Knitting My Life Away

I’m still on a sock kick. Can’t get enough of these things. After spending a small fortune at the recent Stitch n Pitch Mariner’s game, I have sworn off buying more sock yarn until I use up what I have purchased.  Fortunately, there is enough yarn to keep me in busy and in socks for quite a while. The photo to the left was my latest pair, which I named, Simplicity Socks. These were done from memory, using favorite ideas from two patterns I’ve used recently:
Cable Look Socks by Anastacia Zittel  and Beginner Toe Up Socks for Magic Loop by Liat Gat
Both are great patterns and taught me to knit socks and I now want to venture out on my own.

The Cable Look Socks are for worsted weight socks but the pattern is for one at a time using double pointed needles, neither of which fit the bill for me.  For both Tracy’s Blues and Diana’s Royals, I converted the directions to 2-at-a-time magic-loop and then used her heel pattern but my own stitch patterns instead of the simple continuous crossed stitches she uses in her cable look.

The stitch pattern for the Tracy’s Blues was similar to Anastacia’s but instead of the continuous crossed stitch pattern, I alternated long stretches of the pattern with a simple 2×2 rib.

For Diana’s Royal’s, the stitch pattern I used was as follows:

Row 1: K3, *K3, YO, K2Tog*, K1
Row 2: K2, *K3, YO, K2Tog*, K2
Row 3: K1, *K3, YO, K2Tog*, K3

It’s a multiple of 4 and you repeat these 3 rows for the pattern

The beginner Toe-up socks for magic loop is for sock weight yarn (seen in Lazy Afternoon) and has a fabulous heel that requires no counting on my part, always a blessing in my book.

So, after working with those two patterns on several socks, I used what I learned from those two patterns to come up with my own, no-brainer socks. The Simplicity Socks were worked up in very plain stockinette stitch with a pretty peach worsted weight yarn incorporating a beaded rib stitch just on the cuff. (k2, p2 for Row 1, K for Row 2; repeat these two rows for pattern). This will probably be my favorite cuff pattern too.  It is very stretchy and the little knit row causing the bead is in the rib is cute. I’ve also found that going to a smaller needle while increasing the number of stitches gave the socks a bit of a cushion effect when blocked.  I’m currently working on a new pair in sock weight yarn, again increasing the stitches for the cushion effect and will see if  Anastacia’s heel pattern can be converted to an easily memorized sock weight pattern.  It is going to require some math.

Oh! I ‘ve also been continuing creating the hats for the Knifty Knitters Club, using up various yarns and trying out different patterns. I worked up several hats in Brett’s Marble in a very pretty burgundy color using 2 different patterns:

Easy Peasy hat by Knit Picks Design Team and Learn to Knit Your First Cap by Staci Perry

I had wanted to use up a large quantity of boucle I had sitting in my stash for a few years.  I just could not seem to work into a project finding it a difficult yarn to work with. But, I decided to pair it with Bernat’s Satin and voila…what a wonderful combination that makes!  Very soft and easy to knit up. I used the Easy Peasy pattern, changing it up with a few of my own quirks like 3×2 ribbing for a few inches and decreases In sets of 5 to create a star on the crown.

By the way.  If you ever wonder why they recommend you buy enough yarn to finish a project…here’s a big one for the “I told you so” category.  I was creating a lovely baby blanket with some of Brett’s marble in a beautiful lavender/blue varigated theme.  It was the diagonal blanket where you start with a few stitches increasing until you get to the middle and then decreasing back down to a few stitches, basically working corner to corner.  When I was a scant 4 inches from being finished, I ran out of my yarn.  I had no idea it would take four skeins of yarn to complete this little blanket.  No problem. Off to Ben Franklin’s to buy another skein. Lo and behold they had all the colors BUT the one I wanted.  No one had it.  I found a skein online and am praying it is the same color.  Soooo, the moral of this sad tale?  NEVER buy too little yarn before you begin and the diagonal blanket pattern takes far more yarn that you would think.  I would so hate to rip out three skeins of knitting to start over and I have nothing that will coordinate with this particular yarn.

So what’s next other than my continuing sock addiction?  Fair Isle.  I love the idea of working with multiple colors and geometric patterns.  I suppose it goes back to my love of blackwork.  This also means I need to learn to knit continental style (yarn held in the left hand) in order to comfortably deal with two different yarns at one time (one yarn in the right hand and one yarn in the left hand).  It will put me back to knitting one sock at a time, of course, since I can’t conceive of dealing with four strands of yarn at a time. I’m adventurous…not crazy. As of right now, my attempts at continental have me swearing so Fair Isle is a ways away.

Back to my needles….