Sockpocalypse Summer, part 8 – Raspberry Latte Lace

I just confessed to my friend Kelli, for whom these socks were made, that I had a really hard time bringing them to the post office today.

Not just because I was rushing to make it there before the torrential rain started (hurricane season in New Orleans, you guys), although that was a factor.

No, they were just too goddamn beautiful, and I didn’t want to give them away. I had to overcome my natural sock-based selfishness to put those socks in the mail because I wanted them to be miiiiiiiiine.

(Maybe I just need to make another pair?)

I did my duty and sent them off because Kelli is one of the greatest people ever put on this earth, and if anyone deserves something this lovely, it’s certainly her. If you’re an avid reader of this blog (hello to all three of you!), you know that I adore her to the point of making her a baby blanket and a sweater for her tiny dog. If that’s not true friend-love, I don’t know what is.

She chose this beautiful skein of Mountain Colors Crazyfoot in Wild Raspberry (again, tragically discontinued because it was just too beautiful to live) for her custom socks, and as I was winding it, I couldn’t get over just how much color was packed into the colorway.

In addition to the shifting reds and magentas that lend it its namesake, there are royal and navy blues, purpley grays, olive green, brown, and flashes of orange. And even though it has all of that riotous color, it still manages to not overshadow the lace somehow.

Speaking of lace, the pattern is Latte Lace Socks by Diane Mulholland, a very clever little knit.

There are so many details I enjoy here. First, the socks have a front and back panel, rather than a circular multi-paneled repeat. The front, seen above, has a sort of fishtail/leaf vibe going on, with some purl sections to make it seem a bit like undulating waves.

The back panel repeats the mock-cable braids from the front panel, with mirror-imaged pairs and lots of negative space.

Second, the flow from ribbing to pattern is really delightful. Lots of patterns, both sock and sweater-related, will have ribbed cuffs in order to keep tension to keep the garment in place, but then just go into the pattern itself with no rhyme or reason. Through one row of tiny one-stitch cables, the panels grow out of the ribbing organically, rather than abruptly.

Third, I’m a real sucker for heel detailing. Those same braids from the back panel continue down the edges of the heel panel, extending the lace while also keeping the main heel section in slip-stitch for added strength.

It extends the length of the cuff of the sock in a really pleasing way, making for some elegant long lines. Plus, I’m just really tickled by how the purl bumps on the edge add another little architectural detail.

And last, not certainly not least, the tiny detail that extends the front panel patterning into a tiny point at the beginning of the toe section, rather than a blunt squared-off ending? *chef’s kiss*

It really ties the room together.

However, a word of warning to anyone who might want to follow along and make a pair for themselves: this pattern is not for a beginner sock knitter. You definitely need to be comfortable with your top-down sock anatomy to even begin to decipher what is going on with this one. Not that the instructions themselves are not clearly written or that the charts aren’t excellent, but it’s really lacking in the little touches that make patterns easy-to-read. There are some spacing issues and a lot of cramped text. There are no indicators that help you follow along, like notes about how many stitches you should have at the end of certain pattern sections (which can be invaluable when you’re new at socks) or where exactly you are in relation to the sock itself when starting a new pattern round or placing markers. I would have been seriously lost if I hadn’t been the seasoned, embittered, maker of countless socks you see before you.

But, when you’ve boned up on the skills, go for it. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you when you won’t want to give them away.

Next time, my first foray into toe-up socks! Made for the only person that I’d ever dare venture into that new undiscovered territory for! Stay tuned!

Sockpocalypse Summer, part 6 – Yarn Chicken Pomatomus

We are just now over the hill of our Sockpocalypse Summer (confused? Here are parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5), and my fingers are getting tired as well as my brains. And it’s all the fault of this gorgeous pair of socks.

I mean, beautiful, right?

When my knitting friend Leslie from Colorado requested this particular skein of Knit Picks Hawthorne in Irvington (not discontinued for once, but on back order…foreshaaaaaaadowing…), I knew I had to pull out the big guns. When you knit things for other knitters, you better make sure you got game. Otherwise, why wouldn’t they just make it for themselves?

Seriously, this is a real concern.

I knew that Cookie A. would save me by providing a pattern with lots of wonderful fiddly bits, and I was right. Enter Cookie A.’s infamous-in-the-knitting-world (and should be famous in the real world) Pomatomus Socks. When these socks hit the scene, people lost their minds. There are over 5000 pairs of Pomatomus socks on Ravelry, even though Ravelry wasn’t developed for another two years after its publication in 2005.

At the yarn shop where I worked for several years, I helped people pick out hundreds of skeins of sock yarn for this very sock pattern, plus the multitude of variations that other knitters have created over the years, like hats, fingerless gloves, and shawls with that instantly recognizable twisted stitch fish scale lace.

I even knit a pair myself, for my friend Tillie, back in 2009. It’s got a boatload of twisted stitches, patterning every single row, and non-rectangular charts with mysterious stitch-shifting to get the pattern to line up correctly.

It has this brilliant heel section where the scales morph into the heel and continue the all-over pattern without disrupting the construction somehow. It’s a Cookie A. nightmare-dreamscape of knitting, and I absolutely love it. It’s definitely the kind of big swing that one experienced knitter takes for another.

However, this time, things took an unexpected turn.

As soon as I had finished the first sock, I knew something was off. The amount that I had left over definitely didn’t feel right. I took it to my scale to see if I could figure it out.

Standard sock yarn skeins come in 50g and 100g weights. This first sock, made to accommodate Leslie’s perfectly normal size US 9 feet, weighed in at 51g. Meaning that I only had 49g left to make the second one. No matter, I thought. Maybe there’s a tiny extra bit in this skein, just to make me happy.

The bit of cuff that I had knit, plus the remainder of the ball also came to 51g, BUT that was including the 3 sock needles currently in use. I knew that this was a losing battle. (However, I did feel pretty chuffed that I could tell the 2g difference completely with my special knitting-based mind powers.)

Now, yarn chicken is a game that I have played before many times. When it works out perfectly, and you have only a tiny bit of yarn left but the project is complete, it is the greatest feeling in the world. When you lose…you just feel like a crazy person.

The entire second half of the second sock I felt like I was knitting through molasses, my fingers slowly prodding through those twisted stitches just in case knitting slower might make the yarn last longer. I just kept praying that it didn’t end in a weird spot, right in the middle of those glorious fish scales. Luckily, this is what I had left over when I got to the toe shaping.

However, it didn’t last very long. A few minutes later, the yarn was all gone, and I still had 18 rounds left to go.

I looked online to see if Knit Picks still had the Irvington colorway, but it was listed as on back order until July, meaning that there was no way on Earth I’d be able to get the same colorway or any yarn at all until August. I checked on Ravelry to see if anyone was willing to sell or trade a skein with me, but there was nothing available. I had to admit defeat and that I had lost this terrible round of yarn chicken and resign myself to the fact that these were not going to be the perfect Pomatomus socks that I had planned.

Fortunately, I keep all of my sock yarn odds and ends, so I had plenty of options to give to Leslie as to the yarn that would finish off this second toe.

Leslie chose this beautiful bit of yarn, which some of you may remember as the stunningly beautiful Pagewood Farms Denali from my Drachenschwingen socks a few years ago.

I have to admit, the gold, purple, and blue tones in the yarn really do look lovely in there.

So, even though I played yarn chicken and lost, I still managed to make something unique and so-very knitterly for a fellow knitter. She can wear these with pride, showing off those fish scales…

…while always having a special secret toe hidden inside her shoes that no one else has to know about.

It doesn’t get any better than that.

Sockpocalypse Summer, part 4 – Shadow Braid Socks

For today’s Sockpocalypse update, we have a whole lot of purple.

Ooooooooooh.

My friend Kirsten from high school, the personification of a ray of sunshine, chose this gorgeous skein for her own during this Sockpocalypse Summer experiment, and I couldn’t have been happier to make it into something lovely for her.

The yarn is Knit Picks Hawthorne Fingering Kettle Dye in Goddess. (And, miracle of miracles, it isn’t discontinued! You can actually buy it! Go get your hands on some of this goddess goodness.) It has multiple shades of royal purple, fuchsia, and lavender, giving the whole thing this wonderful depth without so much variation that you can’t get some stitch patterns in there.

Also, as we already know, dark purple socks are impossible to photograph perfectly, so these socks look like a bajillion different colors in these pictures. The picture of the skein by itself is the truest to life, if you are a stickler about these things.

In fact, this yarn was so dark and difficult to see when I was working with it, that Dan had to rig up a little extra lighting for me so that I could tell what the hell I was doing. I needed an overhead floor lamp, plus my usual over-the-shoulder lamp, plus I had to use some lighter bamboo and rosewood needles because I couldn’t see anything with my fancy-pants green variegated ones.

The pattern is Cookie A.‘s Angee socks from her fantastic book, Sock Innovation. They are a perfect distillation of the Cookie A. sock playbook. If you are an adventurous knitter, you’ll know exactly what I mean. First of all, the pattern itself looks like cables, right?

Nope! It’s actually a cleverly-disguised lace panel pattern, with the texture coming from strategically-placed decreases. I made these while having a resurgence of watching numerous favorite detective shows like Sherlock, Endeavour, and Monk (I guess I’ve got a thing for prickly detectives…), so the Shadow Braid name for these seemed appropriate. They look like they are full of depth and shadow, but it’s all an illusion. (ooooooooo…imagine I just waved my hands around like a magician when I said that.)

Secondly, there’s an odd number of repeats of this lace panel, five to be exact, which is definitely not typical. Most sock patterns with a panel-type structure either have three, four, six, or eight repeats spread out over the cuff of the sock. This makes it so that you can use only 3 or 4 double-pointed needles in the process and not have to worry about trying to use stitch markers to keep track on such teeny tiny needles. (Not that I haven’t had to do that before for a Cookie A. pattern, but she’s definitely not the norm.) Instead, for this pattern, we have to figure out how to keep track of five repeats, so…five needles it is! It felt like reaching into a bag of porcupines every time I had to start a needle, but it did make this fun little pentagram shape for summoning friendly sock-loving spirits.

And thirdly, in true Cookie A. fashion, there were three different charts to keep track of as the pattern transitioned from cuff to heel to instep, and that stuff just pleases me to no end. The fiddilier, the better. Cookie A. sees every single stitch pattern through to the end with these really pleasing and harmonious designs, and making them, although mentally-taxing at times, is truly a delight.

Plus, this week I had some really cute nail polish going on, and I couldn’t stop ogling it next to that purple. I felt like a mermaid.

See? Cute!

One note about the Hawthorne, just in case you jump on that Kettle Dyed Goddess train with me. These kettle dye variants often feel very…crunchy when you first wind them up and knit with them. I’m not sure why it happens so often with kettle-dyed and tonal variant yarns, but I imagine it has something to do with the dyeing process. They tend to have a lot of residual dye sitting on the surface, which leads to that crunchy and plasticky feeling, and will also tend to stain your fingertips and nails if you work with the yarn for extended periods of time. However, with this particular brand, when you block the yarn, that extra dye washes out easily, leaving the rinse water bright pink but the yarn now very soft with a light brushed halo around the strand, not sacrificing the base color you fell in love with. But, if you combined this yarn with something lighter, like with stripes, you definitely run the risk of bleeding and staining occurring, so just keep that in mind.

I sent these off today to Kirsten in Florida, sending all my love with them. It was hard to part with their jewel-tone loveliness, but I hope she’ll love them just as much as I do. We all need a little bit of extra love right now.

Warm Feet = Love

A few years ago, my best friend since high school, Jonathan, and his lovely wonderful wife, Rebecca, moved from New Orleans out to beautiful San Rafael, CA.

I miss them all the time.

Ever since visiting them in the middle of summer last year, I am also concerned about the state of their feet. The entire San Francisco area is ridiculously cold at night, no matter what time of year, and I knew that this had to be remedied with some precious handknit socks, post-haste.

I happened to have a gorgeous skein of Mrs. Crosby Loves to Play Satchel hanging around, an impulse purchase made during a huge sale at my favorite LYS, McNeedles. This weirdly-named yarn is one of my all-time favorite sock yarns, supersoft with gorgeous color saturation and a lovely single-ply twist that manages to still yield some great stitch definition with a soft fuzzy halo around it. This colorway, Peacock, is just absolutely stunning, and Jonathan and I felt like it was perfect for Rebecca.

The pattern is the Cookie A. classic, Monkey. I’ve been wanting to make these since the first time I saw them in Knitty, 12 years ago, and I finally got to add them to my Cookie A. oeuvre.

Seriously, I have made a lot of Cookie A. socks. Look through the archives, if you don’t believe me, because it’s just now the end of the semester of my second year of grad school, and I just can’t muster up the energy to look them all up and link them here for you. But trust me, there’s a bunch.

There’s nothing overly twee or clever about these, just a really good, classic sock pattern, with a little bit of lace and mock-cables to keep things interesting.

They are so incredibly soft and plush. The perfect thing to keep this wonderful woman’s toes warm this winter.

The only thing that I might change, if I were to make these socks in the future, is to try them with a yarn that’s maybe more tightly-spun or smoother, because even though the halo of Satchel is glorious, it does obscure the more subtle bits of the patterning. I’d love to see what it might look like in something more defined.

As for Jonathan…well, it would just be really mean to make beautiful, warm socks for his wife and not make him anything at all. Too rude to even think of.

How freaking cool is it that I somehow have pictures of both of these people that coordinate somehow with their new socks? Uncanny. (You’d almost think that I did it on purpose, but I didn’t. I swear. I’m just good at picking out sock yarns, I think.  We all have our talents.)

I’ve had this skein of Berroco Sox in my stash for years, just waiting for the perfect opportunity to use it. You don’t just jump into a self-striping sock without having the perfect pattern and perfect person to use it for. This colorway, the tragically-discontinued Lancaster, was an utter joy.

I mean, that’s a lot of pictures of the same thing over and over, but I don’t know how else to reveal those little flecks of soft browns, purples, pinks, and grays throughout the whole thing. The pattern is my old stand-by, perfect for showcasing crazy stripes and colorfades, the Good, Plain Sock Recipe by the Yarn Harlot.

Just a standard 3×3 rib pattern to show off all those tweedy stripes. Such good stuff. It’s hard to not feel like an aspiring Ivy League professor trudging through the fall leaves while you’re wearing these.

These beauties got packed up and sent on their way to California, where they are doing their important job of keeping the toes warm of the people that I love.

That’s what true love is, right? Keeping your loved ones warm, any way you can, even from across the country? I think so.

Lace and Cables and Elephants

For my last baby blanket of the year (I was about to say there’s been a bunch, but really only two others. But seriously three baby blankets in a year plus working and grad school? That’s a lot. I’m super proud of those beautiful things, so please do go look at them here and here.), I present this lovely piece of lace and mock-cabling.

Uuuunnghh. So pretty.

This gorgeous thing was made for my friend and former nursing school group partner extraordinaire, Bonnie. Bonnie is one of the nicest people I have ever met. She has never been anything but welcoming and sweet to me, even though I can be sort of a prickly person to get to know (especially when I was in nursing school…sorry everybody). She is full of smiles and encouragement, and I am always happy to see her.

We work in the same hospital, except she’s in the NICU, being one of those superheroes that takes care of all of the tiniest, most fragile patients that there are. I get pulled there occasionally, to my general terror, because I am always scared to death that I am going to break a baby. When she’s there, I know that there’s a wonderful friendly face alongside me, ready to answer questions and make me feel comfortable.

A girl like that deserves something really lovely for her new baby, and I’m more than honored that I got to make it for her. She wanted something sort of simple and classic, and I think that SweaterBabe‘s Fancy Stitch Baby Blanket was just the perfect choice. I tried to come up with a better project title than “Fancy Stitch,” but really…”fancy” describes this pretty aptly.

I used Blue Sky Cotton for this, because it is the most perfect yarn for baby projects, in my humble opinion, and that gives the lace and curves a really wonderful squishiness. It’s a long-wearing, good, strong cotton, but it feels absolutely luxurious here.  I want an entire adult-sized blanket made out of it.

The whole thing came out so elegant. Perfect for a soon-to-be sweet wonderful baby.

I had to make a little squishable buddy to go with this blanket, and the grayish-lavender color (number 644, if you really needed to know) just screamed “elephant” to me.

This little guy was made using leftovers of the lavender, plus some of the white left over from the chevron blanket. The pattern? Elefante by Susan B. Anderson, who has so many more patterns for some of the cutest plushies I’ve ever seen.

He is so plump and adorable. Plus, I love the little ridges for the edges of the footpads and trunk. Good stuff. When I sent a picture of him over to Dan, he declared that he looks like an anteater, so we’re calling him Arthur.

There is only one issue. If Arthur’s left unsupported…

…he looks a little…depressed. In the original pattern, this is more of a design feature with his trunk supporting his head and acting a bit like a fifth foot. However, when I adjusted his eyes to be more muppet-y (just like I like them), I felt like I needed to push up his ears to make his face more open and friendly. Which ended up just making him look like he’s Eeyore, staring at the ground sort of sadly.

But he’s just perfect if you hold him and play with him and squish him, which is exactly what the best stuffed animals are for.

Arthur also looks super cute just sort of resting on things, like he’s intently watching everyone else walk around. I’m choosing to think of it as a design feature.

I did make one other tiny change, due to the fact that crocheting the ears as written with their tiny, tiny stitches and multiple crocheted increases caused me physical pain. Instead, I knitted up some circles and whip-stitched them together after folding them in half. The little whipped stitches really make it feel homey and handmade to me. For those who are inclined to make some tiny elephant ears, here’s the instructions:

Ears (make two):
CO 3 sts, and distribute them evenly across 3 double-pointed needles.
Knit 1 round.
Kfb across all sts (6 sts total).
Knit 1 round.
Kfb across all sts (12 sts total).
Knit 1 round.
Kfb across all sts (24 sts total).
Knit 2 rounds.
Kfb across all sts (48 sts total).
Knit 3 rounds.
Bind-off all sts.
Fold each circle in half, with the right-side facing out, and whip-stitch the edges together.

Then follow the rest of the pattern as written!

This project was the cap on a really great knitting year, most of which I haven’t posted about yet, due to its super-secret-ness. Don’t worry though, that’ll all be coming soon. For now, just enjoy that lacy squishy elephant goodness and go make your own.