Yarn Along - Scrappy Striped Toddler Socks

Joining Ginny's Yarn Along again this week.  Lots of great knitting and reading ideas over there.

I've been knitting a pair of socks for Lil One out of some sock yarn left over from a pair I made for me and a pair for the husband.  The red-purple-blue stripes on the legs actually made a pair of socks for me and a simple hat for Lil One before I used up the last of it here.  Since I knew I would run out of that, I'm knitting these two-at-a-time so the socks will match.  I don't have a long circular needle in the right size, and I prefer double pointed needles for socks, so I'm using this technique from an old Knitty article to make one sock inside the other on dpns.  The blue-brown-black yarn is the leftover from the husband's favorite pair of socks.  Those were actually the first socks I made two-at-a-time on double points. I think it'll just be enough to finish these socks.  I'm hoping to finish them today and turn them in for Detention points in the HPKCHC.  Gryffindors try to "WIP the First" and turn in a Detention project on the first of every month.

The husband and I have been listening to the final book in Robert Jordan's (help from Brandon Sanderson) Wheel of Time mega-series.  I love these books, and love the audio versions.  We laugh all the way through the Matrim sections.  I may just have to start the series over when we finish this book.

Yarn Along - Golden Lion Throne

Joining in with Ginny's Yarn Along again this week.  Check out what everyone is reading and knitting, and join in the fun.

I have recently discovered the Craftlit Podcast by Heather.  I had to go back to the beginning and start listening to everything (I'm "that sort of bear"), so I've just finished listening to Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.  I am really enjoying this podcast.  Good crafting talk, great literary talk, and books.  It is a bit weird listening to episodes from several years ago.  She made a reference to information she got from a knitters' yahoo group, and I realized these episodes are pre-Ravelry.  What a watershed moment it was for knitters when Ravelry was created!  Hard to imagine what we'd do without it, now.

The project I'm knitting for myself right now is the Golden Lion Throne, a shawl made with both lace and mosaic knitting techniques.  I'm taking a class for this at my LYS, and it's quite nice to have a small group of us working through the pattern together.  I really am loving it.  The rows are very long - four of them in an hour and a half is good progress, and the pattern requires lots of attention.  But I am still enjoying the knitting, and I think the result is going to be wonderful.

I'm at about row 70 of 101.

Yarn Along - Tall Socks

Joining in with Ginny's Yarn Along a day late, but hey the linky widget hasn't expired, so it's not really late, right?
Two of my favorite things are knitting and reading, and the evidence of this often shows up in my photographs.  I love seeing what other people are knitting and reading as well. So, what are you knitting or crocheting right now? What are you reading? 
Check out Ginny's blog for more knitting and reading.

The first thing I cast on after recuperating from the last surge of Christmas knitting was the first of a pair of long-promised socks for my mother-in-law.  The yarn is Plymouth's Happy Feet, a 90/10 Superwash Merino/Nylon sock yarn in mottled purple and black.  If the cuff in the picture looks awfully large to be a normal sock cuff, it should.  These are going to be thigh-high socks to wear with her witchy and/or Renaissance Fair outfits.  I'm using Deborah Newton's Thigh-High Stripes pattern in Sock Knitting Master Class (edited by Ann Budd) as a guide, modifying for MIL's measurements.  I expect these to be my mobile/mindless knitting for a long while.

The computer in the picture is a stand-in for my reading.  The husband and I have just started listening to A Memory of Light the final book in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time Series (14 or 15 in all).  It'll be very strange to finish this saga.

Christmas Spectra

Still working on catching up with documentation of the Christmas knitting. The major knitted present this year was a scarf for my step-mom (completed on time and everything!).

The pattern was Stephen West's Spectra (ravelry link). I believe my only two pattern modifications were to slip the last two stitches at each edge instead of only one, and to twist the yarns to trap the contrast color between the wedges. Both of these mods were recommended at my LYS. I used a brown Malabrigo sock for the main (border) color and Kauni for the contrast (wedges) color. I used the Malabrigo until it was almost all gone, and I used only about a third of the Kauni. The color was "EG," their rainbow colorway. I absolutely love this yarn. It's considerably rougher than the butter-soft Malabrigo, and in this scarf I think that provides a great texture contrast. I might not use the Kauni alone for a next-to-skin item, but I still love it.
This shot gives an idea of how very slowly the colors change. I started at the blue edge of purple, knit through red, orange, yellow, and 87 color wedges later I was just getting into the green. I think this is the right part of the spectrum for my step-mom's coloring, though I am not known for my ability to judge such things. It seems right, though.

The short row wedges make a great spiral shape, which turned out to be a little bit of a challenge to block on a flat surface. When my husband came home and saw this pinned out on our sunroom floor, for a minute he thought I had knitted a rug.

This pattern with this yarn was so much fun that I may have to turn the rest of my Kauni skein into two more spectra scarves. Giving me the wonderful dilemma of choosing two more yarns to be the edges!