Socks and baby stuff
Every now and then, I consider subtitling this blog: “Confessions of a Crummy Knitter” - or words to that effect. So, anyway, I’ve been knitting. Things come out close to how I envision them, but usually not quite in the same ballpark. I just keep telling myself it’s a learning process, and even though they come out flawed and full of “oops” moments, I’ve learned that much more from the mistakes.
A friend of mine gave me the most amusing book from 1968, and it’s full of baby and toddler and young children’s sweaters and hats, and of course booties, and a few other fun things, like mittens and hats with animal faces and ears on them.
The pink bonnet is one of the bonnets in the book. I need to stitch some satin ribbon on it to finish it off. I goofed up the lace pattern…of course. The textured pattern is called “Quaker stitch” and it’s alternating stockinette and reverse stockinette to make a nice stretchy fabric to accommodate a pretty good range of head sizes. I like the seed stitch borders. When I bound the bonnet off along the bottom edge, I used two different bind-offs. The front sections, I used one that I saw Annie Modesitt demonstrate once which she calls the k2tog bind off. I like it because it’s such a pretty edge, it looks kind of “crochet’d”. However, it’s not very stretchy, so for the midback section of the bonnet, I used EZ’s sewn bind off, which is illustrated in her book, “Knitting Without Tears”, for a slightly more stretchy area.
The black socks are just the finished pair I’d been working on previously. Basic sock “recipe” - and they also have my unique stamp of “oops I forgot I did that” on them - and one heel flap has a 3 ST garter selvedge - and the other does not. Sigh…
How cute is the ladybug sock???? Yes of course there are boo-boos in it - need you wonder??? I finally got my hands on a copy of the (out of print) book Vogue Knitting on the Go, Socks. I’m sure I could have improvised this from the Dale of Norway book that has Marihone in it (the Ladybug sweater that still sits waiting for steek cutting and sleeves to be sewn in), but I’m glad I got the book because I knew it had the pattern in it. I found the book used through Amazon.com. It smells of ciggy smoke though (ick!) but hopefully that will fade eventually, and I won’t have to resort to putting it into a plastic bag with some charcoal briquets to take that stench away from it. The book is a small one, and just the right size for a knitting bag.
I finished the toe with a skein of similar yarn but slightly different fiber content. I actually cant tell which sock has the different toe unless I look really close, so that’s a relief. I’m disappointed I didn’t just try to do the short-row heels on this pair. I have just never gotten the hang of those heels and really don’t actually LIKE them any better than a standard heel flap and heel, so the incentive just wasn’t there to make it “click” in my brain. However, the textured eye of partridge heel flap was probably a little bit “much” this time. It may look different on a foot, but as a flat unblocked sock, I don’t like it this time. Otherwise, though, this pattern is really a fun knit. I am actually thinking that it’d be a cool pattern to substitute for EZ’s February baby sweater, and I just might take that project on one of these days. Next sock project, though is 
See that tiny little ball of yarn? Do you think it’s enough for another, oh, say three inches or so of sock? Yeah, me neither. 
I could have sworn I had two skeins of this yarn. I made the socks small, since the pattern is for an “average” woman’s sock. My oldest granddaughter has a foot about that big, so I decided to just knit it as written and give them to her, but I can’t find the second skein. I do have another skein of pink sock yarn here though - so once again the kids will be getting something improvised!
- that the ball-of-yarn-that-refuses-to-become-a-sock seems content with so far.
