knitting | First Light Handcrafts

For the past few months, I have been valiantly chugging away at two pairs of fingering weight socks, one for my Mom and one for my Dad. It all started when I was at home in Newfoundland this summer. Mom decided she liked the pair of Hermione’s Everyday Socks I was working on, and because she had caught me at exactly the right point in the process and I was not all that enamoured with them, I offered to finish them to fit her. Once she had them, she told me she loved them and would really love another pair to go with her brown jeans. My parents have never asked me to knit them anything, ever, so I thought that was the least I could do.

Now, there are two things you should know about this. My mother has a size 10.5 foot – I have a size 7 foot. So as you can imagine these socks require an awful lot more stitches than I usually have to knit to finish a pair of socks.

The bigger issue: I loathe brown. With the fiery passion of a thousand suns. (That’s a slight exaggeration – indigodragonfly makes a Captain Tightpants colourway that I like, and I don’t mind it in variegated colourways like the ones in my Stillwater scarf…but that’s about it). So it should be telling of how much I love my Mom when I tell you that I knit a pair of size 10.5 brown socks for her.

It gets better. I cannot knit my mother two pairs of socks, and not knit any for my father. That just won’t do at all. This necessity for equality is come by honestly. When my brother and I were children, Mom kept a running account of what she spent on each of us at Christmas to make sure the numbers were even. So I ask Dad what colours he would want, since of course I need to knit him two pairs as well. His answer? Dark blue and….brown. Normally, being the dutiful daughter, I would have asked him which socks he wanted first; I skipped that step and cast on the Sweet Fiber Seastorm ones. Because one more brown pair of socks might have killed me. He’ll get the brown ones in the spring. After which I will be declaring a moratorium on brown knitting for a minimum of six months.

I am at the gusset decreases of the second Seastorm sock. It’s not brown but it’s still not exactly colourful. Last night, out of pure desperation, I cast on a Reunion Cowl. In indigodragonfly MCN Lace. In the most stunning red in the world, made even better by being named after one of my favourite TV characters…Inara from Firefly.

indigodragonfly MCN Lace in “Only The Exact Phrase I Used Was Don’t”

This is my cheering antidote against the current winter blahs.

Wow…two posts in one day! I realized that in my blog-absence, it seems I have completed quite a number of FOs and have not blogged any of them. Thought I’d play catch up so there’s a chance these posts might be shorter that previous ones. We’ll see.

Early this spring, my friend Liz had some friends over to lunch and opened her stash up for perusal. I ran across a couple of skeins/wound balls of yarn I loved, and the ever-generous Liz said “If you will use them before I will, take them!”. Since then, of the four I left with that day, three of them have been knit up. This project was made with a partial skein of Colinette Jitterbug, a yarn I had always wanted to try. Because the skein was a partial, and had some 265 yards according to my calculations, I decided that socks would be the project, but that they’d need to be toe-up, because let’s face it, who wants to get to the toe of a second sock only to discover you are a few yards short?

As the beautiful cherry red yarn was staring at me from my wound stash collection, the Sock Knitter’s Anonymous group was hosting Cookie A month, and I inadvertently ran across one of her very few toe-up sock patterns, a Knitty pattern called Baudelaire. Since I had knit precisely one pair of toe-up socks in my life, I hesitated somewhat, before deciding “it’s only yarn” and diving in.

I did these two at a time, on two separate needles, and that was the best idea I ever had, because it meant I learned Judy’s Magic Cast on once, and cast on both toes on the same day. It also meant I didn’t run out of steam at the end of the first sock. It’s strange; I seem to be okay doing simple socks one after the other, but if it’s at all complex, I seem to prefer doing them two at once. Maybe it’s because I don’t forget things in the interim between the first sock and its mate.

I absolutely adore how these turned out, despite their somewhat short legs.

The yarn was super-dense, but a pleasure to knit with and just about impossible to split. And the colour is spectacular. I love the pattern, with its lace front and adorable little cables up the sides. I very well might knit these again.

Pattern: Baudelaire by Cookie A.

Yarn: Colinette Jitterbug in (I think) Morello Mash

Who Was It Made For? Me

Were There Changes Made To The Pattern? Cast on 12 stitches on each needle instead of 8…I really don’t love sharp toes as they look odd and don’t fit me. Also shortened legs due to limited yardage.

Did I Learn Anything New? Re-learned toe-up socks.

Anything Else? Not that I recall.

Would I Make Another?: Absolutely. I really love them.