FO Catch Up

Thankfully, only one of these FOs is really old. The other two are from this month. I still need to sew the buttons on The Husband's sweater so I can photograph it and blog it.

Up first:

Pattern: Multnomah (Ravel it)
Needles: US size 5
Yarn: MadelineTosh Sock-William Morris (Lt. edition artist series)

Now, the reason why this took so long to blog, despite being finished in the first 11 days of December, is that this shawl will not photograph nicely. I've tried. The husband tried. This picture, is as good as it got. I've never had to fight this hard with a photograph before. It makes me want to cry, because the colorway is gorgeous in person and it knit up so nicely in this pattern, but the world will never know because of poopy pictures. Many, many poopy pictures. EESH.

Anywho!

I waited way too long to work on this shawl. I saw it the day it came out, picked out my yarn, printed the pattern and then waited 4 months to actually knit it. It had gone viral by that point and took away the speshulness of being able to knit it first. Oh well, lovely pattern, well written, easy to follow. I tried to figure out a way to more easily transition between the lace sections. If I remember correctly, as soon as I'd have enough stitches for the next pattern repeat, I'd switch over from garter to lace rather then waiting until the end. Other then that, no mods.

Pattern: Charade (Ravel it)
Needles: US size 2 1/2
Yarn: Yarntini Variegated Sock-Cherry Cordial

This is my first pair of replacement socks after the culling of my sock collection in December. These were already on needles when it happened, but after, I was a bit more focused to get them done. The original plan for 2010 had been to have a leisurely, almost lazy, sock knitting year with 2-3 pair being slowly produced during Sunday knit meet ups. Now, the plan has been upped to five, which will almost cover all the pairs that were lost. So this would be 1 of 5. Ooh, sounds like a Borg name. Excuse me, I think my geek may be showing. Ahem.

Super easy peasy pattern. Easy to memorize, rather easy to do. The "sl1, k1 YO, psso"s could be a bit fiddly, but I got the hang of them quickly. The toe on these was a bit different then I've done in the past. Rather then have the decreases 1 stitch in from the end of the needles, they were 3 stitches in, giving the toe of these socks a rather unique look. (Mine are on the boxy side because I waited a bit too long to start the decreases. They fit great, just look a little funny.) This would be an easy pattern to convert to toe-up and I may do that in the future, because I'll be knitting these again.

For these, I decided to try doing socks 2 at a time on 2 circulars. It worked out great and I'll keep using this method. It could be a bit frustrating because of the perceived speed of the knit, but in the end, I was so glad that for once, I was not going to have differing gauges on both of my socks and issues getting them exactly the same.

Pattern: Twinkle Toes (Ravel it)
Needles: US size 4
Yarn: Squoosh Fiberarts Merino Cashmere Sport-Passionfruit

Meet 2 of 5. Heh heh.

I already addressed some of the issues with this pattern in an earlier entry. DIY took it down and it's not clearly written out as it was meant as a supplemental to an episode of Knitty Gritty. Not an issue for me, but for a newer sock knitter, or a knitter who needs more direction, it could be.

On Ravelry, I had seen mention in several FOs of the ankle portion of this sock being tight. This was also my experience and I altered the pattern to have 8 extra stitches for the leg. It's snug in the ankle but I can get them on and off. If I were to knit these again, I'd stick with the size 4 needles for the foot of the sock, and then switch to 5s for turning the heel and the leg. Now, if you have thin legs, the pattern as written is probably just fine. The only other mod I made was increasing the number of stitches in the toe for cast on, and I think I probably would have gone just a smidge larger.




To date, these are my FOs (minus one sweater finished in the last days of December). January is already looking pretty good with 2 pair of socks and one sweater. My yardage tally isn't too bad either.