Chicken #2

The second pair of Chicken Socks is finished. This time, Dark Cornish Rooster. I do seem to be attracted to the Roosters, I think that they have more vibrant colors.

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This was a highly variegated yarn, and therefore also needed a pattern to compliment that. Hence the Monkey Socks by Cookie A yet again. I cannot count how many times I have knit this pattern.

The sock knit up nicely, I opted to change the heel and cuff colors and do a striped toe.

One thing that was written in the original Monkey pattern, was after you have finished the heel and picked up the sides for the gusset, on the next row do a twisted stitch to firm that pick-up. I had glossed over that part on my first few Monkey socks, but when I tried it, I really liked the effect. Every sock that I make with a heel gusset now has this technique. If you look closely, it is visible in this photo.

#HueLoco

#BarnyardChickens

#MonkeySocks

#CookieA

Colored Monkeys

My Monkey socks with the beautiful variegated bright yarn are finished.   The heels were knit in a lavender color, which I think helps pull out the brights.  Truth be told, any of the colors that I was looking at would have worked beautifully.  When I was knitting the foot, I was actually loving the underside with the just plain knitting (at one point I contemplated ripping both socks out and starting over!).  That inspired me to knit the toes in the same yarn, and not use a contrasting color.

All from this gorgeous yarn:

Colorful monkey socks

That amazingly colored rainbow yarn from a couple of weeks ago has become the beginnings of the Monkey socks by CookieA.

I love love love the colors, and was uncertain how they would knit up in a patterned sock, so I opted for the Monkey socks as they normally work very well with a highly patterned yarn.

It seems to me that even this pattern has not stopped the complementary colors from muddying out a bit.  Not wanting to rip back, I am opting to continue with this.  My thought is that a brightly colored heel will accent the colors of the sock.

Here are some choices, all from jaWoll.  My tendencies are towards the blue or purple. Thoughts?

Soft to the Hand

I recently finished the second of my 12 items for the Spin the Bin Challenge.  This was a fiber from River’s Edge Fiber Arts, called Monkey.  Silk, bamboo and Merino.

It was a dream to spin, but the fiber was so silky that it was not a fine spin.  Thinking that this would feel so good on my hands, I chose to make a 3ply yarn for some future mittens.  Yardage was not as good as I would have liked, 160 yards of 3 ply, 4 oz.

On the knitting front, I am currently finishing up some CookieA socks from my last club shipment last winter.  The yarn is Tanis, made in Canada. 70% super wash merino, 20% cashmere and 10% nylon.  Look at their website, the colors are amazing (my color is off in this photo, it is really a lovely soft green, color Julep, which describes it well). This yarn, called the “Purple Label Cashmere Sock” is a dream to knit with, I have another skein in my stash that was from my birthday Twin that I now can’t wait to pull out.  Not sure how easy this yarn is to get in the US, that was the great thing about the past 2 sock clubs, was finding and trying yarns that I would not have necessarily found on my own.   Even though I have size 9 feet, I am knitting the size small in Cookie’s pattern.  When I took classes from Cookie, I realized that she knits so incredibly tight that my gauge is never the same as hers.  Not sure yet if these are for me or a gift…

Flight socks

These socks were started in January and took over 2 months to finish.  The yarn color was very dark, and they were difficult to knit up at SnB or on a dreary day because of this.  While cashmere in socks is wonderful on your feet, I do find it to be more splity than other sock yarns. These were from the Cookie A sock club, and this was the December 2012 pattern, it was the simpler of the 2 patterns available.  Between the difficulty of knitting with this yarn, and the dark color I had to abandon the harder pattern for my sanity.  They were gifted to my Mom when I was up a couple of weeks ago visiting her.  She loved them.

 

 

Pattern: Flight Socks
Pattern Source: CookieA Sock Club December 2012
Yarn: Stricken Smitten Sinful Sock Yarn
Needles: US 1
Date Started: 1/?/13
Date Finished: 3/22/13
Finished Dimensions: Women’s large

 

Red Socks

I am finally returning to finishing up the first installment for 2012 of the CookieA sock club.  The yarn was a beautiful fiery red by Alisha Goes Around called Richness (of Martens) Fingering, which is 75% Superwash Merino, 15% Cashmere and 10% silk.  While the cashmere is very soft, my experience the past year with other brands has been that it pills a lot.  It will be interesting to see how this works.  This is a very hard color to photograph given the brightness of the red, and the sheen of the silk.

I ended up choosing the Makoto socks, even though I was not initially drawn to the 3-dimensional qualities of the knit sock.  It is supposed to relate to a fortune cookie, and I think that it does a good job of that.  One of the cookie recipes was for fortune cookies, and I am anxious to make them with my own fortunes inside, I am thinking knitting themed.  Hoping to be able to do that for my SnB group on Monday.

 

These need to be finished in short order, as I now have a new sock pattern and yarn coming EVERY month.  The Knitterai Club (Janel Laidman) arrived 2 days ago.  While I am not a fan of green, especially the Kelly greens, this color has grown on me as I look at it.  It is Mad Color by Fiber Arts, the color is Emerald Green (80% Superwash Merino, 20% nylon), 420 yards, 4 oz.  I love the project bag that came along also.

And, my first flower of the season as always.  Judy tried to figure out what this perennial was last year (after the flower was gone), the green foliage stays on through the summer.  I still don’t know it’s name, but love it and it will always now remind me of her and the beauty of new growth in the spring.

More Socks

I started a new pair of socks, using a CookieA June sock club pattern.  She always gives 2 patterns in every shipment (every other month), as does Janel Laidman.  I find that one colorwork sock pattern every other month is about all that I can manage.  The CookieA socks are always an easier one, and then one with a bit more detail in it, I usually save the detailed one for the sock club yarn.   So, I bought this yarn on my trip, and am making these for Judy.  It is the Jubilee pattern, and I wish that I had read the comments by others before starting these, but I was working on them on our car trip back, and only opened my computer up to check the pattern.  The yarn is Plymouth Sockotta:

Judy picked this yarn at a new store in Grosse Pointe, MI.  It is called the Knotted Needle, and focuses on knitting and needlepoint, although I felt that the knitting took second stage.  Most of the yarns there were not anything that I would really want, a lot of the same old stuff that you can find in virtually every yarn shop (Cascade, Debbie Bliss, Noro).  There is a local store that also combines the 2 crafts also, and I find it a bit confusing, as there does not seem to be a lot of overlap, and they seem to end up short shifting something.  I did find this skein of hand dyed yarn from Abstract Fiber, a yarn that I have not seen or tried before, it is much finer than some of the other yarns, and I like that quality.  The color is Matisse Harvest.  Hard to resist anything Matisse, it will be interesting to see how it knits up.

Here are my Jubilee socks in progress, almost complete with sock #1.  The yarn is okay, would probably not make my “must buy again” list.  It was much cheaper though at just $12.50 for a 400+ yard skein.  The suggestion on Ravelry was to knit the YO stitches through the back loop, and the fabric is pulled in tighter.  I wish that I had seen that comment, as even though I am making the size M, they are very stretchy.

And more photos from our mini vacation.  Any ideas yet?