I Warned You This Might Happen

I finished my Sea Aggie Mom socks, and since the Third Quarter Craft-A-Long begins Thursday morning I decided not to start another pair of socks immediately.  Instead I went to the stash and dug out a partial skein of The Loopy Ewe's Solid Series in Robin's Egg Blue.  I grabbed a 3.25mm hook and started crocheting the Mable doily (free pattern).  This is more advanced crochet than I've ever done before, but it's still one stitch at a time, one round at a time, so when I get confused, I just go to YouTube.  Once I figure out what to do, I just crochet happily along until I find the next new stitch that I don't understand.  

I've got about seven or eight rounds left to go before I'm finished, and I am enjoying it.  Since I'm making it in fingering weight wool instead of cotton thread, I'm totally guessing on the hook size.  I don't know if I'm using one too big or too small.  I might make a second doily in a different hook size just to see which one I like best.  Do any of you know how tight or loose these things are supposed to be?  I really have no idea what I'm doing here!

A New Sweater

I feel like it's been ages since I knit a sweater, but I guess the last one was just back in March.  (Unless you count the tank top I knit in April, but that doesn't really feel like a sweater to me.)  I started this a week or so ago, but it looked like a maroon worm at first, so I didn't worry about blogging it.  Now that it's starting to look a bit like something, I figured it deserved some blog time!

This is the Adam's Ribs Hoodie from Sunday Knits.  I'm knitting it in Hazel Knits Cadence Worsted in Giddy Up (yes, this is the same colorway as the socks I just finished, on a different base).  I've loved this design since the first time I saw it but had never quite decided what to knit it in.  When I saw the Giddy Up colorway, I knew it would be perfect!

The design took me a little bit to figure out what was going on, and I actually changed some of the setup I had done in KnitCompanion after working a few rows.  Now that I've made sense of things in my head and have my markers set the way they need to be, it's moving along smoothly.  I can pick it up and put it down without too much thinking on my part.  There's a lot of knitting in this project, but hopefully it will go quickly moving forward.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Socks, Socks, Socks, Done!

I've finished knitting socks!  At least for the ESK Second Quarter Craft-A-Long, that is.  I'm probably not even finished knitting socks this year, but I don't currently have any socks on the needles right now.

I've knit six pairs of socks since April 1, for a total of 2,022 yards.  Want to see them?  Here we go!

First up are the Homely Socks, knit in Teal Torch Knits Evelyn in the Afternoon Tea colorway.

The second pair of socks knit this quarter were the Old Sweatshirt Socks, knit in Madelinetosh Twist Light in the Dopamine colorway.

Then there were the Parade socks, a pair of plain, stockinette socks, knit in Malabrigo Sock in the Parade colorway.

The fourth pair were Hermione's Everyday Socks, knit in Blue Moon Fiber Arts Super Sparkle in the Chasing Flamingos colorway.  Fun fact: this is the fourth time I've knit this pattern!

Pair number five were Honey Badgers, knit in Madelinetosh Twist Light in the Hydroponic colorway.  This was the yarn that I tried with two other patterns before I did this one, but you'd never know it from looking at them.  The yarn held up wonderfully to all my abuse.

Finally, the sixth pair of socks were Ocean Mist socks, knit in Hazel Knits Blueprint in the Giddy Up colorway.

This has been a fun quarter to knit.  I made some simple patterns I've done and enjoyed before as well as some new ones that were a little more complicated.  As I mentioned, I don't have a pair of socks on the needles right now, but definitely feels strange not to!

Stole Dunes

I'm currently working on just about the perfect combination of projects: a pair of socks, a wrap, a sweater*, and a spinning project.  All of the knitting is on different sizes of needles (which is good for the hands) and I'm far enough into each of the projects that I understand how things are working and can pretty much pick them up and put them down as I have time.  

I've worked two more sections of my Stole Dunes this week.  (Here's a link to my original post for this project with all the yarn information and a pattern link.)  I did have to re-read some of the instructions on this one to figure out what I was doing, and I changed the project setup a bit in Knit Companion, but now I've got it fixed so it's easy to use.  I can work one full section in an evening, so that gives me a logical place to stop when I get there.  I'm hoping that now that I've got myself sorted, things will move faster because I love watching this project grow.

Have a great weekend!  

*I haven't blogged the sweater yet, it's in that weird looking place all sweaters go through when they're bottom up and just getting started.  You'll see it soon.

Sea Aggie Mom Socks

I have been moving right along on my socks!  The first sock is finished and I'm more than halfway through the leg of the second one.  I had the sense to take really good notes on the first one so I don't have to remember exactly what I did for the second one.  (Present Me is seriously proud of Past Me for doing that.)  I'm not quite following the pattern for the heel/gusset area because I kind of have a way that works well for me that I've memorized.  It makes knitting a sock much faster but it means I should make some notes sometimes.  The first sock is not blocked, which is why it looks so narrow.  The stitch pattern is a combination of cables and ribbing so there is a lot of stretch, despite what it looks like right now.

I've been watching Downton Abbey while I knit these.  I've never watched it because when it first came out there was way too much hype about it from pretty much everyone, and that is just about the surest way to get me to ignore something.  I am enjoying it (which I was pretty sure I would) and since I'm watching on Netflix, I'm almost through the second season.  I did find myself thinking about making doilies over the weekend and it took me a little while to figure out where that idea came from.  I'm not sure if my doily urges will go away or if I will cave, but I'm trying to get these socks finished first.  If I'm still in a doily place after the socks, we'll see what happens.  Honestly, I don't know if I'm just telling you this or if it's a warning.  There may be doilies!

Catching Up!

We're all still here!  I've had some busy mornings so blogging has been neglected, but we're all doing well and I'm still knitting.  I thought I'd use this morning to catch up since I have a lot to show you.  

Let's start with something you've sort of seen before.  The yarn is Madelinetosh Twist Light in Hydroponic which is what I used to knit a single sock in Vanilla is the New Black.  It was weirdly big around the ankle area, so I frogged it.  Then I started knitting Ocean Mist socks with this yarn.  I thought the large, regularly occurring cables would be able to stand up to the speckles of the yarn.  I was wrong, but didn't admit it until I was knitting the heel flap, so I frogged it.  At that point I seriously considered putting the yarn in time out to let it think about what it had done, but I decided to try one more time (third time's a charm and all that, right?).  It worked!  These are the Honey Badger socks, and like the Honey Badger, at this point in trying to turn this yarn into socks I just didn't care.  The stitch pattern isn't super obvious, but I think it works and I have a finished pair of socks.  (I should probably note, that I didn't really knit these completely like the pattern said.  I just used the four round repeat stitch pattern and used it over the whole sock.  I'm kinda lazy like that, but I'm happy with my socks, and after all, Honey Badger doesn't care anyway, right?)  These were my fifth pair of socks for the Second Quarter Craft A Long for ESK, and after a little bit of math (that I did twice, just to be sure) I realized that I'll be able to max out on yardage with only one more pair of socks.

Meet the sixth pair of socks for ESK's Second Quarter Craft A Long!  These are the Ocean Mist socks.  Yes, the same pattern I tried with the Hydroponic colorway, but these are knit in Hazel Knits Blueprint Sock in the Giddy Up colorway AKA Texas Aggie maroon.  I loved the sock pattern and still wanted to knit it but I had learned the hard way that I needed a more solid colored yarn.  It's working perfectly in this yarn, and since it's A&M maroon and the pattern is Ocean Mist, I'm calling these my Sea Aggie Mom socks!  Caleb will probably roll his eyes at me but I know he'll be secretly jealous.  I'll knit him some socks with a maroon stripe or something.  He doesn't like full length socks or much pattern, but he needs some Aggie socks too.  

Finally, I have a non sock and non knitting (yet) project to show you - I've finished the second bobbin of my combination spin.  These first two bobbins are spun the same way with the rovings divided exactly the same way to get (hopefully) the same type of color distribution and lengths.  I'm trying to get shorter color sections on the remaining bobbins to really break up the different color sections and I've already started spinning the third bobbin!

Whew!  I'm exhausted after all that, but now you're all caught up!  I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and I'll see you next week!  Stay hydrated!

A Finished Top!

I finished my Notched Hem Tank Top!  This is knit in Juniper Moon Farms Zooey in the Sloop colorway and it's knit almost exactly as the pattern is written.  The only thing I changed was the neck and arm edgings.  The pattern has a knit edging, but I used a few rounds of single crochet instead.  When I had finished knitting it, I tried it on and while I liked the neckline, the armholes felt a little big and open to me, so I did two rounds of SC on the neck and four rounds in each armhole.  Then I wove in the ends and washed it and let it dry flat to block.  The Zooey is a cotton and linen blend yarn which should be great for our North Texas climate, but I'm pretty sure it will shrink if I toss it in the dryer.

I'm hoping to get a lot of wear out of it this summer and honestly, if I do, I would probably knit this again!