What I made, by Sharon

I decided to make a fun pair of sneaker liners, as a simple project to work in public while I knit the bigger, more complicated Agave top. I thought it would be fun to knit them in conjunction - two at a time, but on separate needles. Finally I thought I would try the HiyaHiya needles and compare them with Chiaogoos for sock knitting. I actually bought the HiyaHiya circulars a little while ago. One was slightly bent when it arrived in the mail. I straightened it out and it seemed fine, but that should have told me everything i needed to know. I also seem to need to keep relearning the same lessons, because I made the same observations about the two brands' double pointed needles back in 2019. I cast the first sock on. the HihyaHiyas are very pointy, and split the splitty yarn quite a bit and bend if I lever too hard. After completing the cuff, heel and first set of stripes I cast the second sock on using a Chiaogoo circular. It is pointy, but not sharp. After completing the cuff, ...

It was meant to be a quiet weekend - Leon and i got our 2nd COVID boosters (the bivalent one) on Thursday, and we both had side effects that felt a lot like COVID. It was a brutal 26 hours,a and then I got better. On Friday i was too fatigued to knit! Aweful. i wasn't too tired to read, and I'm reading Miranda Saphire's A Light in the Dark , which is a sexy, feminist retelling of The Beauty and the Beast, so much of the day was spent lying on the couch reading. On Saturday I went to the gym and then had the rest of the day for whatever I wanted (after cleaning the house of course. We always clean first, and then do the relaxing). I finished the sneaker liners with the SHaG heel.  I really like the heel, it's the same fit as a heel flap and gusset, but much tidier. Then I made a cat toy  That was meant to be a gift. Which would have been great, except I left it on the bed and Willow decided it was great to play with. Successful cat toy, failed gift. I'll make ...

 I'm currently obsessed with  Birgit Freyer's  slip stitch helical socks. I bought a book of six patterns, and plan to make at least two of them for Leon and a couple for me. i started with the Xara socks. They are a marvellous confection of 1 x 1 cables, helical stripes and fun! They are a very good way to use up partial skeins of yarn, and you know how I love to use leftovers. They do lack stretch in the leg, which is why this pattern calls for 80 stitches in the leg. it's a German pattern, and is very well thought and and well written and also suggests  you use whatever heel and toe you like best. For this first pair, I went with the heel-flap and gusset. It's my go-to. I've tried a lot of different heels and always come back to this, because it just seems to fit best. in the past I've used an afterthought heel, a sweet tomato heel, fish lips kiss, hat heel, fork in the road heel, Crystal heel, you name it. I seem to have used the most variety on s...

This week I am using the leftovers from last week's  socks to make a pair of sneaker liners. The only interesting thing about them is that I am using Sarah Jordan's SHaG heel - simultaneous heel flap and gusset method. It's very clever. I'll be back on Friday to discuss this, and other sock heels. Sarah is a genius designer, and also writes an interesting blog and participates in unravelled Wednesday, which might be how I first came across her.    The reading is going well in the ears, and not so well with the eyes! Leon and I started Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone    and it's very clever and knowing and fun. It's set in New South Wales, and read by an Australian bloke (Barton Welch) and it's murdery and fun.   By myself I'm still listening to  The Tsar of Love and Techno , and still loving it. With my eye's I'm reading Helen Garner's Monkey Grip.  It's her debut novel, published in 1977 and I when it came up a...

I don't know what's going on around here. Normally I knit a big thing and then some smaller projects and then another big project, but for the last bit I have been leaping from giant project to giant project. I spent July knitting a brioche cardigan, September knitting a brioche jumper, October knitting a giant shawl and now I'm knitting a man's hooded jumper that will probably take me until December. In between finishing the brioche jumper and starting the shawl (which was the Twists and Turn MKAL ) I knit one sneaker liner. This took me two days. Then I set it aside, thinking I would finish it in the breaks in the MKAL, but, unlike in previous years, I had no breaks in the MKAL. So last weekend in Marysville I knit the second sock. These are Joji's Flores s ocks. It's the second time I've knit them and I adore them. They just fit so well. Add to that that the multi-colour is my own hand-dyed and this project removed two separate yarns from my stash and  ...

Sorry about the nighttime-photos, things are getting a bit hectic around here. It just occurred to me, I should have brought these to work with me and then i could have had day-light photos. Oh well, I'm not letting perfect be the enemy of good. You could say that about these socks too: Yep, they have a different number of rows. Also they were written with four rows in between patterns - apparently i failed in reading the worlds simplest chart. The pattern also called, very specifically, for wrap and turn short rows. I always use German Short Rows, which i did for the first sock. For the second I followed the instructions, and i have to say,i still hate wrap and turn. It's gappy, and hard t see where you are at, although in the finished product there is not much to call between them. Anyway, I have a complete, if not quite identical, pair of socks, and i got to try a different kind of heel and a different toe. They are not my favourite for me, but the socks are very cute. They...

 A very long time ago (December 2010) I made my second pair of sneaker liners - a pair of Stephanie Purl-McPhee's tiptoe through the tulip socks. I made them to wear to pilates.... which i stopped doing in 2011. Since then I have worn them regularly to ride, and to Crossfit. They've had a good run. Over time they have shrunk down a bit, and the top now site just under where my shoes go, which is not ideal.  Still, I'm so fond of these socks.  The other day i got them out of the wash and realised that they are just falling apart. The edges of the intarsia has holes, and they are quite tired. Still, they have worn well for a very long time. I thank them for their service, and bid them goodbye. 

When I finish something, I put it to the left of the computer that I sit at to blog. Then I (at some point) photograph it, blog about it, update my Ravelry and off they go. I also occasionally use the spot as a holding zone for other things. The other day I received some leggings and had to return them for sizing issues. I put them on the pile, organised the return, put them in the envelope and sent them off. The only thing is that now I can't find one of the socks I JUST finished. They were on the pile, and the only thing I can think of is that I put them with the return. So, here's a single sock: Flores, by Joji, in a yarn I dyed myself. I've emailed the company, so hopefully they will find the sock with the return. The other item isn't actually quite finished. I made a tea cosy for Elise's tea pot, but I'm doing an afterthought spout hole. I say Elise for a few minutes the other day, but she forgot to bring the pot. So it's not technically finished...

I had 38 grams of yarn left over from Elton , so I decided to make - what else - a pair of sneaker liners. It's always either sneaker liners or baby jumpers, isn't it? I knew it would be yarn chicken, and I don't really enjoy that game, so I found some black yarn of a similar texture and searched Ravelry for "bees" and "socks". I found this adorable free pattern called Free Bees .   It's written as a toe up pattern, and I chose this opportunity to try out the Hiya Hiya Flyers, which are like flexible double pointed needles. I didn't like them - as expected the short length stressed out my hands.I also found the second needle stuck out weirdly, in strange places.  It was fun to try, and now I can pass the needles on. I knit the rest on my beloved DPNs. I did the first sock as written (except I substituted the toe and the heel, so I guess that's a very broad definition of "as written"). I knit the second sock top down, so my...

I finished my latest pair of sneaker liners ( Roxy by Trudy Hertaas , and wore them today. Knitting these in Socks Yeah , which is a fairly thin sock yarn reminded me of a solid fact: there are three things that affect the final size: 1) Needle size 2) number of stitches AND 3) yarn thickness.  Which is to say these, knit on my usual 62 stitches and 2mm needle size came out quite small. But I wore them today and they are rather perfect. I reversed the pattern for the second one. I was thinking about just eyeballing it as I knit, or rewritting it in excel, and then I wondered if my (work) photocopy machine could mirror the image. It could, and it worked, so that made life fun and simple. I also changed the side cables: the pattern had one extra long cable, which I didn't realise, so when I saw my sock had one longer cable I "fixed" it. After I realised what had happened, I left the cables equal, because to me it looks better that way. And now I'm back to ...

I finished the Treetops jumper on Wednesday, so I did what I always do when I need something to knit and have no time to plan: I cast on a pair of sneaker liners. I wanted to do helictical single row stripes, and was trying to work out a way to do an afterthought heel, but by casting on the heel provisionally and then knitting in, when I found the Fork in the Road sock pattern. It does exactly that, although it uses a hat heel. Since a normal afterthought heel doesn't suit me that well anyway, I decided to go for it. I cast on in the first pub of the evening, and knit the ribbing. We left the first pub, partly because we were always going to, but also because they turned the lights down and it was kind of dark. We got to the second pub, and I tried to cast on the heel stitches using Judy's provisional cast on in two colours. I still think it's possible, but I was 4 beers down and struggling. The bar tender turned the lights down (why do they do that?) He saw me looki...

The other Monday Catherine came to knit night and offered me this ball of yarn. 29 grams of "mind the gap" colourway  self striping yarn. Part of me was thinking "what would I do with 29 grams of self striping yarn?" Most of me was shouting "Mind the Gap, all my friends have knit with that. gimme, gimme".  While I was pondering what to do with it, twistedstitching on Ravelry posted this sock: copyright twistedstitching And I knew what i had to do. I found some left over SocksYeah in grey - I would have preferred white but I'm stubbornly using stash.  I've  put them in a ziplock bag. Because I'm still working on  Strathendrick, and I can't bear to put it down. I guess being a monogamous knitting doesn't stop a girl from dreaming.  Or, as my father once very lyrically described marriage "just because you're on a diet doesn't mean you can't look in the cake shop window". It sounded less creepy whe...

As soon as I finished my  What The Fade shawl, I knew I wanted to use the leftovers to make faded monstersocks. I had already used some to make sneaker liners, but I wanted a fade. I bought the How I Roll pattern,  pattern, which is basically Rose City Rollers with a fade. Her technique is a little different from the blenders I have used before. I quite like them - if I had done more maths I could have made them more matchy, but the first one I got through the fade too quickly. I really should try to take a break from making sneaker liners, I have a draw full, but I find them such fun to knit. I wear a pair every single day, and often at the gym I run around in nothing but my socks, so they do get worn, seen and appreciated.  

After I finished Boxy there were still two days of Good Beer Week left. I was home sick on F riday - nothing to do w ith the week , there is a horrible cold going around, so I cast on a pair of sneaker liners, using left over Mothy and The Squid yarn. I just love these colours, and there is plenty more yarn left over from my What the Fade shawl.I did a basic sock, with a Fish Lips Kiss heel. All very simple. I cast on on Friday, and between the sick day and Saturday's beer festival I had them finished by Saturday night. I was tempted to immediately cast on a pair with the colours reversed, but I resisted that thought, at least for the moment.