This was an interesting yarn to work with – no repeats – just two complete socks in the ball. The break was identified by a length of white yarn separating the two socks – which I missed at first and thought it was where the second sock started! I got several inches into the second sock before I realized I hadn’t found the “beginning” of the second. I unravelled what I’d done and started the second sock to match the first.
I have another ball of that yarn in another colour. I’ll use it after I’ve finished the pair I’m working on at the moment. These were fun to work on since I had no idea how they were going to turn out. My colour placement was quite different than the image on the yarn wrapper. The yarn – Lang Twin Soxx.
Finished this pair of socks last night – they’re a bit smaller than my standard sock. My massage therapist wears a size 7 shoe so while I made the legs with the same number of stitches as usual, I decreased from 64 to 60 stitches before the ankle and did fewer rows in the foot.
If you click on the image you’ll get an enlargement that lets you see the glitter.
Then a couple of days ago I got this image from a friend!
“Well Loved”
I have some leftover yarn from those socks but not enough I think to reknit the feet (and I imagine the heels are weakened as well).
These socks were made from an acrylic/polyester yarn because Heather can’t wear wool. So I checked Micheal’s online to see if they had any in stock – DISCONTINUED! And nothing similar available.
So I tried online to find this Loops & Threads yarn – I came across a single Etsy shop that seemed to have some. Since I couldn’t source a decent acrylic sock yarn anywhere else, I ordered two balls (the yarn was inexpensive; the shipping was out of sight). It’s what a good friend would do.
This pair of socks turned out nicely, I thought. Great colours in the variegated yarn and the contrast is almost an exact match with the turquoise in the red yarn.
I liked the colour combination as soon as I had completed the first repeat on the first sock! The light turquoise contrast works beautifully to brighten the whole sock.
Finished this pair of socks on Friday and began a new pair that I think I might keep. The stash keeps growing – I will definitely have plenty of socks to share for Christmas. Last week I contacted the gal who wanted 4 pairs of socks from me two weeks before last Christmas – I told her this was the time to place her order. She said no socks this year. Do I really believe her? When she asked last year I just squeezed her order through – I had to take one pair, remove the toes, lengthen the foot by an inch, reknit the toes – she was lucky I had enough time to do that. I’ve already put aside a couple of pairs with someone’s name on them. I’ll just keep knitting as usual.
The Christmas Show Challenge
I finally made a decision regarding the 6″x6″ blocks – to use the textured raw silk for the background, to fuse batik circles of various sizes to the background to simulate “modern flowers”. I cut out ten 10″ blocks from the raw silk I have on hand, backed it with sewer’s dream to stabilize it, marked 6″ squares in the middle (using a heat erasable pen). Next, I added fusible web to a pile of batik scraps and cut out a lot of circles. I have started arranging and fusing circles to the raw silk.
Six Blocks Laid Out (but not yet fused)
Because all ten blocks will be shown next to one another, I’ve worked to vary placement, even cropping some of the flowers so the appearance of the blocks is different. I have to edge stitch the cropped edge so there are no raw edges at the edge of a piece.
I’ve completed one of the blocks
First finished 6″ Block
The slight wobble at the bottom of the block will be eased out when I mount the fabric over the stretched canvas.
Looks like each block will take me between 2 and 3 hours to embellish. It doesn’t look like a humungous amount of stitching but it takes more time than you think to edge stitch each bit of batik, then to add stems and leaves, and signature. The stems are free motion. The leaves are decorative stitches each requiring careful placement. The flower centres are embroideries which want precise positioning and often involve thread changes. It all takes time.
I’ve got another block sitting on my machine waiting to worked on tomorrow.
I also finished the latest pair of socks (added to the give-away stash) and the pull-on shirt I made using the heirloom panel I created a couple of weeks ago. I’ve since added five small mother of pearl buttons to the centre of the heirloom embroidery to draw attention to the stitching. It’s a light, loose hot summer day shirt. The only problem – the fabric I used for the heirloom panel is a slightly yellower colour than the rest of the shirt. Nobody will notice it. And I’m hoping a washing or two with oxyclean will whiten so the panel will blend with the rest of the shirt!
I like how this pair of socks turned out. The dark grey goes well with the bronze and tan colours. This was an Opal yarn I picked up here in town several months ago. The bits of white in the variegation make the other colours sing. I enjoyed working on them.
The new pair I started next uses yarn from KnitPix – it came wound as a skein (rather than as a ball) but it may have an actual repeating pattern, I haven’t got far enough along to be able to tell.
Finally finished this pair of socks – not sure why it was slow going but it was. I knew before I started I wasn’t going to have enough turquoise to finish the toes – dug out the purple variegated to finish the toes. So on to another pair.
This was a ball of yarn I bought from Hobbii in Denmark during the early summer. I couldn’t tell from the image of the ball of yarn what it would turn out like – what caught my eye was the glint of a “metallic” fibre – which I know from experience is some kind of “mylar” strip. You can’t see it in this photo, but if you click on the image, you can see in the enlargement a slight bronze glint which adds an interesting element to the sock.
The only problem is that there were constant breaks in the mylar which meant there were metallic thread ends sticking out both inside and out. I kept trimming them as I went along.
And then on the first sock I encountered a knot – always a sign to watch out for a pattern disruption! Turns out the second yellow stripe beyond the heel was missing – that’s on the first sock on the bottom. I made a mental note to remove the second yellow stripe when I knit the second sock but forgot about it until I was knitting the turquoise stripes and at that point I wasn’t going to unravel what I’d done, I was too far along, so I just kept knitting.
At a cursory glance the socks look like a pair – but just not quite. Fortunately, the mismatch is in the foot and therefore not visible when wearing the socks.
I just keep knitting. I CANNOT sit in front of a TV without something in my hands that doesn’t require my full attention but lets me feel productive. Finished this pair of socks a week ago. They’re not as drab as they look, there are hints of magenta and navy blue in the variegated yarn. They weren’t too boring to knit as some socks are from time to time.
This pair finished, I started on the next. I’m ready to turn the heel on the first sock, this evening.
jmn 