It’s been a while since I have written a “What’s on my Needles Wednesday” post. It has also been far too long since I posted regularly here.
Today was one of those days where I was able to spend the entire day knitting and making significant progress on my current pair of socks.
I had started this sock before I finished my last pair. Though most of the progress I have made has been since I finished that pair.
I am currently working on this year’s “Road to Rhinebeck” sock set from Bumblebee Acres Fiber Farm. This colorway is on the Coquette yarn base.
The Coquette yarn base happens to be my favorite from Bumblebee Acres. It’s thick for a fingering weight, making it warm and cozy. It makes the perfect cold weather socks.
This morning I finished up the first sock in the pair of “Road to Rhinebeck” socks I am currently working on.
This was a sock set with a main variegated hank and a smaller contrast / coordinating tonal hank for at least heels and toes. I have gone on the conservative side and not tried using the contracting tonal for a top rib in the cuff. I may kick myself later for that, if I end up with a decent amount left over. I just wanted to make sure I had enough for the heels and toes for two socks.
This sock, seriously evokes all things fall for me. Cozy Sweaters, Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Lattes, turning leaves, fires in the fireplace, Gilmore Girls, Mel in Virgin River – the scene from the first episode or two when she is walking down the street in Virgin River talking to her sister on the phone in the cute sweater and boots.
Yes, one sock made me think of that. Well, it did have the help of visiting two local yarn shops yesterday. Those made me think of rainy Portland October days, with a cup of tea, hunkering down in a cute yarn shop working on a knitting project, or squishing the yarn. For me, Starlight Knitting Society was the coziest and most inviting of the two. It also really made me miss Happy Knits. Happy Knits was a yarn store here in Portland, on SE Hawthorne Blvd, that I fell in love with. They closed a few years ago (Pre Pandemic) they had a very light, airy, welcoming shop that wasn’t super crowded but had an amazing selection. In the back, they had a large table to sit around and work on projects as well as a couch that faced the natural gas stove. It was amazing in the colder wet months to go hang out, look at yarn, squish yarn, get inspiration, work on projects. I miss that space.
I have known about the Rhinebeck sheep and wool festival for several years. It is the big festival. I really want to go, and I want to try to make it happen next year. This year isn’t going to work for me, since I have other things I need to deal with first. Rhinebeck is one of things that I feel like I should experience at least once.
We don’t have many fiber festivals out here on the West Coast, and the ones we do have aren’t on the same caliber as the ones that take place back east.
All the smaller indie dyers I follow and typically buy from are from east of the Mississippi River, and the “better” fiber festivals are part of the circuit that most of these dyers go to.
Which is why I would love to go to Rhinebeck, especially, as well as some of the other fiber festivals back East and find more small, Indie, US based dyers who have amazing yarns.
I finished up the second Kodiak sock this morning!
The yarn is from Deep Dyed Yarns, and it this colorway is on the Figment yarn base.
This pair of socks took about a month to knit up, as life has been busy with work, Dr’s appointments (I am on the road to recovery, it’s just a long road), and just life happening.
It’s been a hard month, with a lot of life changes, and feeling overwhelmed, so knitting has been the one thing that has helped me refocus and destress with all the changes that have been happening.
There are still a lot of unanswered questions, unknowns and uncertainties. Hopefully over the next few months, as more appointments happen, I will get some answers and things figured out.
While I keep pushing forward to find the answers to my health issues, I will keep knitting and getting back to other healthy coping mechanisms as well. Things that have taken a back seat over the last year like walking and Journaling as well.
It’s kinda crazy how quickly the weather can change around here, a couple weeks ago, we had a snow and ice storm hit, with temperatures early on in that storm down in the 20’s. This past Monday we had our first 60 degree day.
After I had finished up my last pair if socks, I wanted to work on something with more vibrant colors, and that was more springy, so I had picked one of the spring yarns from Bumblebee Acres that I had ordered last year.
I also got the four hanks of yarn i had received in the mail, and got them wound up on monday.
Two hanks are from Forbidden Fiber Co and the other two are from Bumblebee Acres.
I am definitely excited to work with these yarns and see how they knit up!
I have worked 5 shifts in a row, and it felt longer. I wasn’t able to get much knitting done on the days I worked.
I finally got the heel finished, turned and the gusset done since I got home from work yesterday. It definitely feels good to be making progress on this sock, especially since the second sock always seems to take longer.
The smoke has been really bad this past week. The air quality has been hazardous most of the week, and I have been trying to stay home with everything shut up as much as possible, to help keep my respiratory system as protected as much as possible.
Having knitting to work on definitely helps while being cooped up indoors, between the pandemic quarantine and now this smoke, I am very thankful that I know how to knit.
This summer has been somewhat busy, and things like gardening and making jam have pushed knitting to the back burner.
Now that summer is winding down, I can shift more of my focus back onto Knitting.
I have been slowly working on a couple pairs of socks in recent weeks. For both pairs I am working on I am using KnitPicks Palette yarn, in the colorways: Opal Heather and Finnley Heather. I absolutely love the Finnley Heather color. Grey has become my favorite color.
At the looks of things, summer is finally quickly fading. When it is hot I don’t have much in the way of energy and desire to work on knitting.
I have gotten two socks done using two different colors and different kinds of yarn.
I have one Finnley Heather sock knit up using KnitPicks Palette yarn done as well as one Hollyberry Stroll sock done.
They are both sitting while I make progress on their respective mates.
With the Finnley Heather sock, I have made it longer than the other socks as I am trying to use up as much yarn in one sock as possible. Each ball is 50 grams, and it takes about 30 grams of these particular yarns to make an individual sock. So I would have to buy two balls of yarn to get a pair of socks anyway with the old pattern. Now I am getting way to much extra yarn sitting around, that isn’t enough to make another complete sock on its own. So I decided to lengthen the leg to help use up more of the yarn in each ball.
I usually am only working on one pair of socks at a time, but I wanted to see how the newer pattern worked using the Stroll Yarn and the Palette Yarn so that is why I have these two pairs going at the same time.
Over the course of the last couple of days, while having the second Cobblestone Heather Stroll sock in the works, I have also cast on another couple socks for two different pairs of socks.
I cast on the first sock of a pair of socks using KnitPicks Palette Yarn in rouge, as well as the first sock of a pair of socks using Black Trillium Fibres Fingering weight yarn in Morgana.
For the Palette yarn I am using my second pair of 2.50mm size 1 double pointed needles, and for the black trillium fibres yarn I am using my 2.00mm size 0 double pointed needles.
Each of the three socks have a bit different of a pattern for the top parts of the socks. My Cobblestone Heather socks have a 10 row ribbed cuff and an 80 row leg, while the Rouge Palette socks have a 20 row cuff and a 50 row leg, and and the black trillium fibres socks, have a 20 row cuff and I am aiming to fit the leg to the sock blockers.
Beings that the black trillium fibres yarn is thinner than either the Stroll or the Palette yarn, and I didn’t like how it was working out when I was work it up on either of the size 1 needles, the 2.25mm or the 2.50mm, I am giving it one last try with the size 0 needles. I am hoping they turn out better being knit up tighter. Though I am not a fan of how rough they are working up, I am hoping that will work itself out with being washed, and line dried. It also may be partly due to the fact that the yarn is 25% nylon. I don’t know what’s worse, rough socks or gaping holes from the slipped stitches along the sides of the heel where you pick up to knit the foot, that is the issue I am trying to resolve by using the size 0 needles. I am also winging the pattern on this first sock since I haven’t worked with the yarn enough to know how many rows is enough to make the leg of the sock long enough.
As you can see in the picture above the difference between the two yarns and the gauge difference between the two needle sizes. When you are working with Fingering weight yarns and making socks, half a millimeter in needle size and in gauge / tension is huge. In the picture above, both socks have a 20 row cuff and are sitting at 30 rows in the leg. While I have more to knit on both before I get to the heel, I figured that this is a good starting comparison point to show you all. I should also mention, the sock on the left has a total of eight more stitches (2 more on each needle) than the sock on the right does, and still looks and feels narrower.
When I get the Black Trillium Fibres socks done, I will definitely update on that.
I am making the rouge socks a bit shorter because I had to cut one of the balls of yarn in the winding process, and I doubt I have enough yarn in the larger of the two balls from that original ball without tying on more, and I don’t want to have to tie on the smaller ball if I don’t have to.
I am making progress on the second regal colored sock of the pair that I have been working on. The first sock I had to start over twice, and it finally worked out on the third attempt. By the third time knitting the first sock, I was very ready to be done with the pair. With that being said I have made an effort to get the second sock knit up as quickly as possible.
As of writing this post, all I need to do is knit up the toe and sew in the end. Beings that it is about 9:30 pm as I am writing this, I am leaving the sock until the morning to knit up the toe.
Beings as the weather is cooling off and rain is moving in, I will leave the washing and blocking until the weather is more cooperative. Once I finish the toe tomorrow, I will start another pair of socks.
I may have mentioned in a previous post that this pair of socks is being knit up from KnitPicks Palette Yarn in the color: Regal.
I started a pair of socks using KnitPicks Palette Yarn in regal, and here I am, weeks later, still working on the first sock of the pair. On the first try, I had dropped a stitch several rows below where I was, that was to far down to pick up and bring it up to the round I was on, so I started that one over. Then, on the second try I had inadvertently unevenly distributed he stitches on my needles, and I was at the point of turning the heel when I realized that it was off, so off the needles it came, and rewound the yarn. Now I am on try #3, and I have checked the number of stitches on each needle, and each has the correct number of stitches. So, unless I drop a stitch along the way and don’t realize it, this sock should come out right in the end.
I will hopefully be getting this pair of socks complete in the next few days.
I still have some scarves in the works, but I am really trying to get this pair of socks complete, beings that I still have so much sock yarn to knit up. I would definitely like to be getting more socks done.
The Knitter's Notes 
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