Pretty Poppies or Sunflowers?

Forward progress has been slow, but it is happening on the Pretty Poppies Socks. But they are now no longer poppies. Why? Mostly because the word Sunflower just looked so much better charted out as opposed to poppy or poppies. So here are what the socks look like currently:

More progress would have been made if I hadn’t ripped out the original heel. The first go ’round continued the Salt & Pepper pattern from the foot. But it was too tight and thick. The shaping was dumpy and I was unhappy. Heels are a pressure/rub point for nearly everyone and you have to get that part right or the socks stink to wear. So I switched to a two color garter. You can see it in this shot:

I’m still not happy with the heel, though. Not because the shaping is wonky this time around (Although the ssk row isn’t as straight as I’d like it to be due to the color changes. But that should block out.) This time I think the combination of the instep pattern, the gusset stripes and the striped heel are too overwhelming. There’s no where for the eye to rest. Luckily, you can work the entire heel in one color and end up in the same place you started from (Beginning of round, where the other working yarn strand is waiting.). So the next sock is going to have a plain green heel. That should clear things up substantially.

I will try to get more knitting done this evening….right after grocery shopping, present shopping, dinner and applying the first clear coat to my kitchen table legs. It’s going to be a busy night!

Pretty Poppies Socks

I’m back from Sock Summit and sort of almost recovered from the insanity that is planning, working and cleaning up after a retail yarn show. It was great to meet lots of you at the Summit, and you know I always enjoy the yarn show – even if I don’t sleep for a month!

So I’m in just a bit of a holding pattern after the show, while I wait for a large order of base yarn to come in. After being in such a wonderfully chaotic, creative environment, it’s hard not to design something new. So currently on my needles I have my Pretty Poppies socks.

1/2 way up the foot on the first sock

The idea is that the flower grows out of the toe, up the foot and finally blooms on the leg. Yarn is: Yarn Love’s Diana in Violet Vale (Background color: non repeating, medium saturated purple, semi solid) and Scarlett O’Hara in Ancient Forest (Accent color: non repeating, moderately saturated green, semi solid). The flower will of course be another color, but I haven’t quite decided what color I’ll choose. I’m leaning towards a new tri color that I dyed up for Sock Summit called Marigold. Notice the entire floral motif thing we’ve got going here?

Socks….lots and lots of socks.

I’ve been meaning to blog more, but not doing a good job of it for the past several (read 6-9) months. I’m attempting to fix that now, and get back on my Monday blogging schedule again. I have been busy in my off time. If by off time you allow that I’m running a hand dyeing business, branching into designing, teaching dyeing, and prepping to vend at Sock Summit.

I do have pretties to show you. Maybe I won’t post them all now, but snippets….to entice you to come back. (Some of these links will direct you to Ravelry.com. If you’re not a member there yet, you need to be. Don’t fuss, just sign up. You’ll be glad you did!)

I’m going to start with the most recent pattern added to the Katie Franceschi collection. It’s available for purchase (Immediate download, no less! Yay, instant gratification!)

Winding Path Socks

Yarn Love's Elizabeth Bennet yarn in Awakening Earth

Designed especially to accentuate the particular beauty of hand-dyed yarns. No more knitting with the most gorgeous skein ever only to discover that it does wicked, wicked things when you actually knit it. The pattern contains specific guidance for choosing an appropriate yarn. Both examples are knit with high contrast, multi-color yarns. Generally speaking highly saturated colors with high contrast to each other present the largest challenge when knitting with hand dyed/ painted yarns. Ironically, the multi-color skeins are often the ones that catch your eye and draw you in!

The socks are worked toe up, with a generous gusset for a great fit. (The gusset is that triangle along the side of the foot.) The stitch pattern does a great job of breaking up and re-distributing the bold colors – which gives the sock an over all even sprinkling of color. Notice how there aren’t large blotches of any single color anywhere. Those blotches are referred to as pooling or flashing and are usually very distracting. Then I finished off the sock with a simple cable. It’s eye catching and keeps you interested as the knitting progresses. Yes, the pair is asymmetrical. The cable travels up the outside of each sock. You could place the cable on same side for each sock, but it looks….very odd when you wear them!

As a bonus, there are four widths included in the pattern. And instructions for using both fingering weight and sport weight yarns. You can knit these up for practically any adult foot size! The sport weight option makes these a good choice for a fast gift!

Extras

When I’m designing, I usually knit up more than one version of the sock. The first pair is the design template, and the second pair is polished and pristine (Well, mostly pristine.) for photography. You can see the prototype pair for this pattern in my Ravelry Projects. If you keep tabs on my projects at Ravlery, you’ll most likely see my design projects in progress.

Yarn Love's Elizabeth Bennet yarn in Nostalgia

They're done, and I've moved on.

I finished the Thrummed Mushroom colorwork mittens for my swap partner. I carefully washed and blocked them, lovingly wrapped them, and mailed them on their way to Canada…..and then realized I never took a finished picture of them! Oi! What an oversight! Anyway, they’re beautiful and I hope Jane likes them. Jane, if you’re reading this, then you know what to expect, but you’ll have to wait to see them in person before you know what they really look like, because of my aforementioned omission.

Click the picture of the Mushroom Mitten Chart to be taken to the actual chart. Use as you like, but please don’t reproduce the pattern or mitten for sale. Thanks!

 Sometimes I forget that I know how to do other things beside knit and dye yarn. There was a time when I spent the majority of my free time sewing and quilting. In fact, before the girlies were born, I even had my own long arm quilting business. Imagine a huge sewing machine set on a 10′ table used for quiliting full sized quilts. The pregnancy quickly put an end to that business, as there was no way for me to be able to run the machine with a huge belly. But I do have a beautiful, hand pieced Mariner’s Compass tree skirt, quilted by myself to show for that business venture. Just prior to that I worked in a small, specialty sewing shop for several years.

I was acutally nicely impressed with my ability to remember how to sew after about four years of very little sewing. It’s so hard to sew when you have little kids, and no dedicated space. I sewed these cute flannel and fleece rag quilts for the girlies for Christmas. Their original fleece and flannel blankets (Given to them just after they were born…) were wearing out. I got these done, start to finish in two days. Not bad, given that I’ve also been knitting a hat, knitting a scarf, sewing mittens and quilting. True, the project is simple, but it did involve cutting 80 squares, sewing a x down the middle, piecing together the quilts and cutting 1″ slits along every seam, and the entire outside of the blanket. The girlies like them, and I hope the blanket transition will be a smooth one. The fabrics were chosen to hide wear and show minimal dirt, and are cute to boot!

Merry Christmas to you all, if I don’t check in before then. I was just working out my shopping list, and let’s just say it’s a good one. I have at least three steady days of Christmas celebrations and chaos looming before me, and a lot to get done before then. I wish you a very blessed and crafty New Year for you and yours, too!

for my birthday

i was recently asked by both my husband and my mother what I want for my birthday. i answered honestly, “i don’t know,”. now that may be common for you or perhaps for a particular loved one, but that is an unusual answer for me. i thought about it more this morning while i listened to the creative mom podcast. (a must listen pod-cast for any creative person, not just moms and parents. a great way to focus and re-energize your creativity.)

 this year for my birthday i want:

creativity     *     freedom     *     exploration

i’ve been mulling over getting a small weaving loom. i’ve been mulling over teaching myself to paint. i’ve been mulling over creative journal-ling – creativity somewhere between scrap-booking and memoirs. but i haven’t decided. i don’t know what to ask for because i haven’t decided.

so i think i’m going to ask for this: a small memento. something owned by them that has a special meaning. something they bought, but the gifting imparts meaning. something inexpensive, where the true gift is the thought behind what is given. then the remainder of what they would have spent to be saved for the time when i do know what i want.

i want them to have the freedom to give a gift – something special, something personal, something meaningful, but i also don’t want them to spend money on something that i might not like or use, simply because i chose something before i was ready.

i wonder what they’ll think.