zaubernuss - witchhazel

socks #33

This is pair #251. I made it for my sister. She chose the yarn at Christmas, knowing that I wouldn't make them immediately. (When I gave them to her she was actually surprised that I got them done "that soon" - haha!)
The yarn was in my May '22 Opal box but will be part of the "Crazy Waters" collection, available in late July '22. The pattern is Tennarisukka, one of my favourites. 

Pair #252 is a pair of Mojos for my husband. He chose the yarn, surprising me with his choice, as usual. 
The yarn was in my March '22 Opal box but it is part of the "Sweet Kiss" collection which is currently available. 

This is pair #253 and I love it so much! The yarn was part of my March '20 Opal box but was part of the "Gutenachtgeschichten" (= bed time stories) collection. I don't know if it's still available. 
I had this in my stash for a while. I wasn't sure if I'd like it but curiosity won and I cast on a pair of sock simply because I had to know what it looked like. (Googling images isn't always enough.) To my surprise I absolutely loved it and flew through the first sock in less than two days. I'm not normally one to go for pastels but somehow I got totally addicted to the colours and the pattern they create. They reminded me of pastries with apricots, raspberry jam and custard cream, sprinkled with chopped pistachios. 
Generally the yarn I use doesn't spark instant associations like that but some do and I always enjoy it a lot when it does... 

This is pair #254. I made it using a ball of grey-blue yarn from my March '22 Opal box and a ball of rainbow yarn from my December '21 box. The grey-blue was also part of the "Sweet Kiss" collection, the rainbow seems to have been a subscription box exclusive. (I had the two sitting in my self next to each other and thought they looked just like the sky did though most of April and May - but with more rainbow.)
It doesn't show a lot in the pictures - or even when I'm wearing the socks - but the rainbow stripes start narrow, get wider up to the middle of the foot and then narrower again towards the toe. (You can see it most at the toe.) I tried to emulate the arch of a rainbow.
How successful that was I don't really know.
There was a lot of counting and calculating involved to get the stripes to work out. Maybe I'll write up a separate post about how I did that with charts and details on how to calculate the right number of rounds.

I still have plenty of both yarns left and I want to make some more Rainy Day Socks with different stripe designs. 

Pair #255 is a funny one. The yarn I used is by gründl; Hot Socks "Simila", nr. 585. It doesn't look particularly fancy but this yarn is actually for making two identical socks with long, patterned legs, plain speckled feet and then, if the feet are big enough, stripy, patterned toes. Like this: 

I bought all the colourways of this yarn when I had the chance - they were on sale at a local store - because I really like them...

... but I've noticed that I don't really like to wear socks with very long legs. Don't ask me why, I can't really explain it, I just don't; not even in the winter. 

So I came up with a way to use the nice yarn anyway: I re-wound it into individual little balls, separating the patterned section and the speckled section. Then I used the speckled yarn for the cuff and the heel and the patterned yarn for the foot. I had planned to use the speckled yarn for the toe as well but I wanted to have more stripes on my feet. 
I love how it worked out and maybe I'll do that again with another one of the colourways. 

This is pair #256. I made it for my sister's partner with the yarn he chose at Christmas. (Yay! for men who like funky socks!)
I used my Caterpillar Sock pattern but extended the pattern part on top of the foot to give the sock some more texture. 
The yarn was in my September '22 Opal box but the design will be part of the "Knuddelbande" 6-ply collection available in late September '23. 

For pair #257 I used yarn from my March '23 Opal box. My daughter chose it for a new pair of socks and I used the Tennarisukka pattern again because it works well for this kind of self-patterning yarn and it knits up very quickly (which was good because I'm not crazy about the colours and the pattern the yarn creates). 

This is pair #258. I can't really get over the fact that my son now wears bigger socks than I do...
The yarn was in the September '22 box but it's part of the "Regenwald/rain forest 19" collection and will be available in 4-ply as well as 6-ply in early and late July '23 respectively. 

That's it with the socks for now. I have another finished pair that I haven't taken pictures of yet and then I have to get out some of my son's - too small but otherwise perfectly fine - sneaker socks and make them longer so he can wear them again... 

 

Lots of love! xxx

 

If you're wondering about the Opal boxes I keep mentioning: I get these as a gift from my wonderfully indulgent husband and I explain all about this subscription and how it works in this post.
I don't get paid or free products for mentioning them here. (That goes for all the other brands I mention as well. If I was sponsored I'd let you know.)

december 10th

roll number 10 is one of my less favourite ones. i think it's one of the first i made too. i used some metallic cardstock which would have been fine i guess but i have no idea what i was thinking when i added that fabric trim... interestingly enough, T says it's one of his favourites.

i didn't really get to a lot of blue with yesterday's yarn so it does look a little christmasy after all...

door number 10 - i really like that the numbers are shaped with colourchanging i-cord by the way.

this colourway is looking very promising i have to say...

lovely shades of pink and mint coming up!

have a great day! love and hugs...

december 9th

roll number 9 is decorated with this adorable reindeer giftwrapping paper. the whole design - craft paper, gold, red and black - is very well put together and i'd love to be given a present by this cute little guy on ice skates. i added some lace trim too...

i enjoyed knitting with yesterday's yarn. i like how the colours come out and i'm also looking forward to seeing this yarn knitted in the round - looks like it could be a nice irregular stripe pattern.

this is rather christmasy looking, but i did glimpse a touch of yellow under the next section of blue...

... we'll see what else i hiding in this little ball of squishiness.

i'll show you tomorrow. see you then and have a nice friday evening!

december 8th

i'm running very late today, i'm sorry about that.

today's roll is very elegantly covered in silver paper and white lace. i attached the lace with some kind of glue-dot-tape. i figured it was the most invisible way to glue the lace without adhesive showing everywhere.

yesterday's yarn knitted up. this one is very similar to the 2^nd one i got - they look like they could be two different colourways of the same pattern design. i like it.

door number 8 is in the sweet village scene again.

look! there's rudolph on the ball band!

i love this one! the colours remind me of an older opal yarn (from 2011 or 12) that i liked very much... i'm very much looking forward to seeing how this one knits up!

love you all! feel hugged and see you tomorrow...

december 7th

for roll number 7 i used some matte paper i found in my mum's stash as well. it was in a very retro looking folder and there were lots of other colours. this paper feels very interesting. i never know whether i like it or not - it's almost, but just almost, a little velvety...
i used paint pens to sketch some candles and fir sprigs.

yesterday's yarn knitted up just lovely i think.

today's door has an upside down elf on it...

bright and vibrant colours again!

i have to say i'm very much looking forward to knitting the yellow section and seeing what comes next...

i'll show you tomorrow. love and hugs!

december 6th

roll number 5 is one of my favourites i think. i love the style of this one. i used a page from an old book and ink sprays and stamps from the Dylusions line by Dyan Reaveley. (i love her style!) i used glitter glue to colour in the stamped twinkle lights and a white gel pen to make them "light up".

it's St. Nicholas' Day today. it's a day in advent the kids look forward to because as legend has it St. Nicholas comes to each house where nice children live to bring them sweets and other good things. in austria we don't hang a christmas stocking that is filled at christmas but i have a theory that the christmas stocking thing actually comes from St. Nicholas's Day. traditionally, as in: the olden days, every one in the family cleans their boots on december 5^th and puts them out on the front porch (or at least outside the bedroom door). St. Nicholas stops by when everyone is asleep and puts chocolate, gingerbread, sweets, fruit and nuts in the boots that belong to nice people, while those that have been naughty only get lumps of coal and twigs. when we were kids my siblings and i did clean our boots actually - or at least some years - but these days kids tend to get their sweets in little bags made of jute (because St. Nicholas is said to carry a big jute sack on his back). i remember one year my sister and i got wonderfully warm and cozy housebooties made from sheepskin that were stuffed with yummy things and sat at the end of our beds when we woke up.

some people ask a relative (or hire someone) to dress up as St. Nicholas to come and deliver the goodie bags in person but as far as i know most children are more intimidated than delighted by this. i remember when i was little my cousins' grandpa (not the one we had in common) used to dress up and he always seemed to be so very tall and he has such a deep voice - i was usually quite scared...
a hired St. Nicholas comes to kindergarten every year - T's always very excited about it and not afraid at all.

(don't imagine St. Nicholas looking like Santa Claus. St. Nicholas wears a bishop's robes and hat.)

for my kids i made these felt stockings and hung them up with the rest of the advent calender and in the afternoon we're going to have a nice tea with chocolate, cookies, nuts, oranges, candles and maybe a few christmas carols...

i got the pattern for these from this book that i just had to buy a few years ago...

this is yesterday's calender yarn knitted up. this one will look really nice in the round as well.

this is what i have so far. still looking a little wonky but it will be fine once i start the second row. after today's square is added a quarter of the calender will be done already! once i have ten in a row i will measure if it's wide enough to see if i can start the next row.

door number 6. it's ridiculous how much i adore these little doors...

it seems my blanket is getting a blue streak...

... with lovely shades of frosty greyish blue, mauve and lavender. how beautiful!

i love you all! consider yourself warmly hugged and i'll be back tomorrow...

december 5th

roll number 5 is dressed up as a present. i used some sort of textured glassine paper that i found in my mum's paper stash when she was sorting through some stuff... i taped some ribbon to it with double sided tape and curled up the ends.

here is yesterday's yarn. i really like the colour combination on this one. the red appears much more random in the photo than it actually is - it's a beautifully bright red with a tiny touch of coral which goes very well with the shades of turquiose and blue. i've decided that i'm going to have to make some colourful striped socks with some of my calender yarn after all - but after christmas when i've used each one for a square. i'm interested to see how this colourway looks in the round...

door number 5 - i love the big smiling moon very much!

don't ask me why but this little ball of blue and brown yarn instantly made me want a big mug of hot chocolate with a shot of caramel syrup and a dusting of cinnamon...

now, i'm not the hugest fan of blue on it's own, especially not of navy and marine or blues that are just blue and nothing else - although i seem to have a lot of blue pieces of clothing. but certain combinations and especially certain shades of blue are just plain awesome! and blue and brown absolutely has to be one of them...

see you tomorrow! love and hugs!

december 4th

roll number 4 is covered in the cover of some exquisite chocolate my brother got us all for christmas a few years ago. this particular chocolate was filled with something delicious that had been made of pink champagne, cinnamon, aniseed and cardamom...

this is yesterday's yarn squared up. i was very pleasantly surprised by the change from soft pink to this lovely deep plum colour...

door number 4 is on my favourite side of the cube:

i really like this snowy village scene. it looks so friendly and welcoming with all the lit up, glowing windows... and the snowflakes are really pretty... (you can see some close up in the door-picture.)

(sorry - it's blurry again. it's really hard to get a decent photo in the afternoon now...)

another brilliant combination of gorgeous colours! i'm very exicted to see how this knits up. i'll show you tomorrow of course =)

until then, enjoy whatever you do! love and hugs!

december 3rd

roll number 3 looks nice i think. i used the thin cardbord from a tissue box to cover the kitchen roll. i like the colourful print very much. it's sort of quirky but looks a little like ice stars and flowers on frozen glass, that's why i thought it was appropriate for christmas themed crafting. by the way: all of the holes for hanging the rolls are reinforced with eyelets so they don't rip.

this is yesterdays yarn knitted up. it's a lovely rainbow that swings from a rich pink to a light blue and back again. i had to knit this square twice as well because for some reason i managed to have the decrease off center... counting stitches is hard... the whole thing looks a little wonky but i think it will straighten out once there are more squares and i'm almost sure at this point that i want to add some sort for border to the finished blanket which will give it stability as well.

door number 3! R was very much in love with the snowman just before...

this is my favourite ball band so far which is not so difficult actually, as there were only three so far.

look at those gorgeous shades of pink and blue!

first i thought i wanted to tape the ball bands into my project jounal but then i changed my mind. i took the first two out again and made this:

a paper chain! it will be finished on christmas eve, just in time.

love and hugs to you all! keep relaxed and enjoy the season! see you tomorrow...

december 2nd

number 2 is probably one of my least favourite rolls to be honest. it was one of the first ones i made i think, if not the first one... the green paper was really gorgeous: very soft and slightly textured and if felt like a mixture of tissue paper and cloth. it didn't take the glue well though. at that point i wasn't very experienced with various papers and glues yet - now i'd probably know better and wouldn't use wet glue with paper like this... prettifying it with a gold paint pen didn't work either and the whole thing is kind of ugly-ish. i'm very pleased with my numbers though and at some point, when i feel inspired, i will replace the few rolls that i don't like so much with new ones. (or i let the kids craft and use what they come up with - if it's worth looking at. mean, i know...)

this is yesterday's yarn knitted up. i made the square twice because i wasn't happy with the number of stitches and the resulting size the first time. i use 55 stitches on 3mm needles and there is enough yarn to make a second one later, when the blankie is bigger...

here's door number 2.

(sorry, i had to use the flash - the beautiful colours of the yarn didn't show at all without it. very bad weather and light this morning...)

love and hugs! see you tomorrow...

december 1st

it's the perfect start to december: it's snowing! (although temperatures are supposed to climb up to scorching +6°C today and the weather forecast says it's going to rain later.) but there's a dusting of snow in the garden and on the roofs and that's very exciting - especially for the little ones who wanted to go and build a snowman immediately of course...

december 1^st means advent calenders!

i made this one from kitchen rolls years ago, when T was very small. the first year we actually used it, i think he was 2 years old, i didn't want to put in too much chocolate so we used special pieces (like traffic signs) to add to his duplo lego collection instead. this year, i admit it, it's stuffed with chocolate for T and R to share because i didn't have the time and energy to go and search for little toys that would a) not cause them to fight, b) not break instantly and end up in the trash and c) actually be nice and useful. so chocolate it is this year (and since T had a chocolate one last year too i think he was looking forward to it as we are rather restrained with sweets in general.)

this is number 1. i covered the roll in fabric and lace trim, die cut the number tickets from the Tim Holtz Ticket Strip Die, numbered them by hand and each roll has a little black fabric bag at the bottom to hold it closed. (using fabric was easier than gluing on a cardboard or paper base. you just have to untie the bow and the sweets topple out. that way you can also tell which ones are empty already - the untied ones.)

i haven't had my own advent calender in years but this year i just had to have this one by Opal. i pre-ordered it in june or july because when i realised towards the end of november last year that these even existed they were sold out everywhere... it's sitting on a side table on top of a stack of some of my favourite christmas and winter picture books. there is a little 15g ball of yarn behind each door.

door #1! (sorry - it came out a little blurry but when i noticed that i had already opened it and couldn't retake the pre-opening picure.) each side of the 30cm cardboard cube is decorated with a christmas themed illustration and the numbers are placed randomly.

each little ball has its own specially designed christmas or winter themed ball band. i will collect those and put them into my sock project journal.

there are some lovely people in the facebook knitting group i'm a member of who own yarn shops and they've confirmed what i think to have read somewhere that the retailers got the folded boxes and the assorted yarn to go in them but had to assemble and fill them themselves. that's why i know that i was lucky enough to pull out the only not so great colourway on the first day - haha! at least i know all the others will be wonderful and pretty and gorgeous! (and i don't have so much of a problem with brown actually - we'll see how it knits up.)

these balls are so small and cute! R was all excitement, snatched it up, cuddled it and called it "baby yarn"...
i think this is how we yarnoholics end up with such massive yarn stashes: a little snippet of yarn at the bottom of a yarn basket or box or bag starts to wiggle and lengthen, then it winds itself into a tiny littly ball that just keeps growing bigger and bigger, protected by the warmth and cosyness of the grown skeins and balls, until we find it and think: "when did i buy this?" haha!

i'm going to do my best to use all the yarn from the calender in one big thing and to actually do it before christmas. i want to make a mitred square blanket and if i have to add to it from my leftover stash once all the calender yarn is used up that's fine...

i'll show you the first square tomorrow when i open the second door.

i hope you all feel the christmas spirit, have it cosy and warm and can knit, crochet or craft to your heart's content!

love and hugs to you all!

socks #17

lots of socks to show today!

pair #71 uses the leftovers of an old opal yarn "lasst blumen sprechen" (= say it with flowers). i used a solid red for the cuff, heel and toe to make sure i had enough yarn. i gave this pair to my sister (she's modeling here too) because she told me that she liked the other short pair - the christmas-socks-in-august - and making shorter pairs like this is a great way to use up the third or quarter of a ball of yarn that's easily left after making a "normal" length pair.

for pair #72 i used a ball of the new celebratory opal collection "20 Jahre Opal". this is the "Kerzen" (= candles) colourway and perhaps the first pair that consists entirely of my most favourite colours: sunshine yellow - although they could have added a touch more of that - orange orange and the colour of ripe persimmon (which happens to be what my favourite shade of Tim Holtz Distress Ink is called as well).

pair #73 is a pair of scrahappy socks for my little girl. she had wanted to put on T's pair which is of course way too big for her so i made her these little socks instead. she was very pleased when i presented them to her on the next day - they were so quick to make.

pair #74 is the soul of autum. i enjoyed knitting this pair very much as it took me through the last days of golden sunshine and flaming trees and leaves. the yarn is "Hot Socks Paris 08" and the pattern is the same wavey pattern i jotted down towards the end of the previous sock post.

when i took this picture at a playground a girl, maybe 12 years old, approached me and asked me what i was doing with the yarn. i told her i was knitting a sock. she seemed genuinely interested and asked many questions about how i managed to knit with so many needles, how you made the sock change direction for the heel and if you had to use special yarn to make socks and so on... i thought that was very nice...

pair #75 is the same 20 Jahre Opal yarn but in "Feuerwerk" (= fireworks). the pattern is called "waffle rib" and i was inspired to try it by this blog post (i love the yarn she used!). it was quick and easy to knit and the socks are cozy to wear - they will be a present - but it's not one of my favourite patterns so far...

pair #76 is another little pair for my little R. she loved her scrahappy socks so much that i had to make another pair for when the other one needs a wash... i used some left over opal Hunderwasser "Der Weg von mir zu dir zurück" which i really like. they turned out a tiny bit too big but she'll grow into them...

pair #77 is a pair of mojos using the last ball of the 2013 sparkly christmas release by Buttinette (austria/germany&international). i don't really like the colours and the stripy pattern but i'm going to give them away and i hope the recipient likes them anyway... (is it in any way mean to give stuff you've made with yarn you don't like to other people?)

pair #78 is another pair that's going to be gifted away. the yarn is a rather cheap no-name i got at a discounter because i liked the thin stripes it makes and it came with the contrasting colour for the cuff, heel and toe. it's not the softest in the world but still nice to wear, not scratchy, and warm.

i still have quite a list of people i would like to knit a pair of socks for - don't know if i'll get them all done for christmas but if not it's not a problem for me. most people who know me know that i give gifts when i feel like it and when i happen to find the perfect thing or have something ready - and that doesn't necessarily have to be for a special occasion such as christmas or birthdays. i always like to get nice things in the mail (especially if it's not something i ordered and therefore have to pay for). i imagine it's the same for other people, and what could be better than finding a nicely wrapped pair of socks in ones mailbox...

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socks #16

socks #2

socks #1

socks #16

long time no socks... at least: long time no posting about socks. we are moved and settled in at the new home - yay! we managed to get everything done in time before the weather turned bad. we returned the keys to the old place on october 1^st and it started raining for about a week the day after that. we still haven't finished unpacking and we still don't have all the furniture we need/want (which is partly responsible for holding up the unpacking) but i don't mind that so much actually. packing up was enough stress for a while. i don't want to feel stressed with the unpacking now. and we don't have to go anywhere for a long time now so i'm allowed to feel like we have time to make the new place our home...

now on to my latest socks:

pair #65 is a super-long slouchy pair in stockinette stitch using the Regia Design Line by Arne & Carlos - Twilight 3654. when pulled all the way up, the cuff almost comes up to my knee but i made them to be worn all pushed down and gathered around the ankle. i've been saving the yarn for the first onsets of autumn because of the wonderful fall colours. i made them toe-up so i could get the very most out of the 50g ball for each sock but now i feel like i want to re-do them because of the toe: it just doesn't sit well and twists around my feet...

pairs #66 and #67 will be added later. i made them for a friend and until she gets them i don't want to post any pictures. i don't know if she's even reading this but i want to be sure i don't spoil the surprise...

for pair #68 i used Atelier Zitron Trekking XXL 415. i think this is an older colourway - assuming that they number their colourways chronologically, as they are nearing 700 i think... the colours reminded me of a vineyard in autum and i like vineyards in autumn... watching the colourful spirals form while i knitted these socks was great because i had no idea what the yarn would look like knitted up.

sometimes it takes me a long time to decide i'm ready to knit a particular ball of yarn as some of them look just so beautiful.

pair #69 is the "moving pair": i started it in early september and finished it in early october. this is the pair i took up in the evenings when i decided i had done enough work for the day and wanted to relax for a couple of rounds before flopping into bed. i used Opal Sweet²&Spicy² "Honig" (honey) which was rather hard to get. this colourway is the third i've knitted from this collection and i haven't got tired ot if yet. i have "Cake Pops" still in my stash - the sparkly version that came in the Opal Happy... collection. ("Zuckerstreusel/Sprinkles" was sadly out of stock everywhere i looked - and i'm pretty sure i looked everywhere.)

pair #70 is for my sister to go with a pair of ankle boots that went to live with her when i sorted it out. the boots were a tad too tight for me but they are a tad too wide for my sister so i thought i'd make her a pretty pair of socks (the colours match very nicely) to wear in the boots to make them fit. i used Hot Socks Paris 2 for them.

i found the pattern for the leg on the opal website. it's actually for arm warmers but i have since seen it used on socks as well. the opal pattern is in german but very simple:

• you need a multiple of 8 stitches - i used 64 for the leg and then decreased to 60 for the foot after i was done with the pattern
• knit 8 rounds for the rolled edge
  
• [4 rounds *knit 4 - purl 4*
• purl 4 rounds
  
• 4 rounds *purl 4 - knit 4*
• knit 4 rounds]

repeat as many times as needed to achieve desired length. i knitted 10 rounds instead of 4 at the end of my last pattern repeat before i started the heel. you can also continue the pattern on top of the foot as you can see here or here (scroll down about 1/3 - 1/2 of the page).

!!! i didn't come up with this pattern - i simply translated it to english from the freely available pattern i found. !!!

i thought the whole pattern looked funnier while it was still unwashed, but for socks that's not really an option. (for armwarmers it might be provided you don't wear them all the time, smoke; or stroke hair-shedding pets...)

these are my current socks in progress: a pair of mojos in my favourite colours and a short pair using left over yarn.

that was it for now... i hope you have fun with your crafty project(s)!

 

(the links to the mojo and caterpillar sock pattern are in the right side bar under "tutorials and guides".)

meet Herb:

this is Herb (as in potherbs). he is a fridge magnet and lives in our new kitchen. (you can see a reflection of my very messy kitchen counter in my awesome red fridge door. we get a delivery of stuff needed for more organising on thursday.) also: he's a prototype. i made him up yesterday and i totally winged it.

my mum has had this fridge magnet pig for ages and since R decided to "borrow" it a while back i have been wanting to make something similar.

i've seen this funny couch pillow in a few facebook posts already and i'm sorry to say: i have no idea where this photo comes from and who made this cute, slighly grumpy looking monster-cushion.

i hope my posting it here doesn't upset anyone - i just want to show my inspiration.

if you, who made this photomontage and/or the pillow happen to read this, please message me so i can either remove it at your request or give proper credit for it!

(same goes if you read this and know who made it.)

anyway: i wanted to knit some funny fridge magnet animals or monsters and since i don't feel so comfortable shaping my knitting into animal shapes i took inspiration from this pillow with the telescope eyes...

i love Herb's telescope eyes and his hands or paws or whatever they could be called...

... and i just adore his feet! they are so cute!

he can also hold pens. (i never find a pen in the kitchen when i want to write something on the shopping list or make a note of something i have just remembered or thought about...)

i already have ideas on how to improve the construction for the next one. i also have to find the perfect magnets to use and for the next one i'd like to make the arms and legs longer just to see how that looks. there are so many possibilities!

i'll keep you posted!

 

p.s.: i apologise for the not so great pictures of Herb. it's a grey, gloomy, rainy day and the artificial lighting in the kitchen is not the best for a photoshoot...

socks #15

pair #61 is a pair of sparkly christmas socks. yes - i knitted a pair of sparkly christmas socks in august. it's terrible, i know, but only very recently one of the lovely ladies in the knit'n'natter group i'm part of on facebook posted a picture of christmas socks she was just working on and that made me want to make some too. also: now there's another ball of yarn out of (one of) my stash box(es) that was still too big to move to the leftover basket but not big enough any more to make a pair of long-legged socks.

by the way: if you're a knitter and want to share your projects, ask questions, get suggestions and ideas for future projects, see lots of lovely yarns and just be part of a lovely and friendly community, you should check out this group. (you need to be admitted to the group to see its content.)

anyway, the sparkly christmas socks are made from two different yarns from seasonal yarn packs (one from 2013 and one from 2015) by this company. the cuff, heel and toe are from the older pack and the foot from last year's. i gave these to my sister.

i'm very much looking forward to this year's seasonal special - assuming that there will be one... if so it will be announced in the new autumn/winter catalogue which should arrive in september at the latest. i'll keep you posted...

for pair #62 i used Opal Hundertwasser "Der Weg von mir zu dir zurück" 2107. i love how many different colours and patterns there are in this yarn. it's almost like making a scrahappy sock out of one ball of yarn. i made caterpillar socks again. i've put the pattern in the right side bar under "tutorials and guides".

this is pair #63. i've named it "flowering appletree". just like i did for the Dr. Seuss Socks, i used leftover single spun sock yarn in two colourways for these: one of them - the brown/red one - is called "appletree" and the other one - the pink/white/green one - is what's left of a schoppel zauberball called "durch die blume".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"appletree" on the left - "durch die blume" on the right. it turned out that the appletree yarn was not really suited for sock making so i used most of what was left after the socks were done to make the body of my wonderful rose doll:

(body pattern by lalylala; hat pattern by zabbez)

there was just enough left of both to make little socklets. there are still some tiny little balls of the various single spun yarns left and i think i will keep them to make scarves for future crochet dolls...

this is pair #64. the yarn is an old one by opal - "lasst blumen sprechen" (say it with flowers). i've started this pair back in january and knitted past the heel of the first sock. and then all of the sudden i was sick of the yarn... i almost wanted to rip out the whole work and make something else with the yarn but decided to just wait until the excitement would come back. it did - sort of - and while i was not exactly overrun with joy while i finished this pair - i finished it. i think i will like wearing these very much though, maybe with a pair of jeans...

this is what the skein looked like. the collection was from 2011 or 2012 i think. i have managed to get my greedy little hands (although i think i have fairly large hands for a woman of my short body size) on five of the six colourways.

these two i knitted already...

these two are sitting in my stash, waiting to be sockified...

 

i hope your knitting needles are clinking and your crochet hooks are whirling!

socks #14 and the mojo sock that fits (better)

this is pair #57. it's a pair of mojos and i used Opal "Der Kleine Prinz und der Brunnen" 7766. i love to knit and wear mojo socks - i've made a few pairs already:

slow gradient yarns work especially well with this pattern...

...but self-patterning yarns also create funky socks.

but beware: this pattern is not for sockettes who don't like to work ribbing or to purl over longer streches!
(to be honest: i didn't really like making the first pair because of that, but i got used to it and now mojos are a breeze.)

the blog where i first found the pattern i use is sadly no longer available and i know there are lots of other instructions for mojo socks on the internet. they all seem to be a little different with regards to the number of ribbing rounds and the number of knit and purl ribs between the ribbing. some don't have knit and purl ribs opposite the heel, some have more knit and purl ribs on the leg than on the foot, etc. it's all about personal preference really. when you look at my mojos you probably notice that they are rather symmetrical and i like that.

most mojo patterns also continue the pattern on the sole of the sock. the pattern i originally used didn't do that and i think i actually chose it because of that. (i've looked at a few others before and i didn't like the look of either of those.) i haven't tried the all-pattern version but i imagine it not being very nice to wear to be honest.

i've made a slight adjustment to the pattern. when you look at the above pictures you can see that there is a rib of purl rounds all around the ankle right above the heel. while this is not a huge bother i always felt like this purl rib wants to flatten itself out and pushes the heel down a little. i want the heels of my socks to stay where they are supposed to - on the heel of my foot.

i've tried this adjustment for the first time on the latest pair of mojos: the last purl rib before the heel gets treated like the foot of the sock: i continue with the pattern only on the top half of the sock.

here you have 10 rounds of plain knitting between the last pattern feature (another rib or purl rounds) and the beginning of the heel. i think this makes the heel sit and stay in place better.

here's the whole pattern:

• cast on the desired number of stitches (as long as it's a multiple of 4 - i used 60)
• 20 rounds *knit 2 - purl 2*
  
• purl 5 rounds
  knit 5 rounds
  purl 5 rounds
  knit 5 rounds
  purl 5 rounds
  knit 5 rounds
  purl 5 rounds
  = 7 striped ribs
• 20 rounds *knit 2 - purl 2*
  
• purl 5 rounds
  knit 5 rounds
  purl 5 rounds ONLY ON THE TOP HALF OF THE SOCK - KNIT THE BACK/BOTTOM HALF
  
  work your favourite heel - take care to continue the striped rib-pattern on the top half of the sock:
  if you are doing a short row heel use the next 5 knit rounds to fit the heel in there before you move on to the next purl rib (which will be part of the foot already).
  if you are doing a flap and heel turn, finish the remaining purl and knit ribs while you work the gusset decreases.
  in both cases there should be a total of 7 striped ribs again.
  
  AFTER THE HEEL work the pattern ONLY ON THE TOP HALF OF THE STITCHES - the sole is in stockinette stitch.
  
  knit 5 rounds - place short row heel here!
  purl 5 rounds
  knit 5 rounds
  purl 5 rounds
  = 7 striped ribs
• 20 rounds *knit 2 - purl 2*
  
• purl 5 rounds
  knit 5 rounds
  purl 5 rounds
  knit 5 rounds
  purl 5 rounds
  knit 5 rounds
  purl 5 rounds
  = 7 striped ribs
  
  try or measure the sock somewhere before the ribs are done - take into account that the purl ribs can strech out quite a bit but don't overstrech them. (for my feet (EU size 39 - UK size 5,5) i start the toe right after the ribs.)
  
  when your sock is ready for the toe, either knit the toe in stockinette stitch or *k2-p2* between the decreases. as you have fewer and fewer stitches between the decreases you need to pay attention to the order of the knit and purl stitches.
  if your sock doesn't quite fit yet, continue with *knit 2 - purl 2* until the sock is long enough to start the toe.

mojo socks make great winter socks because the leg is rather long. you can either pull it all the way up or push it down and have a lovely bunch of softness around the ankles.

I also have patterns for a sneaker mojo and a junior mojo (which also includes a sneaker version of the junior mojo) if you want a sorter or smaller size version. 

pair #58 is a pair of scrahappy socks for T. he was so fascinated by my first pair and insisted that i never take them off again because he wants my feet to always be this colourful. since that's not quite possible i made him his own pair and he loves them. there are about 24 different yarns in both socks together.

pair #59 is one i love especially. it's made of leftovers from two different gradient yarns - one changing colours faster than the other - and i think the result is absolutely stunning! i just want to stare at these socks all day... i call them Dr. Seuss Socks because when i was about halfway through making the first one - the darker one, on the right - i picked it up to continue working on it and without thinking about it i said to my husband "you know, this looks like Dr. Seuss" and i don't even know that many of his stories...

this is pair #60. i can hardly believe it - #60! it's opal sweet²&spicy² in "chilli". but i don't think it looks like chilli very much. it looks rather like pink pepper. i made caterpillar socks again - i like how quick they are to make and they add just a touch of interest to an otherwise plain stockinette stitch sock. i modified the pattern a little: i changed every other purl rib from "purl 5 rounds" to "purl 1 rd - knit 1 rd - purl 1 rd - knit 1 rd - purl 1 rd". i don't even know why i did that exactly but it gives it a nice and soft look.

this pair is all ready to be gifted away and there is some yarn left for a little pair for myself as well.
i made an acetate tag and wrote on it on both sides, in different directions and with different colours. i've been wanting to try this in one of my journals for a long time and now that i see it on the tag i have a lot of inspirational images of acetate journal pages popping up in my head...

my current sock is another stripy one made from leftovers of single spun sock yarn. somehow i don't want to knit in the single spun - such as zauberball - with the "normal" 4-ply scraps when i'm making scrahappy socks. and alternating between two different yarns that slowly change colours gives a very unique effect. this one looks like a Punschkrapferl...

happy socking everone!

Related articles

socks #2

socks #1

socks #12

socks #13 - sock yarn scrap socks

socks #13 - sock yarn scrap socks

when you knit a lot of socks it's only natural that you accumulate a lot of leftovers. i've read of people who just throw them out but i could never do that. i have an emotional connection to my yarn - as weird as it may sound - and i can't bear the thought of getting rid of it. it's just too pretty (and expensive) for that...

when i'm finished with a pair, i like to handwind the rest of the yarn into a little ball and put it into the above basket. i have quite a collection already. i think they look like a bowl of colourful candy - or more like wonka's everlasting gobstoppers...

i always knew i wanted to make crazy, colourful socks out of my scrap yarn. i've seen some lovely examples on various blogs and other websites - here, here, here and here to link only a few of my favourite ones. just google "leftover yarn socks" or "scrap yarn socks" and you will be overwhelmed by all the awesome randomness and funky pattern and colour combinations. there are lots on ravelry and pinterest too.

i've heard/read a lot of different names for these socks: leftover socks, scrap or scrappy socks, happy socks, monster socks, frankensocks, fun socks, crazy socks, random socks, funky socks. there may be many more... my current favourites are frankensocks and scrappy socks. and now that i think of it: how about scra-happy socks? haha! lots of fun to be had here...

apparently everyone has their own style when it comes to making these. some pick their leftovers blindly and use whatever they pull out of the box/basket/bag first, some select according to colourways or manufacturer, some blend by randomly knitting one or two rounds and then changing yarn, some knit five or ten rounds per yarn, some knit until they run out of yarn and only then move on to the next. the possibilities are endless. i think this is a wonderful example of how different scrap socks can turn out even when several people work with all the same yarn. (the link leads to a ravelry page - you need to be logged in to see the content.)

the only drawback you could say are the ends that need darning when you change yarns a lot. i did make a pair of striped socks once where i tied the ends using the flawless yarn joining method and the little knots don't bother me when i wear them, but it was uncomfortable to knit them so i decided not to join my yarns that way. (i only do when my yarn breaks or to re-tie a knot that happens to be in the yarn.) i haven't tried the russian join yet but it looks very useful indeed. i hope sock yarn is not too thin for that to work well...

for now i simply knit a couple of stitches with both yarns when i want to change colours. that way the ends are quite secure already and i only have to darn each thread a few stitches in the other direction just to be sure. i don't think my ends will ever go anywhere. it does not really show on the outside of the sock all that much - especially since the patterns and colours sort of blend anyway and it's not disturbing to wear eiher. as long as i weave in the ends every couple of stripes and don't leave them all 'til the i'm okay with all the darned darning. it's good to know that nothing will come undone.

now for the great moment! (can you tell that i'm madly in love and extremely excited about these socks?)

22 stripes of five rounds each featuring 16 different yarns (as i used some of them more than once).

this is the first one i made and it is awesome!

22 stripes of five rounds each again and 14 different yarns this time. apart from the pattern the only thing i did exactly the same on both socks was using the same solid raspberry red for the first five rounds that form the roll down edge. i've worked them on 2mm needles which gives the edge a neater finish i think.

this is the second one. i guess you could call them a pair - you know, because of the matching edge. but the really nice thing about these is that i could make another one and then another one and then another one and as long as i stick to the same exact pattern i could match up my "pair" to my mood. it doesn't always have to be the first and the second together and the third and the fourth. it could just as well be the second and the fourth...

imagine a whole drawer full of these - and not folded and stacked up neatly, as great as that may be - but all of them just tossed in and when you want to wear a "pair" you just pull any two socks out, put them on and have happy feet!

i didn't leave the colour combinations entirely to chance. i don't know how visible that is or if it's even visible at all. the end of the working yarn and the beginning of the next yarn are either in the same colour family or one of the yarns at least contains a colour that also occurs in the other.

when you look at the upper sock in the above picture and focus on the bright purple and orange stripes - just a little after the heel - you may think: why are these next to each other? well, the purple yarn is from a ball that has lots of wild colours forming stipes and the last half row of that purple stripe changed to a very poisonous orange which made it possible to move on to the red-orange zauberball. the brown-yellow stripe after the orange one (which may not have been the very best choice here but that's just part of the fun) led to a succession of yellows that went on for three stripes until it ended with the blue line which allowed me to move on to more blue tones. i say "made it possible" and "allowed me" as if i didn't have another choice. of course i did but i liked it that way for these socks. it made the colours flow...

i've already announced to my husband that he will be honoured with the task of randomly selecting the yarns for my next scrahappy socks by just handing me something out of the basket that visually appeals to him regardless of what i have been working with previously. i know subconciously i will always try to match or blend the colours - which is funny when i think about the fact that i never intentionally match my socks when i'm working with one ball of yarn. i love mismatched socks but i also like to have some sort of harmony. non matching socks form one ball of yarn are still harmonious because the colours and patterns are still the same. blending different yarns in one sock creates a harmony that the sock may need because it will be impossible to achieve the same colours and patterns again in another scrahappy sock.

i want to try completely random anyway... who knows, maybe i will like that even more!

when T saw my first random sock he declared he has to have a pair - or rather: two - as well and i may never take the sock off again because it is so great. how sweet is that...? there is his first one in the above pic. i have to put it on him to see if it is long enough to start with the toe already. he grew again and i can't rely on my measurements from his previous socks any more.

when my mum saw the scrahappy socks she said she liked them almost more than the normal ones. i think she didn't want to ask for a pair - or rather: two - directly. i will make her two, or maybe even three to mismatch even more, and mail them to her in a pretty decorated envelope. just because it's nice...

this is pair #56 by the way.

happy mismatching!!!

socks #12

pair #48 is made from Lana Grossa Meilenweit "Colorado" 6903. they are just simple socklets with a roll down edge and a crystal heel. they were too big for me so i gave them to my mum.

pair #49 used up almost all of the leftover opal sweet² & spicy² "watermelon" that i had already used for a similar pair - also with a cuff drops cuff - for my mum for mother's day.

i'm a selfish sock knitter. i love sockyarn for its colours and patterns. i admit that i buy it mostly for myself. seeing funky stripes and colours on my feet makes me happy and knitting socks out of lovely yarn just to give them away and never see them again makes me sad... i give away handknitted socks only to the most worthy of wearers (or if they pay for it - which means i can buy more yarn) and knowing that i can get two pairs of ankle socks out of one 100g ball of yarn makes everything easier...

pair #50 was something rather special for me. i mean: PAIR NUMBER 50! the yarn is Atelier Zitron Trekking XXL 550. i absolutely love this yarn. it has to be one of my top favourites ever.

i got it for christmas 2013 but didn't knit socks with it until early in 2015. (for some reason i didn't knit any socks during the whole of 2014.) this yarn originally became pair #14:

but for some weird reason they didn't fit at all! i hardly ever wore them because they just were not nice to wear. now i know that it was an unlucky combination of too many stitches and a too short foot. you may agree with me on this one: a sock that turns itself heel up while you wear it if you just change your position on the sofa is not a good sock.

the pair ended up in one of my project baskets because i didn't really know what to do with it. i don't know why i didn't think of simply reknitting them immediately. i ended up cutting the very tip of the toe off to find a working thread from which to knit. i didn't unravel the whole sock, i just knitted from it as if it were a sock blank. i was afraid that some of the yarn on the sole might be damaged from wear but since i had worn them so little that was not a problem. there was just a tiny bit of pilling going on - a little fluff that could easily be removed. what used to be the foot of the sock is now the leg - which is good because it doesn't have such a job to do.

i didn't really know what pattern to do on the cuff or leg - i didn't want to do a simple ribbed cuff and stockinette leg. so i just started with one type of ribbing, did five rows of that and then went on to another one. the entire leg is just a collection of various rib patterns. i like how it turned out.

pair #51 is another pair of ankle socks for my husband. i just now realised that i had forgotten to take a picture of them. they are currently in the wash. i used opal "tiger" 30022 for them. i'll add a picture when they are clean and dry again...

pair #52 is opal sweet & spicy 3 "saffron" 9121 - again. there was again enough left for socklets and because i wanted to play it safe i knitted the rolled edge, the crystal heel and the toe in a beautiful sunshine yellow. the colourway has this colour only twice in the whole pattern repeat - which is almost as long as my foot - and i thought that was too little of beautiful sunshine yellow. this shade of yellow is currently my top favourite colour of all. followed closely by orange-red, deep purple and lilac - so this yarn has it all for me.

pair #53 is opal "ladybug" 30036. it's from an older "save the rainforest" line. i really like socklets. they are perfect for summer when it cools off in the evening or before it gets too warm in the morning. this pair accidentally matches but i have no idea why. there was no knot in the yarn and i clearly started each sock at different points in the colour repeat. it must have been the heel that did it...

pair #54 is opal "happy..." sparkle 9090. i bought two balls of that last autumn and made a long-legged, slouchy pair for my mum for christmas. this little pair is what was left of one of the balls.

sometimes i think i'm weird for noticing or paying attention to that sort of thing: i always thought that this rainbowy ball of yarn looked pretty awesome. before i started knitting pair #54 i handwound the yarn into a ball (yes, i handwind yarn just for the fun of it) and noticed this:

it looks even more awesome! i almost didn't want to knit it...good thing i have another one of these.

for pair #55 i used Lana Grossa Meilenweit "India" 2301. i've used "India" 2305 and the same pattern for pair #37 already; and while i think of #37 as my ode-to-spring socks i think of #55 as circus socks - funny how the colours change the look so much even though the pattern the yarn creates is the same. these socks just remind me very much of the circus...

well, now i've squeezed seven pairs of socks into one post and even i wonder how much i can talk about my socks... i will have to cut back on my knitting time now and start packing up the house. occasionally i think, "it's not so bad, we'll manage in time and it's not so much anyway." and then i realise that what i just thought is bulls**t and i really have to start sorting things out and getting rid of stuff... so that's what i will do now.

happy socking everyone!

socks #11

pair #41 - these are opal sweet&spicy3 kiwi socklets for my husband. i showed you the first one in my last sock post (which was exactly two months ago now as i start writing this post - i may finish it tomorrow because it's late already).

they have been in the wash at least three times already but it's really getting too warm for handknitted socks now. at least for my husband - i still wear them at home. after having worn basically nothing but handknitted socks since september last year i start to find wearing commercial socks rather not so nice... i hate it actually, but with some spring and summer shoes it can't be avoided because said shoes are too tight for handknitted socks (and it looks stupid) but they can't be worn without socks either. as soon as i get home i rip these thin, slipping, a-seam-at-the-toe-having socks off my feet and put lovely handknitted ones on, and since i wear mostly ankle socklets now that it's warmer (unless it's raining - then i put on the cozy slouchier ones) i don't get too hot and my ankles don't get "choked" by too much material around them. 

pair #42 is another pair of little socks for T made from three or four year old christmas sock yarn. T selected it because it was the one with most red in and it sparkles - both highly desirable qualities he says, which i totally support... 

pair #43 is opal yarn again, sweet&spicy2 in watermelon. i made this pair for my mum for mother's day (which is in may in austria). i used a modified cuff drops pattern which looks very cute on ankle socks too, i think. by the way: this is the first pair of socks i ever intentionally matched.

whenever i give socks as a gift i like to make my own band to wrap them in. since papercrafting is one of my other passions i usually have all the supplies ready anyway. i usually try to match the band with the theme of the socks or the taste of the recipient (as far as known) a little.
for this one i used some cardsock, tore one edge to mimic bite-marks in a slice of melon and inked it up at the bottom - the peel - with "crushed olive" and "peeled paint" Distress Ink, faded it out into white and came in from the torn edge with "barn door" and "picked raspberry" to achieve a pinkish kind of bright red. i splattered the whole thing with water to get some interest, and black ink just over the top for the seeds. i'm really pleased with how it turned out, i have to say... i like making little things special as well as big and "more important" ones and i know my mum appreciates it. this sock-band hangs on her cards-and-other-nice-messages display as a matter of fact.
(i usually write the care instructions either on the back or the inside of the band, and at the end of this post you can see another one of the sock bands i did.)

pair #44 is yet another opal, sweet&spicy3 saffron. if you look closely at this pair's colour changes and the pattern of the kiwi socks, you will probably notice that it's the same only in different colours. the saffron colourway is one of my most favourite ones yet - the picture does not do the beauty of the colours justice. usually i don't like to work with very similar or the same yarn for too long, but the opal sweet&spicy yarns are so diverting in a way. it's ridiculously exciting to watch the colours and the pattern change as you work which made these socks especially fly off my hands.

because i liked the cuff drops pattern on the watermelon socks so much i had to try it on the saffron too. some of the bobbles turned out two-coloured which i thought was great!

pair #45 is made from Austermann Step 0219 and the colours remind me of skittles sour.
it has aloe vera and jojoba oil in it, which is supposed to be good for the feet and last up to thirty washes. i felt like it was very hard to knit with - very slippery and it was hard to keep an even tension. the pair took me forever to finish because it was so hard on the hands. i modified the mojo sock pattern for these to make them fit better. i'll talk about that more soon. i also made them with an afterthought heel because i wanted the colour repeat to stay intact on the top of the socks.

i have used this afterthought heel technique before and i like it very much. many patterns for afterthought heels instruct you to insert waste yarn which is taken out to create the gap where the heel is knitted into. using lifelines and actually opening the knitted fabric after picking up the stitches except for two on each side, as shown in picture above, creates a very neat and clean heel "corner" with no holes that need to be closed later on.
i start with the heel in the center of the sole and when i've worked around the corner - where the yellow stitches are in the above pic - i knit three stitches and then knit the tail end from opening the fabric together with my working yarn for about five stitches. i do the same on the other side with the other tail end. this makes sure that everything is nice and secure. the rest of the tail ends are darned when the heel is all done and i don't think any of my heels done this way will ever come undone.

i've added a list of links in the right sidebar where you can find all the instructions i use (to various extent) to create this heel. i will keep adding to this list whenever i find tutorials that i keep returning to.

pair #46 is made from the leftover opal kiwi yarn. it's a tiny pair of socklets with a rolled edge. the pattern could not be simpler: 15 rounds in stockinette - no ribbing; heel, foot, toe - done.

this tiny ball is all that is left over. when i was working on the second sock i did worry a little if there would be enough but it worked out. oh, and this pair accidentally matches, starting from the heel, because there was a knot in the yarn. i think it's great to know that i can get a pair of socks each for my husband and myself out of 100g of yarn. both our sock sizes are about average i think, but even for two bigger pairs it would still work if you made contrasting heels and/or toes.

pair #47 is made from NEXT Sock Yarn "samba" 4254. these are 50g balls of very soft single spun yarn which i had left over from my circle cardigan.

i was reluctant to knit socks from this yarn at first because the only single spun sock yarn i've had good experiences with, as far as sockmaking is concerned, is Schoppel Zauberball. most single spun yarns that are marketed as sock yarn are actually only sock yarn weight, which means they have about 400-425m per 100g, but are not really suitable for socks because they are often rather artsy, thick and thin, and don't have the elasticity 4-ply sock yarn has and which is needed to make well fitting socks.

i had two of these left and used one to make my mermaid doll. and when she was finished i thought i'd just give it a try and make another pair of little socklets with the other ball - because i loved the yarn so much.
i made them with an afterthought heel again - actually the first socklet pair that i tried this heel on and it turns out that it makes the socks fit even better. the crystal heel is bigger, rounder and more cup shaped than the heel i usually do, which keeps the rolled edge of the socks higher up and from slipping down. i just love it and will use this heel for all the ankle socklets i plan to make. there will be more...

also: as far as i can tell so far this yarn seems to hold its shape when knitted far better than i thought it would - especially when i compare it to the other pairs i have made from single spun (other than Zauberball).

while making these socks i went a little crazy taking pictures of the ball of yarn as it changed colours. it was really lovely to watch:

and when there is only rather little yarn left the ball takes on a cute kind of flower shape:

currently i'm working on a pair of socks that matches my seahorse:

i enjoyed working with this yarn very much and there is plenty left for short socks. the first one turned out a little too big for me so i decided to give them to my mum who will love them...

ever since i started knitting socks i stopped during the summer months. knitting very much feels like an autumn-winter-spring-occupation. i did slow down with my knitting - and dolls have taken up some of my time - but all in all i'm quite surprised at my own perseverance and i don't seem to want to stop even though we're full into summer now... but it hasn't been really hot yet so that might still change. we'll see...

happy yarning everyone!

 

EDIT: the seahorse pattern is by lalylala.

doll crazy

i went a little doll crazy since the start of the year. i mentioned in this post how i came across lalylala dolls back in january (and i linked to the pattern source in that post too). i think these dolls are just so charming. i love the proportions of them and how ... simple ... they are in a way. they have so much character. i had a really hard time deciding which pattern to get first and luckily there was a special offer where you could get either three, five or even seven patterns in bulk for a little cheaper than they would have been had you bought this many individually. (this offer is no longer available, which makes it easier in a way because you don't have to decide which other patterns you want to add just to get a discount even if you actually only wanted one anyway...)

i got five: the house fly, the fox, the dragon, the kangaroo and the sheep. i hadn't actually planned on buying the fly pattern but T saw them all and instantly requested that i make a fly. how could i resist that...? so the fly it was instead of the lion (which i got later) and as soon as i had all the patterns downloaded i started. i use sockyarn and a 2,5mm crochet hook for these dolls. it took me a while to get used to - i'm very well used to knitting with such fine yarn and thin needles but i usually crochet with heavier yarn. i crocheted my yarn together with some teal coloured shimmery sewing thread to add a little interest and variation to it. and the grey wings got some silver sparkle thread. he's very proud to wear a scarf knitted from some handspun yarn with golden beads...

the pattern was not difficult to follow - even though i had only done some simple amigurumi veggies and fruit before. the only problem showed when i had to join the legs - the pattern starts with the legs which you then join to work on the bum and body. but i managed that in the end and was really pleased with the progress i was making.

you may know how it is with patterns: one or two or even five is never enough. having seen so many adorable dolls in the web i went on long searches to get hold of as many free add-on or modification patterns as i possibly could - there are two berry- and a bunny-add-on by the designer herself on her website but you need to buy the sheep pattern for one of the berries and one of the others that's not the bat, toadstool, cactus or either of the sea critters for the others, if that makes sense. i also saved lots of inspirational pictures of modifications where there was no pattern. (i'm sorry i can't link to the sources because i didn't save any of them - i only saved or copied the patterns i could find. some of them seemed to have weird restrictions about sharing them for free.) now i have quite a collection...

next i made the fox. i like foxes. they seem to be very popular through the whole of the crafing community at the moment, as are mermaids and flamingos apparently. it's funny in a way that all of the sudden there seems to be a global interest in some creature or other and nobody knows where this interest comes from as it appears to be inspired independently by different designers and crafting categories: a company releases a stamp set, a designer creates a knitting or crochet pattern, there are colouring images, fabrics and clothing with according prints on, etc. and they are all about the same thing... that's how i experience it anyway. it was like that with the foxes for me: without knowing exactly why, maybe i had seen something on the internet without really noticing it, i thought to myself "i really like foxes, they are actually very cute animals, not so random as cats or dogs or bunnies and quite clever too." and then they were popping up everywhere and all the world went fox-crazy!

i tried my best to get her ears a little pointier but couldn't do better than this. and by now i'm also better at chaning colours without it being so obvious as it is at her arms there. her scarf is from a leftover 6-ply zauberball and i even took pains to find this particular section in the colourway - a thing that i usually don't do. she is lovely and i already had more experience with stuffing her as i worked and there are no overstuffed parts - the fly's head turned out a little big. (the patterns all come with names already chosen for the dolls, but i don't like to adopt these - i want my kids to choose names for them if they want to.)

the two of them instantly became friends and she was well received by my little ones as well.

then i started an owl-modification i was kindly instructed on how to do by Häkelpüppi on facebook. and it is still not finished! argh! i don't even know exactly why but i assume it's the yarn. it's heavier than the sockyarn - i didn't have anything in my sock yarn stash that suited an owl and the one i would have liked to use, but would have had to order, was too expensive for doll-making. so i just bought something with appropriate colours at the craft store but didn't really like working with it... also i have noticed that i like crochet toys and dolls much more when they have small stitches. working with bigger yarn gives you a bigger finished object of course; but with chunkier yarn i always feel like the stitches are, in proportion to the finished size, even bigger than the stitches worked with sock yarn are compared to the finished size. but who really cares about such things...

i only have to finish off some of her accessories - i don't know what's keeping me so long... 

on one of my searches of more mod-patterns (not that i needed them yet...) i found some adorable dolls with wonderfully intricate flower hats. first i thought they were lalylala doll modifications but then i realised they were by a different designer - and another talented one of that! his doll designs have a similar shape to lalylala dolls, but have longer legs and a shorter, less rounded body. to be honest: i like the shape of the lalylala dolls more, but that could also just be because i saw those first. (i know a lady from a crochet-doll group on facebook who saw the flower dolls first and then thought the laly-dolls looked odd with their shorter legs.) i asked said lady if she knew whether or not the flower hats fit on a lalylala doll head. she replied saying she thought so because she had made both and they are the same size; so i just had to get the rose pattern and i made this lovely doll:

i had a really hard time sewing her head on centered and after undoing it three times already i decided to just let it be. to keep her from appearing totally askew i cheated a little and attached her arms relative to her eyes as oppose to her "shoulders". it gives her a slightly shy appearance which adds greatly to her character i think.

i used FernerWolle "Color Flow" sockyarn in the shade "apple tree" which i had left over for her body. this yarn is a rather artsy thick-and-thin single spun yarn and even though it's labeled sock yarn it actually does not create very good socks (they turn baggy when you wear them and don't hold their shape) - it's more suitable for shawls and such. but the colours were just rigtht for a rose doll and i didn't have the right shade of either solid green or brown for it anyway.

my kids like to watch the puppet theatre version of Michael Ende's "Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver". and in the second part - "Jim Button and the Wild 13" - there appears a mermaid.

(this is a screen-shot from the movie.) i knew there was a mermaid lalylala and i liked the idea of making our own. her name is Sursulapitschi by the way - the "sch" is pronounced like "sh" - and she is a princess. i didn't have the right colour of yarn for her tail though so i ordered this one which i think fits the bill perfectly:

but because i didn't want to wait for the yarn to arrive and i had a sudden idea i took this ball of yarn i had left from my rainbow circle cardigan and started to make a rainbow mermaid instead:

this pattern is very easy and straightforward and the only thing that bugged me was that working on an already stuffed toy - because you have to stuff them as you go - can be a little troublesome as the whole thing is less squishy and more difficult to hold, but that's just part of it. with most of the other patterns the head is made seperately and then crocheted or sewed on, which can also be tricky but i actually mind it less than i mind handling already stuffed toys while working on them.

then i made 38 hair pieces - or scales as i call them - as the pattern said and pinned them onto the dolls head to see what it looked like. the pattern only said to sew them on but was not very explicit as to how exactly it was to be done. quite frankly: it sucked! and while i was doing it i vowed to myself to never make a scale-headed mermaid ever again. i tried my best to rainbow organise them and only when i was almost done i thought i should have followed my gut feeling telling me to pick them at random. i also had to make 2 more scales even though i felt like neither her head was very big nor did i overlap the scales too much - in the pictures in the pattern the looked much more overlapped... with only two more scales to sew on i was very tempted to cut them all off again and start over but i stitched the last scales in place and left her until the next day. when i came back and picked her up again to finish her arms she looked better already and has very much grown on me since.

when i make the Sursulapitschi doll i will give her a wild turquoise and green mermaid hairdo and i guess i really won't bother with the scales ever again - haha!

and i have to say i very much like her fin.

for the sparkle i crocheted some sparkle thread along with the rainbow yarn. it's "Coats Reflecta" in copper (nr. 314) and silver (nr. 301) and it is horribly expensive at 4,20€ for the 100m spool. i will have to find some other sparkle thread to add some glamour to future dolls - maybe something with colour too...

at the end of may there was a new lalylala pattern released and when i saw the announcement on facebook i dropped everything, bought it and started yet another doll... i'm beginning to feel that i make them more for myself than for the kids but i don't mind that so much actually. everybody needs something soft and slightly silly in their lives...

it's a seahorse! how awesome is that! haha!
now, this pattern was a tad more difficult than the others because you need to work stitches of different hight within the same round to get the curly tail. it's just a matter of following the instructions carefully and not losing track of where you are in the pattern. i used a large paper clip as a kind of arrow to point at the row i'm currently working on and i never lost track really. the only thing i wish i had done better was the beginning of the tail where i should have worked tighter i guess because the stuffing shows through the fabric. it's not coming out but it's visible - i'll know better next time.

haha! when i showed my husband the fin on seahorse's back and asked him if that looked straight to him he said: "as straight as a male seahorse in psychedelic pastels can be..." i almost fell off my seat... hihihi...

you may know - or not - that it's the daddy seahorses who take care of the babies. they are kept safe in a belly pouch.
this daddy here takes good care of his little one, which is only 8,5cm tall. R loves this little seahorse baby and i often find her carrying it around while she plays with other things.

and as all parents need a little hand from time to time it's a good thing there's a relative to help out...

the family keeps growing!

 

EDIT: here are the pattern links again for the lalylala dolls and the zabbez flower dolls.

various and flowery things

i stole the first bunch of lilacs this year. i'm not gonna lie: i do steal lilacs from hedges in spring. not from front yards of other people's houses, but from hedges along the fences of building sites, wild shrubberies or green grassy strips that belong to the sidewalk and are therefore common rather than private properties. no harm done, i'm sure, and i love the scent of them... these four or five twigs sit in a bottle on the corner shelf in the living room now and smell divine.

we've had a lot of bright, sunny and almost summery warm days throughout april. the occasional rain made everything grow and shoot up and become lush and fresh and green. i love the green of spring. there are so many shades of it, all bright and transluscent. during summer the greens tend to get dark and muted and dusty like old velvet - but spring green is all crunchy like salad with a nice and slightly spicy vinaigrette...

when winter has its slow fade-out i'm always waiting and longing desperately for spring only to find myself suddenly in the middle of it, sometimes even amost at the end of it. the temperatures are running mad though: one afternoon you get over 20°C, maybe even 22 and the next day you're lucky to get 15°C. it's that time when you really don't know what clothes to put on yourself and the kids. on cold mornings you leave the house in full winter gear, coats, hats and scarves on (sometimes even gloves if you're a five-and-a-half-year-old who likes to dash about on his scooter playing high-speed-train) and then at lunchtime when you go out again to pick your son up from kindergarten you have to change completely because it's just to hot for jeans and sweater and coat. and then it is windier than you thought and you catch a cold again which you were so glad to be finally rid of...

(i wrote a rather long spring-post last year - where i went a little nuts with the photos if you'd like to take a(nother) look... and it's actually from a yarn-and-four-days ago. spring seems to have been a little earlier and quicker this year because the fruit trees are in full leaf already and the tulips are almost over again. funny how it's never quite the same and yet it still is in a way...)

there they are, my two sweet ones, shoveling soil into a flower-box to plant strawberries. they were very persevering and kept at it for quite a while. (we have to barricade the stairs to the upper garden to keep R from wandering off all by herself and into the neighbour's garden where there is a steep wall into their courtyard without a fence.)

we were able to eat outside in the middle of april! (my mum makes the most delicious salads.)

we haven't mowed the lawn yet and T has picked me lots of little bouquets of dandelions and daisies and pretty much anything that blooms...

(i was a little late with taking pictures of this one - it's a little wilted already.)

our local supermarket has the most wonderful, organically grown williams pears at the moment. they are delicious and juicy and have a lovely fruity-flowery scent. (T loves them while i have not yet figured out how to get R to eat raw fruit and vegetables.)

i finished the kiwi yarn socks, but haven't taken proper photos yet. what's left of the yarn should be enough for a pair of little socklets for me - and if it's not i can always go for a contrasting colour heel and toe. T loves his fox-sox so much, sweetly declaring he never wants to take them off when he first put them on, that i felt like i needed to make another pair for him right away. i let him choose the yarn again and of course he picked one that had lots of red and sparkle.
"you know, mama, just because it's actually christmas yarn doesn't mean i can't wear them all the time." he has the true spirit of a hand-knit-socker...

my other (second) sock in progress had to wait a little, poor thing just barely cast on, because i got sidetracked by the second part of the fairyland-series which is beyond awesome. it could be about the reproductive cycle of garden snails as long as it's written in this wonderful language! using lots of rather oldfashioned words, all swirly and full of ruffly petticoats and yet at the same time still very clear and to the point of things. full of imaginative metaphors, magic, and everything being alive. everything. even a dress.

if you want to get a whiff of the green wind you can read a short prequel of the series for free on tor.com called The Girl Who Ruled Fairyland - For a Little While - it's really worth it.

i hope your world is wonderful - wherever you are in it - or wherever it is.

socks #10 and works in progress

pair #40 - i can't believe it's that many already! - is made from Atelier Zitron Trekking XXL 565. i love this yarn. i love the colours, the random stripes, the fact that it absolutely doesn't matter if there's a knot in the ball where the yarn has been tied (to a new cone or because it broke somewhere in the machine during the process of winding) and there is a stretch of colour missing and you would never notice if you didn't knit it yourself and knew exactly where it was. if i designed sock yarn - and i would love to design sock yarn - this is the kind of yarn i'd go for... sorry to all the OCD sock matchers out there. hihi!
(these are caterpillar socks again and you can find instructions here if you'd like to make some too.)

i'm currently working on a pair of Opal Sweet&Spicy3 Kiwi socklets for my husband. yes - he chose the yarn himself. it's awesome and i love my husband even more for liking funky socks just as much as i do.

i'll cast on the second one tonight.

i've also started to knit a sweater for my little girl... i went online shopping for clothes for her a while ago and was really frustrated because there seem to be so little nice kids' clothes available these days. everything looks either like doll stuff or like miniature adult fashion. i know there are great companies that make awesome clothes for kids - using organic and locally sourced materials and everything and i'm really all for that - but as long as i need new clothes for my kids basically every three months i just can't afford those... i'd love to but that will have to wait until they stop growing that quickly. until then i'll just have to make their sweaters myself if i can - and it turns out i can:

i have knitted two sweaters before. one that took me forever because the yarn i used required 3,5mm needles and another that didn't take quite so long but turned out horrible beause of everything: yarn that looked and felt great in the ball but not when knitted, shape, pattern, fuzzyness... everything. so i kind of gave up on the whole idea of knitting sweaters for a while. then i found this post and absolutely loved this sweater made from sock yarn leftovers. i know - even thinner 2,5mm needles, but i'm used to those by now.

so i started searching for ways to make sweater knitting easier which meant: find a way around all the sewing of individual pieces. i did find patterns for sweaters made from sock yarn but didn't really like any of them. then i found a series for blog posts that teaches you to knit a top-down sweater (or cardigan) using any kind of yarn and needle size you may have in your stash (no more "i like the pattern but not the yarn", etc.) and you can add any kind of decorative elements (lace, cables, etc.) if you feel up to it. i read the entire instruction, made sure i understood all of it (it's really easy to understand and follow) and then i just used my calculator to do some basic math and figure out how many stitches i needed to make a sweater that will fit an almost two-and-a-half-year-old.
(another great thing about working top-down is that the bind-off is at the bottom hem and the wrists. should it get too short before it gets to tight i can just make it longer!)

i guess i just made that sound much more complicated that it actually is.

i guess i'll be done with the body really soon and can start the sleeves. i think i'll add a hood as well. i'm using my sock yarn leftovers and i just love how it's turning out. i almost wish i had made it bigger so i could keep it myself - hehe! - but i look forward to seeing my little one in it. T has already requested a sweater for himself when he saw me knitting on this and asked what it was. he was very cute and asked if it was for him when i told him i was knitting a sweater. when i said "no, it's for R." he asked why not for him and i explained that i had never made something like this before and wanted to start with the smallest size first to see how it goes. he's a very understanding boy and was satisfied to know that he will get one as well once this one is done. and the great thing is: i'm not scared of it any more! i'm actually looking forward to a whole load of handknitted sweaters in all shapes and sizes using all different kinds of yarns, with hoods or not, pouch pockets or not, ribbing or rolled edges, v-necks, round necks, boat necks... i'm turning into Mrs. Weasley...

this is on my spinning wheel at the moment - or rather was. i finished the single today and started navajo-plying right away. it's the finest single i've spun so far. the fiber is blue faced leicester which is lovely and easy to spin and has appropriately been named "rolling hills" by the dyer. 

i still have issues with the yarn being slightly overtwisted when plied but i'm working on it.

i can see lots of shawls knitted with handspun yarn in my future...

happy yarning everyone!

socks #9 and the cuff drops sock how to

this is pair #38. T has requested another pair of socks and i was happy to oblige. i call them "fox sox" because i have used the same yarn for the crochet lalylala fox doll... the yarn is Regia Winter Stars and i made them with a three-wedge "fan heel" (a type of short row heel - link's to a (german) video - heel starts at about 4:00 min) to make the socks fit longer.

this is pair #39. i got a little fancy and named them "vintage harlequin". it's because of the colours of the stripes and squares. they seem a little muted to me - like the faded colour of an old circus poster...
i used two 50g balls - a stripy and a solid - which came in the same pack to be used together but i was a little irritated (for a very short time) because the solid turquoise and the turquoise in the stripy yarn are not the same. i really wanted to make another pair of patchwork socks and these colours were perfect for it.

a couple of months ago i stumbled across a picture of a pair of socks on google that i really liked very much. i don't think i can share it here as i could not find out who took it and therefore owns copyright to it. i think it was a listing for the finished socks on one of the many artist's marketplace websites and now i can't find it again because they may have been sold. anyway, google remembers everything so you can look at a picture of them here (i hope). it was not so much the colours that struck me - although they are lovely and instantly caught my eye all the same and you know i like everything rainbow - it was more the pattern or rather the texture on the leg. i tried to find a pattern for it but didn't, and since i really wanted a pair of socks like that for myself i had to improvise...

the pattern does not show so much as the self patterning yarn is very busy already but it worked out very great once i had finally figured it out. and i have to say: i'm rather proud of myself for coming up with a way to knit something just from looking at a picture of it. (even though i have no way of knowing if the socks that inspired me were done the same way. and i'm sure i could not do that with fancy lace patterns - haha!)

before trying on a sock i had to research instructions for knitting the little bobbles. i found different ways that seemed managable and i made a little swatch where i tried them so i could compare and choose the one i liked best. i ended up doing a three-stitch bobble.

here is how i knit the "cuff drops" pattern. (this instruction is my own design and wording, inspired by the picture i linked to above. in case it's done the same way - no offence and/or copyright infringement intended!)

• cast on the desired number of stitches (i cast on 60)
  
• purl 1 round - knit 1 round - purl 1 round - knit 1 round (that's the very top edge of the cuff)
  
• ** 10 rounds *knit 2 - purl 2*
  
• purl 1 round
• knit 2 rounds
• 1 round *knit 2 - bobble*
  (if your stitch count is not a multiple of 3 but of 4 instead you can also *knit 3 - bobble*)

bobble:

• knit into front of stitch, knit into back of stitch, knit into front of stitch
  (you have made 3 stitches out of 1)
• turn
• slip 1st stitch purlwise - purl next 2 stitches together
• turn
• slip 1st stitch knitwise - knit next stitch - lift slipped stitch over knitted stitch
• tighten gently

i don't know if this is common knowlege when knitting bobbles but i have found that i get nice looking bobbles when i knit them very loosely. don't be tempted to tighten the stitches while you are working the bobble - it will look nicer when you tighten it up only when it's done. (don't let your needle slide out of the bobble you are working on! don't ask...)
also, when you slip the stitch over the last knitted stitch to finish the bobble, let the slipped stitch kind of "wrap" itself around the whole bunch of stitches you have created. when you then tighten the bobble, said slipped stitch will pull this bunch together and create a nice bobble.

after the bobble round:

• knit 1 round - to avoid a hole appearing between the bobble and the previous stitch, pick up the thread connecting the two and knit them together through the back
• knit 1 round
• purl 1 round
• knit 2 rounds
• 1 round *knit 2 - bobble*
  
• knit 2 rounds (pick up threads and knit together with the bobble stitches through the back on the 1st knit round again)
  
• purl 1 round **

repeat from ** 

i repeated from ** to ** twice on the first two pairs i made this way, but you can repeat the pattern as many times as you like. on the vintage harlequin socks i replaced the second 10 rounds *knit 2 - purl 2* with the mitred squares which i knitted first in fact and then picked up stitches from the top and bottom edge to knit the pattern. 

mitred squares tutorials can be found on the internet aplenty. i started out with 21 stitches per square and made a continual strip of six squares, joining the last one to the first as i knitted it (or you can make a strip and then sew it together to form a cuff). that should give you 10 edge-stitches per square (60 in total) to pick up form the edges both on the top and the bottom of the cuff. however, i picked up 11 per square as i felt it was necessary but that may differ from knitter to knitter - if you think it looks okay with the intended number of stitches to be picked up that's great, should you feel like you have to add yet another stitch you'll have to decrease away more. after picking up the stitches i worked one purl round and then decreased the additional stitches away - one per square - in the first knit round of the pattern.

how many stitches you need for your squares depends on the number of stitches you need for your sock and the number/size of squares you want. my socks usually have 60 stitches, so i divided that by 6 which makes it 6 squares of 10 stitches each - those are the edge-stitches which you will pick up. a mitred square is made from double the number of stitches +1. that makes 21 stitches in my case.
you could also knit 10 squares of 6 stitches each in which case you would need 13 stitches for each square.
for the first pair of patchwork socks i made i needed 64 stitches, so i made 8 squares of 8 stitches - 17 stitches per square.
you could also make 4 really big squares, using 31 stitches per square (for a 60 stitch sock) or 33 stitches per square (for a 64 stitch sock) - but these squares would be big enough to make the entire leg of the socks.

i made the cuff first and used jeny's surprisingly stretchy bind off. take care: you are binding off purl stitches!

then i knitted the pattern again at the bottom of the squares but without the rib-section (see pictures for orientation) and added 10 rounds in stockinette before i started the heel. you can use any kind of heel you like, i made this one - which works great if you want to have a contrasting colour heel.

 

happy knitting!

 

EDIT:
the bobble pattern described above works great on the cuffs of ankle socks:

• purl 1 round - knit 1 round - purl 1 round (that's the very top "cuff")
• * knit 2 rounds
• 1 bobble round - you can space the bobbles as far apart as you wish. i usually knit 2 or 3 stitches between each bobble - it also depends on your total number of stitches.
• knit 2 rounds (remember to pick up the strand between the bobble-stitch and the previous stitch as described above in the first knit round)
• purl 1 round *
• repeat from * to *
• knit 10 rounds before starting the heel

i've also made a pair where i have only one bobble round:

on this pair i repeated the "cuff" (purl 1 rd - knit 1 rd - purl 1 rd) after the bobble section and i did only 5 rounds before the heel. they turned out really short but you can always make them as long as you want.

enjoy!

the happy socks grow

my happy socks are growing nicely. i love how the colours play together. there is a rather visible line down the middle of the soles where i change the colours but i don't mind that so much. once the socks have been worn and washed it will hardly by visible any more.

as you can see, i've put in lifelines for an afterthought heel already. i came across this video by Cat Bordhi that shows a brilliant way of inserting an afterthought heel. (actually she shows how to do an afterthought leg in the video but i thought i would try it for the heel of my socks.)

wish me luck for i have never cut into my knitting before... but it will all go well - i think...

 

 

 

it did go well:

i had a moment of terror there when i discovered that i had dropped three! stitches only when i had just closed the heel on the second sock. (it was rather late already.) i managed to pick them up and lift them back up to the bind-off where i darned the stitches in with quite a lenght of yarn. the heel is a bad place for this and i hope it holds up and does not wear out too quickly... but one advantage of an afterthought heel is that it can be replaced with comparative ease.

now i can go on and use up all the rest of my yarn leftovers on the leg...

 

happy knitting everyone!

how to do a short row heel without boomerang rounds

if you have knitted socks with short row heels before you have most certainly been annoyed with the so called "boomerang rounds" - the two rounds worked between the two sections of the heel - that usually screw up the colour flow on top of the sock. now, with solid yarn it does not make a difference of course, and with variegated yarns and very slow gradients it doesn't bother me so much either, but with a lot of self-patterning or self-striping yarn this thin line of two knit rows can be very irritating. same with a heel in a contrasting colour.

there is a way around this - and it's not an afterthought heel which would of course be a very elegant way to do it, but some knitters may not like an afterthought heel or have never tried one and don't want to - which is fine too...

this technique can be done with every type of short row heel and every type of stitches used to create said short rows: twin stitches, double stitches, wrap'n'turns, un-knitted stitches, etc. (these are the ones i know but there may be more.)

now let's get started:

when you are ready to start the heel, knit only three quarters of the round in your main colour and stop there. (i have 60 stitches in total on 4 dpns so i knit 45 stitches across three needles.) don't cut the yarn - you will pick it up again when the heel is done. start knitting the heel in your contrasting colour (or the same if you just want to keep the pattern from being disturbed on the top of the sock). leave a long tail end!
i have actually knitted the last two stitches before changing colours (stitches 44 and 45) with both yarns to keep the first stitch of the contrasting colour from undoing itself.

knit the first section of your heel as you normally would - going from long to short.

what you would normally do now is knit down to the left, from the center of the heel, dealing with the short row stitches and then across the top/front of the sock to the other/right side of the heel and up to the center again.

i've drawn a little diagram to show you what you want to do instead:

you knit down to the left as you normally would:

as you can see - i have all normal stitches on the left needle and my working yarn is hanging to the left as well. now you can either turn your work and purl across all the heel stitches to the other side - dealing with your short row stitches on the right needle -

or you can do it the way i do: by knitting backwards. this is a great video to learn how to knit backwards and learning this is really worth what little effort it takes. it's great to use on heels, for short stretches of knitting where you don't want to turn and purl. it's also a great technique for anyone switching from english style knitting to continental style knitting - i know lots of new continental knitters have troubles with purl stitches while knit stitches are comparatively easy.

when you are at the right side of the heel, knit back up the way to the center of the heel. you now have normal knit stitches across the heel, just as if you had knitted all the way around the whole sock. now you can start the second section of the short row heel.

when the heel is done you should be at the left side of the heel. (the heel i knit actually takes me back to the center of the heel when it's done so i just knit down to the left side.) now you can cut the contrasting colour, but make sure to leave a long enough tail.

go back to the right side of the heel where the main colour is waiting for you. (you can see the two stitches i knitted with both colours there. if you did that too, you can either just leave them or gently pull the contrasting colour stitches out again. i left them - it hardly shows once the heel is completely done.)

as you can see there is a gap because you have knitted several rows back and forth, creating something like a mini heel flap. now you can either pick up three or four stitches and decrease them in a mini gusset in the next couple of stitches -

or you can just ignore the gap and start knitting across the heel stitches in your main colour. (if you have done an afterthought heel before, this gap might be familiar to you, if not - never mind.) be sure to pull the first one or two stitches tight so you don't get ladders.

here i have knitted two rows around the sock already. you need to knit some more before you can close the hole.

as soon as you have knitted enough of the foot - maybe ten rounds or more, or even when you are done with the whole sock - you can turn the sock inside out and sew the hole closed. here is how i did it:

use the tail end on both sides to pick up the loops around the hole and pull it closed.

(sorry - i only noticed this picture came out blurry when i uploaded them onto the computer.)

make sure not to pick up the loops on the very edge. this might show on the outside. go for the next inside loop.

now gently pull the hole closed:

this is what it looks like on the outside:

secure the end and weave it in. check on the outside: in case there are any ladders or loose stitches you can darn them closed on the inside. this is how the inside of my socks look:

not extremly pretty but secure. i use a duplicate stitch on the purl side to weave in all of my ends. a couple of stitches in one direction and then the other. it adds no uncomfortable bulk and it has never yet come undone.

(sorry again - picture taken at night.)

there you have a short row heel without boomerang rounds disturbing your colour sequence.

 

if you want to know more about the type of short row heel i'm doing - there will be more on that soon.

and if you would like to know how i did the patterns on my cuff - you can find instructions for it here (cuff drops pattern) and here (mitred square patchwork socks).

happy knitting!

 

socks #8 and the caterpillar sock how-to

these are my ode-to-spring-socks - it's pair #37. the yarn is Lana Grossa India 2305 and it was a dream to knit with. they were done really quickly - because i enjoyed knitting them so much! - and would have been done even more quickly had i not waited for daylight to finish off the second heel because i took some photos of the process to write a tutorial some time soon... 

i could have easily matched them and made them twin socks but that's just not a thing i do - but i did kind of meta-match them because i made the first cast-on loop exactly at the change between two colours which gives me a differently coloured top edge (which is only a thin line really) but i like that they have that in common.

the inspiration for the leg came from Babajezas Wundertüte - i think i have linked to it in another post already but i'll link it again anyway... you can never have enough reference to the places that inspire you i think...

she doesn't say anything about the exact number of rows knitted and purled so i counted them as best as i could from the screen and then just went with it. i've called it the "caterpillar sock" and if i'm stepping on anyones toes by naming the pattern that and posting my way of doing it here, i do apologise...

this is for 4-ply sock yarn, instructions for 6-ply in ( )

• cast on the desired number of stitches
• *knit 2 - purl 2* 10 rounds (8 rounds)
  
• *knit 10 rounds (8 rounds) - purl 5 rounds (4 rounds)* as many times as you like to achieve the lenght of sock leg you want
• knit 10 rounds (10 rounds) before starting the heel
• finish the sock as you normally would

you can use the 4-ply instructions for 6-ply yarn of course. i've tried it but didn't like it so much so i changed it a little for thicker yarn. here is an example:

(although i started with the purl rounds right after the rib on this pair but it really does not matter...)

for pair #60 - you can find it at the bottom of this post - i modified the 4-ply pattern a little: i changed every other purl rib from "purl 5 rounds" to "purl 1 rd - knit 1 rd - purl 1 rd - knit 1 rd - purl 1 rd". it makes the purl section appear lighter and gives it a nice and soft look. you could do that for all the purl sections of course.

T has very sweetly requested another pair of socks for himself to wear to bed. after making his first pairs i got the impression that he didn't like wearing hand knitted socks very much because whenever he wanted to wear them he took them off rather soon again. then i realised that a) they are too warm for him to wear during the day - busy, playing children hardly ever get cold feet i think; at least mine don't, and b) they didn't fit him quite well because he kept stopping what he did to pull them up. so now when he said he wanted a new pair (the other ones might also be getting a little small already) i was very happy and instantly set to work. his favourite colour at the moment is red and when i pulled out the ball of yarn remembered what he had said when i first bought it back in autumn: "mama, you just have to knit me a pair of socks from this!" and the "just have" came with a big sigh to emphazise the importance of it... (he forgot it again and so did i to be honest but he remembered when i made the crochet fox doll.)

so now i'm calling T's new socks-to-be the fox-sox...

they have a roll down cuff, no ribbing and very little leg - more ankle socklets than socks. they'll get a three-segment heel (more on that soon) and i hope that it will fit him better than the normal heel (which apparently does not want to stay in place on his feet).

by the way: i've knitted 37 pairs of sock and this is the first one that is all one colour - and it is so boring! good thing they are so small...haha!

Related articles

socks #2

socks #1

socks #7 and the beginning of the happy socks

i finished pair #36 on march 17th so i could finally start the happy socks!

i've told you about the sock yarn leftover swap i'm doing with Rosemary in this post already (at the bottom of the post). last friday i started knitting the socks and i took the opportunity to try my first toe-up socks. since i don't know how much yarn i actually have, starting at the cuff would not make much sense...

this is a bosnian toe which starts out as a little square in stockinette stitch. all the stitches needed to knit in the round are picked up along the sides and the cast-on edge. you can find written instructions here and a video here (both by ColorJoy LynnH).

after knitting a couple of rounds with increases for the toes i started blending two yarns. i randomly knit one, two or three rounds in one colour and then the other. i don't have to cut the yarns when changing to the other colour, i only need to do that when i take an old colour out and add in a new one. when working with two little balls i just cross them on the inside to avoid gaps and carry up the one i'm not working with.

i love how they are turning out and how different they look even though i'm using the same sequences and yarns on both of them. i only do five to seven rounds at a time and then repeat the sequence on the other sock - that works okay...

as far as i'm now they cover about half of my foot, so i thought i'd do a sample of the heel i want to do: i've never done an afterthought heel before and i really don't want to knit too much or too little of the feet and risk the socks not fitting in the end.

it's always odd to take close-ups of feet, heels especially. but the heel (also in the written instructions and video series both linked above) was really easy to make and i like the shape of it. it fits quite well and will fit even better once there is more - foot and leg/cuff - to hold it in place properly. now i can basically "feel" where the heel starts in relation to my foot and knit the foot of the sock accordingly.

i'm still ill (grr - have been for about a week now! double-grrgrr) and was in need of a simple sock to knit - the yarn blending does require some concentration. so i cast on this one yesterday:

and by now i'm ready to decrease the first toe already... the colours sang me a wonderful song of spring when i opend the box looking for the perfect yarn and i just had to listen to it... it sang of the pink and copper flower buds of fruit trees, of red tulips and of fresh green birch tree leaves swaying in a warm breeze...

i hope you are all healthy and enjoy whatever you are doing... (and if you're not enjoying what you do, you should consider doing something that you do enjoy...)

Related articles

socks #2

socks #1

handspun #3

i just picked some brown and blue merino, hand-blended and started to spin. i hadn't spun in a while and felt like it and something brown and blue had been on my mind for a while...

i had trouble with this! for some reason i couldn't spin properly that day or i couldn't get the wheel to spin properly. i had problems with treadling speed, uptake, tension, drafting, etc... i guess most of the problems beginner spinners can have. i think the only problem i didn't really have was overtwisting the single. i rather think most of it turned out to be very much undertwisted...

i can't decide whether i like this yarn or hate it... it's pretty and there's lots of nice colourplay and i like the flowers - even though they gave me lots of trouble as well because of them being too bulky for the standard size orifice on my wheel. but i was so frustrated while i made it because nothing worked the way i wanted it.

i guess i could just call it Art Yarn and pretend that it was intended that way and that i actually can spin really good, even yarn - which i can... well, i don't know about good, but at least even...

i will look up some ways of troubleshooting: how do i correct uptake? how do i know if i have enough twist? how much tension is good/advisable when plying? things like that... when i have problems like that i kind of regret that i never took a spinning class and i wish i had a really good "theory of spinning" where i could read up on all the theoretical knowledge i don't have yet... i'm just too impatient to learn everything through trial and error... that would also get way too expensive...

the whole skein is just over 50m of yarn and i don't know what to do with it at all... i think i'll just keep it for a while and maybe i'll think of something... maybe i'll even continue spinning it...

even when i do manage to spin an even, (almost) balanced yarn i have to remind myself every now and then that i'm still very much a beginner making "unitentional" art yarn... i intended it to be art yarn but even art yarn has to be good yarn and not couldn't-set-the-wheel-right-lumpy-drafting-undertwisted-chaos-yarn...

but i like this picture very much...

now i'll be off to find out how to spin better...

this is what's on my wheel right now: plain coloured merino with colourful wensleydale locks spun in. i'll fill up the bobbin and then wind the whole lot into a center-pull ball for two-plying. i think it will be fun and colourful candy cane lockyness...

handspun #2

back in december i ordered a box of merino fibers from FILZFAKTOR!. they actually specialize in felting products, tools and accessories but they have lots of fibers in beautiful colours at a reasonable price (i think - i don't have that much experience with that yet). and what you can felt with you can usually also spin into yarn... these little fiber-butterflies were 20g each as i wanted lots of different colours.

i also ordered some dyed wensleydale and gotland locks for some texture... while i waited for my wheel to arrive back in autumn i found this video showing how to make "Rosebud Yarn" (at about 7:22) and i really wanted to give this a try so i got quite a selection of greens and browns and pinks in my box.

i want to thank Kate from Ashford's for the wonderful inspiration! (though i doubt this will reach her - it's the thought that counts and that will travel to wherever she is... i think...)

i sort of "hand blended" (i don't even know if this is a "thing" spinners do but it worked fine for me since i don't have any professional blending tools that would usually be used to prepare and blend fibers for spinning) my greens and browns, threw in a little teal and some grey gotland locks and spun a single. i took a ball of fuzzy grey kid mohair i had bought ages ago for a knittig project i didn't make and followed - or at least tried to follow - the instructions in the video. i also added some green locks to it...

it's rather overtwisted (not even a good soak could fix that) and if it was plain yarn i would be very upset about this, but the curlyness adds beautifully to the organic texture of it. it's also not particularly soft but it was my first try - so i guess it's good...

some of my rosebuds didn't turn out too great. some got too big and loose and don't feel as tight as i would have liked them to be. some have a rather funny shape and with some of them the "twig" holding them in place just ran out of my hands... i had troubles with treadling speed and uptake and twist with this yarn... but it was great fun to make all the same and if i make another skein of this - i'm sure i will - i'll do better...

when i was little we had a video tape of a live-action sleeping beauty movie that i liked very much. sleeping beauty in german is "dornröschen" - "dorn" = thorn and "röschen" = small rose/s - which is what i have called the yarn. you know, in this movie i liked as a kid, the twelfth fairy, the one who is late and then twists the curse from "instant death" to "sleeping for a hundred years", puts everyone in the castle to sleep as well and then casts a spell on the spinning wheel which then spins all the vines and thorns that overgrow the whole palace and the grounds...

and when i look at this yarn i imagine that this is actually what the enchanted spinning wheel spun - yards upon yards of curly, twisty, wooly vines that weaved their way all over and across the place growing felt buds and flowers, felting into an impenetrable carpet as rain and wind and sun hit it year after year, fending off all the unworthy who came to take the sleeping princess away before the time was right...

i think there is a reason for spinning wheels being such important props in fairy tales... (i mean apart from the fact that spnning wheels were basic household items back when most of our classic fairy tales were written/collected). there is just something magical about them... the plot point of "spinning straw into gold" became much more understandable to me: it's a metaphor for patience and skill. take something you have in abundance: straw (which for me stands for fiber) and turn it into something useful, valuable and beautiful: yarn.

next i "blended" myself a rainbow. actually i made two of those. i just pulled strands off my fiber and had them overlap each other so the colours would blend a little at the joints...

the outer layer on this bobbin looks kind of like a mess but it was with this yarn that i discovered i really like navajo plying...

these two skeins of rainbow yarn were the first of my handspun i knitted with. it was a little odd - i'm not really used to yarn that's thicker than sock yarn... but i made a linen-stitch scarf and i'm quite pleased with it...

next i used every colour of merino i had (some of each - leaving only a few very dark shades out) and made this huge ball of fluff ready to be spun:

i sometimes like to stop and take a look at my bobbin...

about 219m of colourful lovelyness - and fairly even. navajo plied again.

my wonderful husband gave me two beautiful braids of merino/mulberry-silk blend for christmas. he bought them here and i'm definitely going back there...

and since i had not spun anything since october due to lack of fiber i felt like i needed the two batches of rainbow yarn and the colourful one to get back into it because i really didn't want to mess up with these wonderful braids. i wanted to get as much even yarn out of them as my skill level allowed for. while i spun the other ones they waited patiently, enjoying to be admired. because i did... i took them up, stroked and squished them, took in the wonderful colourplay because i knew once spun into yarn they would be something else entirely. still wonderful, still colourful, still soft (hopefully) but very different...

i think the colours muted quite a bit and spinning a blend was totally new and different to me since i had only spun commercially processed merino before. this blend is hand dyed and some bits of the fiber were slightly felted which made it harder to draft. i learned a lot about adjusting treadling speed and how i have to draft between the easy, silky bits and some of the not so easy bits... i love the yarn very much. it's incredibly soft. i got about 152m out of the 100g braid which upset me a little because i had come across this pattern for a triangular shawl that had been designed for handspun yarn and that i really like the look of but it requires at least 220m of yarn to get a good wearable size.

so i thought i'd like to practice spinning very fine yarn some more before i start with the second braid, and i prepared some pink-brown-purple merino and started spinning...

still only about 166m... but it's very fluffy (a little overtwisted) and i'm rather curious to see how it knits up even though i don't think it will be me who ends up knitting with it...

now - i love this one! over 236m of gorgeously soft, softly coloured merino silk yarn - the silk makes it all shimmery like mother-of-pearl - and i am going to knit my shawl out of it. when i'm ready to part with the skein as it is now... just as with the transformation from a braid of roving to spun yarn, the change from yarn to a knitted piece sometimes has to await the right moment... the braid has been called "wonderland" by the dyer and both braid and yarn are very suited to the name...

rainbowy things and scrap yarn

every now and then i like to surround myself with rainbowy things. maybe it's just the "default" colourscheme because i don't want to commit myself to a colourway i might get bored of or dislike some time later - but i actually don't think so... i just like it when colours flow.

after i finished my mixed stitch blanket i had lots of this cotton yarn left - i don't recommend using cotton for making blankets by the way - and then i discovered that another brand of cotton i still had from a failed project - i used some of it for Mrs. Penstemmon, my african flower hippo - requires the same size needle and i could mix them and create a more complete rainbow effect.

last summer i ordered this yarnkit to make a crochet circle cardigan and when i thought about what to do with all the leftover cotton i decided to make a smaller version for R to wear in spring and summer. (it all started when i found this post somehow.) the above picture shows the beginnings of it and i'm past the armholes and all the way round with the colours already, starting again with the dark red.

i'm also working on a pair of mojo socks using Schoppel Zauberball "Frische Fische". it is not a perfect rainbow because it does not have any purple and goes from dark blue - almost black - back over green and yellow to red and from red back to blue...

 

as much as i love watching my socks grow and the beautiful colours morph into each other - when i'm knitting with Zauberball i almost like seeing how the ball changes even more...

i have two of these left from my circle cardigan and they will be turned into socks at some point too. unless i desperately need rainbow yarn for something else... it could happen...

on to the scrap yarn:

i'm very excited about this! i'm in a group called Winwick Mum Knit n Natter on facebook where members can share knitting and crochet (anything really - yarn related or not) projects, yarn purchases, ups and downs, techniques, links to patterns, questions about techniques and patterns, etc. it's a really lovely place. very friendly and encouraging and helpful. a while ago i came across this post about socks knitted from leftovers and we started talking about what we could do with our sock yarn scraps in the group. there are lots and lots of possibilities...

but i'm a sock knitter at heart so that's what i want to do... and then a lovely lady named Rosemary told me how she used to swap yarn scraps with a friend. i loved that idea and was sad that i don't have anyone around who i could swap yarn scraps with... and you know what: she kindly offered to do a yarn swap with me! so we sent each other the first load of sock yarn left overs, parting them roughly in the middle so we would each have the same yarn. we will both knit socks with it and even though we work with the same materials the results will be different because of our induvidual colour choices, pattern choice and so on... i'm really looking forward to seeing what we are going to come up with.

in the above picture you can see my collection so far (my actual sock yarn scrap stash is much bigger - those are the swap sock scraps). it's funny how we both went with a similar colourscheme without knowing what the other one would send... the three balls on the right are the ones Rosemary sent me and she dyed them herself. i love them! (she sent me some other lovely things too...) the pink and white one has sparkle in it, the rusty brown one has lovely textural flakey bits and the purple one is my favourite shade of lilac lilac...

Thanks again, Rosemary!!!

Rosemary runs an Etsy store called Rosie's Moments. she paints and dyes sock yarn - you should go and have a look if you are a knitter (and if you are not - look anyway) - her yarns are lovely!

i can't wait to play with these yarns and arrange them and select colourways... i want to try my hand at "blending" which apparently is when you knit very few rows of each colour although not in regular stripes but in a sort of interchanging way so you can't tell the different yarns apart in the end. i've seen scrap socks knitted that way and they are soo cool! i also want to try a specific technique of toe-up with these...

(while looking for the post about the yarn blending i found this just now... isn't he awesome...?)

 

socks #6

time to show some more finished socks. as mentioned in my previous sock-post i have become quite the sock knitting machine in the winter. i have slowed down since the start of the new year as there were lots of other things to do and to be done as well, but i'm still knitting...

pair #24 - using Schoppel Zauberball Crazy "Kleiner Fuchs" - love them!

pair #25 and #26 using lovely sparkly christmas yarn. one pair of mojos for my husband and one pair of perfect fit for me. the yarn came in a value pack of three and was a limited seasonal release by WollButt.

pair #27 Opal Tiger

T requested these when he saw the yarn. he is very cute and i think he can appreciate things i make. i guess it's because he sees me making them and he kind of knows that i spend quite a bit of time on it.

the only thing is: after the first oh! and ahh! and thank you, mama! he doesn't really like to wear them. maybe they don't fit well enough or maybe they are too warm for him. i don't know, but i won't give up. i will find a sock that he likes to wear. maybe a little ankle socklet and a different heel shape fit him better...

i like pair #28 a lot. i combined a self striping and a single coloured yarn. the colours remind me of dried rose petals. i made a patchwork sock using different textures on the leg, a double roll down cuff and of course some knitted patchwork squares. i gave them to my aunt and she liked them a lot too.

i made pair #29 for my mum for christmas. she liked my other rainbow socks, but as mentioned in my previous sock-post (link on top of the post) i could only get one ball of the yarn and almost used it up for socks with high legs. when opal re-released it in a new collection called "Happy..." (4061) with silver sparkle i just couldn't resist ordering two balls so i could make a nice, long-legged pair for my mum and would have plenty left over for another pair for myself... i'm pretty selfish when it comes to sock knitting, you know, because i want all the pretty yarn for myself. and if i have to give socks away there has to be some yarn left so i can use it for something to keep... it's like keeping a yarn diary... a little...

speaking of yarn diary: i started a project journal to keep track of the pair numbers (i'm weird about that), stitches cast on, cuff pattern, rounds of leg and foot, type of heel used, etc. it's so useful i can't believe i haven't thought of it before. if i can't cast on the second sock right away for whatever reason or get sidetracked by another project or the knitting mojo just fails me i don't have to furiously count the rounds on the first sock any more. i just look them up in the journal. if i don't forget i also note down the date of starting and finishing.

pair #30 using a ball of Lana Grossa Magico II that had been sitting in my stash for ages. i lost the tag so i don't know the colour number and i don't know if this colourway is still available. i really liked this yarn but when they where done i thought i should have known better - it's very soft and sold as sockyarn but it's not really suited for sockmaking. it's something about the yarn: when i wear these socks for half a day the get all limp and wide and don't fit well any more at all...i have made a pair with similar yarn before that has the same problems... i have two other balls of this kind of yarn and i'm using one for a Drachenschwanz shawl and will use the last one for something other than socks as well.

i borrowed the idea for the pattern on the leg here by the way...

pair #31 is a 6-ply Schoppel Zauberball called "Herbstsonne". i had some of it left and it was just enough for little socklets.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

for pair #32 i used the very last scrap of old Opal yarn. i made my mum a pair of these and then didn't think there was enough left for another pair. but i just tried... it worked. i like these socks a lot. they are very comfortable when i want warm feet but don't want my ankles to feel "choked" by lots of material. (that can happen to me. same with scarves: sometimes i love being hugged and cuddled by soft stuff around my neck and throat and then there are times where i feel caged and choked if i have something around my neck.

 

i love these socks! #33 is another pair of mojos - i find i really like making mojos... the yarn is Opal - Der Kleine Prinz "Die Rose des kleinen Prinzen" and i instantly fell in love with it when i saw it. i was over the moon when i saw that one of my go-to online-shops had it in stock and i had to order it for some of my christmas money along with "Der kleine Prinz und der Fuchs". (and when i checked in there not long ago the little prince yarns were on sale and i had to get "Der kleine Prinz und der Brunnen" and "Der kleine Prinz und der Laternenanzünder" as well before they go out of stock and i have to go on a yarn hunt again... they are so beautiful and the colours are stunning! i might have a bit of a problem when it comes to yarn... but honestly: i don't know any knitter who doesn't. and, unless you have a moth problem in your house, yarn doesn't spoil...

pair #34 was a commision from my mum for a friend's/colleague's birthday. she (my mum) picked a Schoppel Zauberball Crazy Stärke 6 called "Der Lenz ist da!" i gave them a similar pattern on the leg to the one i did on #30 only shorter but long enough so they go nicely above the ankle when pulled all the way up. i still have to inquire about wheather or not she liked them and if they fit... i hope so...

pair #35 is my latest finished pair for now. i used the same pattern i used for my sparkly christmas sock and they are very nice... the yarn knitted up quite differently from what i would have expected just from looking at the ball but i like it. it's Lana Grossa Colorado 6901.

i have started another pair already. more mojos on the way... Zauberbälle seem to be just made for this pattern.

that's it with the long sock-posts... unless i take another longer break from bloging (i don't plan to) i won't have to catch up on all my socks any more - haha!

happy knitting!

i'm back

i haven't posted in a long time. time has kind of gotten away from me and whenever i thought i could (or should) write a post i didn't feel like writing something long and picture heavy - so i didn't... you see: long and picture heavy posts are the kind of posts i enjoy when i read other peple's blogs, so i thought i myself should blog the way i would enjoy reading it. now i notice: this doesn't suit me. and i guess that's fine. there are other ways to write blog posts. 

writing long posts and uploading lots of pictures annoyed me and i don't really have time to do it during the day (maybe sometimes I would have time, but whenever i sit down to write something on the computer the kids come running and want something) so it usually took up most of my evenings and i didn't want that. i have a facebook page that goes with my blog and i've been posting a lot there recently which got me thinking: why don't i just write blog posts the way i write facebook posts? a quick line and a picture or two and it's done and it only took five minutes (and that's only because i honstly think the typepad photo uploading service is very inefficient).

i'm going to try this - i don't know why i didn't think of this before actually. i really want to write about and record my daily life more but somehow i had this fixed idea in my head that blog posts have to be wordy and full of photos... don't know why...

there have been lots of things going on since i last posted:

i have knitted 20 pairs of socks since september! i can't believe this... i will not post pictures of them all now because it would take forever but i'm thinking of setting up a gallery sort of thing where i can add all the finished pairs to over time.

i finally finished my mixed stitch blanket (which i started back in spring 2014 and have been working on on and off whenever the mood struck me). it's living on the sofa and being used already.

you can find a very detailed pattern with lots of photos and easy to follow explanations here if you're interested in making one for yourself.

i also spun some yarn but i'll write a seperate post on that because that one will be picture heavy... here's a little sneak peek:

i stumbled across Lalylala Dolls while browsing through google images seaching for something and was instantly smitten with them. i bought some of the patterns (here) and have made the house fly and a fox already. there will be more to come... many more to come...

we are going to move next winter. our new place is being built and supposed to be finished next winter around the end of november. we'll have unlimited lease, affordable rent, no draft from the windows and underfloor heating - all of which we've never had in any of the places where we've lived before. i'm very much looking forward to it and already have lots of ideas for decorating. we need to plan our kitchen - also something we've not done before - and despite the ongoing issue of how-do-we-pay-for-that i'm looking forward to that too because in all the kitchens i've been in so far (at home or as a guest) there have been features i liked and features i hated so we came up with a list/concept of the things we would like to have in our kitchen and we'll just see what's possible...

i made a canvas last weekend as a thank-you present for a friend of my mum's who has given us lots of kids' clothes her son had outgrown. my mum had commissioned me to knit her a pair of socks as a birthday present as well so i matched them up:

i'm glad that spring is on its way. we have liverleaf and snowdrops to marvel at on the way to kindergarten and once we're into march it can't be long until it finally gets a little warmer (on a more regular basis - we've had an odd mild day or two)... i'm looking forward to sitting outside again while the kids play without freezing my butt off or having to put on so many layers i can't move any more. and i'm sure the kids will enjoy not having to wear so much too.

i'm sure i'll be back soon with something short and small about something that i'm working on or that's happening... until then.

socks #5

i have become quite the knitting machine recently. all i really want to do is sit comfortably somewhere and knit socks. maybe listen to an audiobook, or sit outside if the sun's shining, or chat to the family, or maybe even just follow my thoughts while they wander... but that not so much actually - sometimes my thoughts can go on long hikes...

that's not happening of course. at least not all the time since there are other things to be done like cooking and laundry and walking to kindergarten and back and the little bit of cleaning that simply can not be avoided... (you may notice here: i'm not the biggest fan of house work and chores.)

anyway, i pulled out my entire stash of sock yarn recently - just for fun and to see how much i actually had... a lot.

i have a box of lovely gradient high quality yarns, a box of solid colours, a box of cheapo yarns i picked up because they were at the store and then there's of course the box that holds everything that doesn't fit in the other boxes... and of course i could try and convince myself that it's not so much after all... but i won't - because it would be a lie...

pulling all of that yarn out of the cupboard and spreading it out like that was very inspiring. not that i had really forgotten about any of the yarn i had, but seeing it all at once refreshed all the ideas i had when i bought it...

(i should mention that i did not have to pay for all of this yarn myself. one year for my birthday my wonderful husband had asked the family to contribute a little something to a yarn-buying-present. i got a lot of money for buying yarn to my heart's content... i'm so lucky...)

to date i have finished 23 pairs of socks. i have two new ones on the needles already - i always work on at least two different pairs parallel because i tend to get bored if i have to work on the same thing for too long. so when i don't feel like working with the green yarn i can still do some knitting with the selfstriping yarn - just an example.

i'm also working on a scarf for R - it's going to be the same one i made for T when he was about the age R is now - only in different colours.

i have so many plans! i have two different techniques for toe-up socks i want to try and at least one if not two different heels. i want to learn how to do twist- or swing-socks, which is creating wavey patterns using short rows, and hexagon-socks, and i want to knit funky patchwork socks with double rolled edges, knitting going in all directions, knitted dominos, maybe even some crochet sections. leftovers and yarnscraps would be great for that... at some point i guess i will want to tackle cables as well. i was playing with some shawl-ideas too and i have already chosen the yarn to knit socks in the linen-stitch.

sometimes i have a picture of myself in my head with several pairs of arms and hands each knitting on something different. for some very strange reason i always seem to wear a lace bonnet in these pictures...

these are my husband's, pair #19 made from about half of a Schoppel Zauberball Stärke 6 (6-ply) "Café Flair". it's a very simple and basic sock with k1 p1 ribbing, a boomerang heel and a ribbon toe.

this is pair #21. (i can't show #19 and #20 just yet.) i just loved this yarn so much. i first saw it when i read this post in 2012 i think (sadly the blog has been discontinued but i'm glad the content's still there) and i searched everywhere for it but i didn't find it. it's by Opal and it was in a collection from 2011 - no wonder i couldn't find it - opal yarn collections apparently ship to retailers and when it's sold out it's sold out. if i understand that right they don't have a lot of "permanent stock" which is okay and a good thing i think but sometimes it can be frustrating when you see and old blogpost where someone has that wonderful yarn and then you can't find it anymore because it's a year and a half later and it's sold out everywhere... anyway - last spring opal released a "best of" collection where this lovely rainbow yarn was re-released. it's full name is "Opal Leckerbissen Best of Opal 4-fach Surprise, Farbe 4061". it would have been easier had i known that before spending hours clicking through every yarnshop i could find. some that had it didn't ship to austria or the shipping cost was about twice as much as the yarn itself. finally i found an itty-bitty yarnshop that still had one single ball of it left and i got it!

opal has just re-released it in yet another collection called "Happy..." and this time it comes with silver sparkle! i might just have to...

i called pair #22 "wicked wizard" and i have dyed the yarn myself back in 2012 or something... i was very surprised to see how the yarn knitted up - one section of purple (or green) was exactly enough for one round (with the number of stitches i had for these socks).

after i had dyed the skein of yarn and wound it into a ball i wasn't too crazy about it and put it into one of the boxes. when i asked my husband lately if he wanted to choose the yarn for his next pair of socks i was very flattered that he chose this one specifically... oh - and i love how the heel turned out on these:

when knitting in rows the yarn made very nice stripes...

pair #23 was only finished yesterday. the pink reminds me of the "Hubba Bubba" gum i used to love when i was little - and i know i loved it mainly because of its colour and the pink yarn was in the box of solids right next to that rich burgundy colour so i just had to use them together. i inverted the stripes for the second sock because i kind of made a promise to myself to never knowingly make another exactly matching pair of socks again. Friedensreich Hundertwasser, the austrian artist, never wore matching socks. at first accidentally and then intentionally, saying that clothing has to become art again. that made me think about knitting as an artform... and while i try to knit my socks a perfectly as i'm able to (far from it though) to make sure they last long i want to be and try to be artistic when it comes to choice of pattern and colour. it started with me considering it a waste of yarn to pull out the thread of selfpatterning yarn to start the second sock at the same point as the first one - i just didn't bother - now i don't want to. i like looking at my feet and seeing different colours and patterns... that means if i knit a pair of striped socks and i stick to the same number of rows per colour - the least i can do is make them uneven. if i want a pair of perfectly matching socks i will go and buy some...

i'm knitting Opal Tiger socks for T at the moment,

a scarf for R using Schoppel Zauberball Stärke 6 "Kunterbunt" and

Mojo Socks for myself using the absolutely gorgeous Schoppel Zauberball crazy "Kleiner Fuchs" (= little fox).

i'm busy...

handspun #1

this is my very first handspun - i've talked about it here already.

these are the fibers i ordered along with the spinning wheel and i started with the multi coloured one.

i pulled it into long thin strands which revealed the colours much better.

that's it all spun into a rather chunky and uneven (and of course over- and undertwisted) single.

while i was waiting for my wheel to be delivered i watched A LOT of videos on spinning basics and techniques. and i looked at lots and lots of beautiful images of funky art yarns that had all kinds of things like beads and charms and laces etc. spun into them. of course i wanted to try some of that. i started with beads and coils - although i should admitt that the fist coil kind of just happened and i really liked it so i just went with it. i guess i could have waited with that until i had some more experience with plying in general but why should i? as long as i don't hurt my wheel (or myself or anyone else for that matter) there can be no harm in experimenting with something new... this is the result of said experiments - and i love it:

i plied the single with some very strong crochet cotton thread - in one or two of the videos the spinning ladies mentioned that a ply-thread has to be sturdy enough not to break on you while you are plying so i gave it a good pull and actually hurt my fingers... i figured that meant the thread was sturdy enough. it took ages to thread a lot of tiny seed beads onto the thread. the beads were not the best choice because they didn't slide freely on the thread which made it hard to feed them into the yarn while plying. but now i know better and for my first try i guess i could have done worse. same with the coils - most of them are way too loose and wobble and slide up and down a little. i only plied as much yarn that way as i had beads threaded on the ply-thread and there was no way i was going to thread any more... it turned out to be about 46m of yarn...

i plied the rest of the colourful single with more cotton and some shiny golden and teal sewing thread. i ended up with roughly 87m.

it's fun mini art yarn. i've called it "harlequin" and will probably knit a loop-scarf with it - on some big needles to bring out the coils...

next i started the pink and green roving.

with this i wanted to try another thing i had seen during my spinning-video binge. i wanted to spin in fabric flowers. i parted the fibers equally and spun a plain single with one half. then i prepared the flowers and spun them into the other half of the roving.

i plied the plain single and the flowery single and i'm very proud of the result.

it's very soft and feels luxurious and special in a way... over 105m of lovelyness...

this one was sold as an "art batt" - it's also just merino but it has some very sparkly angelina-fibers in it, which is a synthetic product but all it does is add sparkle. you don't feel it because there is so little of it.

it was a little difficult to spin though because the angelina was just kind of sitting on top of the merino and was not really integrated which caused it to bunch up while i spun it... maybe i did something wrong and there was something that i should have known or be cautious about while spinning it. i was also a litle disappointed because the entire base (underside) of the batt was in this dark forest green that can be seen a little of in the pic above. it didn't say so in the description - i thought i was getting something springy/summery with that lovely pinkish red, orangeish yellow and light green (a bit of dark green i don't mind) but when i unrolled it and turned it over it was like a carpet of moss... it still turned out nicely when i spun it and it actually grew on me since...

it went from summery to christmasy...

when i spun this i tried to really pay attention to getting as even as possible and to get as much mileage out of it as possible - as much as my "skill level" allowed for anyway... it's quite chunky but not as uneven as the other ones - still uneven enough though...

i split the fiber in half again to fill two bobbins so i could ply them together. i had some leftover on one of the bobbins when the single on the other one had run out so made a tiny little mini skein with the rest, plying it with the cotton thread with some gold beads on it.

what i want to do next is practise practise practise until i can spin really fine yarn that is evenly plied - sockyarn is the thickness i have in mind here. what could be more fabulous that knitting socks from handspun yarn...?

socks #4

how could i forget my husband's socks?

this was the 3^rd or 4^th pair of socks i ever knitted. it's made from Regia 6-fach "irland grau color 05858". it was the last pair i made using the eye-of-partridge heel before i swiched to the boomerang heel. 

this was maybe the 6^th pair i knitted. i was just about to complete an online-order of yarn and asked him if he would like to pick some yarn for his next pair of socks. this is Opal Rainforest "snake". i love the yarn and i love that my husband picked it. it was totally not what i would have expected him to choose and that's why i liked it so much. it's nice when people surprise me in that way...

his next pair is already on the needles. i will have to close the toes using the kitchener stitch though and i'm a little scared of that - i've never done it before.

currently i have my 17^th, 18^th and 19^th pair on the needles.

happy knitting everyone!

socks #3

i can't believe i cast on these socks in december 2013! on the 11^th some time mid morning to be precise. that was the day R was born and i needed to keep my hands busy. i finished the first one quite quickly actually - while she was still really tiny and sleeping most of the time. i cast on the second sock and i knitted the cuff and about half of the leg and then i just didn't get to it anymore. then we moved and for a while i didn't even know where they were...

also, because of the christmasyness of them i didn't really feel like working on them after the new year (2014) had started. i don't know why i didn't finish them in time for the christmas season 2014... really no idea whatsoever. i don't even think i made any socks last autumn. i made a jelly bag cap for my brother-in-law (who had always wanted one that actually fit his head) and a couple's mitten for holding hands in.

but no socks. at least i don't remember. that's weird. but maybe i'm just getting a little confused with time here... nope, my hubby just cofirmed that i really didn't (i'm all i awe that he remembers and i don't - he even remembered that i remarked on it last year).

anyway - back to my socks. i had bought the yarn on a complete whim because i just couldn't resist the golden sparkly thread that had been plied with the yarn. it came in a pack of three 100g balls - each selfstriping in red, green and white resulting in a different stripe pattern. i started with the red and green block stripes.

that's what's left now.

since i've tried the traditional eye-of-partridge heel on my first three pairs of socks and noticed that they don't quite fit my foot, i've been working the boomerang heel and by now i manage to knit it pretty evenly and without the holes that most fellow sock-knitters complain about. especially since i found this wonderful video tutorial showing a way to knit the boomerang heel that really leaves absolutely no holes - it's genius! the brilliant woman who came up with it realized that the backrows where you purl are the reason for the holes occuring, so what she teaches you to do is knit backwards so you don't have to turn and purl back - backwards double stitches included. the video is in german but if you already know how to do the boomerang heel you should be able to follow just by watching carefully.

for my christmas socks i wanted to try another heel-technique that skips the two rows knitted around the whole sock between the two parts of the heel, because i didn't want to ruin the nice stripes on the front of the sock.

had i knitted the two rows after the first half of the heel, i would have ended up with a very thin line of red in the middle of the green stripe (left sock) and a very thin line of green in the middle of the red stripe (right sock) - i didn't want that.

that other technique works like this: knit the first half of the heel as usual, don't knit the two rows - instead knit the second half of the heel just as you usually would but every double stitch will be turned into a double-double stitch... sounds complicated but it kind of works. the only thing was that the holes came back! oh nooo! and it turns out that this sort of heel (which is needed when knitting two socks at the same time with the magic loop) doesn't really fit my foot again. it makes the heel kind of pointy and sticking up rather than fitting snuggly. i guess that will "wear in" after i wear them for a while and they have been washed a couple of times.

back to the holes in my socks.

what to do?

i took a piece of yarn and a darning needle and just darned them. i didn't stitch them up because i wanted the knitted fabric to stay flexible. i just weaved the yarn back and forth to create more fabric between the holes.

this didn't create any additional bulk and it's barely visible from the outside.

i'm so glad that worked! now i finally have my christmas socks ready (and with time to spare) for this year's holiday season!

T saw me working on them and was totally fascinated by the fact that the yarn is sparkly. (it doesn't show in the pics very much but they do sparkle beautifully!) i asked him if he wanted some too and his answer was a softly breathed: "jaa..." with a very cute delighted expression on his face. so with the leftover red-and-green i made these:

i didn't have quite enough of it left, so i let him pick one of the other balls of the pack (pic above - the one with the tons of yarn wound around the belly band - what's so hard about making proper center-pull balls?) and sort of "invented" yet another variaton of the boomerang heel. it worked for the little socks and i want to try it on an adult size pair as well and if that works i'll share it with you...

wow... that was a lot of talk about just one (and a little) pair of socks... sorry about that... =)

********************

for all of you german speaking knitters who also use english patterns and instructions (and vice verca), i found this great document that has a lot of knitting terms and abbreviations translated from US english to german: here

back to school...

on the way to kindergarten

it's actually been two weeks of school and kindergarten already... and i already feel like there has not been any summer break at all... i don't know what it is really but just knowing it's school-time stresses me out a little already. and i don't even have to go there.

T's chalking a house

one of the things is that i have a really hard time getting up in the moring. i'm an owl-type by nature and according to recent studys by chronobiologists this is not a thing that can be "un-trained" or "re-trained" and "just go to bed earlier" doesn't do the trick. my personal body-clock is set to get up at around 09:00 and go to bed between 23:00 and 24:00... and there isn't much i can do about it... so when i have to get up at 07:00 it feels like 03:00 or 04:00 in the morning. i have a wonderful husband who knows and respects that and since it's not AS hard for him to get up in the morning as it is for me he lets me sleep as long as possible. usually he wakes me when he has to leave the house to go to work - at about 07:20 - i know i'm blessed.

another thing is that i never got rid of the "school-rhythm": my year starts in september, not january, even though i don't go to school myself. but since my husband is a teacher, my mother is a teacher, my dad's job runs very parallel to the school-year, my mother-in-law is a teacher and of course the kids go to kindergarten and later to school too it's kind of natural for me to stick with that too. i don't mind it much really. when i was in school myself i always thought it would be weird to get a job later that doesn't follow the school-rhythm (and i still dread that!). i just never knew it any other way...

lovely overgrown flowery streetlight

T settled back into kindergarten very well. the group got a new teacher at the beginning of term and he has adjusted to her i think... he's good at that. he's so open minded and takes change rather well. i also did prepare him very gently during the last couple of days before start of term - that may have helped too... she is rather young and seems to be a very kind, competent, friendly sort of woman. i'm glad - i have to admit: i was a little worried since i liked his former teacher very much...

R is getting so big and she's so grown up already... she's so mischievous and funny... very generous with her hugs and kisses (at least with me)... she plays with cars and trains as well as T does and she plays cooking and setting the table as well as T does... she's very much into doing what T does anyway - which also means that when he happens to be mean to her she will retaliate. maybe not immediately but eventually...

cute brown mouse eating birdfood in my mum's shed

they both love listening to stories by Reinhard Lakomy at the moment. the stories have lots of songs in them and they are whimsical, funny, unusual and totally different. i used to love them when i was little - and i still do now. even almost 20 years later i can still sing along most of the songs. we switch between Der Traumzauberbaum and Schlapps und Schlumbo for now. there are many more but i think it's best to wait until the kids are done with these before we start the next one... R even has a special word for each of them so she can voice her requests: "mauwau" and "mamu/mabu" respectively.

happy husband is playing his birthday present

my creativity has been challenging lately... sometimes the muse just kisses me and i can come up with things just like that and i work my way through a frenzy of productivity. and some (most of the) times it drags on like spit out gum that's been heated up nicely on hot concrete and someone stepped right into it...

recently i just didn't know what it was going to be:

• i love papercrafts and making books and journals. no question about that but i tend to get stuck with whatever paper i'm working on very quickly these days.
  
• i felt like sewing a little more again (but nothing close to the sewing obsession i had a couple of years ago when i thought i wanted to make a living of sewing purses and handbags) - i made myself a light summer shirt and a kind of wannabe-medieval shirt for T which he wore last weekend when we were at the big annual medieval-festival in Eggenburg.
• now that summer's pretty much over and we are heading for autumn i felt this natural urge to pick up knitting socks again. this urge has set in every september since i learnt how to knit socks five years ago - it seems to be something of a nesting-thing: it starts to get colder (even if it doesn't really just yet) and i want to make sure my feet stay warm. why the drawer full of socks in my wardrobe doesn't suffice i don't know.
• there is the ongoing crochetblanket (which i haven't talked about on the blog but will soon) which i started around easter 2014 and then had to set aside and eventually pack up for a while because i couldn't get to it and the box of yarn was in the way. i pulled it out again this summer and continued working on it.

for some reason i don't seem to be able to knit in summer while crocheting totally works. i made a circle cardigan (which i will show soon as well) and then went on to the african-flower crochet hippo - which is done and absolutely adorable and i want to make more of them.

this is Mrs. Penstemmon

so what's it gonna be? books and journals? cards? (i forgot to take pics of the birthday card i made for my sister-in-law and i've totally stopped art journaling for now even though i absolutely and totally needed my own Dylusions Crative Journal and wanted to participate in several year-long art journaling challenges about a year ago. socks? crochet and fabric soft toys? blankets? i would really like to knit myself an autumn coat - a nice and thick one...i need about ten more pairs of arms - and all strechable like Kamaji's in Spirited Away.

i gave her a heart of course

and all that next to running a house and a family - but that's not optional. (not that i would want it to be.)

and she has the best butt

well... all of that indecision will be over when my new spinning wheel will be delivered in about a week or two... not that i need another expensive hobby... =)

nothing in particular...

wow! i haven't written a post in over two months! how did that happen...? well - i don't really know exactly why or how... we have been busy with life i guess and i have not yet gotten into the habit of blogging enough to make it a part of my life i suppose... also i didn't really feel like it anyway and as it is my blog i figured i could keep that any way i wanted... 

i worked on pages for two "deconstructed art journal" page swaps i was in... (i'm a member of the facebook-group "deconstructed art journaling" - one joins a swap-group of 5 people - with a theme or not - and creates 5 8"x8" pages (folded in half) accordingly to be sent out to the other 4 members of your group - one you keep for yourself. you get one page each in return to be bound into an artjournal any way you please. the main point of doing it that way is to keep the postage as low as possible since the format is made to fit a standard business envelope - there are art-swap-groups where entire books and journals are being sent around, which can get expensive.)

i was in a group with the theme "enchanted forest/garden" and made these:

the back has an extract from "the secret garden" written on it. the scene where mary calms colin after his big tantrum by telling him of all the wonders of the garden... i love that book...

the other group-swap i was in had the theme "peacocks" and also the challenge to give the page some sort of shaped edge. this is what i came up with:

i got beautiful pages in return which i might write about once i have bound them into books...

i made a journal two weeks ago. a little envelope journal that included the first 1st of using an envelope for the cover - i used a padded one which makes it a little poufy - as well as the second 1st of my first attempts at tea-dying paper, envelopes and doilies. i don't think i did it the best possible or most efficient way but i was fine with the results.

it has lots of pages in it, some tuck-spots and tags and paperclips. i intend to add more of everything and some stamping... i don't know what to do with it yet but i want to take it to a little local store i discovered recently that sells vintage (inspired) and shabby chic items and ask the owner if she would be at all interested in displaying my journals - this store might just have the right sort of customers...

i made a good-bye-card for T's kindergarten teacher. sadly she has been transferred somewhere else...

parents were lining up to say good-bye and thank-you and to give her flowers and chocolates... we all got a little emotional i think...

kindergarten is done for now until september and T's currently on a mini-vacation at my mother's - he loves it there and always tries to talk her into letting him stay even longer - which is sometimes possible and sometimes not. R misses her big brother though. she runs into his room first thing in the morning to look for him when he's not home... very cute...

this is what i'm currently working on. it's going to be a circle-cardigan.

this is the main circle almost finished and by now i'm working on the second sleeve - it's almost done! i'm very much looking forward to wearing it when it cools off a little - we have it crazy hot here at the moment with temperatures reaching 38°C... *phu* i also have not figured out how to block it yet as it is very big when laid out. i guess i will have to finish it really quickly and then try blocking it bit by bit. the "petals" need it most. i should take advantage of the hot weather while it lasts - it dries faster...

the pattern is by wollfactory by the way. you can select from 11 different beautiful colourways (i chose 4254 which was not easy). you get full instructions (in german) and the yarnpack including the colourful yarn and a huge cone of solid in a matching colour (which you can't choose) - in the above pic that's the red of the very outside round. in the sample pictures on the website you can see it in the very center and the round before the petals-round - just so you can get an idea of what's coming...

next on my to-do-list is this kid's artjournal for T and a traveljournal for my mother-in-law who's going on a trip to china in a couple of weeks... she brought a huge pile of old paperstuff for me to use in my art last week and there were even some chinese maps which i'm going to use...

well... i better get to work... =)

juggling

years ago my mum gave each of us - my siblings and me - a set of three beanbags each.

we were in that circus phase (especially my sisters and me) where we came up with little dance and acrobatics routines that involved skipping ropes and hoops and music which we then "performed" for our neighbours. (we were all good friends and relatives in the house of 5 apartments where i grew up.)

after years of use the beanbags ended up looking like this:

they turned really soft even though they used to be pretty firmly stuffed. the upper material got brittle and thin and is about to break.

i accidentally came across this tutorial when i was searching for crochet doll patterns - which she has too by the way. i saw it and instantly thought i have to try if these crochet baubles fit around my old broken bean bags. and they did!

i didn't have to change the size or number of stitches at all. i only skipped round 4 of the tutorial because i found i didn't quite like the look of it after i tried it on the green one. and i added another round of hdc (half double crochet) at the end of each hemisphere to make them meet so i could slip stitch them together.

i'm very pleased with them. they are much firmer again, much prettier to look at and also have a very nice texture. the kids love throwing and rolling them... i still have three more to do in pinks, blues and yellows i think...

 

yarn info: i use Schachenmayr smc Catania which is a cotton yarn and great for crafting and a 2.5mm crochet hook.

socks #2

i finished a pair of socks - actually last week already.

these are called mojo-socks and they are very funny to wear. i've seen a lot of mojos on google-images when i was looking for some yarn or other.

i've been wanting to use my Schoppel Zauberball - Durch die Blume for ages but i didn't want to knit just plain socks with it. so when i saw the mojos i thought they would be perfect. i really like them and i love the colourway - perfect spring socks. and it's not soo very warm yet that i couldn't still wear them...

i have noticed when i looked at a lot of other people's mojos that most of them were not exactly "real" mojos becaus both socks were the same. apparently "real" mojos have to be opposites meaning that one sock starts with the vertical stripes and the other one with the horizontal stripes. i haven't researched it or anything so i don't know about the "real" or not "real" thing but i liked the idea and the couple of pairs that i saw that way looked nice so i did it that way too.

i followed this pattern - it is in german but i'm sure there are plenty of english ones to find on the internet. (i didn't continue the stripe pattern on the sole though.)

now i have to decide which yarn to use for my next pair but i guess i should finish the ones i have on the needles for my husband first. as for my next pair i guess i will just close my eyes and grab a ball. i love all of my sockyarn and i wish i could knit them all at the same time...

socks #1

i started knitting socks on october 2^nd 2010 around lunchtime. i know that because that's when i went into labour on the day my son was born - which was later that afternoon.

i had been wanting to start knitting socks for quite a while and waiting for my baby to be born seemed to be a good time to do it. (it was too early to go to the hospital and i desperately needed something to keep my hands busy.)

so i grabbed an old tangled ball of yarn i had in my stash - i wasn't even sure if it was actual sock-yarn and there was only about a third of the ball left - and a set of knitting-needles.

i made the cuff of the green sock before we headed to the hospital and finished it when we came back - now three of us - and my new baby was sleeping.

the other sock i made from an equally old and tangled scrap of yarn that was the same kind as the green one. i had to use some black yarn to finish them and when i had finished they turned out to be too big and loose and didn't fit at all. i was rather frustrated until it turned out i had cast on too many stiches and used needles that where a size to big for the yarn - since they were scraps i didn't have the paper label any more and had to guess. i went to the yarnshop that was just across the street from where we lived then and bought leather soles to stitch onto the socks and turn them into house shoes. i still wear them at home...

this is the 2^nd pair of socks i made. i went back to the yarnshop and asked the lady for some nice sockyarn and what size of needles she recommended. this yarn is "Regia Colormania fiesta color (4066)" - it is a 6-ply and i think i used 3mm or 3,5mm needles. they worked a lot better and fit better too but since i had no experience with the length of the foot and when to start decreasing for the toes they turned out a tiny bit too long for me and i gave them to my mother. they fit her perfectly, she loved them and was very honored to be given my first "real" pair of socks. =)

my 3 ^rd pair of socks was another pair of house-shoe-socks with leather soles for my dad. he liked the first ones a lot but they were too small for him. so i bought two balls of "Regia irland petrol color 05859" and made him a christmas present.

this was the first pair of socks that i kept for myself and that actually fit. i bought the yarn in a value-pack of three 100g-balls - one solid brown color i didn't much care for (who wants brown socks? i guess people who wear brown suits - and they probably wouldn't wear hand-knits...), one ball of a red and black ply i haven't touched since i put it in my yarn box. and this lovely self-striping. i think the pack was called "Herbst" (autumn)  and i think it's out of production. the brand name is "Freizeit" and they have lots of very nice colours to choose from.

after that i went totally crazy with the sockyarn. my husband asked everyone who wanted to give me something for my next birthday to donate whatever they wished so i could buy yarn to my heart's content. i think that was in 2012...

this is one of them: "Opal - Lasst Blumen Sprechen" (say it with flowers). it's hand-dyed and there were six colourways (in better picture-quality than mine =):

 

i don't know if they are still available. i got the top right one which is "roses", the middle left one which is "dahlias" and the middle right one called "tulips".

i gave the tulip-socks to my mother for her birthday and kept the dahlia-socks for myself.

this yarn doesn't just stripe while knitting - it spirals!

i even used the paper label from the tulip-yarn to make a giftcard for my sister for christmas that year: i would knit a pair of socks for her from any kind of yarn she chose. she chose this one:

this was a "Zauberball Fuchsienbeet" by Schoppel Wolle. i absolutely love zauberbälle! i have five or six more still to knit lovely stuff with in my yarnbox and two more on my wishlist. =)

remember the brown ball of yarn i mentioned before? well, who wants brown socks, right? brown is awesome when combined with other colours, especially teal, petrol, turquoise and blues. the legs of these socks were just rectangles stitched together and the foot got knitted right onto that. i had initially made these for myself but they turned out too short. so i gave them to my sister for whom i had made similar socks a while back in red with a leg made out of beige and red speckled yarn. i think she wore those to death anyway so the new ones arrived just in time.

half of these socks is also made from that brown yarn. the other half from some cheap sockyarn i picked up at a discounter when they had a special. i liked the colour even though it's not as soft as brandname yarn usually is and it split while knitting which made the process a little slower that usual.

this is the latest addition to my sock-family. i got this yarn for christmas 2013. it's ATELIER ZITRON Trekking XXL Color Duett. it's absolutely stunning! it's not so much a color duet as a symphony... it's soft and easy to knit and i had a really hard time putting it out of my hands.

i finished this pair within four days. with most of the others it took waaay looonger and usually one sock was done while yarn and needles were patiently waiting to be picked up again for the second one or i had started the second sock and worked my way up to the heel just to get annoyed and put it in my basket for the next six months... although i don't have this problem so much any more. since i knit mostly with yarn that slowly changes colour i have to keep working on it to see the change - it's odd but i can't seem to stop until i reach the colour that's peeking out from under several layers of wound-up softness and when i reach it there's already the next promising shade coming through and it goes on and on...