fo: abandoned socks (anastasia)

Working down the list of socks I need to finish, I thought I’d start with this pair. For one thing, they have an interesting stitch pattern, and for another, they’re knit up with delicious, delicious Koigu, in a colourway that, inexplicably, has not pooled. I have no idea if this is just the colourway, or if it’s related to the stitch pattern, but I have had some problems before, so this was a nice surprise.

Pattern: Anastasia Socks [Ravelry]
Needles: 2.5mm dpns
Yarn: Koigu KPPPM, in a mysterious blue-green colourway. Knit with two skeins, one of which was clearly lighter than the other.

The one challenge to these socks, for me, came from the fact that I’d already knit one. The second sock had been knitted up the foot, but stopped at the heel, which meant that I had to match the heels of the two socks. I knit the first sock a long time ago, apparently – I can tell this not only from the Ravelry page, but also from the fact that I used a Sherman heel, which I haven’t used in months because afterthought heels are so much more fun.

The Sherman Heel is a variation on the short-row heel, except neater and a little easier to work (no wrapping!), and I do really love the way it fits. I used to have it memorized, and would just work one up without thinking, but for the second sock of this pair I actually had to hit Google, dig out some resources, and relearn it. The original set of instructions for the Sherman heel are here, and there’s a site here that helps customize the instructions for different stitch counts. It’s a technique that’s well worth trying out, and I really love the look of the results.

And, I now have one more pair of socks that I can cross off the “abandoned projects.” I want to cast on for a pair of mittens so badly I can taste it – I can’t wait until these socks are all done so I can start.

sort of the opposite of sock yarn stashing

So, I go back to school in about a week, and to prepare I’ve been trying to clean my apartment and get rid of clutter, so that I start off on the right foot. (I am really, really bad at cleaning when I have schoolwork to do.)

One of the things I ended up doing was going through my shelves and tidying things up, which is when I discovered this:

Three pairs of socks, in various stages of seriously-almost-finished-ness, hiding in the bookcase. One of these pairs is finished except for the grafting, the other two consist of a full finished sock and a second sock knit to the heel. This is just embarrassing.

It also means that, for the next little while, I’m going to be putting my sweater projects on hold, and working on these pairs (plus the pair I started this month with my MSF yarn). My goal is to have them all finished and in my sock drawer sometime in the very, very near future. It’ll be great – I’ll have warm toes, a cleaner apartment, and I can start all the new projects I’ve been dreaming about (more on those later) with a clear conscience.

finished: urban whatever/mystery hat

The second iteration of my hat is done, and I am much happier with this version than the first one. It actually fits my head! The stripes turned out the way I wanted! It’s slouchy, but not comically so!

Pattern: my own (I’ve nicknamed it Urban Whatever on Ravelry)
Yarn: almost exactly two skeins of Blue Sky Alpacas 100% Alpaca Sport
Needles: 3.0 mm dpns and a 3.25 mm circular needle

Despite the fact that this hat uses very small needles (those are US size 2 1/2 and 3), it actually went pretty quickly. I knit the hat itself in about three days (you could definitely pull it off in a weekend, if you weren’t doing much). The biggest delay was actually blocking – the hat took two full days to dry because of the summer humidity! I’m really glad that I did block this, though, because that was totally the key to getting the shape that I wanted out of this hat: I knit it a little too big and a little too short, and then blocked it taller.

I’d like to write this up as a pattern, I think, so stay tuned for that!