Monkey Socks

The April sock challenge was to knit a Cookie A design.  Cookie A is a celebrity sock designer.  Bet you didn't know there was such a thing.

Anyway, there's a free sock pattern on Ravelry by Cookie A called Monkey.  Apparently twelve thousand and sixty-seven people have made these socks.  I found that so amazing that I made some too.  Imagine.  12,067 pairs of Monkey socks, and that's just the ones that are documented on Ravelry:  that is, there's a picture of that many pairs.  There must be thousands more that have never been photographed.

Can thousands--nay, tens of thousands--of sock knitters be wrong?  That was my reasoning when I set out to make my very own monkey socks.  Also, a sock yarn web site had just given me a skein of their space-dyed yarn to try, and Monkey socks are sort of designed for space-dyed yarn, so it seemed like a good time to try making Monkey socks.

The pattern was really easy yet not so easy that it was boring.  It is kind of lacy, and kind of stretchy.  I like the socks a lot.

The yarn, not so much. It bled like crazy when I washed it, and the bright colors faded almost immediately.  Not sure why the dyers have not figured out how to make their dye colorfast. It's not that hard.

Anyway here are the socks.

"Beautiful Vines" sock

I finished one of the March Mystery socks:  it's called Belle Vitini, or "beautiful vines" in Italian, and it was designed by Kristi Geraci.  You can see how well the name fits:

The vines are created by an interesting combination of cabling and lace.  It was my first time to try to do cables in knitting, using a cable needle. At first it was very awkward, but now I'm somewhat better at it.

The yarn is Trekking Pro Natura, by Zitron, which is a blend of wool and bamboo.  Most of the sock yarns I use are blends of wool and nylon; we'll see if this blend has the same durability.

Now for the second sock...

Entrelac socks finished, finally

The Sock Knitters Anonymous challenge for February was to make some entrelac socks.  You have two months to accomplish the challenge, and it took me the full two months to make these socks.

I used hand spun for the tops and mill spun Ultra Alpaca Fine for the bottoms, and so far they seem to be wearing well.

Entrelac socks

 

Entrelac is a knitting technique that has fascinated me for a long time, and I finally learned to do it.  The February sockdown challenge on Ravelry was entrelac. I used a pattern by Kathryn Alexander that uses handspun.

Entrelac is kind of fiddly, but really not that hard once you get past the first few rectangles.  You have to turn the knitting a lot, unless you learn to purl back from the front, which I can sort of do, but it's so slow that it seems faster just to turn the knitting.

The great thing about entrelac is the fun of changing colors for each row of squares.  I had a lot of colorful handspun that I wanted to use up, so I used that yarn for the top.  But when I got to the foot, I was afraid handspun wouldn't be durable enough, so I used some millspun sock yarn (with nylon in it) in closely matching colors.  You can sort of tell it's different yarn, but the change is not too jarring I think.

Kathryn Alexander has some really cool entrelac hat designs that I'd like to try some day. 

Hermione's Everyday socks

I had time to do another pair of knit-purl decoration socks on my way home from DC.  I used this pattern:  Hermione's Everyday Socks.  It was easy.  I used some yarn that my sister gave me a long time ago.  I like the way these turned out.

Fulled handspun beaded socks

Finished these socks a few days ago and fulled them for about 9 minutes in hot water in the washing machine. I had knitted them about 10% longer than my foot, so as to have some room for shrinkage.  My idea was that if I fulled handspun sock yarn, it would tighten up and the socks would be more durable.

ONe of the socks has beads and the other doesn't.

We'll see if they last longer. I gave them to my sister and asked her to let me know about their durability.

Handspun Socks

I want to use up more of my stash of handspun, so I am making the January mystery sock (on Ravelry) out of handspun.  The problem, again, is durability. I fulled the yoga socks for last month so hard that they lost their elasticity and became hard to get on and off.

My new idea is that instead of fulling in the washing machine, which makes the whole sock dense and inelastic, I will just full the parts that usually wear out first:  the sole and heel.   That way, the sock top--the part that has to slip over your heel--will still be elastic. In theory.

To do that selective fulling, I need a washboard, so I can full by hand.  Today I found out that my local Ace hardware store could order me a washboard!  It will come next week.  I won't be done with the socks by then--the last clue comes out the last week of January--so I might have to take the washboard with me to Houston in early February. What will the airline suitcase inspectors think?!?  "That poor child:  still washing her clothes on a washboard, in this day and age!"