On the needles

So now I’m mostly caught up with the things that I have made I can turn my attention to the things that I am making.  I am very much making a conscious effort to keep my UFOs down to a minimum at the moment so this isn’t quite the herculean task that it would once have been.  Much as I love, love, love casting things on, I love finishing projects even more and the key to that is concentrating on projects one at a time.  Ideally I will be allowing myself one ‘big’ project and two sock projects at any one time.  I currently have three socks on the go, but I’m nearly there.

My big project of the moment is a little vest/tee for Cassie mostly based on the Morpheus pattern.  Mostly based because, after the first time I ripped it back I decided to miss out the mesh pattern on the front and back and replace it with a purl ridge pattern instead.  I also decided to keep it that way when I cast on again after ripping back for the second time too!  The yarn I’m using is Cygnet Wool Rich Aran, which in theory is really nice and very good value but I just can’t get gauge with it for anything.  I made an Oslo Jacket with it last year which came out teeny tiny because this yarn seems to be closer to a DK than an Aran so I picked it for this project because DK was called for.  But alas, when I swatched (after the first frogging I thought I’d better) I was still getting too many stitches per inch.  I’ve gone up a size and a needle size so fingers crossed it fits in the end.

Out of my three sock projects I have one plain vanilla sock and two fancy ones that require a bit of concentration.  My aim is for one sock that I can do with my eyes closed and one for times when I can give it a bit of attention.  Of course that means I really need to finish one of my fancy sock projects to get down to my goal of 2 which is why I am currently going great guns on the plain vanilla sock!  But look how pretty it is….

I finally decided to go for it and knit my lovely zauberball and I’m so glad I did.  I had to rip back the heel after I ended up with a very distinct colour shift across the instep but other than that it’s been smooth sailing.  I just needed to make sure that I started the heel once the yarn was completely black just to keep the colours merging nicely into one another and once I’d done that I was happy with it.

This is a Fawkes sock I started around Christmas.  Christmas 2011 that is!  I’m not sure why I stopped because I was really enjoying the pattern.  The only reason I’m not knitting it now is because I have misplaced the copy of the pattern with all my scribbles on so I’m not entirely sure where I got to.  I’m fully capable of looking at the sock and working it out but I’m just lazy and haven’t done it yet.

And finally this sock will be a Kwalla from the Socktopus book.  I haven’t got too far with it but I like it so far.  I’ll be keeping this one on the back burner for a while so I can concentrate on finishing the Fawkes’ and achieving my 3 project goal.