Socks finished!

Finished the Broadripple socks in Cascade Fixation. They have turned out well and are comfy to wear. I’m still not sure what I think about the yarn but it’ll be nice to have a pair of knitted cotton socks when the weather gets warmer. 

It’s DK weight yarn so they are quite thick to wear but fit inside my trainers ok. I hope the thickness won’t make my feet hot though! That used up almost an entire two balls of Fixation from my stash. 

So, it was time to cast on something other than socks. I’d had Hey Teach in m queue since it was published on Knitty and Pakucho Organic Cotton yarn in my stash since I ordered it from Elann a very long time ago when interest rates made North American yarn very bargainous. Must have been pre-recession in 2008?! I think it must have been in my stash for at least eleven years as I definitely bought it before relocating south. 

LO thought that winding up ten skeins into balls was very exciting and insisted on helping. Consequentially it took ages. 
What have you knitted from your stash that’s been there a while?! 

More socks

Finished the Tootsie Rolls socks and got them to match as well! They are comfy to wear although I’m glad that I didn’t do the rolls on the sole. I have called them the Very Hungry Caterpillar socks as they bear a strong resemblance to one of LO’s favourite books. 

This is my latest pair of socks- Broadripple. I made a pair several years ago but wanted to use the Cascade Fixation I had in my stash which the pattern actually calls for.

Fixation is weird to knit with. It’s cotton with a small amount of elastane in for stretch so you have to be careful not to pull on it too tightly when knitting with it, otherwise the finished knitting will be distorted and not stretchy. As you can see in the picture above, the slightly rippled look to the knitting is where I’ve pulled a bit too hard! 

Beginning to feel like I want to knit something other than socks…

Some knitting content

So, what have I been knitting? Well, I started a scrap jumper for LO to use up a few DK oddments where I only had a ball or two of yarn. The pattern is a free one, Scrap sweater for the small ones. The 2 year size came up small though, only slightly bigger than her current chest measurement so I got this far:

And then decided to frog and knit the next size up. This is the, ahem, four year old size, but I think it will be about right for her next winter. The yarn I’m using up is an acrylic – Rico Design Baby Classic DK, which I have in three different, coordinating colourways. With just the ends to sew in and the neckline to finish, it looks like I’ll use up all the purple and variegated yarn, but still have some of the mauve left over. Despite the sizing problem (which might be me – I never checked gauge!), I’d use this pattern again – it’s a nice, basic jumper pattern which you can use in different ways to use up scraps. The suggested pattern includes a fair isle chart, but I just went with stripes.

My other knitting at the moment includes these socks. The pattern is called Tootsie Rolls, and I chose it as I wanted to use some self-striping sock yarn but wanted a more interesting pattern that would work with the stripes. After a bit of playing around (the first go ended up with the plain colours regressed behind the grey/white bits) it worked out like this:

I call them the Very Hungry Caterpillar Socks, as they rather remind me of the caterpillar’s cocoon.

What have you been knitting in January?