It’s been a while, but I finished a knitted garment this week. These socks were started as a travel project to fill the long drive to and from Ohio.
I picked up the yarn on sale last summer. It’s a typical superwash wool + nylon sock yarn, but one new to me: Static by Knitpicks. The colorway is Paradise.
I rarely make socks with self-striping yarn, but now I truly understand why it is so popular. It’s weird how many people that see these socks think they are Really Good!
Using a very basic sock stitch pattern, one can achieve a sock of great interest.
To me, the only skill I demonstrated was matching up the stripe pattern on each foot.
Yep. They match while I’m standing up in them too.
I had great plans on revealing this new shawl with a few last comments on its constructions. But my plans changed last Friday when we got on a plane.
My husband and two good friends and I are in Belize for a week of sun and fun. I took the shawl along and Bill did a photo shoot with me and the shawl on an actual Caribbean beach.
So in this post, I’ll just give some narration to accompany these lovely photos.
As you see here I added a lace border in a very pale yarn. This is Knit Picks Gloss in colorway Clarity, fingering weight. The lace pattern is from my stitch dictionary, called Spiral and Eyelet Panel. The only adaption I made was to insert a six-stitch panel of spiral eyelets between each 24 stitch panel. It worked pretty well with my ultimate stitch count of 320. The bind-off I used is the same as in the Water shawl pattern I knit earlier this year. You can read about that here:
I’m happy with the curviness created by the 24 stitch center panel. An element of waviness came along with the lace border. It reminds me of the foamy waves as they roll onto the sandy shore.
Now that I am actually standing on the beach, I find the colors on the shawl are a fine representation of those found in the warm waters of the lagoon inside Belize reef.
Sand and Sea Shawl final dimensions: 23″ high by 59″ wide. It took eleven different colors of fingering weight yarn (roughly 50 yards each color) plus slightly more than half the ball of Gloss for the border. If all goes well, I plan to publish the pattern, once I get home and have time to write it up.
For some time now, I have been noticing that partially used-up sock yarn skeins have begun to accumulate in my stash. With sock yarns most commonly sold at 100 grams (about 437 yards) it’s obvious to me that my feet and the feet of those that I knit for are below average. I can use up only about 75% of a skein in my favorite sock patterns. Thus I have left-overs. Many left-overs.
It’s time to deal with the clutter. I’m searching for patterns that are written for small amounts of multiple skeins in fingering weight. Today’s project fits that bill to a T.
This sweet little cowl requires 3 light and 3 dark in fingering weight yarn – about 100 yards of each color. After pulling all of my leftovers out of the yarn closet, I managed to come up with six that could work.
The bowl contains a combination of Ewetopia Wisco, Cascade Heritage and KnitPicks Hawthorn. The colors don’t quite line up with those chosen by the designer. But I’m ready to give it a go WITHOUT MAKING A SWATCH FIRST. I know- this behavior is aberrant for me. It must be the summer heat getting to my brain.
You see my cast-on. I am three rows into the ten row repeat. I figure that I will know pretty quickly whether I’m going to like this or not. But then again, it probably doesn’t matter if I like it. I will likely give the cowl as a holiday gift to a loved one who lives in a colder climate.
Full steam ahead!
If you like the pattern, it can be found here on designer Lauren Savidge’s blog:
FOLLOW UP: As I worked through this pattern, I realized that it had an error. The picture and the dimensions seem to indicate that the 10 row polka-dot pattern was knit twice in each color combination. The pattern did not say to repeat the pattern before switching colors. Now I used the pattern as it appeared in her blog, so maybe the pattern you can purchase has been corrected.
I finally got around to taking photos of the yarn purchased during this year’s KnitPicks summer yarn sale. It includes yarns I have used in the past and a few new ones. With an eye toward knitting socks as holiday gifts, I have focused on fingering weight yarns.
This is a new offering from KnitPicks. Static is a fingering weight blend of superwash wool and nylon – the same fiber content as their Stroll line. I guess what makes this yarn different is the self-striping color sequence. This colorway is called Paradise. I thought the bright colors would be nice for children’s socks.
Gloss is a luxury blend of 70% merino wool and 30% silk. I have used it in the worsted weight to make vests and shawls. The fingering weight has all the attributes of its larger sister – softness and a light sheen. I bought it to find out if silk helps the socks wear longer in the heel and ball of foot areas. I also plan to use it as the solid color contrast in 2-color shawls. Colorways shown are clarity, blackberry and navy.
Hawthorne has become a new favorite for me in the fingering weight group. I like its plumpness and high twist. It is made from superwash highland wool, which pills less than merino wool does. The kettle-dyed line (Poseiden is shown here) give nice color variation to items knitted in basic stitches. I also purchased two painted yarns: Burlingame is the top one, Vancouver shown in the bottom of the photo.
This month I will be teaching a short course on knitting shawls. I plan to use these yarns to demonstrate how they can bring pizzazz to a simple garter ridge pattern.
Beyond that, I have no clue of what these yarns want to become. But I will enjoy discovering it.
Gentle Curves shawl is off the needles. Here is my autobiographical photograph of it.
This was a quick and easy knit. To make it more decorative, I added stripes of lacy eyelet stitches spaced up gradually over the body of the shawl.
I still haven’t formed an opinion about whether I like the slanting line that forms a twisted spine on the shawl. It looks better when the shawl is wrapped well around, with the ends hanging down in front.
Yarn fibers include alpaca, wool and silk. The pattern Gentle Curves can be found on Ravelry here:
Daily Fiber 