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Friday 27 February 2015

Socks no. 4

What is it about socks that you want to count them as each pair gets off the needles?  Ok, maybe you don't, but I certainly get the urge.  I'm not sure how many pullovers I've knit in my yarny career, same with shawls and all other types of garment but socks?  I've done four.  Not a shadow of a doubt about it. 

Pretty, eh?

knit socks

These are Show off Stranded Socks by Anne Campbell and they are gorgeous indeed (if I say so myself).

knit socks

The only not-so-great thing about them is the colour of yarn, which I'm not exactly in love with.  Well, it happens sometimes if you buy online...  I went for thrifty this time, I bought the yarn from a Polish online retailer at about a quarter of what I would have to pay here and while quality-wise it delivers 100%, colours are - let's be frank - awful.  No need to add that on the website they looked quite different.  I have another two self-striping skeins, almost as bad (but I'm still hoping to be surprised;  perhaps when knit up they will magically transform into something beautiful?  That's likely, isn't it?), and one more in red.  There's some good news.  You can't screw up red.

knit socks

I always like to try out something new, so I dug up a new cast on for these.  Here, have a look yourself.  It is exactly as stretchy as it says on the box, I think I'm going to use it a lot from now on.


I'm totally in love with how these socks are constructed, too.  You don't need to knit up a single stitch, there's no separately knit heel flap, you do the gusset in the round, quickly turn the heel and knit in the round again.  With all that, they are really, really simple and quick to make.  It took me about a week to finish them but it COULD HAVE taken three days.

While not exactly identical...

knit socks

I think I can live with this much variation.

Sorry about the pics, by the way.  I may constantly get better as a knitter but I'm still a crappy photographer.  Besides, the weather is not on my side.  While the spring is definitely inching closer day by day, I haven't seen really good light for weeks. 

I have one more FO to to show you (any day now) and a decision to make - what to knit next?  So many patterns, so little time...

Thursday 12 February 2015

Amaryllis, all done

Ooph...  It took me a while to knit and even longer to photograph and present, but my aran Amaryllis pullover is finally, gloriously finished.  I confess to feeling some relief here, I was bored out of my wits with this longish knit, even though the design itself is anything but boring. 

aran knitting pullover

I find most traditional aran sweaters, with their boxy shape and crew- or turtlenecks, rather unflattering (unless you are a stick figure of a person, which I am not).  Therefore, I reached for the big guns and went for rather drastic waist shaping.  If you don't have much of a waist, you need clothes that create an illusion of one!  Additionally, Amaryllis has enough positive ease in all the areas that shouldn't really be highlighted (belly, in my case), while keeping an overall 'fitted' appearance. 

aran knitting pullover

To tell you the truth, I am very, very happy with how it turned out (and that it's finally done...).  The armholes are slightly bigger than I would want them to be but I don't think that's a problem.  The sweater is super warm, wonderfully comfortable and since its premiere, I wore it for an embarrassingly long time before finally throwing it into a washing machine.  Oh yes, it's made of acrylic/superwash wool blend so I can machine wash it as much as I please. 

aran knitting sleeve

Much of Amaryllis was improvised on the go and I tried a few techniques that were new for me, e.g. saddle shoulder and short row sleeves knitted up the armholes once the front and back were joined.  Getting the whole thing right was a bit tricky, but tell me, wasn't it worth the effort?

aran knitting detail

The pullover was worked in the round up until the armscye, then divided into front and back and worked flat, leaving stitches in the last row live.  These I used to 'anchor' the cable that joins front and back.  Once all live stitches were used up, I knit up a round along the armhole, shaped the sleeve cap with short rows and worked in the round decreasing in more or less regular manner until the sleeve reached desired length. 

Knitting arans in the round is universally considered a bad idea, but I took my chances.  I used around 650g of aran weight yarn, so I hope the pullover is light enough to hold its shape without any additional structural strengthening.  If, however, I notice any stretching, I'm going to implement plan B: reinforcing crochet chains on the wrong side in all the crucial areas.  Hopefully I won't need to, because I really want to focus on other projects now. 

Socks coming up next!