Bamboo socks

I'm working on a large shawl for a friend, with lovely yarn, but it's a long project and occasionally I feel the need for a change in my knitting diet. Usually I knit from stash yarn, in the interests of saving my money for essentials and also with a notion to using what I have rather than buying new stuff (I have enough stuff to keep me going for years).

I ducked into the yarn shop on a whim, "just for a look". Um, yeah. I managed to resist buying on the day, but the pretty colours and luscious textures of the sock yarns niggled away at the back of my brain. Never having knitted with bamboo yarn, I succumbed to the call of the new, made a return visit the next time I was in the vicinity and came home with 100 grams of "Happy", 75% bamboo, 25% nylon. It looked more variegated on the ball and I wasn't expecting it to knit up into stripes, but I like the resulting socks. They feel rather cool to the touch, rather than warm like wool. The yarn itself tends to be a bit "splitty" and slippery, but I got the hang of it as I went along (the second sock is better than the first), and I have enough left to make a second pair, I think.

But not just yet. Back to the shawl for a bit.

I've also discovered that the viscose process used to make bamboo into yarn is not environmentally friendly, so while this was an interesting diversion, I don't think I'd buy bamboo again. I must stop thinking about the (non-bamboo) Kaffe Fassett sock yarn...

Socks and scores

I scored The Needlworker's Dictionary at the Dandenong Savers for $5.99. It's a lovely book, great illustrations, and a few pages of private correspondence tucked into the back as a bonus. I especially like the squirrel and bird pictured below.


Discovering Needlecraft came from an op shop in Sandringham a year or two ago. It is (or was) a monthly magazine on stitching, and came with a little project of aida cloth, threads, needle and pattern. There are 40-some issues here, most with their stitching project intact. Some day I'll tackle them! It didn't have a price on it, and when the lady at the counter said fifty cents an issue or the lot for $5, I couldn't get my money out fast enough :)

Three white/off white cotton socks, knitted from op-shopped or trash'n'treasure market yarn (can't quite recall where it came from). I have a little yarn left, but not enough for a fourth sock. If two socks is a pair, is this a trio? Triad? I plan to dye these, perhaps green and purple. It won't matter if they don't match, then I can wear any two of the three together. Unless I find more cotton yarn, then I can knit another sock (or two) - would five socks in a set be quins? Or just weird?

Recycled yarn

Before: imagine this op shop jumper is twins - I bought two of them for $1 each. Abercrombie & Fitch, womens size large (perhaps that's why they were in the op shop - this looks like a small to me!) with bonus gorilla arms, 40% lambswool/30% nylon/27% acrylic/3% polyester.

After: this is one of the jumpers deconstructed into its constituent yarn, and partly reconstructed into a pair of Bloke socks (yep, more socks! I'm still in need of sedatives, evidently). There are little navy blue squiggles of yarn throughout the house, turning up in the cat's food bowl, and even one or two magically transported into the backyard, byproducts of the unravelling process. Undoing a jumper is strangely satisfying, both in a destructive and constructive way: watching the progress of frogging versus the steady growth of the new balls of yarn. By the time I undo the second jumper I will have a surfeit of navy blue.

Let's take a little gaze into my crystal ball...ah, the mist is clearing...I see...navy blue knitting...socks for me, handwarmers, maybe a beanie...lots and lots of navy blue knitting!

Sedatives, mmmm...

What does one do when life seems beyond one's control and one is stressed out? This one knits.
Socks. You can never have too many handknit socks, right? I needed a project that was fast, relatively easy and very fun. And, bonus, not only did it suck up a good portion of the little scrap balls festering, er, breeding in the yarn crate but it calmed me right down. Hands busy, brain quiet = happy. These were done in three days of evening tv watching.

And then I knitted another pair :)

I am a sock knitting fiend

Drawing 253

Stripey green socks: a pair but not matching (in that the stripes are a random arrangement of greens and blues, with the cuff, heel and toes all in the same green). I am a little in love with the repeating yellow stripes in between each blue/green length.

Another multi-coloured stripey pair of socks commissioned by one of my classmates after seeing the first multi pair I knitted for myself. I am surprised by the amount of yarn I seem to have amassed in the stash since learning to knit three or four years ago (The Bloke taught me in about fifteen minutes, after my mother told me - on her 4th or 5th attempt to impart knitting skills -
that I was unteachable :) Three pairs of scrappy socks have diminished the stash somewhat, of sockish yarn at least.

Now I should return to the black shrug I abandoned at exactly the halfway point of the back, after running out of steam for knitting an apparently endless round of black, black and oooh, black. Perhaps I can convince myself that since I'm halfway, it's all downhill from here. Or else cast on another pair of socks!

Oh, and I've discovered a way to get me over second sock syndrome, a malady to which I am all too prone. I cast on the first cuff, knit to the heel flap, put that aside and knit the second cuff, knit to the heel flap, go back to the first sock and knit the heel, pick up the second sock and knit the heel, knit the first foot and toe, then - ta da! - all I have left is the second foot (I just typed 'food' instead of 'foot' three times - must be hungry) and toe and I have a complete pair of socks, painlessly. And no poor abandoned first socks languishing for want of their mate.

Knitting valium

Drawing 228

I've been knitting a LOT lately. Stephen King refers to book valium, which works well, too, but my current sedative of choice is knitting. These are currently making my feet very happy:

Knitted totally from stash yarn (scraps and odds 'n' ends - for a woman who only learned to knit four years ago I seem to have accumulated quite a bit of yarn), a pair but not matching. It's all 8ply so they're thick but very comfy for house socks. Better than slippers for keeping my tootsies warm, and I can wear them in bed - can't do that with my slippers.


These came first, though:

I couldn't resist the lime green, though it's crappy yarn, and the black stripes really make the colour pop. Also very thick and good for house socks. I'm onto a third pair out of various greens and blues (but not the lime - it overwhelms everything else) with two rows of yellow separating each stripe. I like!

Darn, darn, darn!

Progress on Mending Mountain! Three pairs of handknitted socks darned. I put the darning off till there's several pairs, then have a blitz - there are still two pairs of bloke socks to tackle. And I reknitted the toes of a stripey pair a few weeks ago, as the holes were enormous and the yarn not the best; it was easier, in the long run, to re-do the toes with better quality yarn in the hope that they'll wear better.

The burgundy pair on the right of screen are the first socks I ever knitted, and my favourites. I was a really tight knitter to begin with (picture my face screwed up, tongue poking out the corner of my mouth, and shoulders hunched as I struggled with two unruly sticks and a snarl of yarn), and the fabric in these is very even and thick. And, even better, they're made from yarn I bought in the op shop (Salvos in Oakleigh) for $2 an enormous ball; some industrious worker had been busy unravelling jumpers. I've never been able to repeat the perfect fit and fabric, later socks I like but these I love. It makes me happy just to put them on :)
My toes are warm and snuggly again - don't need slippers when I'm wearing my Favourites!