Sock Books

Thanks for all of your compliments on my socks! I thought you guys would enjoy that conversation… Matt’s pretty cool with the knitting as far as husbands go – he wants me to knit for him! He notices when I’m knitting different things! He wears his handknits (the few that he has)! He doesn’t mind it when yarn takes over half of the couch! Really, what more could a girl ask for? I’m pretty lucky.

Aaaanyways so I did some googling and I found the link for the sock book I'm using. Amazon didn’t have it so I kindof assumed that it wasn’t in print or easy to find. I have it because my grandma gave it to me randomly last spring about 5 minutes after I told her I was knitting socks. She’s seriously the ultimate enabler.

The book is Knit Socks:Whatever the Yarn (scroll down) by Edie Eckman, who also wrote Learn to Knit Socks which is the book I learned sock knitting from! Her patterns are very clear and easy to understand. The book (more of a pamphlet) is kindof geeky, though. Some of the yarn color choices and photography backgrounds… well… yeah. Check it out:

Like I said… but the patterns are clear, fun, and interesting. I’m knitting the top sock in this picture – the Mock Smock Sock: Out of Knitpicks Sock Memories in Pansy. I have to say that I like the pattern much more with the hand dyed, multi colored yarn. Slipped stitches seem kindof blah in plain yarn…. Oh well. The only other modifications I made are that I made the sock taller and I kept the slipped stitch pattern going down the top of the foot...

So yeah...Happy Tuesday! You survived the Most Depressing Day of the Year!

Distraction. In sock form.

So here’s an approximate conversation from my house:

Matt: Um… what’s that?
Me: a sock.
Matt: What happened to my sweater.
Me: This is bus knitting. Doesn’t count.
Matt (very confused): But…you’re not on the bus?
Me: Yeah well I needed to knit something colorful.
Matt: What about that fuzzy rainbow thing you kept asking me about?
Me: That’s lace. So not the same thing.
Matt: ooooo kaaay. Seriously, though…. Where’s my sweater?
Me: Dude, lay off. I have to get this second sock started or I’ll have nothing to knit on the bus tomorrow and that would be BAD.
Matt: It’s just that I have so many Britts to kill.
Me: Stephen Colbert rules.
Matt: Seriously.

And here’s the sock we were talking about:


Isn’t it cute! Cant you see how it would tempt me with it’s slipped stitch ways? How it’s fun, easy, mindless yet amusing pattern would call out to me even when not on the bus?

So much more fun than ribbing in gray wool…. However, he does have many Britts to kill so the second one of these socks will have to be banished to the bus.

Oh yeah - the yarn for this sock is knitpicks sock memories in pansy and the pattern is from a really geeky sock pamphlet that my grandma gave me.

Stay warm this weekend!

My cures for S.A.D.

Cure #1: Snow. Seriously. I’m so frickin’ happy it finally snowed!!! That rain/sleet/cold/wintery mix was awful. Depressing, gray, ugh. But snow? Snow is fun! You can play in snow! You can ski in the snow! Plus snow reflects light – which in this month’o gray is seriously needed. Not as bad as Moscow needs it, though – check it out. Freaky.

Dexter, however, is not so enamored with the snow:


Cure #2: Fuzzy, Rainbow, Lace
That would be the Falling Water Scarf that you guys have been helping me with. I love it. It’s the colorful thing I need right now to get through all the gray.

#3. Sun. I’m so very glad it was sunny yesterday… but then this morning we're back to the gray... that's ok though - it's supposed to snow more which is perfect since I think we're going to try to go skiing this weekend!

Thuja almost kneesocks – at last.

So while taking my little hiatus from the world I also finished my Thuja almost kneesocks. They made their debut at Christmas Eve dinner and kept my feet nice and toasty on Christmas Morning.

The specifics:
Pattern: Thuja from Knitty
Modifications: Um, yeah. I completely reworked the pattern to be toe up, then I knit it on size 1 needles – casing on 64 stitches. I knit it with a heel flap, and added shaping to the calf.

Yarn: Lorna’s Laces Shepard Sock in the Desert Flower colorway – two skeins with almost nothing left over.
Needles: size 1 brittany, birch, and addi DPN’s
Timeline: Not really sure – these were not even close to a monogamous knit so they took a long time. They were very, very worth it though! I absolutely love them. I’m actually wearing them now….They are so comphy – and that they are tall helps keep my legs warm while waiting for the bus!

Actually now that winter has decided to happen I’m wearing my few pairs of hand knit socks as much as possible. It’s amazing the difference in overall comfort level that good socks can make. I work in a very, very drafty office and my feet always freeze. Not while wearing handknit socks! And without the cold feet the rest of me isn’t cold at all. Problem solved! I’m a complete sock convert now. I want to have enough pairs so that I never have to have cold feet again…Which means I have a lot of knitting to do!

Life in Cleveland

So I haven’t posted anything that’s been going on in my life other than knitting for awhile now… which is sad b/c it’s been a very fun past few weeks! I just had so much knitting to catch up with… anyways…

Christmas was good.

New years was good. We went down to the C-bus as has become our tradition for LB and Rgill’s rockin’ eve. We played a lot of Loaded Questions – best game ever – and one of the questions was "If you had to spend the rest of your life stuck in one time and place where would it be?" I think I’d pick here:

Don Pablos, 2 margharita’s happy, with my good friends. ‘Cause that’s a really, really good place to be.

Then last weekend we had our second annual Pasta Day. This year we branched out a bit… and made butternut squash tortollini, and spinach cheese ravioli in addition to the plain noodles. We also busted out some pesto that I had frozen from this summer (I grew the basil myself! So proud of that.), and rocked a butter/sage/walnut sauce. I also made meat sauce for the first time from scratch. Which was so much easier to do than I had anticipated! It turned out great – even though Matt got very very nervous when I started deviating from my mom’s recipe and adding in things…like wine.

It was such a fun day – actually it was a fun weekend. Some of my friends that I didn’t get to see over New Years came into town which is always good. Although Lori Beth and I had dueling family pasta recipes... Her family puts milk in their pasta dough… My family decidedly does not. So there was a little wine-fueled trash talking going on. Honestly, though, they were both pretty damn good.

Following your advice – part 2

So, Thanks so much for all of your opinions!!! I’m pretty much just going to follow everything you guys said – check it out:

That would be the start of it knit on size 7’s (not 8’s) and it is working out great. 8’s would definitely have been too big. You can also see that I’m starting with the color changes – using option A from below. I agree – more stripes = more visual interest. I think if it was just color blocks, and not the gradient, I would have used B but because I’m doing the whole 2 strands held together thing I’m going with A. Ok I’m totally not explaining that well…. Here’s what I’m doing:

Knit one pattern repeat with color A held double stranded
Knit one pattern repeat with one strand color A and one strand color B
Knit one pattern repeat with color B held double stranded
Knit one pattern repeat with one strand color B and one strand color C
And so on….

I think it’s going to be very pretty… Thanks again and have a great weekend!