It's the yarns. I am in love with these yarns. Okay. No real secret. I love all yarns, but these are really just so nice to work with. I love the squooshy factor in all of them but it is the pattern too. I really love slipped stitches. Even when I am not having fun with other knitting, I can move over to slip stitch socks! I need to focus now or I will never get this post beyond yummy yarn, so socks.
Touchdown yarn is a really big skein. There are an amazing 150 grams and 507 metres of yarn. That means for mom's socks, there ought to be a significant amount left over, even if I am knitting the foot rather longer, just shy of 12 inches, in case she gives them to my brother or dad.
Sock one has barely made a dint in the cake. The toe of sock two was almost complete as well when I took this photo.
I started thinking about leftovers midway through sock one. Mom has very sensitive feet, made so by shingles and psoriasis. I don't really expect her to wear them unless she wants to use them as bed socks. It is really just all about teasing her about football. But I do want her to be able to get something out of the fun of this too. I started thinking that there might be enough to squeak a little pair of hand warmers out of this massive skein of yarn. She would probably wear those. But you know how that goes. Me, being me, I always worry about running out of yarn. So I took care of that.
I picked up a skein of Hat Trick Semi Solid in the Hooking colourway for heels and ribbed cuffs.
Honestly if I had been thinking leftovers I would have knit the toes using the plain green. I do love what is happening on the toes though. It just looks so interesting and it does indeed tickle my fancy.
If I use the green semi solid for those two sections of the sock, there will be plenty of the multi colour left to knit some sweet little Gridiron styled wrist warmers. If I knit the wrist warmers starting and finishing with a ribbed section of the plain green, I might even have leftovers of the Touchdown when the wristers are done.
I have a query in to the store to see if anyone there has tried making wrist warmers based on the Gridiron pattern. Maybe it will work? A little bit of play is in my very near future.
I also did want to point out a little something else I picked up at RCY, a Coco Knits gauge cloth.
I saw them at the store a while ago, and thought seriously about them. I used to use large foam floor tiles for blocking and while they were great for sorting out dimensions and ensuring straight lines, they were a bugger to store. This just made so much sense. I have a daybed that I pin and block on and if I lay this under my project and pin it in place, the whole thing becomes a much easier process. I don't really have to store it at all. I can use it instead of the blanket to cover my loom so inquisitive small children don't play there. I have also used it to roughly measure my Gridiron sock as it sat beside me.
The cloth is woven with precise 1 inch squares. I have checked. Most grid patterns like this are not. I think this is a really cool tool and now, one is mine!
Anyway, time for this post to end and for me to get to my knitting.
Updated to add my mods: The Gridiron sock pattern is a cuff down pattern with a heel flap and a lovey shaped toe. I'm changing the pattern so it fits any sort of toe shape and so that I can knit in my preferred direction (preferred so I don't run out of yarn), toe up. I am also knitting my Gridiron with an afterthought heel so I can custom fit whoever ends up with them. The actual clever design of this sock, is completely from the pattern, and I strongly urge you to pick one up. It is just that cool.
No comments:
Post a Comment