Playing with Yarn

Things may be quiet in my blog, but I am knitting up a storm these days. That, and I've been spending a small fortune on new knitting books and spring mags. I love the warm weather, because short sleeves, no sleeves, scoop necks, crop tops, and loose gauges mean less yarn & knitting time. Still, I don't have anything to show for it yet, but after thumbing through hundreds of patterns by now, some have caught my eye.



The Regia rainbow socks are the perfect crew length now, but I'll keep knitting until the yarn's out, because that's the main reason I start from the toe. There may just be enough yarn for knee-socks for my 9-yr old, or pretty darn close. Two little balls can go a long way!

As if one pair weren't enough, I've started what I call my chocolate creams socks. Yes, you CAN make brown with Kool-Aid! Two-thirds of a skein of Knit Picks Dye-Your-Own sock yarn took 10 packs of lemon-lime and 2 packs of cherry. On the stove, I kept adding the powder while the stock was hot, so it absorbed unevenly, but I do like that mottled hand-dyed look. For the watermelon & lemon-lime stripes, 1 pack each, I mixed the dye into cool water, dipped the the yarn, THEN heated it to almost simmering, and dye absorbs much more evenly that way.

To start, wind a huge hank on chairs spaced 18 feet apart. Loosely tie waste yarn all around so it doesn't get tangled, then tie the first 3 feet and last 3 feet tightly, and those ends get dipped in pink & green, and the middle 12 feet into brown.



This is my simple toe-up sock pattern on 2mm 100cm Addi Turbos. I actually thought I had invented this cast-on, until I got the Fall 05 Vogue and read Meg Swanson's turkish cast-on article.

CO 12 sts each needle, then use your favorite increase the begining & end of each needle (4 total each sock) EOR until it's as wide as your foot - I need 72 sts around. I like the peasant heel, where you knit in waste yarn to knit the heel later, so the stripe sequence isn't broken. Before too much of the yarn is knitted, I stop and knit with the yarn from the other end of the ball for the heel, then keep knitting the cuff till I run out of yarn. Brilliant!

I tried the Watermelon project in Yarns to Dye For, and though I got the color sequence off (the greens are backwards), it'll still knit up fresh and juicy. I opted to dot the seeds on later, so they'll be in perfect places. I'm thinking a Booga Bag might be just the thing for this yarn.



There's still more WIP's I haven't mentioned, but you can track their progress on the left sidebar. And with my fresh new copy of One Skein, I'm about to embark on my first experience with KidSilk Haze. Mmmmm....