Socks!

I have decided to try my hand at knitting something new - socks! I keep seeing photos and patterns of very funky and stylish socks and would love to be able to make some for myself. They also seem to be small enough projects that I could actually challenge myself to learning different techniques and patterns (like cables or lace work) without being too overwhelmed....and if they work, I can actually wear them, unlike all the little baby outfits I enjoy making. Last year I bought this book "Socks from the toe up" by Wendy D. Johnson, after reading a post on the Comfort Stitching blog. Then last night I was online looking to see if there were any places in Adelaide that might sell any cool hand dyed sock yarn and discovered "Stranded In Oz" - a South Australian online store and blog for beautiful yarns and knitting projects. Even better I discovered that the Stranded In Oz online store has a physical stall at the Port Adelaide Fisherman's Wharf Markets on Sundays. So guess where I went this morning? :-) The owner of the stall was apparently away in America attending some knitting workshops, but a very helpful friend of the owner (Eric) was manning the stall - and he gave me lots of advice about choosing the right yarn and knitting clubs to contact if I needed help with following patterns. He also recommended another book for knitting socks to keep an eye open for called "Socks a la carte" by Jonelle Raffino.

Although there were lots of beautiful skeins of hand dyed yarns, in the end I took Eric's advice and chose a plain solid colour for my first attempt at following a sock pattern, and will try some more fancy yarn once I've mastered my first pair of socks :-) The yarn I bought for the socks is a bright crimson colour, by TOFUtsies. One of the great things about knitting socks is that you often only need to buy a single skein of 'fingering' yarn per pair of socks. So for instance, the TOFUtsies yarn is 100g, 425m, which is very fine and long, and enough for an average pair of socks. I have never knitted with such fine yarn before.

Projects in progress...

I haven't had  a lot of time for craft lately (again), but have done a little bit this long weekend as it has just been too hot to do all the things I had planned to do outside (we are having another Adelaide heatwave in the high 30s...hopefully the last of the season). So I have made some progress on knitting the Purl Bee inspired blanket...also stitched together ~120 strips of fabric into pairs, then cut the resulting ~60 strips into four pieces of 2.5 inches each as the next stage of my queen-sized quilt. It's going to be a massive project...but feels good to have made this progress already :-) It's much easier sewing without worrying about the cats chewing on loose threads of cotton etc...but somehow not quite as fun without my little sewing helpers...