First, the "Socks Ahoy" socks, made with the Widdershins pattern and the Koolaid dyed Patonyle are finished. I'm quite proud of them. They are, I admit, a bit loose (but truly, only a bit) around the toe and heel, and I will tighten that up on my next pair I reckon. Otherwise, I couldn't be happier, and the heel itself is still a marvelous creation as far as I'm concerned. Here they are on my very happy feet:
and a close-up of the heel:
So impressed was I, in fact, I have picked up my new Knit Picks wood needles (which I got to play with briefly while making the heel on my Socks Ahoy project), and have cast on to make Chris a pair of Widdershins, minus the cables.
When you take the cables out, what you have is a K2,P1 rib pattern. Pretty simple, but with that impressive heel! I'm using some Jigsaw sock yarn from Heirloom, in a flat grey color, and I'm making them one at a time, mainly so I can use the Knit Picks wood 80cm circular needle. It's too short to do two at a time, but I'm fixing that. Yesterday, I ordered 6 of them, sizes 2mm to 3.5mm in the 100cm length, perfect for two at a time socks. Since Knit Picks won't ship to Australia, I'm having them sent to mom, who has graciously consented to forward them along, hopefully with another batch of Koolaid.
Speaking of Koolaid, the Heirloom Easy care I dyed the other day turned out to look pretty good when it finally dryed. It has much more muted colors, which is certianly what I was looking for.
I wound it up into balls, and now I'm looking for a good 8 ply sock pattern, although that is proving a challenge, so I might just use a toe up sock "recipe" and design my own. 8 ply socks sound very attractive; thick, warm and quickly made, relative to fingering weight yarns that is.
On the spinning front, I just dived in and started spinning the silk, more or less. I did get advice from Jane, who sent me the silk in the first place, to keep my hands further apart when spinning. So that's what I did. I really didn't mind spinning silk. I have a tendency, apparently, to spin things rather thinly for a novice, but silk is very strong, and even a thin strand doesn't break easily, so I didn't have to "go fishing" for my yarn thru the orifice as many times as I do with wool. It's was rather slow going, because at places, even with my hands far apart, it was very hard to draft, and there were lots of stops and starts, but in the end, I was pleased.
Here is ALL of the pink:
Here is a strand of the pink next to a 10 cent peice:
And here is about 1/2 of the blue:
I'll have to wait until I get back to spin the rest of it.
Which brings me to the postie offerings this week. After my semi-success with the blue and grey wool that J.S. from work gave me, I got the itch to do more spinning. I had a few bits and peices around the house (including the silk), but never liking to get anywhere close to running out of...well...anything, I placed an order with Jane at her Moseley Park Shop.
I ordered some bare sock yarn to dye (fun fun!!):
And some white rovings to dye as well (MASSIVE fun):
I also ordered these black and white beauties:
Jane sent this beautiful English Leichester in varying shades of purple:
She also sent these babies:
I'm assured that it is entirely coincidental, but I can't help noticing how similar the colors of this last batch is to the colors of the silk! What dumb luck! (Or is it? hummm)
So now, plans are to finish the blue silk, spin up one color wool and then ply it with the matching color silk. I can't wait to get going on that.
Not this weekend. Shortly after finishing this post, I'm packing up and going away for the weekend to the state titles for Western Action Shooting. We're getting a cabin near the shooting range, which is a couple of hours from here. I'm taking the new sock I've started for Chris, plus my Peace in the Hood cardi, as these trips are always prime knitting time!
So I should have some progress to talk about when next I post. Till then.
o
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