8:59 am - May 31, 2013 - AngelaH

No safety pint required

Last weekend I cast on for Willowherb from Coop Knits Socks. It’s one of the orange projects (using Indigordragonfly merino sock in Safety Pin or Safety Pint: Discuss) and I am totally captivated.

Rachel Coopey’s patterns are really beautifully presented, with very clear directions and lots of inspiring pictures. Also, these patterns make beautiful garments. Willowherb combines twisted stitches, switch-back lace work and stockinette panels to make a sock that is super fun to knit and, I suspect, very comfortable to wear. I’m especially enjoying the little inserts of twisted ribbing, which pull the sock in and, I suspect, will prevent any late-in-the-day slippage (I hate the feeling of socks pooling around my ankles, something that rarely happens now that I knit my own).

The stitch pattern also seems designed to prevent boredom. It’s an eight-stitch repeat, which lets you get into a rhythm, but the chart is 54 rows long, so in the enter sock you might only get through it two or two and a half times. I guess this means I have the chart out while knitting, but honestly, you only have to look at it once a row (thanks to the short repeat), so it isn’t as though you’re married to it.

The yarn, it turns out, is a perfect match. It’s springing and almost spongy in that way merino can be, and it’s giving great stitch definition (sadly, to often wonky stitches). Despite the lace, these are pretty dense socks, so they’ll likely see wear all year round. I have several skeins of this yarn in my stash and I’m really excited to see how it looks in other kinds of patterns.

Assuming I don’t get distracted by orange project no. 2 this weekend, I may well have a finished Willowherb by Monday. Honestly, you try putting down a project that’s this much fun.

Categories: in progress, Knitting Tags: Indigodragonfly, Rachel Coopey, socks, Willowherb

9:18 am - May 28, 2013 - AngelaH

Cheerful toes

It’s a grey, wet, rainy day here in Toronto, so let’s look at some colour.

I actually finished my Monkeys last week, on a day rather like this one, and it was a perfect pairing. I know the wisdom is that during the winter you should avoid knitting grey and white things so your entire world doesn’t become one monochromatic colour, but frankly I find grey spring days far worse than grey winter ones, and the bright colours of these socks were an excellent antidote to all the rain (and friggin’ cold weather) we’ve been getting.

Monkey, of course, is a hugely popular pattern, but I wasn’t a knitter when it was published in 2006, so this is sort of catch-up for me. I will undoubtedly knit another pair – there are books I try to read every year and I suspect that, when it comes to knitting, spring will be greeted by a pair of Monkeys.

Details
Pattern: Monkey by Cookie A. (I used the original pattern, published in Knitty’s Winter 2006 issue, but she rereleased the pattern in her book and offers more sizes, etc. there)
Yarn: SweetGeorgia Tough Love Sock in Honey Fig (I know this yarn has Tough in its name, but honestly, it was wonderful to knit with. It feels strong and like it will last, but it’s still soft on your hands as you knit. I loved it.)
Needles: 2.75 mm
Mods: None. I used a larger needle so the pattern would fit my 9-inch feet, and I used my normal slip-stitch heel instead of the stockinette heel in the pattern, but otherwise, I worked it exactly as written. Details, such as they are, are ravelled here.

I’m including this so you can see what the yarn did in stockinette. I love the way the swoops of the pattern broke up the flashing.

Categories: finished, Knitting Tags: Monkeys, socks, SweetGeorgia

9:35 am - May 24, 2013 - AngelaH

Tangerine, melon, squash, terracota – it all adds up to the same thing

I’m feeling a bit of a colour jag coming on, so I thought it was only fair to warn you that there might be a bit of a theme over the next little while.

Left to right: Indigodragonfly Merino Sock in “Safety Pin or Safety Pint: Discuss” for Willowherb; Quince & Co. Finch in “Nasturtium” for Grace; and Indigodragonfly Bleats, Shoots & Leaves in “Baldersquash” for Daphne.

Yeah. I know it’s spring and that colour says fall, but I can’t help it. I’ve been seduced. I have projects planned in other colours too, but at least one of those is secret (this year I am going to be on top of Christmas, dammit) so it’s going to be mostly orange, most of the time for the next little while.

The weird thing, though, is that I didn’t plan this, or even realize it, until I was getting myself organized. I briefly thought about switching the yarn for Willowherb to this one, but then I thought about it and decided that those socks really wanted to be orange. Then I thought about not knitting Daphne right after, but I’ve been wanting a pair of these since I finished the first ones I knit, so that wasn’t an option either. And Grace was always going to be this colour. So, yeah. Orange.

Does this happen to you? I sometimes go on unintentional thematic runs in the books I read, but so I feel like I’ve been okay about mixing up my knitting colours. I suppose, though, that once a stash reaches a certain size, colours just rise to the top of their own accord. That’s probably it, right? I mean, this is basically all the orange yarn I own, so the fact that I’m planning to knit it all in the span of a few months means it decided it was time (my yarn is sentient I guess?).

Sigh. I’ll figure something else out for October.

Category: Knitting Tags: orange, planning, yarn

8:51 am - May 21, 2013 - AngelaH

Happy Street

L and I found a few minutes this weekend to get some proper shots of my finished shawl. It was actually harder than expected to photograph because it’s so big – 85 inches long and almost 16 deep.

It’s almost more of a scarf than a shawl, which will be perfect for fall and winter (I purposefully chose colours that will go nicely with my red winter coat for that very reason). The looser gauge means it wraps nicely around my neck, twice, so it fits well under a jacket or, wrapped just once, it’s perfect as an extra layer in the air-conditioned office.

Overall, I’m really pleased with this! (Details on it are here and/or here)

Categories: finished, Knitting Tags: photos, Sweet Street

9:41 am - May 17, 2013 - AngelaH

Wild Monkeys

After knitting nothing but garter stitch for two weeks (and such a lot of garter stitch it was) I needed something entirely different. Naturally, my attention turned to socks. I actually cast on after finishing the fourth repeat of my shawl (so, okay, not two weeks of nothing but garter stitch, but pretty close). I didn’t yet have my copy of Coop Knits Socks, so I couldn’t start Willowherb, but I have had Cookie A.’s Monkey in my queue for almost a year now, so they seemed a suitable choice.

I’m using SweetGeorgia Tough Love Sock in Honey Fig.

I’ve mentioned before that I wear socks year round. Not every day in the summer, of course, but if I’m wearing my Chucks, I’m wearing socks. Spring, especially, is sock weather, since although it’s warm when I go to work (averaging 20C these days) the temperature is still falling to around 8C by the time I leave, and that is too cold to not have socks and shoes on while waiting for the bus.

This weather is perfect for lace socks. All that pretty patterning that is impractical when there’s snow on the ground is ideal right now, and will continue to be for the next few months. For all the socks I’ve knit for myself, though, I really only have two pairs of lace patterned socks. Not enough, clearly, so for the next few months I’m going to work on that portion of my sock drawer, which means lots of fun new patterns.

These Monkeys were a great place to start. They’re pretty much knitting themselves (I knit half the ribbing when I cast on last week, the rest of the knitting has been in the last couple of days) and are a perfect canvast for this yarn. I’m knitting the classic, with-purls version of the pattern (from Knitty), and although I might knit no-purl Monkeys in the future, the texture of knits and purls is doing wonderful things to break up flashing and pooling, which I can see happening on the sole, where it doesn’t matter.

Summer socks – I guess you have to be a knitter to get excited about such a thing, but man, is it too nerdy to say I can’t wait?

Categories: in progress, Knitting Tags: Monkeys, socks

10:23 am - May 14, 2013 - AngelaH

Almost as planned

Yesterday was my birthday. I’m lucky enough to work somewhere that believes your birthday should be a holiday, so I had the day off. It was lovely. I knit, I watched some TV, I baked a cake (chocolate zucchini cake with cream cheese icing – delicious).

My original plan, as you may remember, was to have my Happy Street shawl finished by my birthday, and I have to say, I almost made it. By the end of Friday I was finished all the repeats and only had the border to go. I figured that with the weekend to knit 12 rows and cast off, I’d be home free. Then I got sick. I barely knit four rows on Saturday (24-hour flu) and then had to work on Sunday. I got really close, but I still had to finish the last row, bind-off and block the shawl on my birthday. The bind-off row was nearly 600 stitches.

This is a big shawl. I knew it was going to be big, but this is really big. After blocking, it’s 85-inches long and almost 16-inches deep. It dwarfs my Colour Affection and I can comfortably wrap it around my neck twice. The garter stitch is soft and squishy, and the short row turns tightened up nicely.

I haven’t had a chance to get proper FO shots yet, but in the meantime, here are the specs.

Details
Pattern: Happy Street by Veera Valimacki
Yarn: Sweet Fibre Yarns Super Sweet Sock in Luna (MC), Early Spring (CC1), and Spanish Coin (CC2)
Needles: 4mm
Modifications: None. I knit in my ends (at least at the leading end of each stripe), which was a great time saver. Also, on my last WS row (I bound off on the RS), I didn’t do any increases. My shawl is ravelled here.

More photos to come.

Categories: finished, Knitting Tags: shawl, Sweet Street

9:27 am - May 7, 2013 - AngelaH

Very looooong stripes

At this gauge, the garter stitch is so wonderfully plump.

I have been knitting my Sweet Street shawl very diligently since I cast on last Saturday night and managed to finish repeats three and four this weekend, despite spending most of the two days outside enjoying the glorious and unseasonably warm temperatures. Despite all my hard work and attempts at focus, though, I am slowing down.

As with all top-down shawls, the more you knit, the more there is to knit, because the rows get longer and longer as you progress. In the case of this shawl, where each repeat adds 84 stitches to the overall count, that meant I finished section 3 with 350 stitches on my needles. Now, the finished wingspan of this shawl is listed as 3 metres, which is basically enormous. My gauge tends to be a little tighter than Veera’s, but even if I only have it to 2 metres, that’s still a pretty big shawl.

I have no idea how big it is.

So, while I’m not surprised by the length of each row, I am a little dismayed at how long it’s taking to knit them. I have one repeat and and the edge to knit before I’m done and a week until my birthday, when I’d like to be wearing this, and I’m honestly not sure if I can make it. I’m going to knit like the wind, but these rows aren’t getting any shorter.

Categories: in progress, Knitting Tags: shawl, Sweet Street

10:17 pm - May 3, 2013 - AngelaH

From the Frolic

I’ve been on a bit of an inadvertent stash stockpile in the last few months and I think I’ve discovered what’s up (besides and obvious love of yarn): this is stress stashing. I’ve never really been someone who bought into the idea of retail therapy (hah), but yarn and clothes are very different beasts. There have been big changes at the Post in the last few months and work has been crazy and the result has been a lot of yarn coming into this little apartment (and yes, L has noticed).

I, however, am not worried, because I have a plan. Or, many plans. I bought Rachel Coopey’s Coop Knits Socks last week and, although it has not yet arrived (yes, I bought the hardcopy; it comes with a code for a digital download, so it’s win-win), I am planning. At the Frolic last weekend I picked up:

Orange!

Indigodragonfly Merino Sock in Safety Pin or Safety Pint: Discuss (explanation behind that colourway name here). This is destined to become Willowherb. (After the Frolic, in a fit of why-didn’t-I-buy-it remorse, I swept over to the Indigodragonfly site and picked up three more skeins of this yarn in various colourways. I am well stocked now.)

I also snagged a skein of Tosh Sock in Maple Leaf (it takes a Texan to see maple leafs as anything but red, I think, but this is exactly the colour of the maple leaves that are bursting forth right now, and I love it.) I’m going to turn it into Calamint. I’m not sure what the other skein, in Spectrum, will be – maybe another pair of these?

A skein of Tosh DK, in Cosmos, also snuck home with me, and while I’m not totally sure, I suspect it’ll be a pair of Stepping-Stones for me. Every winter I tell myself to knit some thick socks and every winter I don’t; this winter I’ll have no excuse.

So, that’s the yarn. I also picked up a Sweater Stone for de-pilling and a pair of sock blockers. These are just slightly smaller than my feet, which I think is good since it leaves the sock with a little stretch to ensure a snug fit. I got a pair (set?) of the metal ones and so far I like them just fine – they remind me of my grandparents’ bathroom, because every time we visited my grandmother always had several pairs of my grandpa’s socks hanging to dry over the radiator on giant sock blockers. (This is also why I call all thick and wooly socks “Grandpa Socks.”)

I will have an update on my Happy Street shawl soon (stripes are worthy of in-progress photos since they make for such delightfully visual progress). I am knitting away and have been monogamous since casting on. It’s driving me crazy, so if I can get the third repeat finished tomorrow, I’m taking the sock out with me for a few rounds at least.

Category: Knitting Tags: Indigodragonfly, Madeline Tosh, yarn shopping

10:14 am - April 29, 2013 - AngelaH

Sweet Street

I have been planning to knit a second Colour Affection for a while now. I wear mine all the time and every time I wear it someone compliments it. Since I knit the fingering-weight one last time, I thought I’d knit it in laceweight for the second go round for a little more versatility and so it isn’t just the same thing again. Then, Veera Valimaki went and released Happy Street and, well, my plans sort of changed.

Super Sweet Sock in Luna.

Like Colour Affection, Sweet Street is a striped, garter stitch crescent shawl in three colours, but that’s basically where the similarities end. These stripes are wider and, because of some seriously clever short-rows, this shawl looks more like two colours striping over a solid background.

Super Sweet Sock in Early Spring.

Saturday was the DKC Knitter’s Frolic in Toronto, so I hit up the marketplace with this shawl in mind. My original plan was to do the bright stripe in chartreuse and then choose contrasting colours based on that, but when I arrived at the booth for Sweet Fiber Yarns, that plan went straight out the window.

Super Sweet Sock in Spanish Coin.

Sweet Fibre is new to me, and I was totally taken by their colours. I honestly wanted one of each, but I was very controlled and only bought three – all for this shawl. I was very tempted to go with a cashmere-merino blend, but then I remembered that there was a whole marketplace to shop in, so I needed to be smart (the rest of my purchases will get their own post). I was, of course, immediately drawn to the gold colour, and then to the smoky purple beside it. For the third colour (the background) I went with a grey that seemed to have some purple undertones. My Colour Affection is bright, and I wanted this one to be more subtle while still offering a pop.

Sweet Street

I am in love. The purple and the grey are a little closer in tone than I was imagining, but I think as this grows they’ll gain better definition. The gold does exactly what I intended. I’m finished one fifth of the shawl (in repeats, not size), and the rows are already really long (over 200 stitches, I’d guess), but there’s something hypnotic and addicting about garter stitch stripes. My goal is to have this finished for my birthday, which gives me two weeks. That is rather optimistic I think, but who doesn’t like a challenge?

Categories: in progress, Knitting Tags: shawl, Sweet Street

9:27 am - April 26, 2013 - AngelaH

Good news will come to you by mail

I always thought this was the most ridiculous fortune a cookie could offer, but then yesterday I got home from work to a postcard from Lisbon and a package from Ireland.

Hedgehog Fibres Twist Sock in Pheasant.

The package? Yarn I ordered from Hedgehog Fibres on Saturday. Not even a week ago! This is a bit different from the yarn I used to knit my Hummingbird Socks, though. I imagine it’s dyed the same way, but that yarn was a four-ply Merino/Nylon blend and this is a two-ply BFL/Nylon. It feels much springier, but that bit of nylon also makes me think it will hold up well. (I ordered yarn for Grace from Quince & Co. the same day – maybe in some late-April miracle it will arrive today!)

And, because it’s silly to order one skein of yarn all the way from Ireland, Twist Sock in Unforgiven.

In other news, I am knitting another pair of Stepping-Stones for my mum and I swear these socks knit themselves. Barely a few hours in and I’m almost at the heel. It’s (almost) silly to knit quick socks at this time of year, since she won’t need them for another six months or so, but I don’t care. The next pair, though, is for me!

Category: Knitting Tags: Hedgehog Fibres, socks