Soft Like Kittens socks

In my ongoing effort to make sure everyone in my family has at least one pair of hand-knit socks, I made these for my sister:

The pattern is By the Seine River by Dona Knits, and the yarn is Soft Like Kittens Noodle Sock in a prototype colorway. The creator of this yarn, Annette of Gentle Ribbing, has decided to take an indefinite break from hand dyeing, which makes me very sad. She has understandable reasons for her hiatus, but selfishly I was hoping Soft Like Kittens would be around forever because her colors are my favorite.

Here's another pair of socks I made with the same yarn base, in the Sashiko colorway, this time for my mom:

The pattern is Bowties are Cool by Mandie Harrington, and the stitch pattern makes tiny bowtie or butterfly shapes - nice texture for a variegated yarn, or a good way to add patterning to a solid color yarn.

And of course, I had a skein of Soft Like Kittens set aside for myself, too, in the Double Helix Sock base:

I used Becca Compton's Vinnland pattern for these. The original pattern is toe-up, which I try to avoid, so I knit them top-down instead. To keep things simple, I just followed the chart as written, so the leaves on my sock point in a different direction than on the original pattern. I'm really happy with how these socks turned out, and they feel great... I'll miss you, Soft Like Kittens...

Seine socks
Sashiko socks
Vinnland

Teeny tiny baby socks!

Exciting news: my boyfriend's sister had twin boys earlier this month! To welcome the boys to life with a knitting aunt, the first thing I made for them were some socks.

Cozy Little Toes is a nice, free pattern by Judy Kaethler for making socks sized for newborns. I knit them using my leftover Soft Like Kittens sock yarn in Alpine Flora, which I used to make socks for myself last year. While I wouldn't have described this colorway as "babyish," I think it works really well for baby socks, and I love how it managed to make little stripes!

The nephews were born a bit early, so as tiny as these socks seem, it will be a while before they grow into them. Meanwhile, switching back to adult-sized socks after making these was a bit of a shock...

Baby socks

January socks

I'm trying to use my sock yarn in the order it entered my stash, so first up for this year was my Strong Sock from Another Crafty Girl. I chose this colorway specifically for the Herbology Socks from the Unofficial Harry Potter Knits collection.

Everything was progressing at a good pace, so I decided to call these my January socks since I'd probably be done within the month. And then I had a huge project that left me no knitting time at all, and I didn't touch the socks for a few weeks. And then there were other knitting projects with deadlines. And then, finally, the Olympics started and I sat down and finished a sock and a half in a few evenings of tv-watching. All told, these socks took me six weeks - the longest ever!

This is no fault of the pattern, which I love. These are the first socks I've made more for the pattern than the yarn - usually I pick the yarn first, and find something interesting and generally simple to complement it. My January socks will definitely be for special occasions (occasions like wanting to put something pretty on my feet and sit around and gaze at them). Juniper found them so appealing that a sniff and a rub were not enough:

Don't worry, the sock (and my foot) was unharmed.

Socks That Rock

The LYS where I work is one of a few brick-and-mortar stores that carry yarns by Blue Moon Fiber Arts, including Socks that Rock. I had never tried StR before we brought it in, but many of my coworkers had, and I knew from Ravelry and the podcasts I follow that it has a big fan base.

I tend to be in the "sock yarn should have nylon" camp, so I was a little wary of StR's 100% superwash merino content, but my coworkers assured everyone with similar doubts that this yarn wears very well thanks to how tightly it's plied. So I bought a skein to try, and got around to knitting it this winter in between Christmas knitting.

I made Burning Rings of Fire by Kirsten Kapur, and it shows off the yarn beautifully (the colorway is Beach Glass). StR feels different than other sock yarns I've used - more dense and springy and almost rope-y - but I liked working with it and the finished socks feel very nice. They wear well, and they wash really well.

Frosty

Currier & Ives

So I bought some more. As you do. I'm intending this to be my winter sock knitting for next year, since I have a lot of other sock yarn to try in the meantime... but my LYS keeps bringing in more and more colorways from Blue Moon and I'm pretty sure that this will not be the extent of my StR stash.

Socks for dads

My dad's Christmas list this year included hand-knit "cozy socks." Of course I would never turn down a sock request, especially when the requested socks would be best knit in worsted weight. These are the first non-fingering weight socks that I've made, and it felt amazingly fast to be knitting rounds of only 48 stitches! 

The pattern I used for these is Thuja, available from Knitty, and the yarn is Malabrigo Rios. I really enjoyed working with the Rios, and I'm already planning to get some more to make cozy socks for myself once my LYS gets a restock in. (There wasn't much Rios left on the shelf when I bought this, which is why I had to get 2 skeins that came from different dye lots. The difference between the socks is obvious to me, but I hope my dad won't mind.)

My boyfriend's dad also got some cozy socks this year. These are also in worsted weight, Cascade 220 Superwash this time, and the pattern is one I made up myself. I cast on 52 stitches and did 2x2 ribbing all the way around, except for one column of faux cables, created by doing a left twist (or a right twist, for the other sock) every 4th row.

Christmas feet!

From the moment I first touched a mini-skein of Fancy Gnome sock yarn, I decided that this year my feet would be getting a Christmas present, and that present would be socks in that wonderfully soft merino-cashmere-nylon blend from GnomeAcres.

I knitted these over Thanksgiving this year, and although my plan is to wear them only on Christmas and then put them away until next year, I've found lots of opportunities to try them on. Just to make sure the cashmere still feels amazing.

The pattern I used is called Ribbelmuster, available for free on Ravelry. It required a little more thinking than I expected, but was not difficult. Unfortunately - through my own fault, not the pattern's - I made the heel flaps a little too short. I don't know what I was thinking, but the upside is that the relationship between the length of the heel flap and the overall length and fit of the foot is now explicitly clear to me. It probably should have been obvious to me all along, but hey, at least now I know. And for indulgence socks that I'm only going to wear once a year, it's fine. And Juniper approves:

Un-vanilla socks

I've been knitting socks for over a year now, so it's time to expand my horizons. Since I don't see myself giving up my sock habit any time soon, I want to develop a more intuitive sense of what I like in terms of construction and methods. There are so many options that I'm sure I have yet to discover my Perfect Sock.

Until now, I've used magic loop, and almost always worked cuff-down, so for my first adventure, I decided to try DPNs and a toe-up sock. That turned out to be a bit too much adventure when I discovered that the way I purl clashed painfully with my inept way of holding my needles, so I scaled back to a toe-up sock on magic loop.

I used Carle' Dehning's recipe for vanilla toe-up socks with an afterthought heel - another technique I hadn't tried yet. For the toe, I used Lynne Ashton's rounded toe recipe, since I think the "normal" toe-up toe looks a little too chunky.

I knit these in Loops & Threads Luxury Sock, with the toes, heels, and cuffs in Knit Picks Stroll. Both of these were leftovers from my iPod cozy and my iPad cozy, and although I was just trying to use stuff up, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I like the finished socks. I've heard that people sometimes have trouble with Loops & Threads' color consistency, but since I squeezed two socks out of a 50-gram ball, they match fine. The fit of the sock is good, too, including the heel. Rather than working in a gusset, the recipe just adds a few stitches to the heel area, which seems to work fine for my foot.

Now that I have a toe and a heel that I'm happy with, I think I'm ready for my next pair of self-striping toe-up socks!

How to be an excellent recipient of handknit socks, in four steps

1. When you stay with your friend for the weekend, admire her collection of handknit socks, and mention several times how nice it must be to wear them.
2. Enthusiastically visit the LYS where your friend works, even though you yourself have tried knitting and given it up as a bad idea.
3. Accept your friend's offer of a pair of socks, and when you pick out some yarn for them, choose one of her secret favorite colorways.
4. Receive the completed socks a couple months later with many expressions of thanks, and a very sweet post on Facebook.

These are the socks I made for my friend, who executed the above steps perfectly. Like many knitters, I'm happy to make gifts, but socks are reserved for a special few - immediate family, significant others, and very worthy friends.

The pattern I used is Katniss Socks by Rose Hiver, which is free on Ravelry. I know that the braided cable barely shows up in my photo because of the colorway (Citrus Mix, on Cascade Heritage), but I couldn't resist. In person, I think it gives a nice tactile quality to otherwise simple socks, and makes them a little more special. Also, although my friend is not, to my knowledge, a Hunger Games fan, I enjoyed using a fiery-looking yarn in a pattern named after Katniss. So of course, I named them Socks On Fire.

Alpine Flora socks

I finished these socks more than a month ago, and I haven't posted anything about them yet. I feel a little guilty about that, because there's nothing wrong with them. They're perfectly good socks - no major trauma or triumphs were involved in making them, which might be why I haven't felt inspired to write about them.

But I should, because this is a nice pattern and nice yarn, and they work so well together. The pattern is Level Up, by Heather Kinne, and my only objection is that twisted-stitch cables in fingering weight are very fiddly, but I knew that going in. The yarn is from Soft Like Kittens - it's the Alpine Flora colorway, on her Noodle Sock base. I love Annette's sense of color, which this yarn shows off nicely. The colors blend so subtly together that I can't really tell where one stops and the next begins, but taken as a whole I can definitely see them all. I like the nearly-striped effect I got on these socks, and how well the stitch pattern shows up on this yarn. I'm looking forward to working with more from Soft Like Kittens.

I'll also put in a plug for Annette's podcast, Gentle Ribbing, which is how I found out about her hand-dyed yarn. She is always working on something interesting, and usually has some smart ways to modify and personalize the patterns she knits and crochets. Plus, she crocheted this tea cozy. Enough said.

Regeneration

(I wanted the title of this post to be something along the lines of turning frog[ged project]s into princes, but it wasn't happening. Instead I titled it after my Trillian shawl, which is named Regeneration because my tv accompaniment for this project was Doctor Who.)

My "frogging spree" of last month was less painful because I already had alternatives in mind that I thought would better suit the yarns I was knitting with. I had been using some Miss Babs Yummy sock yarn for a Zilver shawl, but things were not looking good. As I mentioned in my last post, I ripped out that shawl and started a Trillian shawl instead, and we lived happily ever after.

Long rows of garter stitch are kind to hand-dyed yarn. The different colors blur and blend together, and this yarn now looks much more like it did in the skein, when I thought it was so pretty.

I love that this pattern allowed me to knit until I ran out of yarn. It's just the right size - generous without being ridiculous - and I don't have a ball of yarn left over that's not enough to make anything but too much to ignore.

The other ripped-and-redone project of last month was my socks using Manos del Uruguay's Alegria sock yarn. My first attempt offered visual proof that pretty yarn + pretty pattern ≠ pretty project in every instance. So, I went back to Ravelry to browse my collection of favorited sock patterns, and picked something much more suitable to a highly-variegated hand-dyed yarn: Anne Campbell's Show-off Stranded Socks. Look!

Much better. This stitch pattern gives texture without fighting the swirly colors for attention, and it was very easy to do. I will definitely keep this one in my repertoire for future socks.

And don't worry, I've already bought new yarn to make the Herbology Socks that I thought I could knit with the Alegria.

Naruto socks for him

I love how the colors swirl around the cuffs!

After nearly two months, I finished the socks I was making for my boyfriend! It wasn't the size that made it take so much time (although these socks felt endlessly long in the foot compared to the ones I've made for myself), but that I was experimenting as I went, specifically with the heel. I wanted to try a short-row heel, but I knew that that might make the fit a bit tight. So I decided to do the heel over two-thirds of the total stitches rather than half - this is a 72-stitch sock, so I did the heel over 48 stitches rather than 36. I also wasn't happy with the look of my short rows, so after some experimenting and Googling, I settled on the shadow wrap method, as explained here by Alice Yu.

Many attempts and many ripped stitches later, I got the first heel done to my satisfaction, and then it was smooth sailing. I'm satisfied with how they turned out, and have learned a few things that I'll keep in mind the next time I make socks for my boyfriend. And he seemed pleased to have some handknit socks for himself.

The cat approves.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, the cuffs, heels, and toes are done in GnomeAcres sock yarn in the Naruto colorway, and the black is Cascade Heritage. The Naruto yarn was leftover from my very first socks that I made last fall, so it seemed fitting that I use it again in my first socks for my boyfriend (it's also fitting because we're both Naruto fans). Now we have cute matchy socks!

Rip rip rip!

I have been on a frogging spree! By which I mean I've frogged two active projects in the past week - so maybe not quite a spree, but much more than normal for me. First to meet its demise was my Zilver shawl in Miss Babs sock yarn.

Back in July, I said that I wasn't quite sure how I felt about this colorway. Although I love the individual colors, the way it was pooling in Zilver left patches of sad blue-grey and moldy brown-green that looked nothing like what I had hoped for when I bought it and had it wound up. I kept going for a while to see if my opinion would improve, but then I realized I was more excited about the idea of frogging the shawl than I was about finishing it. So, rip rip rip.

(I was also not happy with the way the top of the shawl wants to curl in, as you can see in the picture. I don't think blocking would fully eliminate that, so while I would like to try this pattern again with a more tonal yarn, I might see if I can alter the construction a bit.)

Now I'm trying the same yarn again with Martina Behm's Trillian pattern, and so far I'm liking it much better. The garter stitch helps to blend the colors together and break up some of the blobbier pools, so it looks more harmonious and pretty. I don't have as much yarn as the pattern calls for, but I'll just go until I run out.

Manos del Uruguay Alegria in Pindo

The next frogging victim was a sock I was knitting at work. We recently started carrying Alegria, a wool/nylon sock yarn from Manos del Uruguay, and I was really excited to start some socks with it. I was also really excited to try one of the patterns in the new Unofficial Harry Potter Knits magazine, so I started the Herbology Socks. Yes, I was trying a lacey, cabley pattern with an intensely variegated and colorful yarn. Yes, I know better. I got about halfway down the first leg before I admitted that neither the yarn nor the pattern were doing each other justice. So goodbye for now, Herbology Socks.

Instead, I'm thinking of trying Anne Campbell's Show-off Stranded Socks, or a similar pattern meant to complement a variegated yarn rather than fighting with it. Lesson learned (again)!

Socks #4 and #5 for me

I've decided I will be one of those knitters that always has a pair of socks on the needles. My current in-progress socks are the ones I'm making for my boyfriend that I mentioned last week, but before those, I finished two pairs for me in pretty quick succession.

These are from Kristi Geraci's Froot Loop pattern, and they are my new favorite socks. The pattern has the perfect amount of visual interest without being too fussy to make, or so elaborate that I feel like the socks are too special to wear. I also got the fit just about perfect on these, which is not an art I have fully mastered yet, so I'm very pleased. And, I think the yarn works very well in this pattern. It's the Space Cadet sparkly sock yarn that I bought at the Pittsburgh Knit & Crochet Festival earlier this year.

As usual, Juniper assisted with my photo shoot.

I also made a pair of Hermione's Everyday Socks for myself. The yarn store where I work recently started carrying Frolicking Feet from Done Roving, which is a 100% superwash merino sock yarn. So far I've only used sock yarn with a nylon component, so I'll see how these do. I couldn't resist trying out this yarn, though - the only issue was choosing between the many, many unique and vibrant (and crazy) colorways they offer. This one is called Cozy Cove and features my two favorite colors circa 1994.

WIP Wednesday

Well hey, what is this? A blog post?! And a WIP Wednesday post, no less, for the first time since early April! As usual, I have no good excuse for my absence, so let's just skip that part.

I have four things on the needles, all of which are taking turns with each other, and therefore taking their time. Usually I only have one or two projects going, but a few weeks ago I had 6+ WIPs, which was strange and exhilarating! Now I'm back down to the more tedious projects - not to say I'm not enjoying them.

For the past month, I've been working on a pair of socks for my boyfriend - my first socks for someone other than me. Calling it "a pair" is optimistic at this point, because I'm only about halfway done with the first one. They are an experiment in many ways, plus they are for giant man feet, so they're going quite slowly. I'm using leftover GnomeAcres yarn in the Naruto colorway for the cuffs, heels, and toes, and black Cascade Heritage sock yarn for the rest. Three by three rib, nothing exciting until the heel, where I finally ventured beyond heel flaps and learned to make a short-row heel. I wasn't happy with how it was looking until I discovered the shadow wrap method, and now I'm past the heel and well into the foot. The rest should be easy!

I have also been working bit by bit on this little guy. The pattern is Joris by Annita Wilschut, and I have been wanting a Joris of my own since before I could knit. I'm so happy with how he's turning out in this yarn, which is Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sport in Child's Play. The pattern is not that difficult, but a little too complicated for tv-knitting, so I work on him when I'm in the mood to listen to a podcast or something.

There is also this shawl, Zilver by Lisa Mutch. It's currently my tv-knitting for whenever I'm tired of the Naruto socks. The pattern doesn't require too much attention, so it's a nice project for relaxing and just zoning out. The yarn I'm using is Miss Babs Yummy sock yarn, in the Swan Princess colorway, which I picked up at Loopy Yarns during my visit to Chicago a few months ago. This color... I don't know how I feel about it. I loved it in the skein and in the cake, but every time I see it now, it looks different to me. I'll think it's gorgeous, then two minutes later it looks kind of moldy to me. Probably the color variations will even out in the full-sized piece, and if I'm still ambivalent about it, it can be my only-wear-in-low-light shawl.

And finally, my Tempest Shawlette by Tabetha Hedrick, which I'm knitting in Malabrigo Sock, in the Azules colorway. It's grown a lot since this picture - I'm now on the 18th repeat of the tempest stitch pattern - but it's slow going. The pattern is a little too complicated to memorize, but not too hard, so by this point it's starting to get a bit boring. I'm also only working on this project a few days a week, because it's my at-work project, because - surprise! I work at my local yarn store now. I don't think I've mentioned that yet, but yes, I now have a part-time job sitting amongst huge quantities of wonderful yarn with other addicted knitters and crocheters and trying to keep myself from spending my entire paycheck before I even earn it.

Daffodil socks

My Daffodil socks are done! I'm happy with them, especially because of the bright and spring-timey colorway (Lucky Ewe from GnomeAcres). Despite the calendar saying it's April now, we're still getting snow here, and there are not really any leaves or flowers or anything yet. So, at least I have nice socks.

As I mentioned in my WIP Wednesday post about them, I used a US 1 1/2 needle, and I think they turned out just a teeny bit too tight. They're perfectly comfortable, but because I'm the one that made them and I know what I would do differently, I can't keep myself from thinking about that when I put them on. Hopefully I'll forget about that issue soon and just enjoy them!

I'm also happy with the pattern I used, Jeck by Regina Satta. The columns of slipped stitches add just enough texture without fighting with the colors, I think.

My collection of hand-knitted socks is slowly growing, now that I have three finished pairs. I already have my next two sock projects planned out, but first I think I want to take a little break and cast on something different. Come back for WIP Wednesday to see what I've got going :)

WIP Wednesday: Socks and a secret

I skipped WIP Wednesday last week, partly because these socks were giving me such a hard time. I'm not sure I can even call them these socks, because I restarted and ripped them out so many times that I had to throw away the first few yards of yarn from this skein. I don't know what it was, but for some reason I had a huge crisis of confidence about whether my gauge was right. As I've mentioned before, I've been trying not to knit so tightly, so I'm making these socks on US 1 1/2 needles from Knit Picks, down from my usual 2s. Now that I've gotten this far, I think I can say that I will either switch back to size 2 needles for my next pair, and/or go back to the ChiaoGoo RED Lace ones that I have been pretty happy with before. I wanted to try some Knit Picks needles just to see if I liked them better, and I thought that slicker needles would help with my tension. But actually, I'm finding that I can't knit as loosely as I'd like because I feel like the yarn is getting away from me.

All that aside, I'm pretty happy with these socks now that they're behaving. The yarn is GnomeAcres House Gnome in Lucky Ewe and I love it, of course. I think it's meant as a St. Patrick's Day colorway, but to me it looks like the colors of daffodils just starting to bloom, so I'm calling these my Daffodil Socks. The pattern I'm using is Jeck, by Regina Satta, and I'm enjoying it too. Originally, I was using the Hermione's Everyday Socks pattern, but I didn't think the texture of that pattern was really working with this yarn. I'm glad I switched because I think the yarn suits Jeck nicely.

I'm also working on a secret project that I can't say too much about, because it's a present. This project involves a few techniques I haven't done before, including cables, and needs to come out a certain size. I think I've learned my lesson about making presents - I always want them to come out really nice, but if I'm learning something new while making the actual present, I usually end up feeling a little frustrated even if the recipient is happy with it. So, I'm doing a test run with some stash yarn in the same weight as the yarn I plan to use. It's going well, and I think a lot of that is due to not putting pressure on myself to make a brand-new-to-me project come out perfectly.

Check out more work-in-progress posts at Tami's Amis!

Second-ever pair of socks, complete!

Good news! I've finished another pair of socks, and they have been approved by my kitty!

I just realized that I never mentioned casting these on, I guess since I started them during my little unplanned blogging hiatus in January. So let me start with a picture of the skein, which is Aurora Gnomealis by GnomeAcres. I fell in love with this colorway as soon as it was introduced, and had to wait through a few shop updates to get my hands on a skein.

The pattern I used was Vanilla Latte Socks. It's a top-down pattern, which made me a little nervous since my only other pair of socks were toe-up. Turns out, though, that I had a much easier time understanding the construction of these socks. I think a large part of that is due to having already made a pair of socks, but something about working these socks top-down and trying them on as I went made a lot more sense to me than trying socks that I was making toe-up. With the toe-up socks, especially because it was my first sock attempt, I didn't really have any idea how big or long the toe was supposed to be, since I didn't understand the anatomy of a knitted sock. With my new socks, I felt that somehow starting from the cuff and going down felt a lot more intuitive.

There was one line of the pattern that I had trouble with, and I think this is due to me still being new to sock knitting. When you finish the heel turn, the part where you knit around and pick up the gusset stitches either had me knitting "backwards" around the sock, or being one line off from the instructions when it was time to knit in pattern again. It's hard to explain and I don't know what happened, but it turned out fine. (I'm very proud of myself for not repeatedly undoing my work to fix teeny-tiny mistakes that no one but me will notice and even I have mostly already forgotten about.)

These ended up only a little smaller in length and width than my Naruto socks, but I like the fit much better (sorry, Naruto socks). I can't wait to make my third pair.

Two socks!

My socks are done! I'm very happy with them, although they are a little long for me. I really didn't know how to judge the way a half-knitted sock would fit me while they were in progress, but now that I have a completed pair, I have a better idea of what to do next time. And yes, there will be a next time. I'm not sure yet whether I'll become a Sock Knitter, but I already am thinking that a pair of holiday socks would be a nice project to work on soon.

I'm also thinking I might give DPNs a try, because with my supertight knitting, it was hurting my hands to get each side of stitches worked back onto the needle with magic loop. I really like magic loop otherwise, but unless I can change my tension, it is not a fun experience fiddling with such tiny stitches.

I have a sock!

As I mentioned before, I'm doing GnomeAcres' Socktober KAL, because it is the perfect opportunity for me to learn to make socks, and once I know how to make socks I will have a reason to buy more and more lovely yarn from Amanda. I'm using Wendy Johnson's gusset heel vanilla pattern from Socks from the Toe Up. Yesterday, finally, I bound off my first sock! I am going very slowly, but right on schedule to finish before October 31.

I'm thinking the second sock will go a lot faster. I had to restart this sock three or four times due to my inability to read the instructions correctly, and then I redid the heel a couple of times because I kept second-guessing my measurements. Turns out every time I worried that the sock would be too small, I should have stuck with my initial instincts, because it could stand to be a bit snugger. But it fits pretty well, and for my very first sock ever, I'm quite happy with it.

There is cat interference in the above photo because she had just woken up from a nap, which means that everything needs to be all about her until she goes back to sleep.