No more Sock Madness for me

(So now I will have to come up with my own madness...)

I made it through round 4 in Sock Madness, the Mad Weave pattern:

















Pattern: Mad Weave by Tina Lorin.
Yarn: The Natural Dye Studio (eBay).
Colour: Blue Rainbow.
Needles: 2.25 mm.

Not certain that the yarn choice was the best for showing off the pattern, but they are very nice on and I guess that is the main thing!

In round 5 my partner finished before me, so I was out of the competition. As I was in no longer in any hurry to finish I took my time and enjoyed knitting what was left. I really like these socks, and for the first time in this competition I'm absolutely happy with the yarn choice for the pattern.

















Pattern: Mad to Dance by Theresa.
Yarn: Cherry Tree Hill
Needles: 2.25 mm.

More madness

Yup, I'm still in Sock Madness.

The round two pattern was called Mad-tini. It was fun to knit with slipped stitches spiralling down the leg. Here is my version, modelled by my mother:
It's hard to see the spiralling stitches because of the variegated yarn (the yarn is Gjestal's Silja, colour 330, knitted on 2,5 mm needles). My opponent seemed to be MIA. She was neither seen nor heard from. So I feel I got through this round by default.

In that respect round 3 was more fun (at least I think so now that I've had a week to forget about the stress). When I finished my opponent only had half a foot left to knit! The pattern in round 3 was called Painted Madness, and was made to showcase beautiful hand painted yarn. My socks, however, should probably be called striped madness:
The yarn is Hill Country Yarns - Instant Gratification Sock Yarn, the colour is Bluesy Woozy, I knitted the socks on 2,5 mm needles, but would recommend thicker needles (it was rather tiring to knit so thick yarn on such thin needles).

Looking at the socks now I wish I had switched the yarn for the socks, I think the slipped stitches would have been very interesting in striped yarn, while the variegated yarn would have been better showcased in round 3 pattern.

But now I have to go and find some yarn and needles in preparation for round 4 tomorrow...

Madness indeed....

I joined Sock Madness, and spent the weekend knitting like a maniac. I finished sunday evening and made it to round two.

The suggestion was for two yarns, one solid and one varigated. The test sock had been knitted with Lorna's Laces. Great, I have several skeins both solid and striping that match. It was later mentioned that the yarns should be tonal. Still no problem. Have you spotted the problem yet? Only after I recived the pattern and read the note from the author of the pattern did it sink in. My Lorna's Laces stripes, it isn't varigated. Oops. Desperat search through my Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn. Found a couple of yarns that looked like they were pretty close, winded them into balls so fast that my shoulder was sore for days afterward (I use a nøstepinne). And then I cast on, and ripped, and cast on , and ripped, and... Eh, yes, I cast on a total of five times for two socks. (This was when I started to wonder if this was a good idea after all, and where my brain was.) And then I knitted and knitted.



After a while I realised that I may have taken the `tonal´ thing a bit far... They didn't look quite so close in colour in the skeins, but as I was over alf way down the leg I kept going. The result is that my socks doesn't really look stripy, but I quite like the result. Often varigated yarn can look very busy when knitted up, this way it doesn't.

Knit the Classics

Originally posted Saturday, September 30, 2006.

I have joined KTC. One of the reasons I wanted a blog was so that it would be easier to participate in knit-a-longs and such.

Although I enjoy reading classics, I tend to not read them very often. Somehow the idea of reading and what should be involved when reading classics (and by classics I mean good books that have withstood the test of time), becomes so huge and difficult to live up to that I end up postponing the actual reading. So having a deadline seems to be just the thing that I need to kickstart myself.

I read KTCs September selection (The Time Traveler's Wife), but didn't have time to make something for it.