A New Scrap Blanket

Fresh off the high of finishing my Button Box Throw, I immediately wanted to keep using those scraps!  This time around I decided to use a crochet pattern worked from the center out - The Virus Blanket.  Once again I got out my leftover partial balls and little bits of superwash fingering yarns and put them into a kind of fade.  And this is the beginning! (It's actually, part way through a round, which is why one side of the square looks different from the other side - I had to get a photograph while the light was good.)

I'm still on the first color, but I'm going to be changing colors either this round or the next.  I have made a virus blanket before. (I made one in 2020 for Mr. Noodle when he came to live with us, then he turned out to love wool too much, so he has to be supervised with it.)  I remembered enjoying making it, and I thought it would be a pretty way to use up some leftovers that were floating around in bags, tangling up with each other.  I will admit that getting started this time was a bit of a struggle, but I'm sorted now, and have the repeat memorized so I can work without the pattern.  The pattern itself is free, but the written pattern is a little confusing (at least to me).  Fortunately, the designer also has a video, so by referring to the video where the written directions were confusing me, I've got it figured out!  According to notes in some other projects, I'm not the only one who needed the video to clear up some confusion.

Again, I have no definite plans for this blanket, other than turning yarn scraps into something usable.  I'll keep going until I have run out of this set of scraps or when I decide the blanket is big enough.  Big Enough is something to be decided when I get there!

Since I've been having so much fun using up yarn scraps, I noticed some fabric scraps sitting around the sewing room.  I'll show you the fabric plan later this week!  (Yep, I'm currently a scrap busting machine!) 

Socks. They're Just Socks

I finished my Pink Gym Socks!  These are the Broken Rope socks from Summer Lee's Hello Sailor pattern set.  I did a variation on the gym sock stripe in the pattern.  They are knit in Potions and Purls Luna Sock in Keeper of My Heart and the accent color was included as a mini skein.  I think I probably could have gotten heels out of the accent skein as well as the stripe and toes, but I wasn't brave enough to try.  The pattern was straight forward and well written, and the stitch pattern was easy to memorize so I could knit them on auto pilot.  This stitch pattern could easily work for men's socks, either with or without the stripes.  I could see the stripes done in school colors, favorite team colors, or even Hogwarts house colors.   

A New Sweater!

The Eat.Sleep.Knit Second Quarter Craftalong is  based on circular yokes!  I went back and forth trying to decide on long sleeves vs. short sleeves, colorwork vs. texture or lace, and I have looked at oodles of sweaters with circular yoke construction.  Then I saw the Kuffel sweater and it kind of grabbed me and wouldn't let go.  I love the oversized cozy look of the whole thing, as well as the bold, graphic colorwork.

So I'm knitting a Kuffel!  I'm using Berrocco Ultra Alpaca Worsted in Navy and Turquoise Mix.  As you can see in the photo (kind of), I'm through the first colorwork section.  It's knit from the top down and the neck band is added last.  I also must admit that I really like the big, open neckline because I don't like things tight around my neck and also I live in Texas, so we must ventilate in order to not die of heatstroke.  In December!

I hope to be back again later this week with more knitting, but when I tried to blog last week the photo hosting site was down, and what's the point if there aren't any pictures, right?   

The Button Box Throw

Last November I started knitting the Button Box Throw.  It was part of the Knitvent 2026 collection (but it's now available by itself), and I thought it would be great for using up leftover sock yarns.  It was!  I grabbed a few of my blue green multicolored leftovers and figured out a kind of fade and got started.  I also decided to make the eyelet sections in white.   The pattern itself has directions for color changes and is built around the idea of using a set of advent mini skeins.  Obviously, my scraps didn't work out into perfectly portioned amounts, so I just knit through the fade with each color until I ran out.  I dropped a white eyelet section at the same spacing as the pattern, but otherwise I just kept on with the colors.  

Once I figured out my plan, the actual knitting was easy and didn't require a lot of brain bandwidth.  It was an excellent project to pick up and put down, perfect for working through the holidays, and it did eat up some stash.  The finished throw is a smallish blanket (32 inches square), that has no definite plan, but it's very soft and lightweight (being entirely made of fingering weight yarns).  As I was finishing it, I realized I wanted to keep working through some more sock leftovers, so I've pulled some more yarns, and chosen another center out pattern.  This second one is crochet and I'll show you next week!

Finished!

I finished my Austin Hoodie, and got the ribbon sewn on!  This is the Austin Hoodie pattern, which is written for fingering weight yarn knit at a very loose gauge.  I used Malabrigo Arroyo in Natural, a sportweight yarn (slightly heavier than fingering weight) and I'm really happy with the feel of the fabric.  

I also reversed the ribbing at the top of the sweater so there would be more knit stitches than purl stitches showing.  You still get the vertical lines of the ribbing, but it seems a little softer to me visually.

Finally, I wanted to reinforce the front edges with ribbon because front edges go through a lot on a cardigan.  I wasn't sure what ribbon I wanted to use and I lost track of how many I tried (let's just say that I've got more of a ribbon stash now than I did when I started), so instead of knitting the front bands on as I knit the sweater (which is what the pattern calls for), I decided to add them later in the traditional way.  Once I finally picked a ribbon, I knew how wide to make them.  The ribbon is from Kafka, a German company that makes gorgeous ribbons.  I found it from a place on Etsy.  It wasn't cheap, but it was what I wanted and since it will show in the hood and occasionally at the front, I wanted to be happy with it.

This pattern is knit from the bottom up, and for some reason that always seems to take forever, but I got it finished in time to submit to Eat.Sleep.Knit for the first quarter Craft-A-Long.  Next quarter, I will be doing a top down sweater, but I'll give you all the details later. 

One Down, the Second Started

I've finished my first Broken Rope Sock (AKA Racing Socks for watching F1).  I've started the second sock, but there's a bit of an issue.  A normal racing season begins in early March and ends in early December.  The month of August is taken off as a midseason break, but throughout the season there are occasional one or two weekends off.  Partly these are logistical because the season is all over the world and shipping takes time, and partly this is for the sanity of those who are part of this circus.  24 races a year, in every corner of the globe, has got to be exhausting.

I had planned to just knit socks through the 2026 season, ignoring the weekends off, just making sure that I had socks to knit on Qualifying and Race days.  However, due to the situation in the Middle East, the Bahrain Grand Prix and the Saudi Arabia Grand Prix have been canceled.  I completely understand the reasoning behind this and I think it was probably the right call (not that anyone really cares what the Pink Lemon thinks).  What this means though is that we have the Japanese Grand Prix this weekend at Suzuka, and then nothing until the first weekend in May for the Miami Grand Prix.  There's no racing at all in April.

So, are these Racing Socks?  If I set them aside for a month and didn't mess with them, they could be, but I don't plan to do that.  I plan to keep them for knitting when I need a small, portable project, but I feel like they won't be racing socks anymore.  I feel like they just became socks.  Not that that's a bad thing, to be just socks.  Most socks go through their entire existence just being socks, but these socks were cast on with the promise of being something more.  It's tough being a sock sometimes!

Racing Socks

I've made it past the heel flap and heel turn, and I've begun the foot of my first 2026 racing socks!  (These are socks I knit while watching F1 racing, the pattern is Broken Rope from Summer Lee in her Hello Sailor Sock collection.)  I would have been farther but I made an error on the leg and ended up undoing about 20 rounds of work.  It's a simple stitch pattern, but when you make a mistake, that simple stitch pattern makes it glaringly obvious.  Once I redid the leg and knit the heel flap, I messed up the heel turn (I've only done hundreds of those in my lifetime), and had to redo that.  I blame the good racing action!  There's no racing this weekend, so I plan to try to finish my Austin Hoodie.