Do You Like Handpainted Yarn?

Lookie what I found on Amazon…

New book by Carol Sulcoski titled Knitting Socks with Handpainted Yarns. It is only available for pre-order, but it looks brilliant. It is all patterns designed to look good with handpainted yarns. Let’s face it, most patterns get lost in handpainted yarns, and plain stockinette socks are boring. And so you knit Chevron and Monkey and Jaywalker which are great, but we’ve all got a lot more handpainted in our stash than those will take.

Another new thing, at least new to me, is Opal’s new Harry Potter yarns. Check out this page on the Opal website and you can see each of the yarns, both in skeins and knit into a sock. I think I like the Hedwig colorway best (pictured) or maybe Harry’s own colorway.

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

Go take a look and let me know which ones you like best.

In Love With Animals

Ravelry continues to be a Very Dangerous Place for me to hang out. Today, it lead me to buying just one more book– as if I had room for anything else in my suitcase. But who could resist a book that contains the pattern for this adorable puppy?

It is from Knitted Animals by Anne-dorthe Grigaff.

I’m praying for a lenient check in clerk at the airport next Saturday! Now I need to go finish my class sock. I need to figure out the Kitchener Stitch to graft the toe. Wish me luck.

Spiral Socks

I’m dabbling with socks and as a result, there are UFOs everywhere. My first attempt was from my spiffy new books, Kids Knitting by Melanie Falick.

I was drawn to the Spiral Socks pattern because it seemed like a good inro to DPNs, but with a worsted weight yarn so it would be a relatively quick project, and since it is a tube sock, no need to learn to turn a heel. The spiral design makes it a one-size-fits-most pattern. What could be better?

When I was visiting the Double Ewe, I picked out a machine wash and dry-safe worsted wool/nylon mix. I couldn’t wait to get started.

Getting started took forever. First, I had to cast on a bunch of times to get the tension correct. Then while dividing the stitches between the needles, they kept leaping off. After a seriously long time, I was ready to really start. That didn’t go so well either. The pattern in the yarn was so strong that I couldn’t see my pattern evolving. I kept dropping stitches, making sloppy joins, making mistakes. Finally I ripped it out and started over.

This next attempt wasn’t much better than the first, but I stuck with it and go to the sock to here, but I still wasn’t having any fun, and didn’t love how it was knitting up.

 

Finally, I decided to try a different yarn, since knitting something I didn’t like seemed to be a surefire path to UFO land. I stopped at Michael’s to get some Patton SWS for a friend and while I was there, I purchased two skeins of Lion Brand Wool-Ease in the Chestnut Heather colorway.

And soon I had this:

I like how the pattern is knitting up with this yarn, but I still don’t love the DPNs. I decided to switch to two circular needs and am finally making real progress. It is now about nine inches long. Directions are to knit to twelve inches and then I start to deal with the toe. It is a start. It won’t be a terribly useful sock to me living in Singapore, but I figure it will be a slipper when I’m home in Minnesota. Probably isn’t sturdy enough to be worn outside, even if it would fit inside someone’s shoe.