On the other foot (3)

Since I last  wrote, we have been on holiday in Spain -  visiting Seville, Cordoba and Granada, and several other smaller places too.   We had a very good holiday, saw lots of historic sites (Roman and Moorish, mainly), ate lots of delicious food,...  But I had a few days of not feeling very well after we got back, so stayed in mostly, not eating much.  The weather was awful, so staying in wasn't much of a problem, and I did get quite a lot of knitting done.  The final part of the On the Other Foot socks Mystery Knit Along was published just before we went away, so I had the first sock to finish, and hadn't started the second sock.  And now they are finished.

I am very pleased with them - they fit very well and are the most luxurious socks I have ever worn (wool and silk!). Though I should maybe take a better photo on a lighter background.

 I did make a couple of modifications to the pattern.  The cables and lace option I chose for the ankle part had a few bobbles in it, but I have a strong aversion to knitting bobbles, and didn't like the idea of bobbles on my socks, so I left them off.  (Sorry, Ann and Sarah, but they are my socks.)   And the options for the cuff sounded interesting, but were quite narrow. I like a deeper stretchy cuff, so I knitted mine in a twisted rib instead. (My socks.)

I guessed that the lace and cables options I had chosen were those designed by Sarah, mainly because the socks I knitted for Susie for Christmas (described here) to Sarah's pattern The Chain featured one of the stitch patterns used in On the Other Foot.  But I saw Ann at the Huddersfield Knitting & Crochet Guild meeting last week, and she told me that I had actually chosen the options that she designed - the colour work options were those designed by Sarah.  You can see two pairs of socks, one using Ann's options and the other using Sarah's, on Ann's blog here.  The colour work socks look very good, too - and several of the projects on Ravelry have mixed the cables & lace options with the colour work options, and that also works well.

And just to prove that we have been to Spain, here's a photo of me looking in the window of a yarn shop in Seville.  (I didn't go in, though.)

 

On the Other Foot (2)

It's now week 3 of the On The Other Foot Mystery Knit ALong run by Ann Kingstone & Sarah Alderson.  I'm up to date (though only with the first sock) so I've finished the toe, foot and heel stages.  Here's the sock so far.

I chose the option that has a cable and lace pattern on the instep, to go with the cable and lace pattern I had already knitted for the foot.  (Though in theory you can choose either option at any stage.  Some people made the other choice following a cable and lace foot, and it looks fine. So does the colourwork foot with a cable and lace instep.)

Part of the point of Ann and Sarah's MKALs is that you learn new techniques, and they provide tutorials to help.  The heel with the option I chose is very neat, and completely unlike any heel I have knitted before (in my limited experience of knitting socks).

I'm really pleased with the result, and it was very straightforward to knit - just following the instructions.   It uses German short rows, which I've never tried before - I've only done wrap-and-turn short rows before.  There was an easy-to-follow  tutorial with clear diagrams with the pattern, which I found quite sufficient, though I think that Ann or Sarah may have done a video tutorial as well.

Finally, here's a photo of the instep pattern, which doesn't show up well in the first photo because my ankle was bent.  (Taking photos of your own foot in mid-air to show the detail of your socks is not easy.) 

I'm looking forward to seeing what part 4 brings.  I'm still undecided about introducing another colour, though on reflection it might have been nice to do the toe and heel in a contrast colour.  But I couldn't tell until I had done it, and it wasn't clear at the outset whether you could do just the heel in a different colour with this option.  Another time, another pair, maybe.

On The Other Foot

Two years ago, I knitted a pair of fingerless mittens in a Mystery Knit Along, run by my friends Sarah Alderson and Ann Kingstone.  You can see my (almost) finished mittens here.  (I did finish them, and posted some photos here, but the colours in that post look a bit murky - they are in fact much nicer than that.)   Now, Sarah and Ann are running another MKAL (Mystery Knit ALong) - this time a pair of socks.   I signed up for it, and looked for some suitable sock yarn.  I haven't found an actual bricks-and-mortar shop near here that sells sock yarn, except the stall in Huddersfield Market Hall, which has some in very basic, utilitarian colours like dark grey.   And a lot of sock yarn is self-striping, which won't do for this project.   But I have now got some very lovely yarn online from Eden Cottage Yarns. 

It's their Titus yarn, in a mottled brown called Compost.  (I'm new to hand-knitted socks, and almost all my everyday, shop-bought socks are black.  Occasionally black with stripes of another colour on the toes and ankles.  A few thick pairs in grey or fawn.   So I can't suddenly start knitting brightly-coloured socks and expect to feel comfortable wearing them.  Baby steps.)

The MKAL has several stages (five?) and two options at each stage.  (One designed by Sarah, the other by Ann, but we don't know which is which.)   The first stage (last week) was the toe, with a choice of two unusual construction methods.  I chose the spiral toe, which has four evenly-spaced sets of increases spiralling out from the starting point. 

We were told at the outset that there would be colour-work options, but that it would be possible to knit the socks all in one colour.  I do have another colour available, but I haven't decided yet whether to use it.  We are currently on stage 2 (the foot part), and yes, one of the options uses stranded knitting with two or three colours, but I've chosen the other option, which is a lace and cables pattern.  I think there will still be a possibility of using two colours for the ankle, but I'll wait and see what the options are before deciding. 

  
There's still quite a bit more of the foot to do, but it should be finished by next Friday when the instructions for stage 3 will be published. 

One Thing and Another

I finished sewing in the ends of yarn on my On the Other Hand mitts a couple of days ago, and pressed them.  I wore them today at Lee Mills - it was very cold downstairs in the store downstairs, and woolly mitts were very welcome.

Now that the Mystery Knit Along is finished, I know that I chose Sarah's design for the cuff, and Ann's design for the hand.  (But did my own thing for finger and thumb cuffs.)   I'm really pleased with them - while at the same time thinking that lots of the other pairs in the Knit Along turned out even better.  (You can see photos of many of the finished pairs in Ravelry.)  A lot of people reversed the colours for the second mitt, which looks stunning, or chose different options for the two mitts.  The Knit Along was altogether a lot of fun, working through the pattern, and watching what other knitters were doing with the pattern at the same time.

I have also just finished a cabled scarf.  The photos shows it just off the needles - I plan to press it to get the cables to open out a bit.  More on that later.

I used the same yarn for the scarf and the mitts - Wendy Merino 4-ply (fingering weight).  In fact, I used the same blue-green yarn for the mitts as for the scarf, because I miscalculated how much I would need for the scarf and was going to have some left over, and then chose the red (Rose) to go with it.  So now I have matching scarf and mitts.  The blue-green is called Pacific, though it reminds me more of conifers than sea.  It is very nice yarn, very soft, and Pacific is not completely solid, but is a mixture of blues and greens, with occasional surprising flecks of colours like bright emerald green and black.

Now I'm working on some small pieces in Swedish twined knitting for a workshop I'm doing next month - I'll report on progress later.

On the Other Hand (3)

The last instalment of the On the Other Hand Mystery Knit Along was issued last Friday,  Lots of participants have already finished their mitts and posted photos to the Ravelry group, because Ann and Sarah are offering prizes, to be announced at 2 p.m. today.  There are some really beautiful finished pairs - lovely choices of colours, quite a few with different choices of options for the two mitts.  

My mitts aren't quite finished - I still have the thumb cuff to do on one of them.

I changed the pattern a little bit - I did a single corrugated rib for the finger and thumb cuffs, rather than repeating the double corrugated rib. And I wanted the thumbs to be a bit longer, so I have extended the patterning on the thumb gusset for 4 more rows before starting the cuff,

I'm really pleased with my mitts. Even so, the finished projects in the Ravelry group make me want to knit another pair and choose the other options and different colour combinations. But I already need to knit a pair of fingerless mitts for a workshop I am doing in April, and there is probably quite a low limit on the number of fingerless mitts anyone needs. (My daughter has already reached her limit, with the pair I gave her at Christmas, though she tells me that should I feel an irresistible urge to knit more, she has several friends who would be very glad to receive them. But I'm not sure I'm that generous.)

I'll post more photos of the finished mitts when they are completely finished. It's been such a lot of fun taking part in the Knit Along. Several other members of the Thursday knitting group at Spun have been taking part too - a sort of mini Knit Along. I've enjoyed picking the colours, choosing between the different options and guessing which option was designed by Ann and which by Sarah - I saw Ann last night, and she told me that my guesses were correct - they'll show their original samples in the Periscope broadcast, I believe, and also the second pair that each has knitted to the other's design. Hope I can get organised to watch it live.

On the other Hand (2)

It's now week 2 of the On the other Hand Mystery Knit Along, so we have the instructions for the hand part, including the thumb gusset.    I've done the first mitt, as well as the cuff of the second.    

I did Option 2, the stranded knitting option, and it looks really good  (apart from my slightly uneven knitting).  I tried Option 1, but my knitting wasn't turning out very neat, so I switched.  I love the thumb gusset, with the colours reversed.  (And for non-knitters, yes I do know how daft it sounds to say 'I love the thumb gusset'.  I don't care.)  

Not sure how they are going to finish off the thumb - part 3 should give us two options for finishing the mitten, so each option will have to fit with both options for week 2.  We'll find out on Friday. 

I must confess I didn't entirely follow the instructions.  I tried the cuff in the medium size, and decided it was a bit tight, so the cuff is the large size.  But then I decided that a large hand size might be too large, so I switched back to medium.   So large cuff, medium hand.   (Did I test my tension beforehand?  No, I didn't. Partly out of couldn't be bothered, but also I thought that testing my tension on stocking stitch might not be a good guide to my tension on stranded knitting, because I'm not a very good stranded knitter.  And knitting a tension swatch in stranded knitting for a pair of fingerless mitts seems wasted effort - you might as well just get on with it.)

I am quite pleased with myself that I did knit the hand part with one colour in each hand, as you are supposed to.  And it was surprisingly easy to do.   

I'm still not sure that the green and red contrast enough in shade.  I took a photo of the two balls of yarn, before I started knitting, and converted it to black-and-white, as Ann recommends, and they were sufficiently different, I thought.  But then I've taken other photos of my knitting in progress, and sometimes the two colours come out the exact same shade of grey.  I think it depends on the lighting.  Damn.   

But never mind - I'm obviously not going to go back and start again.  I like the two colours together - that's why I chose them of course.  I think the pattern on the palm may not show up very well at any distance, but then that's kind of a secret little pattern for me to admire as I wear them.  And on the plus side, I've made a couple of mistakes, with a green stitch where it should have been red, and v.v., and the mistakes would be much more obvious if there were more contrast.  (I might swiss-darn the mistakes later. Or not.)   

Here's a black and white photo, just to show that the design does show up properly, at least if the light is good.