Winter Hiatus

 Finished the hat by the deadline:

Needles: US 1.5 (2.5mm) and US 2.5 (3mm)

Yarn: 1.5 skeins of Patons Kroy Socks in Gentry Gray

Pattern: Raven Sherbo's Mjolnir

Splitty yarn (with a fair amount of vegetative matter, and white blobs in the 2nd skein only -- neither problems I usually have with this yarn) meant I kept leaving strands behind, and traveling stitches meant it was impossible to drop down to correct things.

There was a mistake in the pattern that I did not make in my knitting, because I didn't even notice until the third repeat, like typos that your brain corrects for you. I just did what should have been done without thinking about it.

KD just informed me that it's the best hat ever, though, so it was all worth it.

And with that, I'm going to take a break from knit-blogging until the New Year, because all I want to talk about are Secret Projects, and that's no good.

Emergency Hat

 That is, not a hat for emergencies, but an emergency need for a specific hat to be worn at a specific time.

Believe it or not, this is a black hat, in yarn with a lovely sheen to it. As a result, the sheen reflected all the sunlight when I took the picture.

Half the time is up; half the hat is done. Onward!

Summer Socks Finished as Summer Ends

When the time for the 2020 Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival rolled around, I went to the vendors I always visit, and bought things. I just did it online. I've been working my way through summer colors of Yankee Dyer Yarns Yankee Breeze merino/cotton fingering. This year I went with a summery green. So I wanted a sock pattern that went with images of summer leaves. I settled on this pattern because, despite the name, it reminded me of the shadows made by trees in full leaf. And it reminded NKD of the vines in her garden.

Needles: US 1 1/2 (2.5 mm)

Yarn: Yankee Dyer Yarns Yankee Breeze in Wasabi

Pattern: Melanie Berney's Snowflake Lace Socks, originally published in MagKnits and available from the Internet Archives here.

I'm leaning towards a purple for next year's selection. Maybe that May Mist if she still has it in stock by then. The serendipity of indie dyers is the best.

Coming Along

 They'll be finished before you know it.

But you know what's even worse than Second Sock Syndrome?

I've had this pillowcase embroidery kit for decades. I broke it out back in March, when I started taking afternoon tea in a chair by my window, looking out on the forest. It seemed like a good time to resurrect an old skill. I was quite pleased with the result. So why haven't I even started the second one???

Legacy Project: Scarf and Fingerless Gloves

 The scarf is half-done, and not mysterious at all. The knitting is easy to read as far as the pattern is concerned, the yarn is still attached, and it even had a needle still in it. No telling how long my sister intended to make it, but I'll just use up the yarn.

But first, the same reason she stopped: to make sure she had enough yarn for the matching fingerless gloves. Fortunately, one was complete except for the thumb-top:

 

She was holding two different colorways together in the scarf, a black and a black-and-gray variegated, for a subtle variegated heather look. She clearly did the same in the body of the glove, then switched to just black for the finger-tops. I guessed that she used the same size needles as the scarf, counted stitches and rows, and quickly made a match.

The finger-tops are a bit of a poser. I don't often make gloves, and figuring out how to divvy up the stitches for fingers has taken several tries.

Half Done

Which is to say, the sock is all done:

And the best course of action is to immediately cast on for the second one. Especially now that the weather has turned fall-like, and thoughts of wool are dancing through my head. 

Round the Bend

Here we are, safely around the corner. Yesterday I knit the heel flap, turned the heel, picked up the gusset stitches on one side, and checked the pattern to be sure I was supposed to continue the lace pattern across the instep stitches.

 

 

That’s when I discovered that the pattern had politely asked me to stop before the heel flap on the next-to-last row of the lace pattern. And after all that careful exposition in my last post!

I almost wrote “there’s no coming back from that kind of mistake,” but of course that’s the glory and delight of knitting: unlike real life, you can go back and fix things. So this morning I did just that, ripping back to the beginning of the heel flap, tinking back that last knit row, and starting off again.

I wound up knitting the first row of the heel flap, because otherwise I would have been slipping yarn-overs and creating large holes just where I don’t want them. But after that I proceeded with my usual heel flap, and everything went smoothly.

Now I will just continue with lace on the instep and stockinette on the sole while I decrease the gusset stitches, and before you know it, it will be time for the toe. Which I might start a little earlier than usual, since I don’t want my little toe catching in the lace.

Time for a Heel

How do I know?

Well, I know that - unless I'm making footies - I generally like my handknit socks to hit just as my calf starts to widen, what the wide world calls "mid-calf" but isn't. I also know that I generally like my summer socks to be about an inch shorter than my winter ones. No idea why, you wouldn't think an inch would add that much warmth. Anyway, I'm looking for a leg length of 5-6".

The stitch pattern matters, too. Since I want two matching socks, it's always wise to start the heel at the end of a pattern set, just because it's easier to remember. Happily, the end of the 5th pattern repeat hit right at 5 1/2".

Definitely time to start the heel, which starts, in this case, with a heel flap. The pattern actually calls for plain knitting, and I could do that. But I like a bit of bulk in the heel flap, so that it wears longer. I could go all out on an eye-of-partridge heel, which I'm fond of. But the stitch pattern is already textured and interesting enough, so I'm just going to go with a regular heel flap, the kind where you slip 1 - knit 1 across the heel flap and slip 1 - purl across on the way back.

See you around the corner!

A Fine Kettle of Fish

 I would just like to point out that this entire garter square blanket is predicted on getting two squares out of each skein of yarn. Eight squares in, this happens:

 I shall continue on, and see if I come up with some extra blue by the end.

Meanwhile, now that it's September, I've finally started my summer socks.