FO: Watermelon Socks

This project was the case of well-placed advertising. Facebook spied on me and showed me an ad for Premier Yarns Fruits fingering weight yarn, and I just had to have some. No stores local to me sold it, so I wound up ordering some from Walmart.com of all places. I settled on the watermelon and the dragon fruit colorways as they were the most obvious what fruit they were trying to represent. The only drawback is that this is totally acrylic yarn, but for the design and the price I was willing to give it a try.

When the yarn arrived, I decided to work up the watermelon first and I went with my tried and true - the Smooth Operator Socks by Susan B. Anderson. I've made this pattern several times now and it works great for a self striping yarn to show off the design, especially since the heel is done as an afterthought, so you can make sure to line up any stripes to be the same on each sock. Sadly, this type of heel never photographs as well, but it fits very comfortably so that's what really matters.

I'm very pleased with how I got both socks to match. The trick is just to make a note of exactly how far into each color you start your cast on and make sure the second starts the same as the first (i.e. make your slip knot 4.5 inches before the first black spot). Once I started actually writing down the measurement from a certain color change in the yarn, I've been able to get them to match ever since. 

This yarn impressed the heck out of anyone who saw me knitting with it, which is ironic because this was the simplest sock pattern ever. People who don't knit don't know about self-striping yarn being dyed this way, and I always find the reactions hilarious. I remember having to explain the dying process to several curious onlookers. I find that self-striping yarn is a great motivator to keep going in the knitting - I would think "I'll just knit until the next section of color" or "Let me get through the green and white stripes, they're small". This wasn't necessary since these socks are just stockinette stitch, so there was no counting involved whatsoever to where I would need to stop at a certain spot to remember my place in the pattern, but it did help me to get these done faster because I was always pushing to just the next section when I would work on them.

The yarn has worked out just fine for me even considering it's acrylic. I stick to the idea that most socks are made of cotton or wool for a reason, and acrylic can be sweaty in the more aired-out of places on your body, so I was worried about sweaty feet in these. I tend to only wear my hand knit socks on much colder days (for Florida) and with my tall boots, and I'm happy to report these did not make my feet sweaty, but it was also cold enough to probably not really sweat anyway. I would not wear these in warmer weather, but then I wouldn't wear wool ones in warmer weather either. Anyway, the yarn is soft and smooth on my feet, so it gets a thumbs up from me.

All in all, I love how these socks turned out. They were a mindlessly easy knit but packed a big punch with the fantastic yarn design. What more can you really ask for in a pair of socks?

 

Summary:

Yarn: 1.53 skeins of Premier Yarn Fruits in Watermelon colorway - $11.67

Pattern: Smooth Operator Socks by Susan B Anderson

Time: 2.5 months

FO: SOS Knit Along Meadow Stripes Socks

It seems I have caught the sock knitting bug, folks. I know this because I live in Florida yet I have managed to make myself 3 pairs of wool socks (yes, THREE) in just a few months time. Considering I only even wear socks a few times a year as it is, never even considering any made of wool, that's an exponential increase in sock appreciation. What can I say? They are a small project that is easy to see progress on, that are easy to carry around with you, and in a pattern like this they knit up very quickly. How can I say no to that?! Plus, these socks are WAY more fun than the rest of my drawer (except maybe my long socks with squirrels printed on them - squirrels!). Anyway, I present my recently finished pair of socks :)

I hadn't even thought of making more socks until I saw Susan. B. Anderson was hosting a knit along for her latest pattern. Last-pair-of-socks-ago, I was on the hunt for a simple sock pattern with an afterthought heel so I wouldn't break up my stripe pattern. I didn't manage to find anything that appealed, so I decided to wing it and they turned out ok (I'm referring to my Arne & Carlos socks) but after wearing them I noticed that the heel still tends to slip down telling me that area isn't long enough. It's ok since I will probably just be sleeping in these come winter time, but still. I wanted to find a pattern that would show me what I did wrong. Smooth Operator Socks by Susan B. Anderson is just such a pattern.

The knit along was a super fun group of folks all making socks. It was very low key - you didn't even have to complete any socks to win anything, just hang out on the Ravelry board and have fun. While you didn't have to finish, I had set a personal goal to do so since these are such a simple knit (seriously, it's just stockinette stitch) so I did manage to finish before the August 22nd end date. I find myself with very little knitting time lately even though my sewing has been surprisingly steady. Maybe it's the blistering heat and soaking humidity (ugh, please end already...), but I digress. My lack of knitting time meant that I took 3 weeks to knit these up, working almost exclusively on Sundays at church - this in spite of the fact that the first sock only took me 3 days to make.

The pattern is really handy and you choose your size based only on the circumference of the widest part of your foot and then just making every section whatever length you need or choose. The real reason for buying this pattern is the heel instructions. Susan gives a really good tutorial on how to make the heel along with tips for making sure you don't break up the stripe pattern of your socks with the heel either. Once making the heel, it's done with just k2togs! Crazy how simple it is, but it works. This is my first time every managing to get exact matching socks :)

I think the heel turned out pretty cool on these. I dug through my stash of sock yarn to find an appropriate striping yarn to make mine up in only to see how lacking my stash was in self striping yarn (lots of variegated and solid, but only a few striping). In the end it came down to a beautiful skein of Opal Le Petit Prince yarn that I'm hoarding for the perfect pattern and 2 skeins of Patons Kroy Sock in the Meadow Stripe colorway. I went with the Kroy yarn to treat them as a pattern muslin. I wanted to make sure I really liked this pattern before I use my beloved Opal, you know? Funny enough I was inspired to get this colorway of the Kroy after admiring a pair that Susan made for herself earlier this year, so really it was meant to be. The colors are so fun!

I'm seriously so proud of the fact that both socks match! I mean they are completely identical - even when I ran out of yarn in a few spots, I actually made sure to begin the new yarn at the same place in the color pattern to keep with the design. I have several tiny balls of yarn leftover, but I also have a matching pair of socks :)

Now you get a couple creepy ballet position photos, lol. I was trying to be visually creative here. Too bad the right sock slumped down a bit *sigh*. The pattern now even includes an alternate heel and toe variation that does not involve kitchener stitch if you are so inclined. Personally I enjoy kitchener, so I made these with the original instructions.

And there you have it - my new pair of socks :) I'm actually pretty impressed I was able to wear these socks for photos out on my porch in the middle of the day and not feel like I was walking through a fire, so that's something. I'm really happy to have found this pattern and participated in the SOS knit along. I now have a great go-to simple sock pattern for striped yarns! Hooray!

*I just found out today that I won a prize in the knit along! Yahoo! It was just drawn at random, but I won a lovely skein of Morning Bright fingering weight yarn in a light gray. I can't wait! Yay for knit alongs!*

Summary:
Yarn: 2 skeins of Patons Kroy Sock in the Meadow Stripes colorway - $10.00
Pattern: Smooth Operator Socks by Susan B. Anderson - $3.50
Knit With: Knitter's Pride Karbonz size 1 DPNs (love these!)
Time: 3 weeks
Total Cost: $13.50

Progress, Not Perfection

I have a simple sewing project that will be coming up this week on the blog, but I wanted to interrupt the finished stuff to report on a few in progress items :) I'm in the middle of a new sewing project that has been thrown in the naughty corner for the last week...

This picture was before I ruined it, lol, so don't let its looks deceive you. It's New Look 6150 made up in an ivory stretch lace and underlined with ivory rayon jersey. All was well until I tried to attach the sleeves. Even though I made this shirt once before, the sleeves on that one drive me crazy and I didn't know why. Now I know: the line backer shoulders they grade the larger sizes up to have. Ugh. I didn't realize this until I tried it on sleeveless and saw how far the shoulder drooped off my actual shoulder, so I've been trying random fixes and at the moment I have no idea what to do. It may just end up with crazy dropped shoulders and an added seam to fix how I tried to fix it at this point. I just couldn't look at it anymore last Sunday, and now it's sat on my ironing board for an entire week with no work at all. So what do you do when you've lost your sew-jo and just can't bare looking at your current disaster? Switch to knitting!

Right when the shirt debacle happened, I decided to join in a knit along. Susan B. Anderson just put out a new pattern called the Smooth Operator Socks that is designed specifically for striped yarns so you don't disrupt the striping at the heel. This is an issue I ran into with my Arne & Carlos socks earlier this year, so I was really interested to see what her answer was, and the pattern is currently on sale at a discount for the Knit Along she's hosting on her Ravelry group, Itty Bitty Knits. It's an amazingly simple pattern, but it's beautifully thought out and I ended up with a perfectly fitting sock that still has a striping heel! She gives a great breakdown on how to match up your socks as well as how to match the heels and get a great fit. I don't have all that much self striping yarn in my stash, and I didn't want to use my beloved Le Petit Prince Opal sock yarn until I knew the pattern fit and worked well for me, so I pulled out this Patons Kroy Sock yarn in the Meadow Stripes colorway (which I actually purchased after Susan herself made a pair with the same yarn earlier this year). Since this sock is entirely stockinette stitch, I was able to knit up this sock in just 4 days! Isn't that crazy? I finished it up last night and I'm excited for the second one. Anyway, if you're at all interested in the pattern now is the time to get it at a discount plus you can join the Ravelry group Knit Along to potentially win some prizes :) What's not to love about that?

 Sadly I did set my Alecia Beth cardigan aside for these socks, but I have made significant progress on it in the last month before the socks came around. I'm almost to the waist and I love how the rows of cables start to disappear on the back - see that diagonal at the lower back? So neat.

And here's how it looks on the front. Sorry for the awful pictures - my current phone's camera is horrid and doesn't like color or detail. The yarn here is a nice rich navy color in real life. I'm actually really enjoying knitting this sweater and it seems to go faster than my first fingering weight sweater did. I guess I've just made more things with fingering weight in general and I don't mind it so much anymore. So, I'm slowly plugging away on this as well.

I also have a small smattering of projects that haven't seen light in months (my Fuzzy Mitten KAL project is about 50% done, my Antarktis is also about 50%, and another shawl I started months ago is still just a few inches in overall size, lol), but I'm trying not to be too hard on myself about them. I know I will eventually get back to them, but with the limited crafting time I have right now I try to just go with what I really want to work on to keep that feeling of it being fun. Sewing and knitting are my escapes from the drudgery that is clearing out my house and getting ready for an estate sale (ugh, heavens) which feels like it will never end. I'm glad I have something soothing to help me wind down after hours of unpleasant real life junk each night.

So that's what I'm working on now. What are you working on?