Blog catch-up

Oh, I have neglected my blog for too long!! So sorry!

I did finish the July SKA mystery socks:



Haven't had a chance to wear them yet, but I think they will fit me. They were fun and I look forward to doing more colorwork socks.

I have made progress on the fair isle vest since the last photo I posted. I introduced the red yarn and am loving how these four colors look together:


Choosing good color combinations is not usually one of my strong points, but I really like these colors! I guess I'm safe with red, white and blue, but I even like how the two shades of blue go together in this project. I haven't worked on this since I finished the mystery socks, but I'll get back to it at some point.

I did start the Yankees socks:


I know, you can't tell anything yet, but those are going to be interlocking NY logos around the top of the sock. These are going to be a challenging knit for me!

1. The needles are tiny - US 0 and something like 96 stitches around right now - ugh!

2. The yarn is a cotton/wool blend (and some nylon or something) - it's Knit Picks Risata - so I'm not loving the feel of it, but I needed these colors and I think the yarn should work well for the colorwork.

3. Sometimes to you have to carry the navy yarn for long distances and sometimes you have to carry the white yarn and I don't know how to "catch" the yarn except when I'm carrying it in my left hand. So, I have to keep switching which hand I'm holding each color yarn in (6 times!) as I work across the row. This is very tedious and is slowing me down. I need to research and see if there's a way to catch the yarn when you're carrying it in your right hand. I was taught in my fair isle class to always carry the yarn you have to catch in your left hand and that's the only way I know how to do it! (I'm talking about weaving it in across long lengths that are more than 5 or so stitches).

Anyway, for all those reasons, I believe the Yankees socks will be a long-term project!

Since these socks were proving to be too challenging at the moment, I decided to cast on another hat for KDO:


Ah, Knit Picks Comfy in Pomegranate, now that is some soft yarn!! So nice to work with. I believe this pattern is called "Gingerbread Hat". I found it on Ravelry. It has cables and is a pretty simple pattern to follow. I'm hoping to work on the hat some more tonight!

The Carefree KAL mystery sock starts on Friday - I can't wait! I will be knitting these in either the peach or blue Panda Cotton that I purchased from The Loopy Ewe. I just can't decide which color to use, but I will decide on Friday!

The next SKA mystery sock KAL starts on September 1st and I plan on participating in that as well! The technique is "knitting with yellow yarn" so I bought some pretty Panda Silk in the colorway "Buttercup Tones". This will be my first time knitting with Panda Silk so I am looking forward to that!

I also bought some Blue Green Wick yarn so I can knit another quick pair of socks when I have the time. I really like the other Wick socks that I knit.

And to end this lengthy post, here's a recent photo of Shelby: