A Christmas Knit and Niagara Falls

Ta da! When I wasn't knitting my socks this month, I was stealth knitting this cowl, from my own Togetherness pattern:

I used a new-to-me yarn for this gift - Mominoki Yarns' German Merino - and I *loved* working with it. Very elastic, and crunchy yet soft. 

 

Even more so after a bath in Soak wash, though I don't have pictures of that. 

However! there were problems. Aren't there always, when you're knitting under pressure after getting a great idea for a gift with three weeks to go till Christmas, and a move to organize and execute in less than one of them?

For a start, I didn't think I needed to do a test swatch, despite changing yarns, because I was knitting the same weight. Wrong! I was four inches too wide on my first pass, and didn't discover that till I was three inches in. I ripped out and cast on with ten stitches less, and got an inch and a half in before I realized I was still way too wide. Third time was the charm, but I wasn't able to finish in time to cast off, let alone do the Soak and dry it before it needed to be wrapped.

So, my giftee got the cowl, which matches his bike helmet by the way...

 

(squeeee!)

... in its knitting bag, stuffed into a gift bag.

Another problem was that I misread my own pattern. It's supposed to be a double moss stitch, such that you do two rounds in one set of stitches before switching to the other pattern pairing. 

 

That would've been a lot easier for me because every other round I would've been able to do what I'd done before, instead of knitting round one, round three, round two, then round four... and having to check every few stitches that I was following the pattern all right. 

After the fact I realized a third problem, which was that I didn't check often enough, sigh.

Can you see that pimple of a purl stitch where it should be a neat line of knits? There's another one nearby, too.

Still. Done! And he likes it, and it looks great on him. Win win win!

Yesterday we went to Niagara Falls, hoping to revisit the American side as we didn't have time to get out of the car and look at it over the summer. I'm Canadian and though I've visited Niagara Falls often from the time I was small, I'd never looked at it from the south until August this year. Even then, we just got enough of a look to see it was different. 

Well, we've seen it now, and WHOA is it *ever* different!

I felt a lot closer to it, for one thing. It was late and the afternoon was cloudy, but hopefully you can still make this out? Where the mist starts on this photograph, obscuring the hotels on the Canadian side - that's the drop on the southern edge of the Horseshoe.

Also, there are so many more little drops than I realized, leading up to the big drop.

From the Canadian side, these look like spray and bounce, but they're actually stepped rock.

Along the southern shore, there are pockets and outcroppings that direct some of the water to the side, before it flows back into the main body and crashes down to the rocks below. They look so gentle and manageable, even though they're leading to something that definitely isn't.

 

I took this picture of the drop from further up the river.

 

There's a duck swimming in this comparatively calm pool, just as if the mist was only something pretty.

Okay I find the Falls terrifying, if I'm honest. But I'm still so glad we got a chance to see them. 

And I'm glad I'm finished the cowl so I can get back to my socks and maybe also a new project I've been yarn shopping for and may yet even commit to.

 

Hope you've had a wonderful week and also, got in some quiet time for yourself. I'm sure we all need it!

See you next Saturday and thanks as always for dropping by.

Adventures in sock heel design

I'm starting to think I might have a pair of Boxing Day socks on my hands! Or not, because there are only a few days left and I still have a lot of baking to do. Still... pretty, right? And they're coming along so quickly.

Today I want to show you my idea for adapting my vanilla sock pattern to feature a more hard-wearing heel. Wearing out is 90% of a sock heel's job, and the most practical solution to that is to knit socks with afterthought heels you can rip out and replace whenever. But I'm already more than my share of practical so I'm leaning toward a sock whose heel you can just darn a lot. And ideally, not so soon after the first wear.

 

I'm not sure why I've never done a stranded-stitch heel before, because it's kinda fun. 

I brought in the secondary colour about a third of the way down the flap, with a plan to finish with it once I picked up the stitches for the foot.

Bit of a dog's breakfast, that heel turn! This is my third attempt, and the stitches are still pretty loose at the top, but I have two green tails to run in there and I should be able to snug things up while I do that job. 

From here it kinda reminds me of an elbow patch on a corduroy blazer! Let's see if I can get a closeup...

Because I only did one stitch in each of the two colours, the floats across the back are minimal - just enough to hold in warm air, give a little cushion, and serve as channels for any future darning yarn. Not sure I love the lighter concentration on the heel against the stronger colours of the rugby stripes, but I can get around that by striping near the toe, and maybe I'll do that. Of course it means even more ends to run in. Ends I can use to reinforce pressure points before a hole forms, now that I think of it.

H'mmm.

Naturally, all I want to do for the rest of the day is knit these things, and if I didn't have to do that baking, and some wrapping, and some meal planning, and laundry, I totally would. 

 

SIGH

Hope your holiday preps and/or parties are going along beautifully - and thanks especially for taking a little time out from all that to visit with me today. I'll see you next week after the holiday dust settles... but in the meantime, Merry Christmas from me and my Chompy Sock!

Name these socks

Well I've made good progress on my Golden Christmas socks, and I am *loving* knitting with this wool/mohair yarn again.

Then, around the midpoint of the second stripe sequence, I showed them off to a passing family member. Who said, "Nice. John Deere socks."

Once I'd seen it, I couldn't unsee it... 

 

Everybody else I live with has John Deere merch, so I guess I was due, but still. Golden Christmas Socks!! They even have that tiny extra multicolour border in there!

And check out that halo on the ribbing, which I knit extra loose for easy putting-onning. There are no fuzzy edges on a tractor.

The John Deere adjacency will only get worse when I tackle the heels. I have an idea for slowing their progress toward holes and mending, and the only secondary yarn I have enough of for the job is, you guess it, the green.

Whatever I call them, I know I'm gonna love 'em. I'm excited about knitting again and how nice is that? Besides which, there's no copyright on this colour combo. Maybe I should dub them my Habitant socks, after my plaid gravy boat from J. & G. Meakin.

What would you call this design?

Looking at all those loose threads, I'm thinking Sock of Many Tails is a good choice!

I'm wrapping up a moving project for my aunt today, who thankfully was making a small shift to the residence room directly above her own - same layout, no need to agonize over furniture placement. I grabbed the opportunity to organize a new chair for her, and a slipcover for her original one so she's got extra seating for guests.

And on that point I gotta take a moment here to jump up and down a little with my hands waving. 

The only chair I could find in the style and dimensions she needed, available same-day, turned out to be a *perfect* match for the floor colour in her new space. And the only slipcover I could find in the shape and dimensions for her original chair, for next-day delivery? The colour didn't look great onscreen, but when I unpacked it just now I actually gasped. It's gonna match the room like I'd meant it! 

Packing and moving and unpacking again is such hard work, but boy, when you get those little wins it makes it all a lot more fun.

Hope you've got some good stuff lined up for this weekend. Things are starting to hop for you too I bet, so thanks for taking some time out to visit with me here. See you next week, maybe even with pictures of my heel theory in practise!

Yarn colour choices for the decision-averse

I'm not even showing you a picture of the finished Christmas socks today, because I am super tired of them and I'm sure you are too! It's time to cast on something new.

Okay yes, I've got more socks on my mind, but this time with wool/mohair blend on bigger needles. And I get to pick all the colours. 

That's a slight barrier though, because there are so many in the stash! Anything I use for one set of solids won't be available for another, later. And I do need to blend, because none of these cakes are quite enough for a whole sock in the leg length I prefer.

I've done blue socks before, but not with the green accent I used to good effect in green socks a while back. I've knit in this beautiful soft mauve, but in solid only - it might look great with multicoloured stripes in blue and white and orange.

Or there are bolder options:

Emerald green socks with tan stripes, or brilliant yellow with a mixture of green and multi stripes. The green is left over from the aforementioned green socks, which means I'd have yellow left over for stripes on some future pair of socks... including the emerald green ones, if I don't pick them right now. 

In that scenario, maybe I'd want to save the tan to use as a solid stripe with socks from this multi-colour blue and mauve. Or I could use a blue accent to pick up the blue of the multi.

But wait, there's more!

There'll be some mauve left over from those socks, and I could use that to pair with the multicoloured blue.

My head is spinning. And I'm not done.

I could also do the mauve with the green multi, or the blue with the blue and orange multi.

sigh.

It's snowing outside today.

Our reindeer, currently not It in the ongoing game of hide and seek with the squirrels, is already wearing a white coat. 

I mean, if I can't benefit from working with bright colours at this time of the year, when would I?

Blinding yellow it is, then. Let me try to get a little closer so you can see the halo.

Isn't that gorgeous?

Let the game begin!

Hope you've got a lovely weekend lined up with some exciting new knitting in it, or something else that makes you happy. Thanks as always for dropping by and I'll look forward to seeing you next week!