Tag: wool

Swatching

On By CarynIn Craft

Ok, so I didn’t actually cast on my eclipse socks on Monday, but I did knit swatches. The instructions give a gauge of 32 stitches over 4”, with a suggested needle size of 2mm. I tried three different needle sizes: 3mm, 2.25mm, and 2.5mm.

Photo description: Shadow’s embrace yarn knit with 3.00mm needles, knitting ruler for scale.
Photo description: Shadow’s embrace yarn knit with 2.25mm needles, knitting ruler for scale.
Photo description: Shadow’s embrace yarn knit with 2.50mm needles, knitting ruler for scale.

Although the 2.25 mm needles gave me the correct gauge, I felt the fabric was stiff, and I don’t like working with the actual needle set. My preferred needles are made by Prym, and the smallest they make them is 2.50 mm. So I’m going to go down one sock size and knit at the slightly larger gauge.

Rather than throw all that yarn into swatches, I ripped out each swatch after taking a picture.

Throwback Thursday: knit gloves

On By CarynIn Craft, throwback

So this deep dive into past pictures for Throwback Thursday has been interesting. There are things I honestly didn’t remember making (which is why I take pictures). I do remember that I had a glove knitting phase where I traced my family’s hands on paper and used that as a template, but I didn’t remember doing color work. Turns out I did, and here is the picture of a couple lovely mirrored bees for my sister that I made in March of 2004.

Photo description: yellow knit wool gloves with black and white mirrored bee shapes on the back of the hands and ribbing at the wrists.

I’m pretty sure that I was using double pointed needles with these, the practice of which went completely away when I had kids and the risk of a needle dropping sky-rocketed.

Shadow’s Embrace

On By CarynIn Craft

This is hand-dyed yarn by Madeline Tosh. The color-way is named “Shadow’s Embrace”. Yes, it was a special design for today’s eclipse. I bought it through JuJu Knits in Fort Worth, and while I was picking up, saw a sock pattern called “Singularity” by Jeny Staiman.

Photo description: Shadow’s Embrace black and orange super fine weight yarn by Madeline Tosh in the skein.
Photo description: two yarn cakes of roughly equal value wound from the Shadow’s Embrace yarn.

I am totally working on socks today called Singularity Shadow’s Embrace. Makes my nerdy science heart happy!

Throwback Thursday: Socks

On By CarynIn Craft, throwback

My current endeavors are not my first foray into knitting socks, as proven here in a picture from November of 2003. I was knitting with thicker wool, and sewed tooled leather to the soles to make a slipper. Tooling leather isn’t the ideal slipper sole, it is thick and stiff. Now I would use suede or a finished supple leather, something to reduce the chance of slipping while walking more than the simple tooling I tried here. I do like how neat my stitches are, though, and worsted weight yarn knits up much quicker than sock weight yarn!

Photo description: cream colored wool slipper socks with a lightly tooled leather sole whipped stitched with leather lacing.

This was over 20 years ago. Hm.

Blocking magic

On By CarynIn Craft

Blocking a knit item really can work wonders. My Helix scarf increased in length about a third, making it a nice size. I’m glad I didn’t add on.

Photo description: Helix scarf knitted from hand spun blended wool and silk yarn, then soaked with water and laid out to dry in a semicircle shape
Photo description: nearly dry Helix scarf hanging from the drying rack showing off the lovely undulations created by short rows.

This could be my favorite piece of spinning and knitting that I’ve done. I started spinning the yarn about a year ago, and knitting it took me about a month. That being said, this was not my only project during that time. I call myself a serial crafter, but really I should consider the title parallel crafter. A parallel serial crafter. A craft dispatcher. Hm. This train derailed, but I’m glad the scarf made it to the station.