Tag Archives: socks

saucon sock

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august.

around here it is

squirt gun fights and tall glasses of ice water

and knitting mainly at night when it cools off a bit after sundown.

in my dreams i have handknit socks on my feet,

but in the warm weather, my wool handknits don’t really cut it…

then along came saucon sock from kraemer yarns.

it’s a fingering weight

 in a wool-free cotton, acrylic, and nylon blend

which makes it machine wash and dryable!

how right that is for the warmer weather.

i quickly decided to cast on for my first pair of jelly rolls

by mara catherine bryner.

see the slight tonal-ness of the colorways?

that’s the cotton and the acrylic taking the same dye in slightly different ways.

i think it gives the stitches added depth and the yarn as a whole extra personality.

 i am definitely a fan.

the remaining question:

will i finish these in time to wear them this summer?

or will they have to sit happily curled up in my sock drawer over the winter

longing, like the rest of us, for next spring?

‘question’ from 22:46 of matthew.

note: now for just a little of the nitty-gritty.

i was given these skeins from kraemer yarns to review,

but, you all know me,

and a couple of free skeins of cotton blend yarn

isn’t ever going to make me say i like what i don’t.

i’m much too stubborn and pig-headed for things like that…

 

 

 

 

 

 

Save

schocks

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found out today that my local inter-library loan

had two charlene schurch books

available like they were just waiting for me.

yes!

now i’m ready to read through,

soak up as much of her teaching as i can,

and get inspired enough to design my own socks.

IMG_6815cropi’ve got beautiful dirty water dyeworks ‘marie’

in four colors semi-solid colors (oh how i love semi-solids)

and cold toes.

cold toes are very motivating.

so i set up the mic and i’m waiting quietly,

listening for the yarn to tell me

just what kind of socks it wants to be.

nothing so far, but maybe

once the kids

go to bed and the whole place gets hushed

i’ll hear them more clearly…

‘toes’ taken from 2:42 of daniel.

let me tell you how it happened

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first, the name silverspun

makes me think of spinning a tale

which means i’m going to begin like this…

once upon a time

there was a girl (that’s me)

whose feet were almost always cold.

even in the heat of flip-flop season, her piggies could get icy.

then one day, this girl (still me)

saw these snazzy flip-flops with built in coziness.sanuk3‘whoa’, she thought, ‘those are just what i need, except…

being a mama, she wondered…

how will i wash them clean?’

so she thought, and she thought, and she thought some more

until she realized that she could knit up her own.

yup, sometimes she can miss the obvious.

when she met up with silverspun for the first time,

she knew, ‘this is the yarn for these.’

the feel good yarn company graciously agreed

and the kinston yoga socks were born.
IMG_4823cropflipalthough, truth be told,

i’ve, i mean she’s, never done yoga and has packed her pair

(along with a couple of pair of flip-flops)

for the maine beach town that is calling her name.

more pics on that when i finish packing

and finally get there…

‘graciously’ taken from 33:5 of genesis.

one sock in front of the other

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in a day and age where ‘magic loop’ is the new black,

IMG_3027shadei know my opinion won’t be popular.

still,

i do not like

knitting small circumferences

on circular needles at all.

up until now,

to avoid the dreaded ‘m. loop’,

i have worked sleeves and fingerless gloves

one at a time on my tried and true double pointeds.

IMG_3028cropsocks,

however,

are a bird of

a different color.

last year i finished

one (matching) pair of socks.

this has never happened before.

when i managed to make it through one,

second sock syndrome always blocked

my path to sock number two.

pondering this

(all the while tapping

my chin like winnie-the-pooh does

because it really couldn’t hurt

and i figured it just might help),

it struck me that when i finish sock one, beginning it has blurred by the passing of time.

i’m uncomfortable starting the 2nd when i can’t remember starting the 1st.

IMG_3031cropthe goal is to have them be mostly the same after all.

so i invested in an extra set of double points.

now i can knit the cuff of sock one

then go directly to the cuff

of number two.

next, the straightaway to the ankle of two,

followed by the same bit of one.

i find that the stress i’ve always connected with socks is almost gone doing it this way.

here is is the first week of 2014,

and i’ve already finished my first pair of the year

and started on my pair number two.

for me, that’s unheard of.  makes 2014 look like a huge step forward

IMG_3030shadefor ‘sock knitting tal’.

my tootsies are

just gonna

love me!

‘color(s)’ taken from 17:2 in ezekiel.

socks by sunday: sunday

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and done.IMG_3003crop

socks started thursday night.

socks finished sunday afternoon.

now i’ve got happy, happy feet.

only ‘problem’ is

i’m all jazzed up with motivation,

and nothing at hand to apply it to.

IMG_3005crop

.

perhaps the next

piece in the

indie collection with cey

or winding the swan’s island superwash

that i bought to make these yesterday morning.

or (why not?) maybe both.

IMG_3008cropthanks to julz,

and all the other ‘socks by sunday’ knitters

for lighting the fire under me.  watch me burn…i mean ‘go’.  watch me go.

‘happy’ taken from 15:13 in proverbs.

socks by sunday: one day to go

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8:28 pm

finds me in my jammies.

actually, this morning was ‘pajama mama’ morning at lys ‘in the loop’,

so i never got out of my mine all day.  yup.  that rocks.

sock-wise, i am on the final

straightaway.

have done maybe 2″

past the last heel row on both socks.

not at all sure i’ll make the midnight deadline tomorrow,

but i am an awful lot closer to finished socks now

than i was 2 days ago.

also, i heard a rumor this morning

that ‘socks by sunday’ might become an annual thing for the week after new year’s.

IMG_2849urbanjust saying.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

‘closer’ taken from 18:24 of proverbs.

socks by sunday: day two

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it was with some trepidation

that i took a look at my socks in progress

early this morning, because

sometimes

the light of a new day can

reveal that late night’s knitting was not as much of a ‘ta-da’

as it appeared to be when it was still late at night.

if you’re a knitter, you know what i mean.

but, this morning i awoke to the sound of plows

18″ of fluffy new snowflakes

and last night’s knitting proving to be solid (deep sigh of relief).

today’s goal: heel flaps and heel turns.

it’s just after 5pm now and i have completed both flaps.

hoping for a little quiet tonight to knit through the turns

which will leave me two full days to sail smoothly

though the arches and toes for both feet.

looking good so far.

IMG_2845crop‘new day’ taken from 3:5 in zephaniah.

socks by sunday: day one

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my friend julz challenged a few of us on thursday night,

as the first big snowstorm of the year was barrelling down upon us,

to knit a pair of socks by midnight sunday.

any socks, any size, any weight yarn.  only requirement = a pair.

i’m in! as i have been wanting to try ‘rye’ by tincanknits

and this is as good an excuse as any to cast on.

not much to do last night except knit, watch the snow fall, and wrap up to stay warm.

i did all three

with malabrigo rios (in playa).

by bedtime, my socks were done

(you didn’t really think i was gonna say actually ‘done’, did ya?)

from the top down through the cuffs and the ankles.

i have plans to attack the heel flaps first thing in the morning

whether we’re buried completely in snow or not

which i seriously think we could be.

IMG_0400

‘done’ taken from 2:3 in genesis.

particles and a planet

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my skew are coming along well.

a good halfway through the first sock now.

feeling so good about knitting socks, that when i stumbled upon

string theory colorworks‘ yarns, with the 8-10 row wide stripes, i quickly picked

the colors of my next three awesomely striped pairs of socks.

top to bottom these are:

continuum in ‘jupiter’

continuum in ‘neutron’

and tachyon in ‘proton’.

this yarn feels as good as it looks and i am thrilled with it!

now i just have to knuckle down and finish the pair of skew.  wip pic here tomorrow.

and no laughing allowed.  i’m going as fast as i can on these ridiculously small sticks…

‘fast’ taken from 2:15 in 2nd thessalonians.

trepidation

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it must be at least two years ago now that i first heard about ‘magic loop’.

my stomach twitched, my knees knocked. and i walked away, fast.

i like dpns.

i know that i am

in the minority here,

but i do like them, sam-i-am.

so why change tools & take the leap into an abyss of unknown?

peer pressure, pure and simple.

two years of ‘you’ll like it’

& ‘there’s nothing to it’

& ‘go ahead, try it’

finally started

to get to me.

still, it was the idea of using size 0’s (for my skew socks) that was the final straw.

can you imagine my tremors at the thought of five size 0 dpns?

off the charts.

so i tasted this new to me technique

and boy am i loving it!

can’t remember now

why i waited at all.

‘tasted’ taken from 16:31 in exodus.