Testing Out a New Sock Yarn

Hey Everyone!

I have spent the better part of a month working on this pair of socks, rather I reknit the second sock because I royally screwed up the toe so I ripped it all out and knit up another sock. I finally finished up the reknit of the second sock last night.

This was the first time I had used one of the Stroll Fingering yarns. Other than the issue I had with the taking off of the second sock (before I reknit it), this yarn knit up really well.

The yarn I used was KnitPicks Stroll Fingering Yarn in Kangaroo Tonal.

Today, I got around to washing them, and I used the Laundress Wool & Cashmere shampoo to wash these socks. I am always amazed at how much dye comes out when I wash each pair of socks for the first time after I finish knitting them up. I know they will get softer and not be stiff when I am done washing them. The excess dye that is left in the yarn astounds me. This is part of why I wash what I knit up before I wear it, besides to get all the waxes and stuff that was used in the processing of the yarn to make it easier to work with.

Today I also started on my latest pair of socks. I decided to go with the Blue Topaz Stroll Fingering Yarn from KnitPicks. I like that it is the same weight and has the same yardage as the Palette Yarn does. These yarns feel totally different, but they knit up similarly so I can use the same needles and same measurements for both yarns and they turn out very similar size wise.

I absolutely love this color, and it is so far, so much fun to work with. I also like that the Stroll Fingering and the Stroll Tweed Fingering Yarn come in a small skein, which means that I haven’t had to wind the balls in order to work from them easily.

When things don’t work out right

Hey Everyone!

Yesterday I had finished up knitting up the toe of the sock I was working on. It was the second sock of the pair. Then, at the very end of the toe I royally screwed it up while trying to finish it off the needles. That being said, I didn’t want a large hole at the end of my sock, so I ripped it all out and then restarted the sock. I’m already at the point where I am ready to move on to a new color.

I am hoping to get the reknit done quicker than I did the original.

New Year and New Knitting Goals

Hey Everyone!

Today, as I am finally coming out of the fog that is my brain while sick, I was like “It’s a new year, a clean slate, and it’s time to set some knitting and life goals for 2018”. 2017 felt like a bust on many fronts. While this year is getting off on a rocky start (with having a cold to start things off), I am excited to see what 2018 holds, and to see what I can accomplish.

My biggest goals for this year is to knit though as much of the KnitPicks palette and stroll tweed sock yarn I have, as well as knit up the KnitPicks Wool of The Andes, Wool of the Andes Tweed, and the Simply Wool yarns that I have in my stash.

This year I really want to work on Stash busting as much of the yarn I have for personal projects as possible. In 2017 I bought a fair amount of yarn, now I just need to knit it up. That is my goal for this year, is to work on knitting as much of it up as I possibly can.

This morning, I got in my last KnitPicks order for a while. This Christmas and New Years season saw a lot of yarn and knitting accessories purchasing. Now I want to put all of it to good use. I am getting kind of tired having bags of yarn that don’t fit in my current stock of plastic containers sitting around. I want to at least get what is sitting out and sitting in bags knit up, or at least be able to consolidate it into a container if I want to use a color that is currently in a container. The only reason I want to buy new plastic containers for anything knitting related is for completed projects, if I run out of storage space.

As I have spent time knitting, I have found that I prefer knitting with wooden needles, so as I have the money, and projects I want to work on I am slowly adding to my stash of wooden needles. After I had gotten the bulky Simply Wool yarn, I went searching through my needles to see what I had in the way of needles that were in line with the needle recommendation on the back of the label. I only found some plastic needles, which I really don’t care for, I went ahead and had ordered some US size 10.5 (6.50mm) straight wooden needles to use with the bulky simply wool yarn. I also had ordered another set of US size 7 (4.50mm) needles. Size 7 needles are a standard size for me, especially since I tend to have a looser tension than some other knitters. I had also gotten some of the Wool of the Andes Tweed in Autumn Heather and the Wool of the Andes in Marina.

Beings that I have the yarn (between what I have already cast on and am currently using as well as why I have tucked away in bags) for seven shawls and more than 20 pairs of socks, I will be bust this year.