Hello Monday and a pair of true monster socks (2015 FO# 11)

Last week flew by in a massive deadline blur. I honestly didn't even realise I'd missed a week of posting until I sat down now to type this. That's hopeless! The days and weeks feel like they're zooming so fast at the moment I can't even keep up. I am seriously tempted to buy one of these gorgeous colouring books to help me be a bit more mindful and slow down. (haha when would I find the time to do that. Bluergh.)

I did take a few minutes time out today to take pictures of my latest pair of socks. These are full-on monster socks, made out of the 5-10g balls of sock yarn left after a pair of socks have been finished.

To make these, I collected all of the similar weight and feel sock yarns I had and divided them each into two balls. I then cast on and spiralled two at a time all the way up the sock, using an afterthought heel.

One thing I didn't do which I probably should have was weigh the itty bitty balls. Although I followed the same yarn sequence for both socks, since some of the balls were much bigger than others, you can see that the colour changes occur at different places in each sock (the right one becomes a lot more blue faster than the right one does, for example).

These taught me a lot about coordinating colours in scrap yarn. If I were to do it again, I'd divde the balls into 'warm' and 'blue' and spiral accordingly, so there would always be a bit of contrast, rather than what I did which was randomly pick the closest ball to me whenever I needed to add a new yarn.

That said, they are super warm and comfortable and when they're on, the colour discrepancies aren't really obvious.

I have now packed these socks up with the helical stripes set and will drop them off at KOGO, hopefully tomorrow.

In other news:

I know I am not alone in feeling like this winter has been going forever. However, I was ecstatic when I popped outside to observe that some of the coriander seeds I planted before this recent cold snap have come up! I was certain that they would have been destroyed by the frost.

So, although spring hasn't actually sprung yet, there are signs that it might be coming soon. 

Hopefully, very very soon - I'm done with the cold (and so is Lucy).

FO Friday AKA Let the sock fest begin: Patonyle Colour-block Socks (2015 FO #7)

A few weeks ago, I blogged about a cowl I had made out of leftover 50g balls of Patonlye. I don't know if it came through but I was incredibly pleased with myself. Not only had I used up all the balls that were each too small to make one pair of socks, I had a great, very wearable scarf that is soft and comfortable and warm. Winning! But then, I looked at the leftovers of leftovers (please imagine this stage as I did not take photos because I am a terrible blogger who still does not understand how blogs work) and the balls seemed just a little bit too big to throw away. I pulled out my trusty digital drug dealer scales, and yep...

[picture 10 teeny balls of wool on a digital scale with a display that says "55g"]

..almost enough for a pair of socks. Clearly I couldn't throw away enough wool to make an entire pair of socks! So I grabbed the 7g of Needfood merino sock yarn I had leftover from my Tennis Scarf and started knitting.

Et voila! A pair of socks.

I knitted these toe up, two at a time so I could use up all of the (damn) wool.

I ran into a slight problem when I got to the heel because I couldn't find my copy of Favorite Socks (I use the heel from Priscilla's dream socks)...

..so I just bought another. I know, consumerism, consumption, excess, etc., but still! I'm usually really good about this stuff. I save up my veggie scraps to make stock with, I use an environmental toothbrush (which, btw, I think everyone should use. Not only are they better for the environment than a regular toothbrush, they're cheap and the packaging has pictures of pandas all over it! Pandas are great) - I think on balance, I'm doing okay (I did not realise how guilty I felt about buying a second copy until I started writing this paragraph! The things you learn.)

There were a ton of ends to weave in but it was worth it to get my free, soft, comfy and waste-reducing socks.

As the title of the blog indicates, I've been finishing a lot of socks lately. There are many more sock FO Fridays to come!

My Sisyphusian spiralling scrapbusting baby hat (2013 FO# 6)

Yesterday I told you that even after finishing my very cute Blue Baby Surprise Jacket, I still had a pile of crepe yarn left. It was only 35 grams, but I was not going to put that back in the stash again! But what pattern uses odd bits of yarn that only weigh 5 - 8 grams?  I knew I had to put my thinking hat on ... Then inspiration struck! A hat was the perfect project and I knew exactly what I had to do to make it work.

I took three colours and cast on 24 stitches in each colour. 

Let's call them A, B and C, going from the left.

I then divided the stitches up for magic loop 

(all of A plus 12 of B on needle 1, 12 of B and all of C on needle 2)

Then started to knit as follows.

Round 1: Knit the A stitches with C. Knit the B stitches with A. Knit the C stitches with B.

The stitches are now are divided as follows:

all of C plus 12 of A on needle 1, 12 of A and all of B on needle 2.

Round 2: Knit the A stitches with B. Knit the C stitches with B. Knit the B stitches with A.

Every time one of the colours ran out, I closed my eyes and grabbed another ball at random out of the bag.

I continued with the spiralling pattern until the hat was as long as I thought it should be, then I cast off by decreasing every second row - I decreased every eighth stitch then every seventh then every sixth etc until I had nine stitches left, then I knitted an icord for a few centimetres.

I wish I was a better photographer because this shot does not reflect the total squee-ness of this hat! It's tiny and the rolled brim is so cute. It's pretty teeny so it should fit the same baby as the BSJ.

I suck so bad at photography! You'll have to trust me - it's very cute. It also took me about two hours to knit and used up annoying odds and ends out of my stash - I will definitely be making this hat again! The question is, can an adult get away with a fetching icord finish? Maybe not...

Oh, the cuteness!