FO: Roosimine socks

Socks!  They are still my favorite thing to knit, and I almost always have a pair on the needles.  The current pair has been neglected while I find time to concentrate on lacework, but eh.  They are getting there.    

These were an interesting knit, although not easy.  They are the Roosimine socks by Caoua Coffee.  It's the same designer who did the Porthos socks, and I really love her patterns.  The technique on these requires some skill- at first glance they might look like fair isle or stranded knitting ( in fact, you could do them intarsia if you were so inclined) but the contrasting yarn is carried across the front of the sock in pattern, and then loosely looped in back to be picked up again for the next round.  It's kind of like combining weaving with knitting.  Not the most practical or easy way to go, but I thought they were pretty and it was something I hadn't done before.

The blue yarn is a leftover skein of Skinny Bugga from this sweater I made.  The color is bomber worm.  The contrast yarn is some leftovers from Silver Moon Farm from this pair of socks.  I thought the combination worked out nicely.

Once the roosimine pattern was done with, there was some really fun shaping on the instep that makes for a more elegantly shaped foot.

The only thing I would have done differently would be to make the cast-on edge stretchy.  I usually don't have a problem, but by the time I was done with the pattern, the socks were long enough to hit the part of my calf that starts to not be ankle-thin.  They just bunch up a little bit where the cuff can't really stretch over my leg.

They took a little time, but I love them.  It's a good use of scrap yarn to do the patterning, and the abstract climbing vine will look nice peaking out from a pair of cropped pants.  

FO: Lingerie Socks

It's been a while since I've finished a pair of socks. Last fall maybe? I don't know. I've cooled on the sock knitting front a bit. I used to always have a pair on the needles and churned them out fairly regularly. My sock draw is crammed with those monsters now, and pretty much everyone I know has gotten a pair or two as gifts, so I kind of feel like I saturated my world with socks to the flooding point.

I cast on for a pair of Lingerie Socks way back in December to have something to knit while I was traveling around Morocco. I had a really pretty skein a dear friend of mine gifted of Silver Moon Farms sock yarn, with lovely bits of silver tinsel spun in. Twinkle toes! The color is "Sahara", which I thought was oddly appropriate considering where we were going.

So, here's what it's supposed to look like if you follow the pattern:

I started the charts, but then got frustrated wallowing through pages of complicated charts and corrections. Once I finished the cuff charts, which were complicated but not difficult to follow, I just said "fuck it" and went back to making a plain pair of socks. Sitting around in a cafe in a third world country with pages of patterns flying about and yarn tangling and trying to tink back mistakes and GAHHHHH plain socks. Mine look much unlike the model.

But the cuffs are so pretty! So I'm not unhappy. But once I got past them, I kind of lost enthusiasm and worked on them rarely, hence the six months it took me to finish them.

I knit them on size 0 needles, so they are nice and tight-fitting and they will squeeze inside of shoes without bunching up and being annoying. I love the little silvery bits worked in.