Yesterday I got to the top of my second Mary Delany sock. Today I cast it off. While technically, I am finished knitting the pair, there is a small geographical glitch.
Sock no. two hanging in the garden, clipped to a tomato cage. It looks pretty good.
One foot cozy and warm, one left out in the cold.
Sock no. 1, found under a chair in the living room of daughter’s house in Madison.
(sigh)
The fault is my own. I had pulled out the completed sock to compare to the one in progress while I was visiting our loved ones. Apparently, I failed to stuff it back into my project bag before packing up.
There’s good news on all fronts. It was found and daughter agrees to mail it to me. If the U.S. Post office fails to deliver it, I have enough yarn to knit sock no. 3.
If you have a hankering to make a pair like this, the pattern is by Kate Davies, and can be found on her Ravelry site here.
Summer is on its way, and that means knitting small, portable projects. Reaching into my yarn closet, I brought out a stashbuster bag all ready to go, using Kate Davies’ sock pattern Mary Delany.
I purchased this pattern on Ravelry a few years back when KDDesigns was offering a sale. This will be my second cast- on using it. The first time I followed the pattern pretty closely, but substituted a more “manly” looking chart, since I was knitting socks for dear husband. This time I happily followed Kate’s stranded pattern of little flowers. So far, it has been a joy to work.
My yarns are acquired from three different companies. The beautiful deep tonal blue is Malabrigo Ultimate Sock in a color called Azul Profundo. I purchased it from Jimmy Beans. The aqua tonal yarn is Knitpicks Hawthorne. I’ve mislaid the band and so don’t know the colorway. And the tiny bit of red to be used in the toe and the ribbing is from Hobby Lobby. The box store briefly offered a line of wool + nylon fingering weight yarn in various colors. It turned out to be not-so-good and has since disappeared from the shelves.
Here’s my start. I cast on using the winding cast on method. It is described perfectly in Kate’s pattern, and I had no trouble at all finishing the first toe.
Yesterday while watching PBS, I managed to get most of the foot finished. It now measures 8 and 1/2 inches long.
Front of footBack of foot showing the heel increases
This pair of socks will be for ME. Wearing hand knit socks makes me feel pampered. It is a small and affordable luxury.
Last week my yarn order from Knitpicks arrived, so I cast on the balaclava requested by my daughter. But before that, I sent her photos of several color options.
She chose:
Gold Rios by Malabrigo, natural Hawthorne and RainForest Heather Stroll by Knitpicks.
It’s a bold choice but not surprising selection.
Here you see the Dice check colorwork design that Gretchen Tracey used in her pattern. It’s a simple slip-stitch – one worked in three colors over six rows.
Interesting construction – the piece starts out with an odd-looking rectangle that forms the crown. Stitches are then picked up on the two long-edges, with the live stitches carrying on down the center back.
At this point, the piece reminds me of a horse-shoe crab. Strange to think of wearing a crab on one’s head. But I have faith that it will sort itself out and look more like a helmet when finished.
I’m modifying this Kid’s Balaclava pattern to fit an adult. There will be a bit of suspense as to whether my changes will be enough to give a good fit. On the plus side, it knits up so quickly I won’t be too distressed if I have to frog it back.
Shaking things up a little bit, with a Cast-Off Monday post. Since I have failed utterly to document my progress on this knit, I’ll start at the end of my work, and just mention the beginning.
This colorful wrap is a result of raiding my stash. Much earlier this year, I pulled full and partial balls that sorta went together. After matching the resulting yardage up with a pattern, yarn and copy of said pattern were shoved into a bag. Eventually I had five bags of future projects hanging in my yarn closet.
It was time to start this one. Sorrento Wrap is designed by Sian Price-White and calls for two colors of yarn – dark and light.
I had selected five different yarns for this project, with the intention of working the extra colors into various sections of the shawl.
Almost immediately I discarded the rayon blend red (in the upper left of the bowl) when it proved to be too flimsy. All other yarns, with the exception of the warm pink yarn, are by KnitPicks. The two blues are Gloss in fingering weight. The multi is a Stroll hand-painted. I’ve forgotten where I got the warm pink fingering weight.
After I finished my cast-off today, I stepped outside for a quick photo shoot.
Diamond and chevron sections are visible here. That diamond stranded section gave me trouble while reading from the row-by-row instructions in the pattern.
I ended up charting it out.
Another modification made was to add a few matching beads to the chevron border.
The section with the light blue stripes features diamond mosaic stitch pattern. That was my favorite. I’ll want to work this mosaic pattern into a future project.
Fresh off the needle, the shawl looks pretty awkward. Once I’ve blocked it and woven in ends, I’ll get another photo, then decide if I like it or not.
At one point, I was interested in working with yarn that has a very long color transition. One summer, when Knitpicks has its yarn on sale, I picked up this skein of Stroll. The colorway is called Beach House – hard to resist! But when I started to knit it, I noticed that it was very thin and quite light. I put it back in the yarn closet while I had a good think about what it could become.
Flash forward to this year and the Summer of the Stash Bust. Way in the back of the fingering weight yarn cubbyhole, I came across the skein on the left. It is 100% alpaca lace weight in a warm white color. It is languishing, because I found it impossible to work with yarns that light. As I made my loops, they had the predilection to float right off of my needles. I grabbed this featherweight and decided to knit the alpaca and the Beach House Stroll held together as one strand.
Finding a garment that I can make using only the 450 yards of fingering weight is tricky. It should become a shawl, but I have way too many of those. So I came up with a pattern for a tiny, short-sleeved lace cardigan by Susanne Sommer.
Here is my swatch and my cast-on. The pattern is worked top down.
Based on the swatch, I am thinking that I will have to add a few additional repeats of the lace to get the cardigan to fit. SO, a game of yarn chicken is afoot. (sigh.)
Daily Fiber 
