FO: My So-Called Scarf

This past fall I went to the Boston Knit-Out where I was handed a coupon for my local LYS which I, of course, had to use immediately. So I trekked a few blocks to the store and elbowed my way through the crowds of women who had also received the coupon but probably don't have the chance to shop at Windsor Button every single day on the way home from work. It was absolute mayhem. Once I found my way to the back of the store, I picked up one skein of Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn and one skein of Malabrigo in delicious Bobby Blue. But what was I to do with the Malabrigo? I took it to a bar for drinks with friends and sat there petting the skein, forcing everyone else to touch it. But once I was home, it was stuffed into a ziplock bag where it sat for months.



On Thanksgiving morning, before driving to my parent's house, I decided it was time to open up the bag and let my delicious yarn breathe. I spent an hour winding it into a ball. (For some reason it was all felted to itself and tangled.) Then I casted on for the infamous My So-Called Scarf. The scarf was completed in two days of solid knitting over the holiday weekend. It was the perfect project for television watching or chatting with a friend over (very late night) drinks.



The length isn't shown in these pictures because I'm still not sure if I'm 100% happy. I used just the one skein and the scarf is a bit shorter than I prefer. I might eventually pick up another skein and add about one foot of length before packing it up as a Christmas gift. And then, once the fury of holiday knitting is finished, I'll make one for myself!

FO: Kew socks

Behold! My first pair of knit socks!

I finished the Kew socks (pattern here) in time for Socktoberfest but my camera mysteriously broke* but now all is well with the world and I can post away.

The specs...
Yarn: KnitPicks Essential in Grass
Needles: KnitPicks US1 dpns. A word of warning, KnitPicks US1 and US2 needle sizes are not the standard mm sizes. This was fine with US1 but I tried knitting with the US2s for another pair of socks and the gauge was way off.
Changes to pattern: None that I can recall. Every row of the leaf pattern requires slipping one stitch to the next needle all the way around. This was hugely annoying and I forgot once or twice so the leaves don't completely line up. The mistake wasn't too obvious to require fixing, thankfully. I'm still no expert at tinking back to mistakes in lace. Actually, this was my first ever lace project (and first pair of socks). I did two and 1/2 pattern repeats for the foot and added 1/2 inch of stockinette before beginning the toe decreases. This adjustment resulted in a perfect fit for my foot and kept the integrity of the pattern.

The pictures...


The color in this picture is pretty much accurate. Unfortunately there is no natural light in the Northeast this week so the flash was required, even at 9AM.


The lace pattern opened up beautifully on the foot but not so much on the ankle. Either I have much smaller ankles than the knitty model or these need a good block (not gonna happen).



These have already been worn and washed twice and seem to have held up extremely well. I washed them in the machine on delicate with a load of sweaters and two of my sweaters exploded lint onto everything in the wash. Conveniently, the batteries in my sweater shaver died the same day. Coincidence? Overall I was very happen with this pattern. There was only one small error in a stitch count calculation but it was no big thing.

*Confession: The camera didn't really break, per se. The batteries died and I had no idea how to recharge them. Turns out when the camera was gifted to me the charger was lost somewhere in my parent's house. But it has now been retrieved and the mystery of the broken camera solved.