One down, one more halfway

I finished a pair of socks this weekend.  I feel like a project-finishing machine! The socks I finished are the ones I first posted over a month ago.  They are a lovely combination of buttery yellows, cream and apricot from Kitchen Sink Dyeworks, a dyer I learned about at the Sock Summit.  Mercedes dyes her yarn in very small batches in, you guessed it, her kitchen (like many small dyers) and the colors she dyes are said not to stripe or pool but instead give you a lovely knitted fabric that has mottled color throughout.  I found that this was in fact the case with the Kai Mei socks that I knit from Sock Innovation: Knitting Techniques & Patterns for One-of-a-Kind Socks.  BTW. if you purchased the book when it first came out, you should check out the errara page on Interweave's site.  There are just way too many errors in this book's patterns, but I hear that the second printing of the book has the errors corrected, for those who have yet to purchase it.  While the errors in the patterns are very annoying, I'm a big fan of Cookie's work and it's a shame that her debut publication wasn't well edited.  Dispite the errors, I will definitely be buying her new book when it comes out next year.

These weren't easy socks to knit, as they are designed in a way that is different than I'm used to.  But they weren't terribly hard- it was just...different.  For me, this wasn't a pair of socks that I could absent mindedly knit while watching Glee.  I love the result of the way the lace panel works its way across the foot.  This was the first time I knit a pair of socks where you had a definied right and left sock.  And I couldn't figure out how to knit the foot long enough for my big feet, so I instead stopped when the lace panel reached the other side and I'll gift them to someone with smaller feet.  Well, I guess I just didn't want to take the time to figure it out- anyone else know hot to make these bigger and not have the lace panel stop well before the toe decreases? 

Here's my new project, the second pair of Lepidoptera Mitts that I mentioned in my previous post.  This is an amazing red, don't you think?  I must not have been paying attention several times while knitting this mitt, because I made a few mistakes and had to tear out. This isn't the easiest yarn to pick up stitches in- it's not nearly impossible like a Kid Merino would be, but it's so soft and really made me almost want to leave the second mistake in after I'd already torn back once.  Yeah, it could have been the glass of wine making it difficult, but I like to blame things on something other than myself...

I don't think I'll even use a whole skein of the Tilli Tomas Milan for these Mitts, so this will be a very luxruious gift for a very reasonable price.  And I think I can finish these mitts in a week's worth of evenings.

Comments

[Sarah]

I think I got lucky and the decreases finished at the point where I wanted to start the toe. (Mine are in black, so it's not all that easy to see what I did.) IIRC, I planned to just continue the lace pattern down the side of the foot if I had needed extra length.

[www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1482145266]

I am in total agreement about the Cookie A book. I love her patterns but found the lack of alternate size info beyond frustrating. I buy books so I don't have to write my own patterns, or rewrite someone else's!

[Nancy]

I love the mitt pattern--thank you for writing it up and posting it I made the first pair in DIC flamingo pie and they are beautiful. The next pair will be in the Dream in Color Pansy go lightly. What a great gift item. Love that red yarn you are using.