Even more spring socks

Prairiespring

Finishing a pair of spring-like socks totally entitles me to cast on a new pair of spring-like socks. Remember the prettiest graffiti inspired sock yarn I bought a while ago? I could no longer resist it and wanted to see how it would knit up so badly.

I was looking for the perfect pattern that would show off the yarn without it being too boring. And I think I hit the pattern jackpot with this one. The pattern I’m using is called Prairie Spring. It has the nice twisting slipped stitches on the leg and still some stockinette on the foot, so there’s plenty of room to admire those beautiful specks of colour. And I’m so freaking in love with this yarn. It’s soft, yet sturdy, it’s colourful but not murder on the eyes. I’m confident I’m going to love love love these socks.

prairiespring4 prairiespring3

 

At the end of the Rainbow

RainbowWanderer_1

Hurrah, I’ve finished my Rainbow Wanderer socks! It feels a little mismatched to finish such cheerful socks, with the weather outside being so dreary and grey, but I very much love them nonetheless. Somehow I like the contradiction, maybe in the future I should knit Christmas sweaters in summer.

Pattern: Rainbow Wanderer
Yarn: Leftover Rico Design cotton stretch and my super lovely mini skeinbow from Happy Go Lucky

RainbowWanderer2

RainbowWanderer5

My expectations for this pattern was fidgety colourwork and threads of yarn all over the place, and both actually weren’t that bad. The colourwork construction is super easy and with just a little bit of effort, major rainbow knots are easily avoided. The rest of the sock construction is also fairly easy, and I really liked the structure in the form of varying forms of rain(downpour, shower and drizzle). In the beginning I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to use a white background or maybe baby blue or grass green, but I think this combination works nicely. Plus the white was leftover yarn, so win-win!

I also still have rainbow yarn left, so I was thinking of making some fingerless mitts with a rainbow on the side. Although for now I’m happy to go back to knitting with a maximum of two threads, at least a little while.

RainbowWanderer6

As a little bonus I give you these pictures of my cat. As a rule, whenever I bring out the camera to photograph my knitting he gets super jealous and will lie on my work or do whatever necessary to prevent me from getting decent pictures. This time however he made the (nearly) fatal error of sniffing my feet (surely not a good idea). I captured the precious moment on camera of course.

RainbowCat
After a good whiff of odeur de smelly feet he gave me this look of utter disappointment.

RainbowCat2 After this he quickly scurried away to a safer area. Poor mister cat. In the meantime I hope that in the future my knitting photography will be less hindered by my feline friend.

Blog hop!

It’s time for a little blog hop! I got tagged by Kat Riddell of The Wayward Knitter blog to answer a couple of questions, so here are my answers 🙂

1) What am I working on?

So this question at first freaked me out a little bit, because in my head it feels like I’m working on literally everything. But then I took a deep breath and counted my WIPs. It turns out I only have 8 WIPs! Which I don’t think is THAT much as two of them are very near completion (Rainbow Wanderer, here is proof of one sock done and sock #2 is past the heel; and Two at a Time Toe up, almost at the cuff!) and this number even includes things like the Beekeeper’s Quilt, which actually doesn’t count. So what am I working on mostly? I think that’d be the Tiller scarf I blogged about last weekend, it’s such a pleasure to knit even a couple of rows every night.

rainbowwanderer
2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?

This is such a hard question to answer. In a way I don’t feel like my work necessarily differs a lot from others. I just kind of do whatever feels right and hope that it will lead to a nice end result 🙂

3) Why do I write/create what I do?

Not to make this into a sob story or anything, but I have a very clear vision of at least why I write what I write. And the reason is simple, there is no one in my life that really knits. Sure maybe one or two people will make an odd scarf or hat when winter comes, but they don’t feel particularly passionate about it or anything. I could never share my thoughts with them on the level that I’d like to, and I’ve come to find that the online knitting community is so warm and loving (and chatty!). It’s just nice to reach out to other people about something you enjoy so intensely and know that they understand what you’re feeling. And the same goes for the downs that inevitably happen with knitting sometimes as well. There’s people out there that know what you’re going through and actually feel your pain when you share that you’ve had to rip out an entire project.

And the reason why I knit what I knit is even simpler, the peace of mind it can give me in an otherwise hectic world. The sense of accomplishment you feel when learning a new technique or simply creating something awesome. And as an excuse to buy pretty yarns of course.

4) How does my writing/creative process work?

I enjoy reading other blogs, checking instagram, pinterest or twitter to see what other people are creating. It really inspires me, and whenever I see a pattern I like I get into a frenzy to find that perfect yarn that would complete this project (that always has to be knit immediately). Then it takes me ages to actually complete the project, but once it does I try to take some pretty pictures of it and post it up here, on the blog 😉

Next I tag Pia from Noget Uldent!

Lo and behold!

Tiller2

I might be mistaken here, but this looks an awful lot like a cable project.. You might remember from an earlier knitting confession that I have a crippling fear of knitting cables (slight exaggeration here), and I’ve decided to treat myself with full on exposure therapy (very irresponsible, do not try this at home children!).

Pattern: Tiller by Julie Hoover
Yarn: Rowan Silky Tweed in mardigras (unfortunately discontinued 🙁 )

Tiller

And I am enjoying this project SO much. In the first place because I cannot even remember the last straight scarf that I’ve knit. It must’ve been in the beginning days of my knitting, back when I was proud to even hold a needle at all and marvelled at acrylic yarns in offensive variegated colours. But it is so calming to just do pattern repeats until you run out of yarn, not having to worry about shaping or heels or whatnot.

Tiller3

For now I’m still working with a cable needle, which isn’t annoying me as much as I thought it would. I like how the yarn is working up with this pattern and I imagine this is going to be a super comfy and warm scarf to help me through the winter. Also this has given me the confidence to set myself the goal to knit a full on cable fest of a sweater in 2015. Yay knitting!

 

A tiny song to fill the silence

It’s been a bit silent around here, basically due to the fact that stuff happened. With stuff I mean mainly me first being busy, then getting sick, and ultimately still being sick right now. The vision of being comfy sick whilst knitting is unfortunately an illusion and I’ve spend most of my time lying on the couch making sad noises. But there is light at the end of the tunnel and I’m starting to feel like my old self again. Regular blogging and knitting will be resumed soon, but to fill the silence in the meantime I just wanted to leave you with this teeny tiny song about knitting by Swedish/Icelandic duo My Bubba. I had the pleasure of hearing this song live a couple of weeks ago and their voices are truly magical. If you don’t know them yet be sure to check them out!