Sunday, September 21, 2008

Welcome fall.

(Fall is my favorite season of the year).

And I can welcome it with two new completed pairs of socks. (I spent my afternoon working to finish these up).

First, the Go with the Flow socks (these are from the Interweave Favorite Socks book)

finished flow

I used ShibuiKnits Sock yarn in a color that the seller (Simply Sock Yarn) refers to as "Anime." (I have no idea if that's the real name; the ball band has a number. I don't remember what the color number is, I'm very bad at that).

I sized up the pattern to be 72 sts and made everything proportionally bigger because I was concerned that 60 sts would not fit my feet, especially knitting at the typical gauge I like for socks. I think the resizing was a good choice. The socks fit pretty well.

Oh, and these socks took nearly every bit of the yarn in both skeins. I think I had about four yards per skein left at the end. (I was really scared on the first sock I was going to run out, and have to either try to find a third skein in the same dyelot, or beg on Ravelry for someone who had leftovers of that). ShibuiKnits Sock is in a smaller put-up than many sock yarns, 192 yards per skein. Which is USUALLY enough for a pair of socks for me (with 2 skeins), but these socks were a bit longer in the cuff than usual.

I also finished the Kureyon socks (but it was a bit of a fight to do):

finished kureyon socks

I like the color patterning but I really don't care for the over-spun-ness of the yarn; it kept twisting back on itself. (When I do the pi shawl out of some of this I'm definitely working from the outside of the ball; on these socks I made the mistake of doing it as a center-pull and that probably contributed to the twistiness of the yarn).

kureyon socks 2

Yeah, the colors don't match up. I think it would have taken two balls of yarn to get that to work, at least with cuffs the length I made them.

I think I need to give these a good soaking in some kind of conditioning soap (and maybe a vinegar rinse) before I try wearing them, the yarn is very "hard" to the touch.

I still think the Kureyon "sock" yarn is probably better for things other than socks. I hope I get at least a few wearings out of these before the heels blow, but I'm fearful that the very loosely spun, 100% wool will not have good staying power. (They are knit to something like 11 sts to the inch, done on size 0 needles. Which made them not a particularly fun knit.)

I do want to finish a couple more things - I think at least two projects - before I start something new.

But I did pull out the Bird's Nest Shawl and contemplate re-starting it. (I'm only on row 30 and there are something like 150 rows in it).

bird's nest

But it is a nice project, and I think the finished shawl will be very pretty. I'm knitting it out of camel's hair yarn (which is somewhat geographically-appropriate given it's a Tibetan-inspired shawl). The one in the book was made of cashmere, which I'm sure is very nice, but I don't quite have a cashmere budget. (The camel's hair yarn was an Elann purchase several years ago, specifically for this shawl).

All of my stitch markers are tied up in this project. I wondered where they had gone until I pulled it out of the bag and realized that I'd marked every repeat (which is a smart thing to do with lace that has a regular repeat; it's a lot easier to avoid getting lost or making a bad mistake).

(Heh...and now I realized, if I HAD wanted to do a Ravelympics project [but meh, I am just not that much of a joiner, rah-rah type], I could have gone all political and done the TIBETAN style shawl pattern. I probably would have peeved some people off, though, and I'm not big on peeving people off.)

1 comment:

Bess said...

I'm not political either and I don't do olympian knitting - I knit for pleasure, not as part of a contest. But I do think that lace pattern is lovey.