I come round on Tuesday please
– a Bernard Black poem

Black and yellow stripes bore me. I’m not a Richmond fan, nor am I an extra from flight of the bumblebees.
So picking a pattern to match my house animal I thought would be difficult.

Starting where I usually start, I typed in “bee” into ravelry. (I wonder if they’ve noticed an increase in certain house animal search terms over the last few days. I also wonder how many results Manatee brings up. 9. Nine whole patterns.)

After browsing for a while, favouriting a few patterns, looking at what’s in my stash I usually gravitate towards socks.

Eventually my search screen looks a bit like this.

Hopefully one will take my fancy. In this case I found it.

I check the pattern notes, see if there are any red flags, before downloading it to my iPad and having a good read of the pattern.
It’s one has a couple of new techniques which I’m looking forward to trying out. The stitch pattern is really pretty, plus it has a provisional cast on which I haven’t tried before.

Plus I have sock yarn which is perfect! I am actively resisting not casting on immediately! But more on that tomorrow.

This exercise has become a little torturous. Now I have a gorgeous pattern which I can’t cast on until I finish my Mother’s Day Hitchhiker.
Aawwwwe.
It’s I’d why I can’t look at ravelry while I have a deadline project.

Pretty!!!

FO#4 Dangerous Turns

Posted on February 18, 2013February 22, 2013 by bekswhoknits

I had a non-monogamous weekend.
Friday night kicked off with a show at Festival Gardens, and knitted some rows on Parcel.
I learnt how to turn a back cable into a front cable one row after discovering it. Disaster averted.

Saturday night was spent watching Castle, before having a girly night and spending some time with my 10 Stitch Blanket (which is slowly getting bigger after being ignored for some time).

Then Sunday was all about the next step sockalong socksDangerous Turns. These socks fit like a glove.
The only thing I’m not happy about is the cuff. But I’m never happy with my cuffs, they hang of my ankle rather than hugging it.
Somewhere along the line I missed a cable repeat and I’m still deciding how annoyed I am about it.

So I’m not over the moon with these socks. And I haven’t weaved in the ends as there is still the possibility that I will frog them.

I don’t mind them, but I know how they should look.

I’ll look at them in a couple of days and see whether I can live with the mistakes.

Next Step Sock Sockalong

Posted on February 12, 2013 by bekswhoknits

I’ve gone a little cable crazy. I’ve cast on two cable projects in the last week, one of which is dangerous turns.

These are a good candidate for the Next Step Sock Sockalong (hosted by crafts form the cwtch and is about stepping out of the sock comfort zone and trying something new).

Firstly I’m knitting these out of cotton. Which I haven’t knitted with before. I have no idea if they’ll make nice socks but I wanted to give it a go. I’m a bit tired of using Noir all the time and I’ve promised myself not to buy it again, but I was in Spotlight and wanted instant gratification yarn, so I bought Panda Regal 4ply Cotton.

Secondly I’m knitting cables without a cable needle. I’m a cable beginner, who naively assumed that there was only 2 types of cables.
Well there aren’t. And last week they had me beat. The tutorial I used didn’t cover what to do when there was purling involved. And stubborn old me wasn’t about to use a cable needle.

Fortunately the answer came to me in a dream.
After nearly throwing them across the room, frogging them, and sobbing into my cotton, I wisely decided that I would sleep on it.
After dreaming about knitting (is this common?) I had the answer.

All of a sudden the cables fell into place and I knew what to do.
So I manually transposed the stitches. Once I had done that I could knit and purl as I pleased.

And then last night I figured out how to do it in one clean swoop, the grumperina way. And it seems so simple I don’t know why I didn’t get it before.

So these are my next step socks.
I’m hoping now that I’ve got the cables figured out for good and the early cables don’t look too rubbish in comparison.
Or that I forget it all and can’t figure it back our.
Or that I have actually ‘got it’ and haven’t just made something up which doesn’t work.

Eep, maybe I’m not as confident about cables as I thought I was!!

FO#3 socks like a waltz

Posted on February 8, 2013February 8, 2013 by bekswhoknits

1, 2, 3.
1, 2, 3.

Knit knit knit, purl purl purl.

And so it goes.

Knit knit knit, purl purl purl.

Until you shift it one stitch to the left and then start waltzing again.

Knitting heel-less socks felt like dancing.

The pattern is really easy. So easy I didn’t think it would work.

But it did. And just in time to.

I did manage to finish these last Friday. And I wore them last Friday as my gorgeous polkadot cons were hurting my feet.

I still need to weave in the ends but I have cast on new projects since so that’s just not a priority right now.

So the pattern I made is as follows. Cast on 60 stiches. (Next time cast on more but make it divisible by 6 – not 3 as the pattern says. That doesn’t work)

Work in rib for a while. I went the twisted rib route which goes like
Row 1) knit 1, purl 1 through the back loop
Row 2) knit 1 through the back loop, purl 1

Once there’s enough rib, start to waltz.
K3, P3.
Do that for 4 rows.
Then
P1,K3, P3 (keep repeating the waltz, you’ve just shifted it over).

After 4 rows shift it over again.
P2, K3, P3

And then you’ll have swapped over and you’ll be starting with P3 K3

Just keep on going, shifting it one stitch along every 4 rows.

Try it on and when you’re ready, make a toe.

I did a standard decrease every second row, toe.

Once you get to the end, say you have 16 stitches on the needles, panic because you don’t have a needle to do Kitchener stitch or a decent enough Internet connection to google it.

Instead decide to so a 3 needle bind off, with a bobby pin.

Later regret this decision because it was so freakin fiddly, but be grateful that you finished them and they could soothe your feet.

I’m at the cricket

Posted on February 1, 2013 by bekswhoknits

Today’s post comes to you from the WACA.

I have polkadot converse and I’m knitting socks.

Tube socks which I’m hoping to finish today.

Oooh a wicket! Excuse me while I pay attention.

Finished object #2 – Summer Sky Socks

Posted on January 25, 2013January 30, 2013 by bekswhoknits

Sock number 1 in my 13 in 2013 challenge is complete and I’m in love this pattern.

Two at a time, toe up socks, with little delicate cables, on my favourite addi turbo 2.5 circular, with moda vera noir ( which is always on special).

My Bloke thinks I’m in a rut because all he sees me knitting is socks.
But not all socks are created equally.

These summer-sky socks (yay! alliteration!) were a great cable project for me. After learning how to cable without a needle on my Christmas Spirit Hats, I wanted something so I could really practice.

And these are it!

The pattern has a yarn over detail in the centre, which makes it really easy to know where you’re up to in the pattern. It was easy to memorise and didn’t require a counter (always a plus in my book).

I really want to knit more things with this pattern. I’m thinking maybe a pair of fingerless gloves. Who knew I would like cables so much?!