The unsimple, simple socks strike again

I loved how the first set of these knitted up so much I went and did them all over again :)  My gauge was a little out if I'm honest so these aren't the snuggest of socks, but boy are they warm.

In keeping with my utter sock obsession at the moment, I've also managed to cast on Twisted Flower in the Ostara 2012 yarn I finished spinning a week or so ago.

I really must get some actual work done soon!

A FO! The unsimple simple socks

I realised that a lot of my blog seems to be about the stuff I have in progress but that I rarely remember to get up pictures etc of my finished objects, which seems a shame really.  So here is a more positive FO posting :)

All good projects have a bit of a story behind them I think, and this one is no exception.  Ages ago I bought some fluff in a destash on Ravelry.  Anyway it turned out that there was an utter confusion as to what I'd actually bought as the beautiful grey/purple/lavender goodness that I was expecting turned out to be an equally gorgeous blue/green/teal braid.  Much PMing too and fro between me, the seller and the lady we thought had got my order and it transpired that the listing had been wrong.  Both me and the other lady were expecting the purple which didn't actually exist.  Well what I'd received was still lovely so kind of no harm no foul I thought.  The seller though, bless her, was mortified by the mistake and insisted on refunding us both the money we had paid whilst telling us to keep the braids.  Keeping with the thought that what goes around comes around, I decided that I'd find some other yarn to buy with the refund with the idea of gifting the FO.

So the money sat in my PayPal for a while and life continued on as ever while I tried to find something suitable.  Sure enough another Raveler came up with a destash and I had a slight moment of inspiration, why not knit some deep red socks for Lama Zangmo?  Sure a white kata is more traditional, but they always strike me as singularly wasteful.  The majority that you can buy feel like man-made fibers, and I'm not totally sure what happens to them after they are given.  Part of me hopes they're washed, ironed and re-sold, but either way, the creation of so many from a non-sustainable source always feels a little wrong somehow.  Shetland wool on the other hand is pretty sustainable, and warm socks when you're walking round a cool temple floor have got to be a good idea.

I finally got round to casting them on on 7 Feb, having waded my way through several other WIPs and they've clocked up a good few miles since.  They've been my commuting project, sitting in my bag with my sports kit, lunch, books, laptop etc and have been kicked about the floor at home.  Though not a yarn I'd necessarily have gone for as a first choice (2ply rather than a 3ply) they have finished up far nicer than I was thinking they would about half way through.  Yes the yarn was a bit on the splitty side which with this pattern could get a bit annoying, but once washed the yarn really floofed up to fill the space between the stitches.  The pattern is Back to Basics from Knitty which describes itself as a slight twist on plain vanilla socks.  I wasn't 100% on it when I was knitting them, for starters they do actually require a fair bit of thought at one point, but seeing the final object... yeah I've already cast on another pair.

I think that is probably enough on the talking about them though, how about some photos :)

If you are thinking of casting this one on, I would just warn you they look terrible on the needles!  I don't know what it was about the pattern or how I was knitting them (2 at a time on one circular needle) but they were possibly the most misshapen sorry looking things I've ever knit.  Blocked though, or on my feet and they are the ultimate ugly ducking transformed.

Taking stock

Ok I think the theme of the past month or so has been of utter manic energy, and not necessarily achieving much.  That is certainly how it feels.  Either way having got a couple of events out of the way, and with a whole pile of deadlines coming up I decided that now was a good time to clear the decks and create a bit of a work plan, whilst making sure I don't stress myself out too badly.

First up the wip list has been thinned out a bit.  A couple of those projects were sitting there with no hope of me actually getting on with them.  The Zauerball socks for instance are blatantly getting frogged, and the Poppy Shawl, whilst not as finished as I want, is bound off and wearable.  I also went for a couple of easy finishes to get things out of the way and space freed up at home.  A couple of nights spent spinning and the Herdwick is done for now... not sure I'm there on yardage but its enough to be getting on with.  Lama's socks have also come to a very pleasant end.  For a pattern that I didn't overly enjoy knitting and which looked decidedly wonky as a wip on the needles they look really good when on (well I think so anyway :D )


So that's me down to four projects actually on needles at the moment ( I might have cast on the Herdwick bag in a moment of weakness last night).  Next up was deciding in what order to get stuff done!  My commuter projects was going to be Lama's socks but they're now off the needles.  Looks like I might be hoping for enough space on the train to spin up the yarn to finish off the other socks and/or try getting Mum's shawl in my bag... hmm watch this space.  The plan then is to get Mum's shawl done on the train leaving my evenings a bit freer to work on the stupidly complicated In Dreams when I'm at home.

With the amount of knitting I've been doing recently though I definitely need a spin project to keep me sane.  There is, contrary to popular belief (and for goodness sake don't let my DH hear me say this), such a thing as too much knitting.  I pretty much topped out my knitting ability at the end of last week with the rush to get the Poppy Shawl done.  The better end of two weeks knitting on trains, on buses, before work, after work, and it felt like in my sleep... oh and of almost all of that being stst was not the fast way to feed my knitting mojo.  So a spin project is definitely needed.  I've got two spindle projects at the moment which are good for commuting, and I think I'll make a start on the latest instalment from Yarnscape's Year of the Wheel club.  I'm going to shoot for a wheel spun 3ply sock yarn to then knit into the utterly delightful Twisted Flowers socks by Cookie A.

Should keep me out of trouble for a while anyway!

Clearing the decks

It is looking like life is about to take a slight turn for the tumultuous, with me spending the majority of September living in a youth hostel during the week (the joys of unpaid internships!).  With that in mind, and the upcoming trip to FibreFest 2011, I decided to finally get the yarn/fibre mountain under some kind of control.

First up was investing in a couple of Really Useful Boxes to store my fluff and spun yarn in.  I'm hoping that by locking it all away it will a) keep the dust etc out b) stop the spiders trying to show me how it's really done and c) will have it looking nice and tidy for when hubby comes home.

Next up was finishing up a project that has been on the needles for what feels like ages, Little Arrowheads.  With my damaged wrist it was obvious that I'd never get InDreams finished in time for the DyeForYarns Ravelry competition, and to be honest after almost a week of solid work on it a little while back, I'm mildly sick of the beads.  With my Mum's birthday coming up soonish, and her wanting a project knitting up I wanted my needles back from the Arrowheads shawl, and to get it out of the "hanging about on the sofa" pile of projects.  So here it is:

Its a much simpler design than I normally go for and if I'm honest it really isn't one of my favourite FOs.  The only reason it got started was that I'd used a skein of the yarn in testing lace patterns for a class I might run, so had 110 yards of it knocking about doing nothing.  A free pattern dropped into my inbox so I thought I'd combine the two.  The intention is for it to have an extended vacation at Wool so that other knitters can see what the yarn looks like knitted up.  As it's hand painted the colour changes are very fast when you're knitting making an odd but nice effect.

Of completions

As promised, a picture of the finished Hiker.  I am finally more or less pleased with how it turned out.  Washing it was a little emotional as it suddenly stretched itself out of all proportion!  A quick corralling with the help of a tape measure though and it started to look a little better.  What never ceases to amaze me though is the transformation that takes place as a piece drys.  In this case, when the yarn was wet it almost shrank in on itself in terms of loft, resulting in a horribly open looking piece of material.  As it dried though, the stitches gradually filled out as the yarn fluffed up again.  Now I just have the wait to find out if the recipient is happy with it... fingers crossed.

My other completed piece of work has been the laceweight,Waves Breaking, a 50g bag of merino/silk that I bought at Woolfest a couple of weeks ago.  For the princely sum of £1.75 it instantly became my second skein's worth of practice fluff.  While I was plying it I could see a distinct difference in the first 100m or so of the singles that I'd spun but after that it was fairly even.  The plying seems to have balanced out most of the variations in thickness and a quick thwacking during the setting process did wonders for the slight overspin.

As with the first First Phoenix it was a bit of a learning curve.  Getting the drafting fine enough was not as hard as I had expected, even if I did put the "drop" in drop spindle on a number of occasions.  With singles this fine and long though I didn't even contemplate Andean bracelet plying it!  Instead I treated myself to a lazy kate from the Spinning Weal along with two bobbins.  As things worked out the first half almost filled the spindle in terms of what I was happy to continue to spin with, meaning I could wind it off onto a bobbin without worrying too much about joins.  First lesson learnt was to never ever ever just take the cop off the spindle... cue an utter yarn barf by the end!

Anyway I ended up with both bobbins about a third full and set off plying them.  I just used a simple 2 ply method, holding both singles together whilst spinning the spindle in the opposite direction to the singles.  I'm a flick spindler rather than a thigh rolling one, so I could get a good meter or so plied in each run.  That said it still took about 5 hours to ply the lot.  Most impressive (even if I do say so myself :) ) was the amount I managed to cram onto one spindle:

In lieu of a niddy noddy I wound the skein around my feet (has the advantage that I can pull my feet together to release the skein rather than getting it stuck on a chair!) then gave it a quick soak in some Eucalan.  A couple of thwacks against the side of the bath and a night hung up in the airing cupboard resulted in this:

All in all, for my second ever skein I was pretty happy.  Hopefully I can work on getting the singles a little more even before I try my hand at some silk.

Hiker complete

Hurrah I've finally finished the Hiker jumper!  For a project which started off so quickly, with the front/back/collar/one arm finished in about a week, the final arm has been tortuous.  I'm still not overly happy with the finished item but it is at least complete.

For once I did swatch before I started and, for the needles given, it worked out perfectly... I should have realised that this was a bad omen.  The back went well, though as it was ribbed it was hard to say.  The fabric felt a touch loose but nothing to write home about.  So far so good.  The front though was where I started to worry a little.  The stockinette section just felt too loose with the gauge looking like it had really loosened up.  That said the overall size was looking good.  Then I moved onto the collar.  I would like to take this moment to register my irritation with badly worked out, lazy patterning.  If you knit as described the ribbing on the neck will bear little to no resemblance to what you've just picked up stitches from!  So a little redesign and I was back on track.  The sleeves are ok pattern-wise.  It is a little annoying that the rib at the cuff isn't as symmetrical as it could be but that is a minor inconvenience.

So I finished it, unsure of the gauge and sure that it would be larger than required.  Imagine my surprise when it transpires that the gauge is a little loose... but the overall object is near as damn it perfect on the given dimensions!  Some things I will never understand.  I'm just glad it is finished and can now be washed and blocked ready for handing over on Friday or Saturday... photos to follow.