For me, sock knitting fills that particular niche of “easily portable, minimal concentration, useful result, boredom-prevention device”.  Sock knitting is great for waiting rooms and public transit and is something to do with your hands while watching a movie that you know is going to be bad before you even start watching.

I have never knit a fancy pair of socks because I figure if I’m willing to put that much concentration into knitting, I’d rather end up with a nice scarf. But I do like the idea of non-plain socks that have a bit of handmade flair. Stripes or variegated wools are my usual solution.

When I recently* knit a pair of Christmas socks for my mom, I decided to change it up a bit. She had picked out the plainest of plain wool so I decided on a nice compromise: fancy cuffs paired with plain Jane socks. The bits that stick out above a pair of shoes take a bit of effort and look impressive to a non-knitter, while the rest can be done on autopilot. Or, in this case, they were done when the actual pilot was probably on autopilot and I was crammed into a plane seat watching GI Joe.

I was quite happy with how these turned out and thought I’d share.  You can download the pattern here: Columbia sock pattern.

If you’re an experienced sock knitter you will barely need the pattern. If you’re new to socks or need a refresher over and above the pattern, here’s a couple of links that might be of use:

• sock basics
• grafting

Happy knitting!

*Nine months isn’t all that long, right? I mean, it’s all relative.  For a mayfly it might be 300 generations and for a continent it’s barely measurable. For me, it’s just enough time to get thoroughly distracted but not abandon my good intentions.

Twas three nights before Christmas, when all through the house.

I was eating shortbread cookies.

Thing 1: I recently treated myself to a few skeins of Brooklyn Tweed’s new wool, Shelter. It is very, very lovely.

Thing 2: My only handknit hat is reallyreallyitchy.

Thing 3: Hats knit up quickly.

Inevitable result: I have a new hat.

I’m very happy with how it turned out. It’s my own design based on the wickerwork stitch pattern. If you’d like to knit one for yourself  you can download the pattern here: Pup Tent pattern.

Disclaimer: I have done my best not to make any mistakes and i can has spellchecker but please let me know if you find any problems. I believe this pattern is good value for zero dollars I’m charging, but it has not been test knit.

Shelter is different from anything I’ve knit with before. It’s rustic and sheepy in a good way and it had a rough feel without being scratchy. I can happily wear in on my forehead for hours. The wool is spun in such a way as to trap lots of air inside. This makes for a surprisingly warm hat when combined with a slouchy fit that keeps even more warm air between my head and the outside world. Cozy.

I’ve named it Pup Tent. This comes from the fact that the triangles in the stitch pattern remind me of little A-frame pup tents. And a tent is a type of Shelter. And I’m not very good at naming things.

This project is 100% Purl Bee . The pattern is directly from the blog (although “pattern” seems like an overstatement for a garter stitch rectangle) and the colour palette is inspired by their beautiful crochet projects. I felt very brave combining beige, yellow and orange (hellooo, 70′s track suit!) but I think the overall effect is great.

I love this so much that I didn’t want to give it away. Even to a really cute baby. That’s how much I love it. I think you’d love it too if you could see it in person and give it a squishy hug.

Also in progress: socks from hand-dyed wool. I go back and forth between thinking that these will be the most beautiful things I’ve ever made to thinking they give off an acid-wash-jeans kind of vibe. Time will tell.

And now a random photo to make the post seem longer and more colourful: I played around dyeing with food colouring. The photo captures the colour pretty well, except for the bottom two. They are much, much brighter in real life.

Good intentions: check.

Enough wool: check.

Actual knitting progress: negative.

Also, look what was 30% off. I see a Malabrigo lace shawl in my future. (After the blankie is finished, of course.)

(Why yes, my floors are looking quite nice. Thank you for noticing.)

2. Slept.

3. Knit this:

This is a poorly photographed version of the Featherweight Cardigan done in a double moss stitch.  I was determined to knit a gray sweater so that I could wear it with everything in my limited wardrobe. One of the lessons I learned is that plain grey is a less popular yarn colour than, say, variegated grass green, so don’t just go waltzing into your LYS expecting to leave with the perfect gray laceweight of your dreams. I walzed/sashayed/slunk dejectedly into four yarn stores before finding this. It’s Sandnes Garn Mini Duett, a fingering weight cotton/wool blend that is soft and flowy and isn’t even pilling a bit after two weeks of continuous wear, not even in the armpits.  (Why didn’t I just order some gray wool online? Because I was leaving on vacation in two days and hadn’t planned that far ahead, that’s why.)

I’m so happy with how this turned out. I’ve received several compliments already from non-knitters who were surprised I had knit it since it looks so “store bought”, “professional” and “not homemade”.  I don’t know if those comments were actually intended as compliments, but I’ll assume they were.

4. Drank wine. We were in the Okanagan. There were at least two dozen wineries within 10km. When in Rome, drink wine.

5. Bought this:

This is 78g of hand-everythinged alpaca. Hand sheared, handspun, sold direct at the farmer’s market. The woman selling the wool used to own three alpacas which she has since sold to concentrate on running a vineyard. What a life, hey? Anyway, this was the last of the wool from her alpacas.  I’m not usually an impulse-buyer, but how could I resist? She even showed me a picture of Pinto, the fine brown alpaca who was the previous owner/wearer of this wool.

6. Experienced a passenger-side-window-mechanism-failure which meant we did the five hour drive through the mountains with the window wide open.  I am pleased to report that it did not rain, snow or hail, I did not get hit in the face with fast-moving bird poop, and the hearing loss was minimal and temporary.

I hardly recognize the person I used to be.

I have come to several realizations:

1. Socks are very portable. And stockinette is very easy to do on a bus without getting carsick.

2. My husband is far more enthusiastic about one pair of handknit socks than a whole bag of Costco socks.

3. Stripes! Green and blue stripes!

4. They’re inexpensive and quick enough that if something goes horribly wrong, you can, without any guilt, hide half a sock behind the couch and pretend it never happened.

These are a generic sock pattern with some twisted stitch ribbing along the back in an attempt to prevent slouching at the ankles.  DGB Confetti superwash wool which is holding up well so far and has the all-important Husband Certification of Non-Itchiness.

I’m usually very restrained in yarn stores, but when I saw mini mochi sock yarn in Intense Rainbow on sale, I couldn’t help myself.  It looked to me like a big soft knittable pride flag and it was clearly made for a friend of mine who has a real thing for colours and textures. He does not knit, but has happily accompanied me to yarn stores just to pet the wool. That is a man who needs two balls of Intense Rainbow.  Perfect.

Then I got home and the inevitable happened.  As the thrill of the catch wore off, the plan started to seem less fool-proof. Although my friend can appreciate the heck out of a skein of Malabrigo, he does it while wearing exclusively grey or black clothes.

After much thought on the seeming contradiction of making a subtle pride accessory out of screaming rainbows, I came up with these mitts.

Here’s what I did:

I knit both the mitts and liners using a generic sore thumb mitten pattern like the ones here or here but without ribbing on the cuff.

The outer mitts are Cascade Eco wool on size 8 (5.0mm) dpns. I cast on 32 stitches and worked about 3″ before beginning the thumb. I added an icord to the cast-on edge.

The liners are Mini mochi on size 4 (3.5mm) dpns. I cast on 40 stitches worked about 1″ before beginning the thumb.  I divided the ball in two and alternated three rows from one half and three from the other.  I worked at quite a loose gauge and checked while I was knitting to make sure the liner would fit in the outer mitt without bunching.

After blocking both parts separately, I folded up the cuff of the outer mitten and stuffed the liners inside with the right side showing. Then I sewed the liner into the mitten.

I think they look nice with the cuffs folded up halfway, but they can be worn with the full-length cuffs on those truly Canadian winter nights when it’s so cold that even the wind has had enough and it’s desperately trying to get in out of the weather by creeping up inside your sleeves where it’s warm.  Plus, they can always be worn inside out.

Oh, and I just re-read this and saw “a man who needs two balls of Intense Rainbow”. Ha. You know what I mean.

It is, of course, Ysolda Teague’s beautiful Peaks Island Hood. A very fashionable friend of mine had requested it as a birthday/Christmas gift. (I warned her she would receiving a very belated Christmas gift, but I did get it done before her birthday.)  So the upside of the oddly chilly evenings we’ve been having lately is that she had a chance to wear this a few times before the woolies were banished to the back of the closet for the season.

I had a minor moment of panic when, three quarters of the way through, my husband looked at it and commented on how it looked like there were two colours and how nice that was. Two colours? Did I not notice a change in dye lot? Did I spill something on it? Maybe this is how I discover I’m actually hopelessly colourblind?  Oh crapcrapcrap.  Turns out no, but the wool does have a nice sheen that makes the the light reflecting off the seed stitch bumps (seeds?) made them look lighter and shinier than the rest. In a good way.

I was so pleased with how that scarf turned out, I almost immediately moved from my first Ysolda project to my second. Here’s Ishbel on the needles.

A shawl is a year-round accessory, right?