Please vote for my socks!

Okay y’all, the Summer of Color entries have been posted on Allison’s Simply Socks Yarn Company website, and the voting has begun.  There is a $200 yarn gift certificate waiting for the winner of the popular vote.  Won’t you please take a few minutes to vote for my Fjordland socks?

Remember these cuties I knit for Boy 2 out of the new SSYC solid sock yarns? 

There are 15 pairs of lovely socks in the contest.  Mine are #12, so scroll down.  To vote, all you need to do is email Allison at allison@simplysockyarn.com with the subject line VOTE and the message Socks 12.  Emails will be accepted through Friday, 8/6/10, midnight EST.

Man, I could make a LOT of cool socks from $200 worth of sock yarn.  S1 is very interested in the new Mad for Plaid design from Knitty.com, and that would be the first thing I’d knit from my new yarn if I won!

Thank you!

I could use a fjord right now…

The Fjordland socks are done!  Stranded wool socks, completed just in time for steamy 90+ degree weather here in the mid-Atlantic…  Wait, if wool uniforms were good enough for the Civil War soldiers (and the reenactors who gather in my fair town), then it’s good enough for my kid’s feet, too.  Bring on the wool socks!
The name “Fjordland” makes me feel ever so slightly cooler…

I really enjoyed knitting these, and I think I might be betting better and 2-color knitting.  I’m hoping to improve my technique even more in September when I take a class called New Ways to Knit at Knitters’ Day Out.  Here is the class description:

Curious about some of those intriguing ways you see other knitters moving their fingers or flinging their yarn? In this class we will cover the basics of Continental knitting, Portuguese purling and backwards knitting. Get your hands to do things you didn't know were possible and potentially speed up your knitting in the process. $5 materials fee.

I have plenty of yarn left over, so I might consider using some of there colors in my next stranded sock project.  I’d really like to make the Bohus-Style Knee-Highs, by Chrissy Gardiner (below).  Maybe some of these colors will reappear in that fetching cuff detail.  What do you think?

I entered these socks in the Simply Socks Yarn Company's Summer of Color Contest.  Check out this line of solid sock yarn - it's really nice.  It has a 4-ply structure, so it's round and has great stitch definition.  It's bouncy and lively.  And it has a bit of nylon, which is a great thing in a sock yarn.  I got the colorcards and the colors are gorgeous.

Fjordland 1!

I finished the first sock of the Fjordland pair.  This colorwork business sure leaves a lot of ends to weave in:

But here is what you get as a reward:

I am very pleased with the way the short row heel came out – it’s my best to date.  However, a short row heel just isn’t as roomy as a flap heel, and that can be an issue for the feet in my family.  My stranded knitting is kind of tight (I’m still getting the hang of it), which makes the main fabric of these socks not so stretchy… which means the not-so-roomy heel does not help with fit.

It’ll be interesting to see if Sock #2 comes out the same size as Sock #1, or if my tension will change.

I’m anxious to cast on for #2, but that will have to wait until tomorrow…

Fjordland

When Chrissy Gardiner’s book, Toe-Up!, toured the blogs earlier this year, I was enchanted by the pattern called Fjordland.  Here’s the photo from the book:

I’ve been meaning to try some colorwork in socks for a long time now and just haven’t made the leap.  Until now, that is. 

I got the new Simply Sock Yarn color cards and started plotting.  It was so hard to decide on three colors of yarn for these.  I tried to narrow it down some by picking a light, a dark, and a medium.  In the end, here is what I got: From the left, that’s Deep Sea (really a very dark greenish-blue), Chartreuse, and Turquoise.  I thought the chartreuse looked more green when I was only looking at a small bit of yarn.  When it sits next to the turquoise, though, it looks a lot more yellow.  Maybe I should have picked Lime instead.  Oh, well!  Here’s how it’s going so far:

This sock is meant for Boy 2.  It’s smallish, but it still has 56 stitches around, and with knitting and purling in 2 different colors, it’s not a very fast knit.  My continental knitting is pretty rough – and don’t get me started on continental purling!  This is a 22-round repeat, and some of the rounds have both knitting and purling with both colors.  This is definitely a challenging pattern for me.