Socks!

Not one but two pairs of socks for the March 2015 Sock Knitters Anonymous challenge. The first pair was the month's mystery by Adrienne Fong, and the second the math inspired Squircle by General Hogbuffer. The mystery pattern was enjoyable and I like the finished socks, complete with the deliberate holes in the heel and toe (there was an option to make the toes more durable, but I decided to go all out with the lace). The Squircle was more straight-forward but with an unusual construction. It was fun to knit, too. I might reknit the pattern, with 60 stitches instead of 64, in the future.

Links to Mystery Socks and Squircle

Silk Road

The first pattern in the Kitman Figueroa shawl club was Silk Road. Inspired by some other knitters' use of beads on this shawl I decided to use 8/0 beads to cover up the yarn overs in the narrow columns that run through the pattern. The combination of fingering weight yarn and small beads did not lend itself to using a crochet hook, so I ended up using a piece of jewelry wire (in the same way some knitters use dental floss) to slip the beads on. About 15% of the beads, which turned out to have somewhat nonuniform hole sizes, refused to fit on the stitches, but luckily most of them worked out. I was somewhat relieved at the end of the shawl that the bead fitting was over. For the yarn I used Cephalopod Yarns Skinny Bugga, which is a lovely yarn choice for soft and drapy shawls, but, unfortunately, discontinued. I have a decent stash of it left, though, so I will be using it for as long as it lasts.

The Ravelry project

Peachy Keen

This year I'll try to be more active in Cookie A's Sock Club; I think last year I knit only one club pattern to completion. Of the February club package I like both sock patterns, and both cookie recipes also look attractive. The club yarn this time wasn't really for me, since for some unexplained reason I'm not fond of salmon pink, so for the first sock pattern I used Cephalopod Yarns Skinny Bugga in the Orange Tip Butterfly colorway, which I think can be considered somewhat peachy. I love the tapering off of the pattern on top of foot, and how the gusset decreases are built into that. This was a gratifyingly fast pattern to knit. I did adjust the stitch count for the plain part of the foot down to 62, because I had a feeling 66 stitches in stockinette would be too loose. The fit is now perfect!

Link to Ravelry project