i WAS planning on showing my latest wip, my sockapalooza 4 socks, but of course my camera batteries are dead. so instead i’ll post about some of the various bags i’ve made over the years.
most people who knit have had at least one person say to them, “oh you make such beautiful things, why don’t you sell them?” my friend devin and i decided a couple years ago to give it a try, so we started heygirlie.com, a name based on both of our surnames. it didn’t last very long, but we did manage to sell some things to people who weren’t family members! here are some of the ones i made for the site.

“watermelon” made with cascade 220.

“pink celery” made with reynolds lopi

“dioptase” made with arucania nature wool

“flame on” made with peer gynt wool and berroco glitz

“obsidian” made with cascade 220 and patons cha-cha

“truffle” made with reynolds lopi

dioptase and truffle are still available actually if anybody happens to be interested in buying them!

i presently have no socks on the needles. i do not like such a situation! well, technically i guess i have two pairs in progress. i still have to knit the second sock of a pair using some of my hand-dyed yarn from last year. and i started a pair of uptown boot socks for my sockapalooza 4 pal. but the pattern just isn’t showing up at all. maybe it’s how skinny the yarn is combined with my insanely tight knitting–i cast on 80 stitches for this sock, and i don’t think that my pal’s feet are abnormally large or anything–but i hated how it looked. so it’s going to be ripped out. but not before i experiment with making up my own pattern. i’m going to try out some cables from the vogue stitchionary and see how they look. if they turn out a big bowl of fug i will probably do the anastasia socks.

on to the good stuff: finished rpms!

yarn: colinette jitterbug in “bright charcoal” from the yarn studio
pattern: rpm
needles: knitpicks 2.5mm circulars

i originally started knitting this pattern with some pink koigu. i did it toe up with an afterthought heel but realized that it was going to be waaaaaay too tight across the top of my ankle. so away i ripped and put the pattern on the back burner. months later i decided to make the pembrokeshire pathways socks with this jitterbug i’d gotten over christmas. too dark a colorway for that pattern, but perfect for rpm!
i’m pretty pleased with how these turned out, although i had to knit the toe three times. i eventually decided to continue the pattern through the toe, something i hadn’t done before. i’ve worn them once, and after a good blocking (i was convinced they were going to end up too small and i’d have to give them away) they are really quite comfortable. but when it’s been 90°+ like it has been this week i am not tryin to wear some wool socks!

(yes, i still call my parents mama and daddy. i’m from tennessee! it’s okay down there.)

i’d made my mom a purse, a shawl, and a lap blanket so far, but not socks. she hadn’t seemed interested before. but i suggested socks for her birthday this year. she said ok, if i could find some black or brown yarn. snooooze. thankfully i spied some yarn that would hopefully meet her desire for something neutral without boring me TOO much.

yarn: austermann step in color “kohl” from hillsborough yarn shop
pattern: stockinette with yarn-over short row heel and twisted rib cuff
needles: inox US1 circulars

this is the fancy schmancy new stuff with the jojoba oil and aloe in the yarn. the skin on my fingers gets pretty dried out and gross from my job, and knitting with this yarn actually made my hands feel softer! or maybe it was just wishful thinking. at any rate, my mom said the socks fit her perfectly and she loves them. hurray!

oh my dear knitblog friends! it has been shamefully long since my last post. three bouts of sickness, internet problems at home, some sad times, and lots of other junk have kept me from you. but i have been busy! i have three new pairs of socks to show you.

yarn: DK superwash merino from mysmallwonders.etsy.com
pattern: campfire socks, found via brainylady
needles: crystal palace US2 bamboo circulars

this yarn was totally an impulse buy. when it arrived at my door, i wondered at first if i shouldn’t have been so hasty. the yarn was wonderfully squishy and soft, but the colors seemed to clash a little too much. i shouldn’t have doubted donna’s talents. i LOVE the way this pattern shows off the colors. the socks are just the right thickness to wear with my target-brand faux-vans star-covered slip-ons which are a wee bit too big.
mysmallwonders = A+++ would knit with again!

it’s been a while! i had a narsty cold for a week and didn’t feel like spending any more time than i already do in front of a computer! but i’m back to present the last of the socks i made last year

yarn: lorna’s laces shepherd sport in “black purl” (source: loopy yarns in chicago)
pattern: baby cable rib from sensational knitted socks
needles: crystal palace US2 bamboo circulars

i *think* i have the name of this pattern right. my copy of the book seems to have disappeared in the disaster area that is my apartment! it’s a mock cable really. you k2tog but instead of dropping the stitch off the needle you knit the first stitch again. then p2. every 4th round. super easy! this yarn comes in 70g skeins rather than your usual 50g ones so you get some serious yardage. i had 54g total left over from my 2 skeins. i thought about making a hat for a toddler, but the colors seemed a bit gloomy for a little girl. i’ll think of something eventually i’m sure. for now it’s crammed into my new sock yarn bin. i bought a new one last weekend that’s about twice as big as the other one i was using at it’s already full! i recently got 4 skeins from ruby sapphire including some beautiful merino/tencel. i really have to swear off the sock yarn for a while.

i decided to sign up for sockapalooza 4. i haven’t participated in any previous rounds so i hope it’s fun! i also said i would be a sock savior for anyone who gets stiffed in this round. so if you’re interested and haven’t already, go sign up!

for christmas last year i knit socks for two people, and i used patons soy wool stripes for both pairs.

yarn: 2 balls SWS in “natural earth”
pattern: 3×1 rib (6 sts/in)
needles: addi turbo size 4 circs

these were for my sister, about a size 8. i think they were 48 sts around. each sock took almost all of one whole ball with only a couple yards left over.

yarn: 3 balls SWS in “natural plum”
pattern: 3×1 rib (6 sts/in)
needles: addi turbo size 4 circs

these were for my friend petter who lives in sweden. for a man’s foot i cast on 54 sts. i hadn’t used worsted weight yarn for socks before, and both pairs knit up surprisingly fast. i love the look of SWS, but it is not the most fun yarn to knit with. it’s so loosely spun it’s almost unspun, so it was very splitty. and the few times i had to unknit to fix a mistake, the strands stuck together so much i needed a little pair of scissors to snip apart the fibers. i also encountered at least one knot in almost every ball. i got a couple balls to make a pair for myself but they’ll probably sit in the stash until the fall.

since i didn’t post any socks over the weekend, today i’ll give you two pairs!

yarn: koigu kpppm #820
pattern: garter rib, toe-up with short row heel and toe
needles: addi turbo size 1 circs

i’d say these are currently my favorite socks. they fit better than any of my other handknit pairs and are SO comfy. even though some of the individual colors are a little pastel for my tastes, i love how they look all mixed up with the darker shades. the garter rib pattern seemed to take care of any possible pooling issues. <3 <3 <3

yarn: koigu kpppm #419
pattern: simple stockinette, semi-toe-up with short row heel
needles: addi turbo size 1 circs

i knit these for a friend who is 6′5″ and wears a size 13, so i was obviously worried about running out of yarn since i only had 2 skeins. i think this was one of my first attempts at the yarnover short row toe and i hated how it came out, so i cast on with scrap yarn, knit a “traditional” toe (decreases and kitchener stitch), then picked up stitches and knit up the foot. i’d conquered my fears i guess by the time i got to the heel and was able to do the short rows. the two socks came out very dissimilar looking, even though they were the same dye lot. but the recipient didn’t seem to mind. he loves them and they are his lucky socks!

last summer, my stitch’n'bitch group had a yarn dyeing party. oh how hot it was that day. at the end of it all i came home with three skeins of my very own hand dyed sock yarn! this was my favorite:

and then i turned it into these:

yarn: base yarn from wool2dye4.com. dyed by me using washfast acid dyes (golden pear, boysenberry, and colonial blue)
pattern: simple stockinette, with Priscilla Gibson-Roberts’ short-row heel and toe and 1×1 twisted rib for the cuff
needles: inox US1 circs

my skeins were small, in the neighborhood of 75g each, so i knit these toe up to make them as tall as possible. getting this yarn ready was a PAIN! it came in one huge 8oz skein, which i wound into one ginormous ball. and this yarn was curly as all get-out. from the big momma cake i wound off 3 smaller skeins basically by tying the end of the yarn to my swift and turning it for what seemed like hours until the big ball had lost one-third of its weight. i applied the dyes in three sections of more or less equal lengths. i didn’t do any kind of calculations to determine how long my skein should be to get stripes of color, but it kinda turned out anyway! i think i was just really really lucky.
these socks have been washed many times now and they are holding up great. they are pretty warm though. sometimes they make my feet feel a little sweaty. they went through the dryer once by accident, and i had a mini-heartattack when i discovered them because they just felt weird. almost plasticized. they are fine now though, and get softer with every wash. i’m presently knitting up the second skein of the party, after it spent several months in limbo as half a sock with a failed toe-up heel flap. hopefully i’ll have picture to post by next week!

previously i’ve posted the socks i’ve finished more recently. all during 2007 i believe. up next are some that i made last year.

pattern: jaywalker by grumperina
yarn: regia strato 4-ply, #5740 (aka “troll”)
needles: inox US1 circs

not much can be said about the ubiquitous jaywalker that hasn’t been already. i followed the pattern more or less exactly. the yarn could not have been more suited for this project. perfect stripes from cuff to toe. the heel and gusset barely even interrupted the patterning. unfortunately it seems that this line has been discontinued!
the yarn is a wool/nylon blend so they’ve been wearing quite well. the only less-than-positive thing about these socks is because of the biased fabric the pattern produces, it is extremely difficult to get them over my heel. i have to do my best ballerina pointy toe to wrestle them on. but once they’re on my feet they feel great!

since it finally feels like spring here in NC, i present some very springy socks!

yarn: spritely goods sprite (dk/sport weight) superwash merino in “manzanita in bloom”

pattern: cable twist socks from hello yarn

needles: crystal palace US3 bamboo circulars (purchased from the hillsborough yarn shop)

this yarn is buttery soft! i was impressed with how evenly the colors appeared, although it isn’t advertised as self-striping or anything. i used the eye of partridge stitch on the heel just to do something different. this is another pattern that benefits from serious blocking, as you can see in this entry. i have ceramic tile floors in my apartment, so i’m almost always wearing socks, and this pair keeps my feet nice and toasty!