Brighton Dome socks

There's a fabulous festival of all things wool happening this summer not too far from where I live - Unwind Brighton. As part of the run up to the event, the organizers are holding a design competition (vote here). Meet my design: the Brighton Dome socks

These socks started with a lovely skein of yarn from Kettle Yarn Co - her fabulous Twist sock yarn. 

I got this yarn in my goody bag from the Small Wool Gathering last autumn, and wasn't really sure what to do with it. When the contest came along I balled it up and started playing around with stitch patterns. There was one that really stood out as a clear winner. 

This stitch pattern is a basic chevron pattern that is broken up by two rows of reverse stockinette, creating gentle arches. I was casting about for a good name when Allison noticed that they looked a lot like the Brighton Dome, where a number of the events for Unwind are being held. Brighton Dome socks they are for ever more. 

If you'd like to vote on the eight shortlisted designs, you can find the entire line up on the Unwind Brighton blog linked above. I'm thrilled to be in such good company, as the rest of the designs are gorgeous!

Fiber Friday: Porpoise Fur Socks

So, those socks I started at the Small Wool Gathering last Sunday evening?

Finished. I know, right? There are bonuses to knitting worsted weight socks...but here they are, all done,

with almost perfectly matched stripes (pats spinning self on the back),

a great fitting heel,

and absolutely no yarn left over.

Pattern: Autopilot Socks by Amy R. Singer
Yarn: handspun Porpoise Fur Cheviot in "FRET BFP-RFP". I split the length of fiber down the middle vertically, spun the singles with a short forward draw, and chain plied.
Needles: US 4/3.5 mm circular needles, magic looped
Gauge: dunno. I just started with a smaller needle size then I would normally use to get a tight fabric, cast on a bunch of stitches for the toe and increased until it was big enough.

Now I am very sad because I can not find my matching skeins of Turkey Day Cheviot which are also going to be turned into matchy matchy striped socks. Also for me. Bliss!

SWG Recap, in brief

This past Friday I hopped in a car and drove with Alli and Karen to Peddington Manor near Berkeley, for The Small Wool Gathering, an event that grew out of the cancellation of this autumn's Plug-and-Play Pembrokeshire retreat.

I picked the girls up just before lunch and we headed westward, with stops at Avebury,

and a lovely shop in Bath, called (appropriately enough) Wool.

Finally we arrived at the SWG, to be greeted by handknit washclothes and big fluffy beds,

not to mention divine food in copious amounts.


Saturday morning, after a much-longer-then-planned-or-anticipated run (10K does not equal 5K in any universe),

I sat down to Amy's latest sock class - Autopilot Socks (pattern here).

Yarn and fancy Alice in Wonderland stitch markers from Inked Yarn on Etsy, one of the fabulous GLYC sponsors

I've knit a lot of socks, in a lot of different ways, and I think I have a new favorite go-to pattern. This is a toe-up recipe that you knit to your own specific measurements (determined mostly by trying the socks on as you go) and uses a new-to-me short row technique that I love. On Sunday afternoon, I cast on for a pair in handspun worsted weight (more on those later).

Saturday afternoon we had a class on photographing your knitting, aka digital cameras for non-photographers who use macro all the time. Part of the class was lecture, part was practical, which had us wandering around the grounds of the Manor draping knitwear over walls, fences, plants, horses, and (in my case) recycling bins.

Then there was more glorious food and hanging about with yarn. By the end of the evening on Saturday I had a sleeve and a half done on my sweater project:

Sunday morning was spinning, more specifically spinning silk. Aka: porpoise's spinning kryptonite. We learned all about where silk comes from and how it is commercially farmed in China. Then we got to dive into some silk hankies. I've played a bit with hankies before, but this is the first time I've ever gotten real live yarn out of them.

There was also some gorgeous tussah silk top from Sweet Georgia in the goody bags, which is going to be next up.

Sunday afternoon was all about the hanging around and knitting/spinning/napping. We had grand plans to go for a walk with Jacqui (who lives nearby), but come time it was pissing down rain and we all just hung around instead. I cast on a sock, and by the end of Sunday, this is what I had completed:

Sweater for Mom, spindleful of silk hankies spun up, 4 oz of Hello Yarn Finn spun up, and most of a sock. I finished the sock yesterday and am most of the way through sock two, thanks to an after school Year 4 music concert and hanging about watching Harry Potter movies with Boo, who was home sick. Sadly most of my good pictures are on my real camera, which is somewhere in Basingstoke with my spinning wheel, and I had to abandon it to Catherine's mercy when we needed to fit a fourth person in the car on the way home. Plans are afoot to sneak down her way and retrieve it soon.

All in all, it was a fantastic weekend, with a chance to catch up with a number of P3 almunae, meet some new folks who were brave enough to join us, great classes from Amy, and wonderful catering/organization from Catherine and Jenny. Thanks so much to all of you - I had a blast!

And we have a winner!

Hooray Carroll! The random number generator picked your comment for the copy of American Sock Knitting. I'll PM you on Ravelry and get your mailing address, and I will post out the book to you as soon as I can.

Thanks to all the commenters - I loved your ideas about sock designs. It's been a while since I actually designed a pair of socks, and I think your comments have sparked some ideas!

Have just noticed that pre-orders have been extended to the 25th of July, so apologies to anyone who comes along after this post!

New pattern: Snowy Pines

I am very excited to announce that I have a sock pattern coming out in the new book American Sock Knitting.

Photo (c) American Gift Knitting

This book is a collection of 13 sock patterns inspired by different states, including socks from Ohio, Oregon, Kentucky, Arizona, North Carolina, New Jersey and Massachusetts. There is so much variety in the collection - cables, lace, colorwork - so there's something to appeal to everyone.  The book also includes some travelogues from Beth's favorite places and five recipes reflecting different regions of the United States.

My contribution, Snowy Pines, was inspired by the woods near my grandparent's house in Maine. It is a great project for a new sock knitter - it's worked in worsted weight yarn (so nice and fast to knit!) from the top down, and includes a stranded colorwork pine tree and snowflake design.

The book is now in preorders until July 15th with a reduced price and free US shipping, and copies will be shipping out soon after that. And since I'm going to have an extra copy, why don't we have a little contest?

Post in the comments about your favorite place, and what sort of sock would be inspired by that place - for example, would it have a lacy motif? Maybe something more rugged, like cables? Or would you need a particular yarn color to capture that place in a sock? I leave the entries open until the end of preorders, July 15th, and then draw a winner. Please note that I won't be getting my hands on the book until mid-August, so there will be a bit of delay in getting it out to you.

And now? Back to carding...

Finis

My first pair of socks in just over a year (last pair were finished 20 March 2012).

Pattern: no pattern used, just started at the toe, increased till it seemed about right, knit the foot for a while, did a short row heel over >50% of the stitches (for extra heel room), knit the leg until I ran out of yarn (Sock A) or it was the same length as the first one (Sock B).
Yarn: chain plied handspun, "Gobbler" Cheviot from the Hello Yarn Fiber Club, 95 yds for Sock A and 130 yds (not all used) for Sock B.
Needles: US 4/3.5 mm and US 3/3.25 mm. I should have gone down one more needle size for Sock B, as the fabric is a bit too loose for socks IMHO, but c'est la vie.
Start/Finish: 11 March 2013-20 April 2013.
Gauge: yes
Comments: so...I love this colorway beyond all imagining, and am very happy with the socks except for one thing: clearly my winging the pattern (i.e. not using the Sock Fitting Bible*) has resulted in socks that are too big for me. The heavier weight (thicker yarn) sock is better, but I got a bit too caught up in making the stripes line up perfectly (mostly) and ended up with a second sock that is just a hair too loose. So be it - these will be lovely around the house socks when the cold weather shows up again. In June**.


My next pair of handspun socks (handspun skeins in this post, also with a large edible bird-inspired name) will be done a bit more mathematically, and so hopefully will fit a bit better.

* any and all books about socks written by Cat Bordhi.
** a certain fatalistic British-ness is infiltrating my attitude towards the weather. I suspect this is completely unavoidable. My apologies!

Because you can't have enough mini-socks

Same pattern/yarn details as previously. 

Wysteria, Rosebud, Birch and Lawn

Jade, Rockwater, Stormchaser and SitkaI can not get enough of this yarn. Which is, I suppose, a good thing, as I've got one more bag of mini-skeins to go!

The sock moratorium seems to be over

Remember how I said I was in a sock rut? Actually, it wasn't really a rut so much as a complete absence of any desire to knit socks whatsoever. A sock drought, if you will. Well...I'm happy to say that the drought seems to be over.

I have discovered that there are two solutions to lack of sock mojo: the first is to knit socks with handspun (I've got another batch of handspun yarn ready for the next pair already).

The second solution? Knit a glorious rainbow of mini-socks for samples.

There are sixteen mini-skeins there, and I've done 6 little, itty-bitty socks in the last two days. I. Cannot. Stop. With. Mini. Socks. I am totally enfatuated, so enfatuated that I'm having trouble doing anything else. Which is great for my sense of productivity and accomplishment (1 sock = about 45 min. Result!), but not so good for getting anything finished off that someone bigger then my dog might wear (i.e. the handspun socks are at the exact state seen in the above photo and have been for five days now).

The upside is that I should be done with the minis in a few more days and I will be required to get myself back to human-sized knitting projects. Like the sweater in progress, and the socks, and the hats, and the mittens, plus the deadline knitting that needs to be done...see you in a month or so!

Lost: My Sock Mojo

I used to knit socks. Lots of socks. I had grand aspirations of knitting my way through Cookie A's first book from cover to cover. I got through the first two and then...radio silence.

I used to design socks. Lots of socks. Two socks for the annual Sock Madness knitalong, one of which was difficult enough (read: effing fiddley) to be the final sock in the competition (the other was the second-to-last round). Socks inspired by the Tour de France. Kids socks. All sorts of socks. But then...the well dried up.

The last pair of socks I knit: started a year ago today.

They are lovely socks, toe-up, from handspun superwash Corriedale dyed by the fabulously talented Amy King of Spunky Eclectic. No patterning or fancy stitch work, just plain stockinette socks.

And since that fateful day in late March 2012 when they were finished? Not one single solitary sock has been cast on, or even contemplated. What's happened to me? It's not like I don't have truckloads of sock yarn to play with. Or enough sock books to sink the Titanic, full of fabulous, inspiring, gorgeous patterns. But I'm finding it incredibly difficult to even consider casting on for a sock, and inertia has me in its deadly grasp. What's a former sock knitter to do?

Last week may have given me the solution. We were gathered for our monthly spinning night last week, and our hostess was not feeling inspired with spinning. So she disappeared for a few minutes and came back with a bag of leftover handspun and some needles. Within a few minutes she had cast on and made measurable progress on a sock toe.

Just like that.

Clearly the answer to my missing sock mojo is to start baiting the trap with handspun. First on the docket is this:

Gobbler Cheviot that I spun up in February. To be followed closely or even simultaneously with this:

Turkey Day Cheviot that is being spun up now (singles are done and need to be plied). Both these yarns have been spun specifically to create fantastic stripey socks, so all I need to do now is wind up the yarn and cast on.

Can someone please hold my hand???? wanders off whimpering...

Between extremes

My "relaxation knitting"* these days is vacillating between opposite ends of the spectrum. First up is the fiddley-beyond-belief category:

A pair of socks I actually started almost a year ago. I pulled them out of the Works in Progress Bin at the beginning of this month, thought "hunh...", ripped them out completely (I had a toe and about 2 inches of instep done) and started over again. The worst part was trying to start entrelac on US 0/2.0 mm needles with a provisional cast on and splitty yarn. Fun!

Then there's the mindless end of things...


That is the Garter Yoke Cardi by Melissa LeBarre, which I have wanted to do every since I saw Caro's version (Rav link). The yarn is the whack-load of Hello Yarn Romney in Timber that I spun up during the TdF last (hooray for casting on one of my handspun sweater lots!!!), and I am operating under the deluded hope that I can finish it before the Tour de Fleece starts. On Saturday.

Oh well. At least there's always (always!) coffee.


* The "work knitting" being my hat project: 2 of 7 prototypes done, one almost totally tested and one about to go to testers. I am on track**. Woot!


** So far. Famous last words and all that...

The sock drought

It's been almost four months since I knit a pair of socks (that I could share on the blog). That seems like a very long time for someone with the sock yarn stash I've got hiding upstairs. If we're going by that metric, this pair of socks barely count in the grand scheme of things (given that they are a) handspun and b) worsted weight yarn). However, I'm the one keeping score, so we're not going by that scale thankyouverymuch.

Toe-up socks with 2x2 ribbing at the cuff, Riverbed sockitecture a la Cat Bordhi, finished last week, but ends woven in yesterday. I split the roving (a gradient dyed superwash Corriedale from Spunky Eclectic) in half lengthwise, and then split each half in half again to spin two skeins of (mostly) matching two ply yarn. Started with red at the toe and kept going until I ran out of yarn (thus explaining the short-ish leg length).

 

I like them. G-man likes them too. They are just the thing to cure the winter blues, which is unfortunate since spring seems to have finally sprung. Guess that means it's time to weave in some ends on Himself's sweater, and finish the secret knitting.

Regressing

After a solid week of fingering-weight, handspun colorwork*, I felt the need to do something waaaay mindless and straightforward.

Enter toe-up, thick yarn socks, in handspun. Fiber is superwash Corriedale, colorway "Tartan" from Spunky Eclectic. US 5/3.75 mm needles. One sock finished in two short evenings of knitting. Gotta love it**.

* I finished on Saturday afternoon, wrapped it up, and gave it to Himself for his birthday. He was very pleased, and totally unsuspecting. Now I have to find the mental fortitude to weave in all the ends.

** I've also finished the center panel (yay!) and started the border on the SYB, picking up umpteen million stitches around the edge and starting to work in garter stitch. I'll keep going until it's big enough or I get tired of the damn thing.

FO: Some socks

I managed to get a few photos done yesterday.

My new handspun socks, which I adore (although I realized when taking these pictures that one is shorter then the other, so I need to go back and add a bit of length...).

Spinning this yarn was an exersise in trying to spin two skeins that would knit up into two matching socks. Ummm...actually, not so much, despite my best efforts.

That is ok, because I am madly in love with these socks. And it's finally gotten cold enough that I might actually wear them!

But it is hard to take pictures of your own legs that don't look funny.

Stats: toe up socks, size US women's 10/UK 8/EU 41 (otherwise known as porpoise-sized). I did an eye of partridge heel and calf shaping. Finished with about 3 inches of 2x2 ribbing.
Yarn: handspun Insect Wings BFL from Hello Yarn, two skeins of 255 and 254 yds, approximately DK weight. Spun as part of the Tour de Fleece 2010.
Needles: US 2/2.75 mm bamboo douple points.
Start/finish: 14 - 30 November 2011 (finished just in time for the November Sock a Month KAL)
Verdict: bliss

What happens when you knit socks out of handspun yarn?

They go really quickly! We went to York this weekend, and I managed to finish the first sock more or less on the way up. Of course, I had to redo the ribbing because I decreased too far and it wouldn't stretch enough to fit over my (rather generous) calves. But now the first one is done and I'm halfway down the foot of the second. Win!

Hopefully by the end of the week I will have handspun thigh high socks to enjoy. Maybe even in time for Thanksgiving!

bleh

Yesterday was the first of the Grim Days of Autumn here in London: grey, cold (about 9/45 degrees), and drizzling. I had one of those mornings where nothing goes right, including getting to work forty minutes later then planned and not having anywhere to lock my bike. In the cold rain. And I had a headache and wanted to put my head down on my desk and go to sleep. Bah.

So I came home early and snuggled the dog, dug out this yarn and wound it up on the ball winder. And I cast on some socks.

Suddenly, the day was much better...

FF: Boo's 'andspun socks

Yarn: handspun Cheviot (some details here), approximately DK weight
Needles: US 5/3.75 mm
Start/finish: 6 Oct - 9 Oct 2011 (hooray for large gauge and small feet!)
Comments: a totally plain vanilla sock, toe up, with gusset and heel flap a la Cat Bordhi, with 1x1 ribbing at the top. I knit the first sock until I had used up 48 gr of the 100 gr I started with - I am less stressed out with handspun yarn and socks if I leave a couple of grams leeway for the second sock, since weight is not always an accurate reflection of yardage (particularly the way I spin).

I continue to be a huge fan of Cheviot. Not only was it fun to spin, and the yarn felt softer then the combed top, but the knitted up socks are soft and cushy and springy and just about perfect.

Boo is very pleased with them. I finished them Sunday morning and she promptly put them on to go for a walk in the Surrey Hills. They are a bit big, so she should be able to wear them for at least this winter. Now it's actually cooling down so that thick, cozy wool socks sound pretty good instead of overwhelming. Hooray for autumn!

FF: Lincoln Socks

I am feeling a bit like the unblogged projects are piling up and I don't really know where to start. There's so much going on at the moment that blogging is taking a bit of a back seat, so I'm going to try and get some things posted just to keep them straight in my own head.

This is a terrifically craptastic nighttime picture of Dev's new handspun socks, made out of Lincoln that I dyed. Since Lincoln is a longwool, and I didn't want the yarn to feel like twine, I spun the singles at 7.25:1 and then chain plied at 6.5:1 - I'm hoping the length and strength of the fiber will keep these from wearing out too soon.

Pattern is a simple toe-up, short-row heel, worked in k3, p1 rib. I changed to k2, p2 ribbing at the cuff. And I managed to get them on to her feet for an even worse modeled shot.

Given that it has been extraordinarily warm here recently (they're calling for 28 degrees over the weekend - bliss!) (Also: WTF end of September? This is July weather. Of course, in July we had October weather, so maybe it's all evening out), these babies are destined for the back of the sock drawer for quite a while. Thankfully they're a bit loose, so she shouldn't grow out of them before December.

I hope...