Sock love

Today, let's graft some sock toes shut! It's true: I am finally finished my Christmas socks, just in time for Pancake Tuesday.

I agonized for a while about how to work these toes and ended up taking the stranded two-colour route, to match the heels. 

Last night I fell asleep thinking about whether the graft would look better in yellow or green or one of those with the other colour duplicate-stitched in to keep the pattern consistent, before realizing I was bordering on obsessive behaviour. And in truth, when I looked at the yarn, I realized I have to go with whatever is lying on the end of the row. 

For this sock, it was green:

and when I was done I didn't fuss so much about which colour stripe I used because isn't this a little odd looking? And doesn't it also look a little odd in side view?

Yellow graft this time:

.... and, yep. I decreased to six stitches on each needle, instead of seven. I have medieval elf toes.

Even on, they look elfy. So I guess these are definitely Christmas socks, even if they do look a bit John Deere. Or maybe it's less elf than bunny? those corners really stick out!

Never mind: I have knit a pair of warm socks and they have reinforced heels and toes and it doesn't matter that I made that small mistake because they will be inside shoes. Or inside Birkenstock sandals inside the house, and eventually I'm going to stop looking down at them.

Plus I can probably rein in the ear corners a bit when I run in the ends. Oh, did I forget to say there are still ends?

I am *so* not taking care of these now. They will make a lovely excuse to curl up in an armchair tonight under a working light.

Hope you get a nice peaceful patch of armchair time in your day! Thanks for stopping by and I'll see you next Saturday. 

 

Wait, I can't really leave you with a thread explosion image, can I?

Here's something nicer to take away - the other side of the socks, where the new colours did not begin or finish.

Ahhhhh, much better. And won't it be nice when they look like this all around!

 

 

 

We have sweater sorta

I finished knitting! not sure my right arm will ever recover... this thing is HEAVY and a poster child for why to learn continental knitting rather than 'throwing the yarn'. 

Though maybe picking at yarn held in my non dominant hand would not make a difference. I am used to knitting with fingering yarn now, and look at the difference in stitch size! 

 

(I tried to get a shot of the two yarns side by side, but the bulky stuff kept leaving a massive shadow owing to its massiveness. hopefully you get the idea.)

In any case, the knitting is done and I am on to the running in of ends and armpit grafting.

I could not be happier with the way the yoke came out. I was envisioning something loose and beatnik-y with a wide sloppy neck, and that's exactly what I got. Except...

This sweater, as a whole, looks TERRIBLE on me! It's far too long and it's weirdly clingy through the body.  My idea to add two inches, do slits up the side, and work a flat border rather than ribbing just did not pay off. Maybe if I'd made the slits about three inches longer? 

I was feeling pretty low about it until I thought of the *sweater* being *shorter*. I experimented by folding up the bottom, which was encouraging enough to actually stitch it up...

And then try it on. What a difference! It now hangs perfectly and doesn't cling at all. It's the Beatnik-shaped sweater of my dreams... with a very big hem.

 

If you squint you can just see on the fold where I accidentally went up a row with my stitches. Thankfully I am still just basting, and it won't be a problem to rip back and redo.

If I knit another, I can copy this one completely apart from making it *four inches* shorter. Oh, my sore arm, how I could have spared you.

(spoiler: you know I am totally going to knit another, though what colour I'd pick, I have no idea.)

 

Meanwhile, we're into an overnight snowfall that should make our front lawn ideal for a snow village with snow people in it, complete with town hall, rather than one lonely snowman. It's making a very pretty pattern on the back deck.

Hope you're staying warm wherever you are, and having a lovely weekend. Thanks for dropping by - see you next Saturday! 

We have yoke

Brace yourself:

I not only finished the sleeves on my giant Icelandic-style sweater, I moved on to the yoke! 

What do you think of the colour pattern? I ended up improvising, owing to not being able to choose from the options at hand.

This one seemed too pointy...

And this one, too busy...

This one looked just right but I had to finesse because the pattern repeat required a different stitch count.

 

Then, when I got up to the first round of decreases, I didn't like where they went, or how. I mean, K2tog, put in some colour, K2tog? I felt like there was potential for something more balanced. I ended up with a left-leaning increase followed immediately by a right-leaning increase, centred on a patch of the main colour, which gave me some texture. Nothing so extreme as a bobble, and it might go flat after blocking, but I kinda like it.

The next band in the pattern didn't seem to be centred on the points below it, so I moved them over. Then I realized the other colours I picked to go into the mix were too bold for the green/gold combo, and decided to ditch them. Instead I flipped the main and contrast colours. Shifting the design over a few stitches made the next round of decreases much easier, but when I finished the band I wasn't sure what to do next. 

Answer: keep wingin' it! I have officially given up on the pattern grid apart from counting how many rounds fall between decreases. 

The top two pattern bands are me, knit without referring to anything but the stitches themselves. I just hope it'll all come out right in the end.

I can't help thinking how gorgeous a sweater like this would be on small needles... you can get so detailed then. This one is chunky yarn is just enormous and sits on my lap like an overfed cat. Everything but the purr, basically. No idea where I'll even store this monster when it's done, and not on me. 

But that's a problem for another day, when I've finished the neck and run in the ends, which I hope will be very soon. Hope you have a great weekend lined up and thank you for including me in it! See you next week, maybe with a finished sweater to show off... wouldn't that be exciting??

 

We have sleeve

The ol' carpal tunnel issues are acting up, but I am obsessed with my Icelandic-adjacent sweater. I managed to get the body up to the point where you have to wait for sleeves... and I'm mostly done the first of them!

Not kidding about the carpal tunnel though. I really need to pace myself. 

I won't show you the completed body because it's impossible to photograph while still on the circular needles - just a big lump of green. Instead, here's a cuff detail:

Managed to match the cuff on the body of the sweater, despite the temptation to go another quarter inch.

Hello lumpy increase seam!

 

The sleeve increases took some planning. I am using a vintage pattern I actually knit several times back in the day, and I can see now that the increases were written for convenience, not because anybody actually wants a six-round run of one width, then a sudden jut outward of two additional stitches. Instead I opted for an increase at the end of the third round, then one at the start of the sixth, and so on. 

I agonized for over an hour about how to do these increases, because of course everybody's going to see the inside of the arm while I'm wearing this thing and care one way or the other, sigh. I got my Principles of Knitting doorstopper off the shelf and pored over my options, before settling on a bar increase for the end of row one, and a right raised increase for the ones at the beginning of the row. 

It was impossible to photograph the result of this for you but essentially, the actual bar of the bar increase makes it *so* much easier to count which round I'm on. It pushes the column of knit stitches to the right, away from the increase line, and since there's no corresponding left-leaning bar increase I picked a right raised increase to push the other column to the left, also away from the increase line. 

Here's the result, which I'm hoping will be a lot more polished-looking once it's blocked and ready to wear:

With luck I'll finish this sleeve today and get a good start on the second one tomorrow. Wouldn't it be exciting if I was up to the yoke in time to show you something pretty next Saturday? Exciting and daunting, because having adapted the sleeve size to suit the profile I wanted (the original is very much oversized) my stitch count isn't going to match the pattern's when I get there. 

I was going to improvise the colour design anyway but now I'm really gonna have to start from scratch. And decision-making is not my strong suit! See the aforementioned hour of agony over stitch increases that barely show.

I'm going to leave you today with a photo of my reference bookshelf (excluding two small stitch guides that didn't fit, and The Principles of Knitting, which is so heavy it has to live elsewhere!) 

I hope you have a wonderful sunny Saturday - we've got sun but also extreme cold, so I plan to settle in at whatever desk has the best sun patch - and I look forward to seeing you next week!