Epic Sock Yarn Bedspread, Sections 2 & 3

I have been lagging in my blogging but not in my crafting.  I made super progress on my sock yarn bedspread this summer, completing two sections before losing momentum in September:

Fiddly intarsia.  Love it.

This section is based on a Kaffe Fassett design.  A nice chance to get rid of some smaller quantities of yarn.  The black yarn was stranded, the colors were intarsia.

Section 4 is in progress, but stalled because the arrival of my twins has made it difficult to put time into complex / big projects.  Maybe when I have family in town who can hold the babies!

Sock Therapy

I bought some yarn on impulse.  This is not unusual, for me or for most knitters, I imagine.  I found the perfect pattern for it.  I ordered the complimentary color I would need.  Then I put the whole thing in a ziploc bag and forgot about it.

July seems to be the month when I need to kick-start my crafting bug.  Last year July was Scarf Month, in which I was allowed to cast on as many projects as I wanted as long as they were scarves.

This month, I pulled out my little cheer-me-up package and started as a treat to myself, ignoring the other projects I promised I would get done.

The results were spectacular, both in terms of production and mood benefits!

This pattern is Dark Isle by Julia Mueller.  The yarn is Patons Kroy FX in Clover and Patons Kroy in black.  This was one of those projects that had no lag from start to finish, and I completed them in a week or so.  I had to modify the pattern in a few places: to fit my foot length I added six rows to the wavy pattern of the foot (about a half an inch).  Also since the yardage of this yarn is a bit short, I was worried about running out of black, so I took six rows out of the topmost pattern of the cuff, and bound off a few rows early.

This was my first stranded colorwork project.  I used a knitting thimble to manage my colors.  A great pattern for a first-timer - the charts were simple, the pattern itself was well-written, and the sizing was adjusted in all the right places to accommodate the firmer fabric of stranded work.  I do think that the foot portion of the sock was pretty snug on my narrow feet; I would imagine many people would need four or eight stitches added to the round of the foot for a better fit.

When making striped socks, I usually put the end of round at the inseam, but this pattern calls for it at the back of the sock, meaning that the contrasting color would normally be cut and restarted after the heel.  Rather than making the afterthought heel from the pattern, I decided to use my favorite short-row heel, and just to be sassy and save myself two ends to weave in, I experimented with stranding up the back of the heel as well.  It was a little fiddly but very fun and satisfying!


Now I just need to wait for winter so I can wear them!

The Epic Sock Yarn Bedspread, Section 1

That is, Section 1 is complete.  It is just my own Stained Glass Magic pattern, which I published on Ravelry over a year ago.  Still finding new uses for it.

Section 2 is going well - messy intarsia!

Sock Yarn Blankies for Thing 1 / Thing 2

My baby crafting goals included two baby blankies for my upcoming twins. I started one immediately after learning I was pregnant, with sock yarn leftovers, and quickly depleted my supply of scraps. I appealed to my knitting guild and a few groups on Ravelry for help, and was simply overwhelmed with the generous response. Packages started arriving, a few people showed up at my door with scraps, and all of a sudden I was in over my head. I had a terrific time crocheting up two different designs, and they are done.

(I was particularly glad to finish these before I was sidelined with carpal tunnel syndrome, which took me out of the knitting/crochet game for the last three months of my last pregnancy.)

The end result is that I now have 2400 grams (grams! not yards!) of lovingly donated sock yarn scraps to play with.  In case you were wondering, this is what 2400 grams of sock yarn looks like.

With a little bit of egging-on from my mother, I have decided to transform these into a bedspread for my older daughter, who, according to her grandmother, will feel left out.  (My daughter is getting roller skates for her birthday so it is unlikely she will acknowledge any other gifts presented to her during the entire of the fall and winter.  But we do these things for love, and she'll eventually outgrow the skates but have an heirloom blanket to abuse as a teenager.)

Since she just moved into a twin bed, I planned to make her bedspread 66" x 90" according to this online list of afghan and blanket sizes, but as I was getting started, I decided 66" was way too wide and shortened it to 54".  After one row of pattern, it became clear that even this was way too wide so I will be frogging and starting completely afresh today.

The Cosmic Joke

I posted last month that I was having a really tough time with Second Sock Syndrome.  I had three beautiful socks done, and no interest in casting on any of their mates.  One weekend I decided to give myself a break and knit a Norwegian Sweet Baby Cap.  That way, I'd get my sock yarn fix but make something that didn't come in a pair.  Shortly after that, I found out I was pregnant with twins.  I am not kidding.

So, ironically, I ended up making a pair of hats too.  And all the baby knitting I was planning, I'm making two of everything now.  Here's my baby knitting checklist:

2 Norwegian Sweet Baby Caps - done
2 Pepitas  - may machine-knit most of these
2 Das Monster pants - can't decide whether to use sock yarn or heavier for older babies
2 baby blankies - one half-done

Deadline is the end of September, though with my last pregnancy I had such bad carpal tunnel syndrome in the third trimester that I couldn't crochet at all, so the sooner I get these done the better!

Sock Lab Experiments, Round 1 is complete

Finally finished the second Rainbow Sock this week:

Knitting the first sock went fine.  For the second sock, I decided to do toe-up just to keep things interesting... but since I had waited so long between socks #1 and #2, I forgot an important part of the pattern and inadvertently skipped two rows for every pattern repeat, or, by the time I'd gotten to the heel, sixteen rows.  Fail.  Frogged it and took my sweet time starting it over.  When I did, I got to the heel and stalled again.  This weekend I finally busted it out and finished sock #2.  The second sock is slightly shorter in the foot because my toe when I do a toe-up sock is fewer rows than when I do decreases top-down.  I haven't done the math yet to figure out why this is so, but it sure looked like the toe on the second sock is about 1/2" shorter.

I enjoyed this pattern for the first sock, especially because the yarn I dyed for the pattern looked exactly the way I wanted.   But doing two and a half socks with this pattern got to be a drag.  Glad I finished them, love how they look and fit, don't need to do them again.

Also I realized that I really should learn to do short rows in a way that is a little neater, especially when I am working in striped yarn.  If you look close-up, you can see that the ends of my short rows are marked with little prickles.  This is because instead of wrapping a stitch before I turn, I k2tog over the gap when I come back, and then do a lifted increase.  This lifted increase pulls the color from the row below into the current row, making the little spikey shapes.  I usually slip the first stitch of a short row after I turn, but I stopped doing that to see if it was contributing to the prickliness.  I need to do it better when I start my Lizard Ridge Afghan.

Next on deck in the sock laboratory, the famous Skew.

Monster Socks

After hoarding sock yarn scraps for months and months, I finally made my first pair of scrappy monster socks.  My husband claimed all the black/black stripes yarn in the scraps box, and away I went.  I wanted to use striped yarn for the heel, but I wanted a bullseye effect so I tried an afterthought heel for the first time.  I made up a sort of whirlpool heel that I'm not happy with - J showed me that the socks keep slipping over his heel, and one heel has one row too many in the center and has a funny little flap at the bottom.  After they come out of the wash I planned to take the heels apart and redo.

But after a few wearings, my husband told me the heel stretched out fine and the little flap of extra rows at the very base of the heel had resolved.  Apparently he loves wearing his odd socks with suits and deliberately showing them off during the work day!