Socks and Shawls

One of my knitting groups, Purlygirls, was having a KAL for the Milkweed Shawl, and I decided to join in. Apparently when it comes to knitting I'm influenced by peer pressure.

I've actually never knit a shawl before. It's true that I started Girasole, but that one might be a bit slow going.



Pattern: Milkweed by Laura Chau
Yarn: madelinetosh tosh sock in Thunderstorm
Started: 9/6/10
Finished: 9/19/10

I still need to get better / modeled pictures of it. It was a really fun, relatively quick, and pretty easy knit. I put in lifelines after every other chart, but I didn't need to use them. It was quick to do, though, so I'm sure I would have been glad if I had needed to go back.

I knew it was going to be a pretty small shawlette, but it's actually smaller than I expected. A good scarfy size, though I might need a pin to keep it from falling off if I want the triangle part in the front. Amanda's was bigger than mine, so I think I might have to block it out a bit more aggressively... unfortunately the cats "helped" me by taking the pins out overnight.

Over the weekend I was in Oregon and finished my handspun socks:



Started: 7/5/2010
Finished: 9/24/2010

They're just simple stockinette socks with some of my older handspun - the fiber is Spunky Eclectic and a gift from my friend Cathy for my birthday a few years ago. I'm not sure why the majority of the yellow ended up on the foot of one sock, but such is the nature of handspun. I spun the yarn and then took forever to knit it.

For the rest of my handspun sock goal (I've decided to make 5 pairs by November 2011) I'll have to get spinning!

Garnish KAL... and some finished socks

My Ravelry Fan Club is having a knitalong for my most recent free pattern, Garnish. If you've been thinking about knitting it, why don't you join in? I'll probably be casting on a pair in the next couple of weeks.

Currently there aren't any official deadlines, but I'll be giving out a small prize to one of the finishers, probably around the end of the year. We like our KALs low stress. ;)

In other knitting news, I finished some socks!



Pattern: Artichoke Socks
Yarn: Jojoland Melody Superwash in color MS16
Started: 8/18/10
Finished: 9/12/10

The pattern is quick to memorize and easy to knit, although the instructions don't contain a chart. They also say that the pattern stitch is over 9 rounds, which seemed very strange to me as you would be decreasing the yarn over you just made.

Instead I did it over 10 rounds (all even rounds are the same, I just repeated it for round 10 as well), and also included a "set up" round identical to Round 2 before staring the first repeat of the pattern. Just my little picky changes...

Yarn

Well, this is a knitting blog, and so I shall talk about yarn.

First off, I was in a swap on the knittyboard - you may have seen my earlier package posted in the beginning of August. Well for the 2nd month of the swap the person that we originally sent *to* sent back to us. I was away for a few days in the first week of September, but I came home on Labor Day to find this:



My pal sent me a couple skeins of Wildfoote, some handmade soap, notecards, a needle case, 2 skeins of Cotton Ease, and a "Blast Off Spinners" shooter thing. The last is for the cats - I haven't tried it yet since I was a bad recipient and didn't take a picture until today, but I'm sure they'll enjoy it soon.

And now for a bit more yarn talk... I've been using the end of my Summer of Stash to make sure all my sock yarn is up on Ravelry. So no, I did not just buy all of that yarn that went up on Ravelry. For the most part it was from Sock Summit (yes, it took me a year to get it up on my stash) or yarn clubs, but a bit was from the yarn crawl in May. None of it was bought this summer, as I haven't been buying yarn since June 21st.

While I may buy the occasional skein once my stash commitment is over on the 23rd, I'm still going to stick to my 3:1 rule (using 3 times as much yarn as I buy).

I also need to get crackin' on some of these WIPs, so I can cast on this:



Yes, candy corn socks, here I finally come!