At long last

At long last I have a knitting post.

Such as it is.

Here are the socks that I finished in Cincinnati. I had most of one sock done last year before it went into time out. It took maybe 4 days to finish them. (Maybe 3 since I wore them one day before coming home.)

Specifics:
Walking in the Maize pattern
size 1 dpns
Brown Sheep Cotton Fine yarn. (One skein would've just barely done it. Or not. I don't know since I wanted the two toned effect anyway. All I know is that it would've been close.)

I'm not sure I'm going to like them. First, I have to handwash them (which I don't do for hardly any of my other socks.) The result is wrinkly since I can't be bothered to block them nicely.



Second, the cuff doesn't cling to my foot. I've worn them for a day in my Mary Janes and they didn't cause any problems. The test will really be to wear them inside my sneakers at work all day. If they still don't fall down then they should be fine.



However, I have a shirt to match, so I might wear them either way.

Just last night I finished my leaf socks. They're actually called Spring Thaw Socks by Cat Bordhi from Knitter's Magazine Summer 2008. I used size 2 dpns and 2 skeins of KnitPicks Essential Grasshopper Kettle Hand-Dyed sock yarn. I didn't really change any directions. (How could I? The pattern is way too complicated for me to do that.)



I take that back. I was supposed to do another leaf repeat for both sides. (These have mirroring leaves, but the other side has two leaves each.) They were plenty long enough.

Twisted ribbing for the whole pair of socks about killed me, though. And either the yarn was splitty or the ribbing made it extra hard but it was a test in endurance for me.



By the end, I had the leaf pattern memorized and I've gotten comfortable enough with the sewn bindoff that I did that at DS#2's baseball game. (Where he pitched for the first time. One really good inning and one bad. But then he hit an over-the-fence homerun to tie the game and the next kid hit a double and reached home on errors so we won. And he came home with a good feeling.)

This is a toe up sock where the gusset increases are done underneath leading up to the heel.



I haven't wore them yet, but they seem very comfortable (but maybe not in 90 degree weather.)

Having a slight reaction to all that twisted ribbing, I cast on for a quick project on Thursday night.

It looks like a blob, but it will be a felted bag. (A soccer mom asked me what I was going to use it for. I said "because it's cute" which totally doesn't answer the question from her point of view, but totally did from mine (even though it's not grammatically correct). I can find a use for it later--who doesn't need an extra bag--but for now it's just cute.)



I'm using the Lucy bag pattern with Paton's classic wool in grey and pink that I got on clearance. So far only 2 skeins of yarn have been used but I will need a third for the straps.

It's been nice to have some mindless knitting, and nice to have some new socks!