Two pears, two pairs

Aren’t these pears adorable?  I should have put something in the field for scale – they are about the size of kiwi fruits.  Pears are coming into full season where I live.  Yum!

Somehow I haven’t reported much on the progress of two pairs of socks, but I finished them both this week.  First off: Orange Vanilla Socks, so named because they are mostly orange but the pattern is “plain vanilla.”  I started these on my way out of town and they made for great knitting while chatting with family. The yarn is Lana Grossa Meilenweit 100 Fantasy, one of those sturdy self-patterning German sock yarns.  I picked this ball up at Hill Country Weavers in Austin, TX, on a visit a few years ago.  These will be happy socks to reach for on cold grey days this winter.  I have a generous 26 g left from my 100 g ball.  I’m actually thinking of making little socks for my dining table chairs, like this:

(I saw those on the Juniper Moon blog.)  We have a hard floor under our dining table, which means lots of scraping chairs.  I put those adhesive chair pads on the legs, but they are always coming off.  So why not try some chair socks? 

I also finished the Jacob Cauchy Socks, which will be perfect with boots: The yarn is a Jacob/nylon blend I got at MDSW earlier this spring.  It is a 2-ply yarn, which meant it was pretty hard on my hands.  I knit it on a 2.25 needle (a little bigger than normal), but it was still painful.  The fabric is dense and I’m sure it will wear like iron, so these are socks for the ages, but I’m not eager to knit another pair out of this particular yarn.

I had to modify the pattern because this yarn is a little thicker than typical sock yarn.  I also made the socks longer than the pattern called for, since I had a very generous cake of yarn.  I didn’t knit the picot cuff the pattern called for, either, and fudged some ribbing instead.  I did the ribbing different on the 2nd sock than the first – can you see the difference in this photo? I learned that decreases disappear better if you put them in the purl columns instead of the knit columns!  (There are 55 stitches at the cast-on edge, and they reduce to 50 after about 4 inches.)

Next I need to turn my attention to a couple of hat projects.  But I’ll return to socks again soon.  Pam has picked a pattern for her socks – more on that later!

Socks in progress

I’m not sure what I call this sock yet.  The stitch pattern (from the Vogue Stitchionary volume 1) is called “rib and welt pattern,” which doesn’t exactly have a nice ring to it.  The yarn is Socks That Rock Lightweight in colorway “love-in-idleness” (an old name for a wild pansy).  So maybe these will be my pansy socks.  There is some pooling, but it’s not annoying me tooooooooo much at this point.  It looks more painterly than pooly:

The Jacob Cauchys are still on the needles but haven’t seen much action since you last saw them:See what I mean about the decrease area?  I wish I’d put the decrease stitches in the purl area rather than the knit part of the rib.  Next time.

I also warmed up the spinning wheel yesterday and got busy.  I decided not to spend much time pondering which fiber to spin.  Instead, I just grabbed what was on the top of the pile.  I got the 3 oz Jacob/alpaca batt that I got at MDSW this spring.  I separated it into 2 equal sections (the digital scale is so handy for this) and spun the singles.  I plan to ply them today (you’re supposed to let the singles rest overnight).  Hopefully you’ll see some new yarn here soon!

That’s all for today – off to ply now.

Camp Fiber

I finally finished spinning the first half of my 4 oz of Polworth top.  I haven’t been using a reference card or anything to help with consistency, and I have a feeling that the last bit I spun was thicker than the first bit (because the spindle was getting heavier).  We shall see when it is plied.  Supposedly you can spin as much fiber as the weight of the spindle, but that seems like a lot to me.  This is about 2 oz of fiber on a 4 oz spindle:I’ll wind that off onto a piece of PVC pipe I brought with me before beginning the next half.  The grey sock is on its 3rd iteration.  I decided that I wasn’t happy with the way the 2x2 rib transitioned into the stitch pattern.  I took a 1-hour ribbing class with Cookie A at Sock Summit about exactly this, so I couldn’t stand not getting that right on one of her designs (her pattern calls for a picot edge, which I don’t think would be right with such a rustic yarn, so I’m substituting a ribbed edge).  I also decided to make the ribbed cuff part much deeper, since I have plenty of yarn (5 oz).  So that photo shows a Cauchy sock with a deep ribbed cuff plus 1 22-round pattern repeat.  When I do sock #2, I’ll modify the ribbing again – I should have planned to put the decreases in the purl stitches rather than the knit ones.  I think they would disappear better.  Knit and learn, right?

The grey sock is kind of bulky.  You may not be able to tell from that photo above, but the grey yarn cake is supersized and not so portable.  So I started my backup project to work on during the camping portion of our trip.  I’m doing a stitch pattern from the Vogue Stitchionary with some Socks that Rock Lightweight from stash (colorway Love-in-idleness).  It’s pooling a bit, but the colors are still lovely:

We have been camping the last 2 nights (one more to go) and it has been rather rainy here, off and on.  Luckily, we hung a tarp over our picnic table, which makes a dryish place to hang out while it rains (other than the tent, which is super steamy here in the humid South).  I popped into the Earth Guild in Asheville while we were there and Boy 1 seemed excited about the potholder loom – so of course we got it:The “deluxe” kit comes with enough loops to make six potholders.  Boy 1 made the first one with random loops.  Then S1 made one with a gradiating color pattern.  Then Boy 1 started another one with a different pattern.  Need a potholder?  We’re in production mode.

We lucked out and were in Asheville the day of The Big Crafty festival.  We had such a great time browsing the booths and getting inspired.  The building that some of the booths were in also housed a children’s museum, which we got free admission to with our Whitaker Center membership, so that worked out great – one parent stayed with the kids in the museum while the other shopped, and then we traded.  The Big Crafty is the kind of craft fair where you can buy things like vegan cupcakes and beer.  A great scene.  We got some fun things to remember our visit there.

My turn on the internet is coming to a close, so I’ll yield the netbook.  See you soon!

OBX stripes (or, FO: Beachy Felici)

Finished the Beachy Felicis today!  These were a quick knit with only 48 stitches around and speedy stockinette.  A short row heel probably would have been more attractive with the striping yarn, but I don’t have that construction memorized and I didn’t have notes with me.  These are done – and I only used 1 ball of yarn (so I have a spare).

I’ve been spinning the Polworth top on my spindle.  I know that seeing singles pile up on a spindle isn’t super exciting, but here’s how it looks now: I started a pair of socks with Jacob sock yarn, which is a little thicker than fingering.  I’m using 2.25 mm needles.  The stitch pattern is a 10-stitch repeat and the cast-on number is 60 – but this thick yarn made the sock too big so I backed down to 50.  We’ll see how this works out. Today Boy 1 and I climbed the tallest brick lighthouse in the world – Hatteras Island Lighthouse.  It’s 12 stories tall.  Great view at the top!One last shot of Beachy Felici (I just like saying that):