Summer of socks

I have 6 little parcels of yarn patiently waiting for their turn to take part in the Tour de Sock.  First up is some sparkly Dream in Color Starry.  I was going to go with these silver beads, but they're a little too long to fit nicely on the stitches, so I switched to regular seed beads that are transparent .

 

They don't show up as well but they're a heck of a lot easier to get on the stitch.  I think this is the first time in my life I've done a swatch for a sock, but all the chatter on ravelry about getting guage was making me nervous so I did it.  I'm going to have to go down to a 2.0 mm from my usual 2.25 mm to get 8.5 sts/inch. 

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Also waiting in the wings is this beautiful sweetgeorgia yarn in honey fig. This is going to be my first Camp Loopy project and it will be socks as well. I'm going with just a standard sock pattern for this one, because I have a feeling the Tour de Sock pattern is going to be a killer, but I'm going to incorporate a butterfly pattern and hope that'll show off the yarn nicely

Infinity cowl or cat bed?

The 9th project I completed as part of the 50 project project started life as a kit I bought at a knitting retreat in Carmel, California, about a million years ago.  I took my daughter Taylor along with me for a girl's weekend and we had a fabulous time.  I think she was about 12 years old at the time.  It was at an old spa/hotel near the beach, so I spent some time in knitting classes, we went for massages, had some nice meals and went to the beach.  She put up with us old ladies talking about knitting and she actually spent a little time doing some herself.

That was in the days when novelty yarns were really coming into their own - people were churning out fun fur scarves like nobody's business.  Wal-Mart's shelves were full of the Lion Brand's version, and even the high class yarn companies got into the game.

 

Even at the time I bought this kit I knew I would never make the shawl pattern that was included, but this yarn was just so much softer than any of the other nylon/polyester stuff I'd felt before, and it also came with 4 balls of Muensch Touch Me, which I was very enamored with, after buying Sally Melville's Knitting Experience book 2 - The Purl Stitch, where she made a cardigan with Touch Me and felted it to a magnificent veloury shininess.  The kit came home with me and languished in the closet until I included it in my 50 project list and it's number came up.

 

I cast on 180 stitches in the round and started knitting.  I had 6 balls of Prism Yarns Fern (the fuzzy stuff) and 2 balls each of green and maroon Touch Me.  I worked garter stitch in Fern until the ball ran out, then I switched to Touch Me and worked in stocking stitch.  I thought it was getting to wide after 3 balls of Fern and 2 balls of Touch Me, so I cast off and called it done.

That's wrapped around twice - it is very cozy and I might just wear it in Winnipeg, in the winter.  But I've only used half the yarn, so I'm thinking I might make a very soft, very expensive cat bed.  Possibly knitting a strand of Fern held together with a strand of Touch Me and felting it. 

The 50 Project Project

I have a massive project underway which may easily take me to retirement.  It's the 50 project project.  Here's my progress so far:

 

You'll see that I'm ahead of the game, but there's a long way to go. 

 

I started with 50 kits that I gathered from my closet - kits that I'd put together with yarn and a pattern, intending to get to them eventually.  Now I'm working my way through and making an adventure of it.  I've given myself about 1000 days (20 days/project).  The way it works is, I can work on 2 projects at a time and once I've finished a project, I draw another number out of my little baggie of numbers and can start on that project.

 

 

So far I've finished 8 projects, not all winners, but closet space is opening up!  I will post pictures of finished projects in future blog entries, but I expect a slow down over the summer as I compete in Tour de Sock and participate in Camp Loopy.

 

An unofficial rule of the 50 project project is that I should only be working on items from the 50 project list, but I'm giving myself some leeway to work on other stuff as long as I don't get too far behind on the target.  And I think it's a little unrealistic for me to go without buying ANY yarn for the next couple of years!