Lions and tigers and cashmere, oh my!

In the midst of plying a bobbin a night, I've been getting some work done on the Knit Love Club May socks.

Halfway through repeat #1:

Halfway through repeat #2:

The leg calls for 2.5 repeats, but I think I might call it good at 2. I didn't swatch and I'm a bit concerned that my gauge is a little too big with the needles I'm using, and I don't want to run out of yarn.

And I must say that, sadly for my budget, I may not ever be able to knit with yarn that does not contain cashmere again. Oh dear!

FO: Nice GAMs!

Pattern: GAMs by Taya Schram, for Sock Madness IV
Yarn: Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock, colorway Irving Park, 1.6 skeins (~350 yards)
Needles: US 0/2.0 mm
Start/finish: 30 April - 25 May 2010.
Gauge: 10 stitches/14 rows per inch
Finished size: 7.5 inches from cuff to bottom of heel flap, 8 inches foot circumference (unstretched)
Comments/mods: The third pattern for Sock Madness. I've had this yarn sitting in the stash for more then 5 years, and it was high time to move it along. I was very entertained by the way the yarn pooled into stripes on the leg and foot.

It broke up a bit around the heel, but came back together nicely. I knit the 77 stitch version of this sock to try and make sure they would fit my size 10 (US) feet, and the stretchiness of the stitch pattern meant that I had no problems getting them on.

The heel design is called a strong heel: there's no heel flap, but you increase two stitches on the sole/back of leg stitches as you go down, making a kind of reverse gusset. This makes it easy to carry the stitch pattern all the way down the back of the heel.

This was a really fun pattern to knit, with an easily memorized repeat, and I'm happy with the way it works with the fairly variegated yarn. I was a bit worried that the stitch pattern would get lost, but that wasn't the case.

These got finished just in the nick of time, because guess what arrived today?

May's Knit Love Club package. Some gorgeous yarn (Spirit Trail Fiberworks Sunna in "In Dreams"), a beading needle and a week package of purple beads. What you can't see from this shot is the rest of the fiber content: 75% SW merino, 15% cashmere, 10% bombyx silk. Excuse me while I swoon...

Straw into gold

Or in this case, yarn into socks.

Pattern: Rumpled! by Alice Yu, for the Knit Love Sock Club 2010, Installment #1
Yarn: Alchemy Yarns of Transformation Juniper in Rumplestiltskein
Needles: US 1.5/2.5 mm circulars
Gauge: 9 sts/12 rows per inch
Start/finish: 26 January - 15 March 2010
Comments/mods: I loved this yarn colorwise - it was the perfect thing for a grey January in the UK. As previously mentioned, the yarn was a bit splitty, but it wasn't too bad, and it has such gorgeous sproing, that it made up for the splitty-ness. Wearing them is like have wooly elastic on my feet.

I did modify a couple of things. The pattern repeat is 24 rows long, and the pattern as written has you knit 1.3 repeats before starting the heel. I am impatient enough to want socks to be on the shorter side, but that seemed way short for me, so I wanted a longer leg. But since they're knit from the top down, I was paranoid about running out of yarn. So I carefully weighed the yarn I had, knit half a repeat, weighed again, weighed at the end of the heel flap, etc, etc. I worked another half repeat on the leg, and could have done a full repeat, since I ended up getting a sock and a half out of one skein. And I have big feet.

The only other thing I did a bit differently was to use a large needle for the long-tail cast on edge to make sure it was stretchy enough. The stitch pattern was great fun to knit, but easy to remember, so I didn't have to carry the chart around with me obsessively. The first sock took about a week, and then the olympics happened and all other knitting was put on hold. Now they're done, just in time for warmer weather, some sun and daffodils!

Oh well, they'll be very welcome when it gets cold again next fall. Or June...or next week. I guess it could be any time actually!

My school colors

About half of the projects on my plate/in mind at the moment are secret, and as such can't be discussed. Makes for pretty boring blogging, not to mention that I've been abandoned by my husband for a week and am trying to wrangle two children on my own. However, there has been some knitting going on, mostly late at night with the companionship of Vampire Bill et al.

First thing I've been working on is the first installment of the Knit Love Club 2010 sock club. It arrived a couple of weeks ago, and I've been loving it.

The yarn is Alchemy Juniper, colorway "Rumplestiltskin" (club exclusive), and the pattern is by Socktopus/Knit Nation braintrust Alice. The yarn is lovely (if a bit splitty for doing k4tog/ssssk, but what wouldn't be?) and the exact color of roasted butternut squash. Really. See?

The pattern is fun to knit and looks way more complicated then it is. I've had to do some adjusting to make the leg a bit longer and make sure I don't run out of yarn, but I'm well into the foot now and I think I'll have plenty. Maybe even some leftovers for The Blanket.

Project #2 is the big spinning project. I try to do about an hour a night on this at least, and I've now filled five bobbins.

That's the good news. The bad news is that I still have this much fiber left to spin, and only three more bobbins available.

That bump on the left is 171 gr and the one on the right (much compacted) is a whopping 472 gr (half of what I started with). Ooof. I was considering trying to get the spinning done during the Olympics, but we're going out of town for seven days for half-term holiday, and the wheel is not invited to Tunis with us.

Instead, last night I started swatching for this for the Olympics. I have serious color choice issues in stranded knitting, so I'm going to knit this vest (which I've been lusting over for ever) instead. I did one swatch last night, and have ruled out three colors and one needle size so far, so we'll see what happens. There is much more swatching for another secret project in a yarn I've never used before, but I think I want to marry. And so on and so on. So apologies for the lack of new, shareable content, but it may be a couple of weeks before I get to anything more interesting then the socks, purple yarn making and random Fair Isle swatches.