Competition Round 4 and "All Used Up!"

[janestarz]

My first pair of toe-up socks was finished in January of 2016 and used up slightly more than half a skein of yarn. But I figured I could easily knit another pair of socks with it if I used contrast yarn for heel, cuff and toe. I have once taken the time to weigh my skeins after knitting each section of sock, so I now know that roughly 22 grams of contrast yarn is needed for two socks if you make heel, toe and cuff in a different colour. Considering I need roughly 70 grams of yarn for a plain vanilla sock, any 50 gram skeins or scraps can still be used quite well!

I've worked out that these are my stitch requirements for socks:

Gauge	Corresponding needle size	Number of stitches for sock
8 stitches per inch	--2.75 mm --	64 stitches
9 stitches per inch	--2.5mm --	72 stitches

(Please note that I have a tighter knitting hand than most, and choose a needle that is 0.25 mm smaller than "recommended" or "standard")

I have no idea if the chosen gauge has anything to do with the required yardage for a pair of socks, but since I suspected you will need more yarn if you knit more stitches, I chose to knit a sock of 64 stitches. With my pattern of knit 4, purl 1, the pattern repeat is 5 stitches so I added an extra stitch after the toe to match my pattern. The rest was just following the SokBasis pattern. (I might have fudged one of the heels a bit. Don't tell anyone.)



The first pair with this yarn was knit with navy blue contrast colour, and for these "sister socks" I used dark green as well as a few other scraps of contrast yarn for a cheeky toe detail, which turned out less pretty than I had hoped. Oh well. At least I can now tick this skein of sock yarn off my stash, with the wonderfully liberating phrase of "All used up!". You can view the Ravelry Project page with details of the toe rows here.
Next up in the All Used Up challenge is this yarn (46 grams remaining) which I first combined with blue and is imho the prettiest pair of socks I've knit to date. For the sister-pair, I am still wondering whether grey or beige is the better choice. Maybe I should use both?

Sock Madness - Competition Round 4
Last Sunday the pattern dropped and I cast on my first knitting project with beads. I dislike twisted stitches, and I'm not much impressed with my speed. But the truth is I don't fancy picking up this project, I'd rather knit something else. I've even considered dropping out, what with my shoulders being sore, the extracurricular activities surrounding my birthday eating up knitting time and of course the fact that I don't much like knitting twisted stitches. Although the difference is minute, I prefer knitting cables over twisted stitches.

Still, the beading wasn't very hard to do (I can imagine it goes a lot smoother if the holes in your beads is the right size, there's some variation in the blue ones especially) and I really love how it looks. So that's a bonus! I am now past the first heel, and the charts are easy to read and not too wide. It's not an especially difficult pattern, as such things go.



I'm knitting this in cotton stretch yarn (Smurfenblauw past bij jou!), which is 41% Cotton and 39% Wool. It feels a lot less itchy than most sock yarns, so I really hope these will work well for me. (I'm starting to build up cotton sock yarn stash for purely egocentrical reasons.)

For now I've decided to still keep trying to stay in the race. It means I'll have to remind myself to go knitting, but I won't drop out yet. I promised myself I'd see how far I'd get and so far, I am still doing okay. Not great, but good enough.

Comments

[starlightmasque.livejournal.com]

You are so talented!