Just a Relaxing Day

Today ended up being a pretty relaxing day. I took my brother to a hair appointment and ended up getting a little trim and style myself. My old hair stylist got another line of work at a better place (go girl!), but that means that I have to get a new one. I tried her replacement today and she is so much younger and styles differently. I'm not sure if I like the back yet, but I love how she styled the front. I don't think I'm going back to long hair for a little while.

I just love the berries out of the pattern I'm knitting for mom's sock. I never thought that doing little fake yarn over cables would be so easy and addicting. It is a little like magic. Pull one stitch over two others and then make a yarn over in the next row and ta da! A magic little cable with a hole in it.

This week:

Reading: The Black Swan by Mercedes Lackey. Finally started the book and it is interesting. I'm reserving judgement until I read a few more chapters.

Watching: Orange is the New Black. Whoever knew that prison drama would be this interesting? Only one more episode left in the season and I am interested to see how this season will end. Then I'll have to decide if I want to start something different or just focus on reading for a little while.

Fit, Ease, & Socks

I never used to care about my own personal gauge when I was knitting. I just followed the pattern with the needles called for or one size up when it came to socks. I made my socks fit and didn't care if they were too tight or anything. But something changed when I started learning more about my knitting and gauge and fit.

My current goal has been to get the perfect pair of socks. It even led me down the road to taking the gauge of all of my sock needles so I know exactly how I knit. The last two pairs of socks I knit fit well, but were a little slouchy and slipped off easily whenever I would take off my shoes. It was frustrating going from knitting socks that mostly fit but were a little loose around the ankle or too tight around the toes to socks that wouldn't stay on my foot when I wasn't wearing shoes.

That's when I starting reading up about ease.

The easiest way to describe ease is the space between your skin and your clothing. Imagine a loose fitting t-shirt. That item would have positive ease so that you can move around easily. Now, imagine a clingy slinky little black dress. That item would have zero ease. Now, imagine a simple ribbed stocking cap that you would wear in the winter. That item has negative ease and clings to you so that the hat won't fall off, but still fits.

Socks should have negative ease so that it clings to your foot and stays there so you can take off your shoes without your socks falling off. Reading around the Socks Knitters Anonymous (SKA) group, a lot of people like their socks with about 10-15% negative ease. That will make them small enough to cling, but big enough to stretch to fit your foot.

Yarn Over Cable Pattern by Charlene Schurch

So, what does that mean about the christmas socks that I'm knitting for my mom? Simply put, I have to do some math, but (luckily) the math is relatively easy thanks to the handy charts in Sensational Knitted Socks.

Her shoe size is seven which means that her leg will be about 8 1/8 inches around. With the five stitch pattern I'm doing with my personal gauge being 9 stitches per inch, that means I would have to cast on 70 stitches for a sock with zero ease. That means it would be a slouchy sock.

At 10% negative ease I would have to cast on  63 stitches. (10% of 70 is 7)
At 15% negative ease I would have to cast on 60 stitches. (15% of 70 is 10.5 round down to 10)

This means my goal cast-on number would be anywhere between 60-63 stitches. With the pattern that I'm using, sixty stitches turned out to be the perfect cast on number. This means that I should be knitting a sock that will fit mom's foot perfectly and not be too snug or too loose. But because this is a gift, I won't know for sure until Christmas day.

Ninety Days

I know you don't want to think about it, I know you don't want to hear about it, and I know that it is far too early to even start talking about Christmas, but knitters everywhere have to remember that Christmas is only ninety days away. This is the first year that I am really counting down the days until the big gift giving holiday of the year because it is the first time that I am only going to give handmade themed presents to my family this year. Of course, I am one of the lucky ones that my family doesn't read my blog so I can talk about my holiday knitting!

This year I am making my entire family (that is immediate family and my fiance) Christmas socks. No, they are not going to be all of the same pattern. That would just be too insane even for me and I would get really bored and stop knitting them. Instead, they are all going to have the same color palette but have different sock patterns. This way my family can't get them mixed up in the wash either.

Earlier in the year when Knit Picks announced that they were going to discontinue the Felici yarn line, I had a massive order that included ten skeins of Felici Jingle. I didn't think that I would like the color when I ordered it, but I did anyway because they were Christmas colors and perfect for gifts. It was a happy surprise when the yarn came in and the normal fire red, holly green, and snow white were instead replaced with a toned down rust red, forest green, and soft almost off white. This way they are nice winter themed socks at first glance instead of the obnoxious ugly Christmas holidays sweater tones that aren't really suitable for wear outside of the holidays.

The hardest part was actually planning the patterns that I wanted to use. Since Felici is a self-striping yarn it does play well with texure, but I also wanted to play with the stripe movement in some socks while still keeping the patterns simple and (hopefully) quick to make. Best of all, every single pattern I picked out are socks that I haven't made before, so there is no chance of me getting bored!

The line up is:

1. Jaywalkers for Dad.
2. Yarn Over Cable Socks for Mom. 
3. Circle Socks for my brother Hunter.
4. Vanilla Latte for Will (the fiance for any newer readers out there).
5. And Hedera Socks for me.

Since my parents will be out of the house for a full week while they take their annual time-away-from-kids-empty-nesting trip, that means that I will have time to knit on their socks while they are away without them peeking. Between my work and looking after my brother to make sure he survives a week without the parents, I should have time to get at least one pair of socks done before they get back which will leave me just enough time to cast Will's socks on for my lounge around the family knitting project.

Are you doing any Christmas knitting this year?

Knitter turned Quilter: Measuring Hexipuffs

After you make a variety of hexagons (no matter if they are out of fabric or yarn), you start to wonder how many of these things that you will need. Blankets and quilts just don't spring to life after making a handful. They take hundreds of these things, but with the variables, it is hard to figure out what number to pick. Will making a blanket big enough to cover a queen sized bed take 300, 400, or 500 hexagons? Maybe more? What about a twin sized bed? Or maybe a decent sized lap blanket? After all, there are always bigger and smaller blankets to have and different  people like different sizes of blankets.

That is when I decided to turn to the quilting side of the internet. The clever quilters have been dealing with the age old debate of "how many do we need anyway?" for far longer than knitters. They deal with cutting out bits of fabric and putting them together all of the time. Of course, knitters to too, but there are far more square knitted blankets than there are hexagon shaped ones.

Since I am back at home now that my dog sitting days are over, I got a chance to measure my bed to see how big I would want it anyway. I am making a blanket and not a quilt so it doesn't have to be big enough to cover my bed and fold down over the sides. It just has to be big enough to cover the top of my queen sized mattress. That ends up being 60 inches wide and 80 inches long. A decent sized bed big enough for both me, my fiance, and my cat when she decides to sleep with us.

I found a spot on the internet called CD Designs that was made to help quilters figure out how many hexagons they would need for a quilt. After figuring out how they measured their hexagons, I broke out my handy measuring tape and one of my hexiflats to figure out how big I was making them anyway. Since they measure their hexagons by side, I did the same thing with my hexipuffs and it turns out that they are about one inch long on each side. That is probably why they are so adorable, because they are just big enough to fit into the palm of your hand. After entering in the numbers and hitting the button to let them crunch the numbers for me, it turns out that my goal hexiflat count will be a whopping 1,829 hexagons. They even calculated that I would need 52 half hexagons if I want to make the blanket completely square instead of wavy.

That is a massive amount of hexagons and I am very, very glad that I have a lot of leftover sock yarn along with a big bin of sock yarn that I can turn into socks and play with the leftovers with. I am also glad that I decided to make a complete leftover blanket instead of having a specific color scheme. This will definitely be a long term project.

Sock Yarn Blanket vs Bee Keeper's Quilt

When I was still in high school, I stumbled upon the Shelly's Sock Yarn Blanket via the Yarn Harlot. I thought it was a thing of genius and beauty, but I didn't have any sock yarn at the time and the point of the blanket was to use up scraps. Being a baby knitter and a person determined to "follow directions exactly" I never made the blanket.

Skip ahead to now where the current viral blanket is the Bee Keeper's Quilt and the fact that I am actually making one to use up my sock yarn leftovers. Now, I love making these little hexipuffs and I'm not going to stop, but I have found that I have more leftovers than I thought with some yarns and I don't want to make thousands upon thousands of hexipuffs with some of those yarns.

Here lies the conundrum.

I am already making one scrap blanket, but I'm tired making hexipuffs in some colors. Those colors that I'm thinking of would not make good socks for scrappy monstersocks, but they might look fantastic in a garter stitch mitered square. But do I really need two long term blankets going on at one time made out of scrap sock yarn?

I don't see myself making anything else out of those yarns and I don't really want to just throw them away or donate them because of postage costs and the local places only want worsted weight yarn of a good quantity (aka not two partial balls of sock yarn).

But again, do I need two long term blanket projects?