Finished Objects!!

So the Monkey socks are finished. On the evening of our snow night I attempted to graft the toe, but I got a little too inebriated so I couldn't concentrate on the stitches. Luckily, the next day I could keep it together enough to finish the grafting without screwing up the stitch pattern. For those of you who are not knitters I will explain. When knitting to the end of a sock, when you get to the toe you have to bring the live stitches together to tie them off so your piece doesn't unravel. This very much makes me think of that Weezer song about unraveling his sweater. I do not what that to happen, so I use a needle and the end of my yarn to make false knit stitches to tie the live stitches together to keep them from escaping. This is a technique that scares lots of knitters, but even beginner knitters can accomplish this and make it look really good if they follow simple directions.

I have been knitting for 20 plus years and I still look at the directions when I graft my stitches. They fit fantastically on my feet, and I love this yarn. This pattern looks really complicated but it is a fairly straightforward 16 stitch repeat. In the leg of the pattern I decreased the pattern by one repeat because my calves get really big, really fast. To make sure they would not slouch I just made the leg part shorter. This means I have a lot of yarn left over. I am thinking a little pair of baby socks, but I won't get to that for awhile.


As an attempt to stash bust I am developing my next knitting project from yarn from the bottom of the yarn bin. This yarn I mentioned in my last blog but I will fill you in again. I had some yarn samples, different fiber content mixtures and all just a couple of yards long. A few months ago I dropped the whole little collection of samples into a acid dye bath that was a dark scarlet color. Because the yarn bits are made of different fibers, they all accepted the dye in different ways. I am coupling them with a charcoal grey Lamb's Pride worsted weight yarn that is many years old. I have no idea where I got this grey skein from, but I was made before Brown Sheep (the company that makes Lamb's Pride) started adding more mohair to their yarn. I am planning a child's cardigan, so I am going to need more than one skein to complete it. I snuck into Gate City Yarns last night after closing ( I work there and have keys. You would be surprised how often employees go into the store after hours to pick up supplies for our own projects and the projects of our loved ones. I have solved many a yarn-emergency in the middle of the night this way.) and we don't have any of this color left. So I had to find something similar to work in with the grey. I was a little discouraged but I did find a grey Marks & Kattens Ecoull that is very very close to my Lamb's Pride. I am alternating the original grey with this new yarn so that you don't notice as much that I am using different colored yarns. I am planning a yoke with the little red yarn bits to highlight how different they look from the same pot. I'm thinking a simple colorwork in the yoke will do just the trick.