Feet and Books and Hats, oh my!

As some of you may have seen over on knitgrrl today, I'm going to be putting out a sock book with Cooperative Press. As part of that we're trying to gather some information on shoe size and foot measurements, as well as pictures of size 8 feet. (Although we only need photos for size 8, measurements are appreciated for all sizes! Even my bitty little feet are going in the data.)

If you'd be willing to help, check out the survey, and thanks in advance!

As far as hats, well that's totally unrelated.



Pattern: Odessa by Grumperina
Yarn: Blue Moon Fiber Arts Luscious in My Blue Heaven
Started: 9/28/10
Finished: 10/11/10

As you can see I left off the beads. The hat is for a friend's sister, who has recently started chemotherapy. A knitting friend who went through chemo last year told me that her most comfortable hat was 100% silk, so when I was at Oregon Flock and Fiber I picked up this skein.

Now to knit away on the Candy Corn Socks... I need those for Halloween!

2008 Knitting

Well, it's time for the year-end summary, but first I have a couple new projects to blog about.

For the holiday gifts I gave these to my mom, these to my middle sister, and the socks from the previous entry to my little sister, as I mentioned. However, we had two other guests that got knitted gifts this year...

The honorary 4th daughter in our family got these "Zom-bees"



Yarn: Yarn Pirate in Killer Bees
Pattern: plain ol' socks
Started: 12/18/08
Finished: 12/24/08

And I whipped out a quick hat for another more spur of the moment guest:



Yarn: Wool Ease Thick & Quick
Pattern: an improvised hat
Started: 12/24/08
Finished: 12/25/08, in the wee hours

That provided a much-needed non-sock item for my end of the year count, which is as follows:

28 pairs of socks
2 hats
1 monkey
1 TP teepee

It was actually kind of a pitiful knitting year. :( Maybe I'll do better next year... I have a feeling it will depend on my ratio of knitter to non-knitter friends in Seattle.

Listening to: Bullet with Butterfly Wings ~ Smashing Pumpkins, #1 Crush ~ Garbage

Happy Birthday MJ! (Twin Socks)

I am very lucky to have a knitting buddy like MJ, even if she is just an "online person". A while back she started off "twin socks" by sending me two skeins of Shi Bui in a lovely turquoise that she also has and saying that we should make twin socks out of them. Then I sent her a skein of Socks That Rock, and then in the past couple of days the twin socks have been upped to four pairs by her sending me some Smooshy Sock in Wisterious and me sending her some Soft Sea Wool for her birthday. (Which is today and she released the most awesome hat pattern that I'm already knitting so look here for Claudia.)

Two of four future twin socks basking in the morning sunlight:



I think we've finally made a decision on the first pair of twin socks - Bayerische in the Smooshy Sock pictured above. Right MJ?

Not Socks!

Hey look at that! That's a hat, knit with less than a skein of Berroco Plush. It's all plain ol' stockinette and it doesn't even roll at the bottom, which is why it's folded up. And it's for a very good cause! Dana Farber is collecting hats for kids with cancer - you can drop them off at A Good Yarn.

The blog might be a bit quiet in the next few days as I'm working on a couple of secret projects - including a little bit of designing...

And now to answer a few reader questions:

LadyLungDoc asks:

I love that colour too - is it an optical illusion that the knitted part looks bluer than the rest, or is that part of the colourway?

The yarn (Jojoland Melody from the last post) is somewhat similar to Trekking in its subtle variegated colors, so yes the knitted part was a bit more blue.

Batty asks:

What size needles are those? They look... tempting!

Mine are size 1. I'm enjoying them, the decoration in the middle of the needles helps keep stitches on there securely while I'm using another needle, but the tips are smooth for easy stitch movement while I'm knitting.

Abigail says:

It looks as if socks will always rule the roost around here...and you said you would diversify this year!!!

Look, a hat!

I know, I know. But with the amount of sock yarn I have, maybe it's better that I'm knitting so many socks...

Listening to: Crawl Away ~ Tool, Look What You've Done ~ Jet