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Oh. My. God. I did it! I made socks!! They are the Beginner TOE-UP Socks for Magic Loop from www.knitfreedom.com. I made them with Lion Brand Sock-Ease in Lollipop. Pink is not normally a colour I wear, but I love bright, colourful socks, and Lollipop is definitely bright.
It took four patterns and a switch from top down to toe up to avoid picking up stitches (I do not like picking up stitches. At all. It is kinda evil, actually. Until I master it, that is...) before I finally managed to successfully complete a sock! The awesome part? I finished the second sock in just three days!
My next sock project will be a pair for my mom for her birthday this month. I plan to check out some sock pattern generators because my mom is diabetic and I want to make a truly custom fit pair for her. I want to use a faux cable pattern across the top of the foot and possibly try a reverse stockinette pattern on the bottom since she is on her feet all day at work.
Wish me luck!
Do you know what is even more exciting than my successful socks? My Knit Picks spindle arrived the other day, and after reading the book I also got, Teach Yourself Visually: Handspinning, and rewatching the tutorial videos on the Knit Picks website about five times (not exagerating), I finally felt ready to give it a shot.
And I ended up laughing. A lot. My first effort? So bad that I want to shellack it and tack it up in a shadow box just to make me giggle when I am having a bad day.
At first I couldn't get the twist to move from the leader into the roving, and then I found that my roving was still too thick to spin easily given this is all brand new to me. I found that some spots were twisting too the point of kinking while others had almost no twist at all. But I loved it. I loved it SO MUCH, issues and all! So the plan now is to go check out some more resources and search out a few more youtube videos, then I can dive back in.
I want to stain my spindle. My mom makes dollhouses - that is her crafty outlet - so she has quite a few stains on hand that I can poke through and borrow. There is one I am leaning towards already, which is a gel based stain that comes out a rich purplish-brown. She used it for the roof of a rather large house, though, so here's hoping she has some left!
Right now I am going to snuggle up with my little pup, Sophie, who is already snoozing in a splash of sunlight on the floor nearby, and start searching out sock patterns until it cools down enough outside to sit out there and get started on Christmas afghan number four.
Picture update coming soon! The socks, Christmas afghan number three (where I ditched all patterns and designed it myself), and the Karen shawl that was supposed to be my mom's birthday gift but now I want to save for Christmas. And not at all because that knocks one afghan off my list of eight. Nooo, not at all. *cough*
It took four patterns and a switch from top down to toe up to avoid picking up stitches (I do not like picking up stitches. At all. It is kinda evil, actually. Until I master it, that is...) before I finally managed to successfully complete a sock! The awesome part? I finished the second sock in just three days!
My next sock project will be a pair for my mom for her birthday this month. I plan to check out some sock pattern generators because my mom is diabetic and I want to make a truly custom fit pair for her. I want to use a faux cable pattern across the top of the foot and possibly try a reverse stockinette pattern on the bottom since she is on her feet all day at work.
Wish me luck!
Do you know what is even more exciting than my successful socks? My Knit Picks spindle arrived the other day, and after reading the book I also got, Teach Yourself Visually: Handspinning, and rewatching the tutorial videos on the Knit Picks website about five times (not exagerating), I finally felt ready to give it a shot.
And I ended up laughing. A lot. My first effort? So bad that I want to shellack it and tack it up in a shadow box just to make me giggle when I am having a bad day.
At first I couldn't get the twist to move from the leader into the roving, and then I found that my roving was still too thick to spin easily given this is all brand new to me. I found that some spots were twisting too the point of kinking while others had almost no twist at all. But I loved it. I loved it SO MUCH, issues and all! So the plan now is to go check out some more resources and search out a few more youtube videos, then I can dive back in.
I want to stain my spindle. My mom makes dollhouses - that is her crafty outlet - so she has quite a few stains on hand that I can poke through and borrow. There is one I am leaning towards already, which is a gel based stain that comes out a rich purplish-brown. She used it for the roof of a rather large house, though, so here's hoping she has some left!
Right now I am going to snuggle up with my little pup, Sophie, who is already snoozing in a splash of sunlight on the floor nearby, and start searching out sock patterns until it cools down enough outside to sit out there and get started on Christmas afghan number four.
Picture update coming soon! The socks, Christmas afghan number three (where I ditched all patterns and designed it myself), and the Karen shawl that was supposed to be my mom's birthday gift but now I want to save for Christmas. And not at all because that knocks one afghan off my list of eight. Nooo, not at all. *cough*
