Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Getting sidetracked

So here's what happened when I finally got the energy to clean up the knitting mess that's accumulated around here over the last year or so: I found some great yarn to match up with my new alpaca sock supplies from the Royal Winter Fair!


I am completely in love with this pairing of some leftover, long-discontinued Duchess-from-Twisted-Fiber-Art blue, and my favourite blue/yellow choice from this year's haul.  The scale is a little off - the Duchess is much heavier than the alpaca - and I will have to do this as a true colourblock to cover the necessary shift in stitch count.  Still.  So in love.  (or maybe I should make a much-needed hat instead of socks?)

I'm also quite happy with this combo:


This one is a little less obviously awesome but in addition to the yarn weights being the same this time, the purple in the alpaca is present in the mohair in long repeats.  You can't help but love that and I think it will be really fun to knit.

But the light green alpaca gave me some trouble.  I mean, it's baby blanket green.  What do you pair with that but baby blanket yellow, which is not a colour I ever buy?


I tried it with the purple's partner because I have enough to do both, but it's kind of Meh, isn't it.  It's like somebody paired a baby blanket with all the fabrics in a fashion-cool teenager's going-out ensemble, and then threw neon spotlights on it.

So I tried it with another mohair yarn and...


Much better.  It's still off, but it's good enough if I do the heels, toes, and cuffs - if there's anything I learned through my interior decoration odyssey, it's that you can make anything look deliberate if you repeat it enough.  But this solid green is supposed to be a main colour for a different pair of socks, and I can't be sure I'll have enough left unless I knit those socks first.  So naturally...


I cast on those socks instead of providing myself with a hat.  Furthermore I am now completely obsessed with these socks and can barely think of anything else except maybe the whereabouts of the needle I dropped while turning the heel last night. 

Knitter's Tip: reclining armchairs are NOT YOUR FRIEND.  Though I did find a long-missing cotton sock inside the backing just now, which was kind of a bonus.  And no, I have no idea how my chair managed to eat a sock.  It wasn't mine and it wasn't my missing needle and that's really all that matters for the purposes of this story.

Now of course, I think that the real best friend of the baby blanket green alpaca is the accent for the green sock, and not the green sock at all... but I won't know till I finish my obsession project so I think it's best that I wrap up this post now, use the needle from sock #2 to knit some more, and hope the missing one turns up soon!


2 comments:

zippiknits...sometimes said...

If you are going to write, I'm going to read.
Best wishes with your knitting!
I'm a recovering knitter for reasons I won't go into here but I did snap up your little Double Double Cloche Hat pattern off the web.

Mary Keenan said...

I too was once a recovering knitter - I stopped for twenty years! and now look at me. It is SUCH a slippery slope, heh