The urge for Christmas Socks

I want to knit a pair of Christmas socks. Not really sure why, but I just want them. I want to knit them. I want to wear them. So I went in search of Christmas Sock Yarn. I checked GnomeAcres first as I really like that shop and she has some wonderful Halloween yarn. But when I watched her podcast she said she was not going to make Christmas yarn for awhile - and since I am a pretty slow knitter I guess I will not be buying any Christmas yarn from her. Unless I want it for the next season.(Boooooooooooo!)

So then I went to Etsy and started searching for Fingering Weight Christmas yarn. After some digging I was able to find LolaDoodles shop and she is selling a yarn called Christmas in Vermont. This looked like a winner!

 

The price was reasonable and the shipping was also very reasonable. It showed up in just a couple days with a nice note. The colors where much more muted in person than I was expecting, but I am still pretty happy with what I got. If I am being really honest - I want the colors I saw on my computer screen a lot more than the colors I got - but I know that is the risk of buying yarn online. And also why its good to buy a single item from a new vendor, you get to test the waters and see how true their portrayal of their product is.

So overall I am pretty excited. I think this is more of a winter colorway rather than a Christmas colorway, and I am not sure if it will cure my need for Christmas Socks, but I suspect I would wear this all winter and not just up to Dec. 25th!

I FINISHED A PROJECT !!!

Project name: Ghoul School
Pattern: Sock Recipe: A Good, Plain Sock
Yarn: GnomeAcres Sparkle Gnome Fingering/Sock in “Smell My Feet”
(You can find Gnome Acres shop HERE)
Needles: Size 2 (2.75 mm) Double Points
Start Date: August 25 2013
Finished: July 6 2014

So much went wrong with these socks - honestly I am just happy to have them done.

♦ Lost notes for Sock one - so had to largely eye ball sock two. YIKES.
♦ I kneeled on one of my needles - so I had to knit a large portion of sock two with one bent needle.
(see the bent needle there? It felt WEIRD to knit every round with one needle bent!)

♦ The yarn on sock two started to feel brittle about two inches past the heel. My feeling is that it was over-dyed and I am a little concerned it will wear poorly.
♦ I forgot I did eye of partridge heel on sock 1 - and did a standard heel on sock 2. Yup - these socks have two different heels. Nice.

♦ The pooling on sock one is vastly different from the pooling on sock two. Is it because I knit these over a year? Is it the yarn? Is it my heel snafu? No idea.

And the fit is just a tiny bit looser than I like.Which is a bummer as I actually did a swatch and did math to get the right fit - debated the needle size and then let the math decide to go with a 2 rather than a 1. If I knit these again in this yarn I would probably use a size 1 needle just to get a bit snugger fit.

I am not in love with these - but have a sense of relief that they are off the needles and finally completed. I wanted a pair of fun socks for fall and Halloween - and I think these fit the bill.

Ghoul School Progress Report

I have been studying all weekend like a woman possessed, so knitting time has been minimal. (I think I knit two rows on Friday?) But I have made progress since my last post, and thought I would share what I have done.

I tried the Eye of Partridge heel this time around and I am so happy with it!I love how it looks on this yarn and I think my stitches picked up much cleaner. I love seeing my technique improve. I am still working away on the decreases and heading down to toe town. I suspect it will be a few weeks before I get to sock two. School is kicking my butt - and it's hard to work in the quality knitting time.

Did I mention how much I love this yarn?!?! GnomeAcres yarn is so yummy. ♥

Ghoul School

 Starting my next set of socks and I am trying to take my time so I don't stress myself out over something that is supposed to be relaxing end enjoyable. Why do I stress out over knitting?!?! Seriously. I need to think about that a little bit.

So I decided I wanted to make some Halloween type socks, and picked up a skein of "Smell my Feet" yarn from Gnome Acres. I balled the yarn up and decided to knit a mini swatch going up one size of needles from my last pair of socks.

 

So I knit up a little swatch and measured it out. Looks like going from a size 1 to a size 2 needle changes my gauge from 9 stitches per inch (what I got on my last socks) and I am now knitting 8.5 stitches per inch. Heh. Not a huge difference, but I find the knitting feels a lot faster on the size two needles than on the size 1. 

So today, while recovering from some minor food poisoning, I sat myself down. watched a movie on Netflix, and cast on for my new socks. I am calling the socks "Ghoul School" since I will be taking 6 classes this semester and working full time. I suspect I will be bery much like a zombie before too long.

The Halloween/Autumn Cowl - FINISHED!

 I finally got a few pictures of my finished Halloween/Autumn Cowl. I started this in October and had a false start, ripped it out, and then went a completely different direction with it.

Yarn: Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Worsted in Limeaid (137 yards or .72 of a skein) AND Gnomeacres 100% Superwash Merino Wool Worsted in colorway "Smell My Feet" (198 yards or .90 of the skein)
Needle:  US 8
Pattern: Barbara G. Walker's Hexagon Pattern from the book A Treasury of Knitting Patterns.
Size: 7.5 inches by 23 inches
Love: ♥♥♥♥ I rate this 4 hearts out of 5 - only because I would have done a few things different if I made it again.
My Ravelry Project notes can be found HERE.

It sits nicely on my neck and I can fold it down or where it tented up for added wind protection. (I am picturing gassing up the car in a nasty winter wind when I say that.) It actually goes around my shoulders under my jacket and I can zip up so that I get no wind on my neck. (Which means no snow down my neck too!)

What Would I change? I think it would have looked better with a picot edge on both sides.When I started this version of the cowl I didn't know I was going to do a picot edge - I just got toward the end and thought it would look good. In hind site I would have done it on both sides.

I also would have liked it better with the inside liner being the multi-colored yarn all the way through. I didn't think I had enough, so I decided it would be better to have a center stripe of the green rather than a row or two at the very end when I ran out of yarn. I am fine with it like this - but I think it would have been just a notch better if it were all the way across. The liner is single crochet which probably ate up more yarn than if I had knit the liner as well. Didn't think of that until just now.

Overall I call it a win. I am happy with the way it wears and think it's interesting and different. My hubby said it would generate a lot of comments when I wear it out. I am anxious to wear it out and see if it's true! ☺