Episode 49 - Old Socks and New Sweaters

[Music] so [Music] so [Music] ah [Music] do [Music] [Applause] hello friends and welcome to episode 49 of little big knits this is a podcast about knitting primarily i'm your host my name is selma and you can find me on instagram and ravelry as selma knits i am located here in ottawa where i live with my my family and our cat yoda who's on the sofa over there sleeping let's see let's see if she makes an appearance that hasn't happened in a while welcome today welcome to those of you who've been around for a long time and those of you who've joined recently there have been quite a few of you so hello welcome i hope you continue to enjoy what i am sharing of my knitting journey with you so hello today i am of course going to share with you uh my finished objects my works in progress as promised i'm going to do an old sock review that doesn't sound very pleasant in a way does it but yet i know that there are some of you that are excited about this somebody actually said i can't believe i'm excited to see somebody's old socks um and i thought yes this is a little strange isn't it but anyway i thought i'd share that with you later to talk a little bit about um you know the the yarns that i've used that have lasted that have haven't lasted that um you know some of the mistakes i've made in sock knitting that i've learned over the over the years so i'll share that with you a little bit later i also wanted to talk about i think having a new knit along that i'll talk about soon and and then some of the beautiful things that have come into my life so that's what's in store for today and hello this is future selma selma of the evening selma who is editing the podcast i'm just telling you this is going to be a longie and before we get on to uh the rest of the business just a reminder that we have a knit along going on at the moment as well called the color play cal and it is being hosted in the ravelry group that we have little big knits however please feel free to use the hashtag colorplaycal on instagram as well to share uh there as well so um that is going until the 1st of july there's been a lot of color work over the last few months we started on december 24th you can join in at this time if you started your project after december 24th it is eligible if you want to put it into the finished object thread there's also a chatter thread where you can come in and chat my life has been a little bit crazy for the last couple of weeks so i usually participate in the chat but i just have not been able to but i can see the number of posts increasing so clearly people are please keep chatting um i know that there have been connections made through those groups so uh or through those threads so that's really really lovely and uh and it's so wonderful to see the fo threads that i definitely still look at um but i have been uh it's been a little bit of a crazy week a lot no two and a half weeks for me um with just my mother's health not being great and she's been in the hospital and in renown in rehab so it's just been taking up a lot of my attention with conversations with people at the hospitals and at the retirement home and trying to figure out where we're gonna go from here with my mom depending on how she does at rehab it's just been it's been very busy so although i've been knitting um and participating in in some conversations i haven't been able to do everything so i i opted not to try and keep up with the conversation thread so today i am drinking my tea out of a very special mug i am about to show you a very special mug that somebody has made for me is this beautiful or what i am so in love with this mug this mug was made for me by a woman who's got a company named knit swag and she makes custom mugs as well as other things she's also got some knitting graph paper and she has made this beautiful mug for me and i just i'm just i was so impressed with it when it arrived i just couldn't believe how selma it is uh it's reminiscent of the um silver forest sweater that i made earlier in the winter um although not not the same design but uh yeah i'm i'm so in love with this mug um of course my family said mom you've got so many mugs already but this is a special mug so and in it i've got my uh sea buckthorn tea that i had last time as well turinite which i really really like so knit swag i've put the name down here is offering you guys a 15 discount should you be interested in getting yourself your own mug she's got lots of different designs of course you could choose this design if you want um but she's also got lots of other designs uh very very apropos for our color play cal they're mostly sort of color play types of of designs so she is giving us a 15 discount until may 16th and the code to be used for this is selma knits so i'll put that across the screen here 15 off at knit swag if you feel like going to check it out um yeah i just i really like the feel of this mug and i'm just it's really exciting to have a color work mug i love it so thank you so much knitswag super super fun so um yeah so that's what i am drinking today out of a absolutely fabulous mug and next episode is episode 50. so i thought uh that we should perhaps have a bit of a question and answer now i probably won't do a whole episode of question and answer just because i find i find when i watch question and answer episodes i find that they can tend to be a little bit on the long side um for me anyway but i thought i would um at least do a portion of question and answer perhaps over the next couple of episodes answering some of the themes in there and then and at the end of the episode and that way if people are interested they can stick around so if you have some questions that you would like to ask me uh whether it is about knitting the podcast i'm happy to answer uh questions about our personal life as well about me if there's something that you happen to be curious about feel free to post those questions below and uh i'll sort of uh collect them and then answer them as we go along over the next uh two or three episodes and yeah celebrating episode 50 next time i have been podcasting by myself i think this in june it'll be four years um and before that i was uh an occasional podcaster on the two tangled schemes so it does feel like i've been doing this a long time even though i've only got to episode 50 i only podcast about once a month so i guess it's been about 50 months or so that i've been podcasting so it's been such a wonderful part of my life i enjoy it so much and even if sometimes life can be a little bit crazy as it has been recently uh actually podcasting is like a little ray of sunshine uh that i do here and there so i just really enjoy doing it and i'm so grateful for those of you that love to come and spend some time with me it's uh it's really really really fun so yeah so that will be for next time all right i am going to start with the sweater that i was knitting on last time which was a test knit for sari nordland it has since been published i think it was published this week thursday or friday and it is called the loomis sweater and i have finished this beauty i have to say that this is probably one of the most striking two color yolks i've ever seen i just i just i fell in love with it immediately and i'm going to be making a second one so let me tell you first a little bit about this sweater this is a worsted weight color work uh sari's um version is made in cascade and i happen to have some cascade in my life which was why one of the reasons why i wanted to test knit this because i thought i don't even need to buy yarn i've got it there and i just as i said the yolk on this is so incredibly beautiful there is also color work on the sleeve and it was really really fun to knit so here it is it's got a bit of short row shaping at the bottom which i did um now this sweater has ended up actually a little bit big for me um and i have a friend who i think may look quite nice in this and she's open to trying it on and taking it on so i may be giving this to her and making myself another one and um but because i really really love it i certainly wouldn't want to not have this sweater in my life because i think it's just going to be it's it's just so darn beautiful um i can't get over the gorgeousness of this of this yolk design and the sleeve design as well there's so many beautiful sweaters out there these days aren't there they're just so many um so we we we have so much to choose from it's amazing so this was a delight to knit it's a great design well-written pattern cascade 220 is a very good workhorse yarn it's a good price point i think i used four and a half skeins of the cascade 220 in this plus i used galway heather in a natural color here and i think i used with the yoke plus the two sleeves i think i used about a skein and a third so probably about 300 320 yards of the cream as well so um you know i probably used uh about 900 and about 900 and something yards of the blue uh to make this sweater and it ended up big for me so that's not a whole lot of yarn to make a sweater um so i made the mistake that i had actually signed up for the smaller a smaller size and went up a size when i started knitting it out of fear that it was going to be too small and then it ended up too big so the smaller size would have been the right size for me lesson learned next time i'll be doing the other size so yeah but really a lovely sweater congratulations to sari and you may notice that did i actually oh i did sew in the end for the bottom um i've sewn in all the ends but my friend is quite a bit taller than me and that's another thing that the sleeves are a tiny bit long as well so she's taller and and broader than me and when i showed it to her i said do you think you might like this sweater we were video chatting one day she said yeah and so i said okay one day when we see each other you'll try it on and i thought if i need to lengthen the body a little bit that's easy peasy i've got a ski and a half left of this yarn i probably wouldn't need more than a partial of the half left to to make it a tiny bit longer for her but i think it'll probably fit her well in the sleeve it's a little bit long for me it comes down to about there but it's very very very pretty very very pretty i like it very very much i used 4.5 millimeter needles i did not go up a size on the color work i as i've mentioned before i tend to knit a little looser when i'm doing the color work because i'm so conscious of having long enough floats i have to say that i think i need to start calming down about that concern about my floats uh i find what ends up happening is that my floats are probably not as neat on the back as they sometimes could be i end up with some floats that are too long um and it always works out so yeah one thing i think would probably be good practice for me would be to make socks color work socks i've never made um socks that are color work or mittens and i i think i really should um i don't always love doing color work on sleeves but i got through this and i knit this on a small circumference needle and it worked quite well actually so i thought maybe i need to practice a bit on socks working a smaller circumference and getting used to not having the play of a longer circular needle to create the longer floats um and just end up with sort of a natural length float and they work out fine so i might i might be doing that um and plus i would love to have some color work socks and just become a little bit more comfortable because even though i've done a lot of practicing i've made quite a few sweaters i still feel like there's something that doesn't feel completely um comfortable for me somehow with with color work knitting but i still enjoy doing it and yeah have really really enjoyed making this sweater as well as the other ones that i made this last winter so that is the first fo that i have for today all right next talk about the next finished object which is the sweater that i'm wearing i am wearing my third ranunculus sweater i have made two others which i'll show you in a minute um i showed this to you last time i was knitting two of them last time i'm now only knitting one because this one is off the needles and i'm really really very very happy with this sweater i made this version and this pattern the ranunculus sweater is by midori hirose or house of midori i think is her other name as a designer and [Music] this is a pattern that has been made by many many many this is also a pattern where the pictures in the pattern itself could be a turn off i would never have made this pattern had i not seen so many lovely versions and and then i realized oh this looks actually really quite nice when i first made my first my first ridiculous when i finished i thought i don't know if i'm going to wear this and then i realized i wanted to wear it all the time because it was a wonderful layering piece and so and then i've just seen so many versions of this and there are so many nice versions of this sweater out there um so it's a lovely lovely pattern i'm gonna tell you a little bit about uh some of the modifications that i've made not really many i just don't do the fancy schmancy um cast on that they have in the pattern i just do a regular long tail cast on and i cast on the number of stitches that they have you end up with once you've finished doing what i think is a tubular cast on i'm not 100 sure because i've never done that kind of a cast on i'm very lazy when it comes to my cast ons i just always do a long tail cast on i i really should try these different cast ons especially the tubular one but i just i don't know i just don't when i want to get a sweater going i just want to get the sweater going i'm not interested in learning a new cast on so but i really should because it always looks nice but i just did an ordinary cast on i followed the instructions and properly for the for the uh for the yolk um i do the they they have some raglan cast ons here this time instead of doing uh they have a uh an i-cord bind off for the sleeve i actually did a ribbed sleeve and i did that partly because i was concerned that this sweater was going to be too tight i actually thought this sweater was going to be small and i did purposely block it which i don't normally do i usually just wet my sweaters and lay them flat and let them just settle into their shape but i was concerned when i finished doing this that it was just a little it was very close to my body and i thought well this is very bizarre because my other two ranunculus sweaters have nice ease one of them has a lot of bees one has slightly less ease but they both have ease this has ended up with good ease um not a huge amount but enough that it it you know it has that that feel of a cropped sweater and i did post on instagram so you're welcome to go there and see my posted pictures to have a have a good look up at it but yeah it's just got a nice amount of ease um i really like wearing it i either wear with a blouse underneath or i wear it with just a t-shirt really and have the t-shirt coming out from underneath um it's just a very very lovely airy layering piece now this one looks less airy because of this unusual yarn that i used i used americo breeza americo no longer exists unfortunately she stopped selling yarn i think about almost two years ago or a year and a half ago um she was out of toronto and would get yarn milled in south america so most of the yarn or a lot of the yarn was um alpaca based alpaca combinations and this one is a bamboo alpaca and it is a chainette yarn and i don't know if you can see that that you know each each stitch is a is not as crisp as you might see in another kind of yarn and it's a lovely light texture because it's half bamboo it's in fact i think 55 bamboo and 45 alpaca so it's very light perfect for our coolish spring or the cooler days of our spring because some days can be just really really warm um and it's just it's very very lovely but this yarn which was advertised as a fingering i would say behaves more like a decay it even though i knit this on six millimeter needles you know it is not a transparent fabric maybe slightly but not as much as my other two radunculus sweaters um so this is a pattern that people have used lace weight with mohair fingering alone fingering with mo hair sport alone sport with mohair dk and i've even seen some worsted versions although i think the worsted versions in the end don't have the lofty feeling but they could just be a really nice woolly swell sweater to you know to wear on a cold day but they won't have quite the airy quality that this generally has i've seen this knit in dk in rowan felted tweed and it looked beautiful yeah and i brought down my two other versions to show you just uh quickly so this was my very original version and this is made out of uh vull mice it's been in the closet so it's a bit right it's a bit folded um this is made out of volemized lace garm which is which is more of a light fingering than a lace weight really with um fleece artist zambezi mohair and this one like this sweater has some ease not a huge amount of ease i don't remember if i made this on five and a half or six millimeter needles to be honest i don't quite remember but this was the first one that convinced me that i wanted more ranunculus sweaters in my life the second one that i made i made with six millimeter needles for sure and it ended up with way more ease and uh but very very oops sorry let me just and i've been wearing this a lot lately a lot um i can't get it to sit straight hello i'm having some there we go um this i made out of um ancient arts i'll have to put it down here because i can't remember it started with an r was it revival and it is a lace weight um i think it's a merino silk base and i knit this on six millimeter needles and it was very clear that the gauge was much looser than with my first ranunculus and it has ended up being a very very airy sweater but it is so wonderful to wear it's as light as air it gives slight warmth and it it just it falls very nicely even though it's a lot larger and i think it's the light airiness of it and as you can see on this one i did do the i-cord bind off as well as on the original one um so it's just worked out for me very well this one sorry i did it with the ancient arts plus a mohair what did i use i'm not 100 what sure what i used i'll have to put that down here it was not um drops and it was not rowan it was uh a german mohair that had a little bit of glitter in it so i don't know i don't know if you'll be able to see that but it does have a tiny bit of glitter and i have to say this is actually probably the one that i get most compliments on but i've gotten compliments on both of my ranunculus sweaters um people just saying that looks so lovely and i think it's just the light airy nature of them that people tend to like so last time when i posted about the ranunculus there was actually a lot of comments uh down below about people having made several and wanting to make more people never having made it people happy making one right now and i thought maybe we need to have a ranunculus along so i think i'm going to start a ranunculus love cal in the ravelry group but also use that hashtag if you want to participate on instagram ranunculuslovecal and this will just be an informal knit along you can come into the group ask questions if you're worried about something about the pattern show what you're doing show your your finished ronculus maybe show the seven others that you've already made uh whatever it's just going to be an informal one that we can just you know it doesn't necessarily mean there could be prizes at the end i'll see there's no end date we'll just keep on going and talk about ranunculus for a little while longer so if you are in the mood to participate uh head on over to ravelry or instagram to participate in that knit along and um what else was i going to tell you about that i think that's it i think that's it so yeah i'll just go ahead and i well by the time this airs i will have created a group and we can we can chat about ranunculus people often have questions about this sweater so you can ask your question i'll answer somebody else perhaps will step in an answer please feel free to step in and answer if you've got the answer or if there are varying answers feel free to to step in and answer and we can we can knit our ranunculuses together or ranunculi together and um and just share them and hopefully this will encourage some of you who have been a little bit nervous about knitting it because it really isn't a particularly difficult sweater as long as you're okay with it being you know a loose sweater and i think that the outcome really depends on the yarn that you use and i think it particularly depends on the base yarn that you use if you're using uh mohair with something else i think that the other yarn the fingering weight let's say that you're using with it is really going to dictate i think that's why in my gray one the silk content had an impact on it becoming a looser sweater whereas in this one the 100 merino i think somehow kept it together a little bit more it's also quite a tightly spun merino so you know you could end up with a different outcome i think this is a sweater that is so relaxed i think it doesn't have to be just perfect um you can just make it and just let it be what it's going to be all right let's move on so my first whoops i've got a bit of a mess here beside me you can't see that that's okay my first work in progress is going to be on the same vein uh the ranunculus vein or in the same vein i should say it is my olive green version which i have to say is almost finished i finished the first sleeve i am just about to finish the second sleeve this one is my olive green version which is going to be a much woolier version than this one which is so light and airy and bouncy which the yarn was the chain at yarn was so bouncy um this one i think is gonna be warmer it's being made with one strand of isiger mohair in this olive green color and the other strand do i have the band i don't think i do is by emilia and filament in their josephine base and the josephine base is a non-superwash merino i believe um and so it's a more woolly wool so i think that this sweater is going to be a little bit more of a warmer cozier version as a result of the non-superwash nature of this this wool um it it feels thicker and woolier somehow and yeah it's it's coming along beautifully one thing i have to say i usually do is i finish one sleeve where i think i might want it and the way i wanted at this point i thought do i do ribbing or do i do the i-cord on this one and then while i'm working the other one i try it on and i see do i really like that sometimes i try a second length with the second sleeve and if i like that more i just go and adjust the first one um and then end up with what i think i want so this will be finished next time and it's going to be hopefully finished tonight we'll see if i end up having to adjust the sleeves and and then this will be ranunculus number four and probably not really worn until the fall because i think maybe if we have a really cool day i'll wear it but otherwise this might end up being something that i'll be saving until the fall i have a friend who's in love with my ranunculus sweaters and i'm thinking about making her one as well so that could end up being one that gets cast on um in the next little while and and working on that her birthday's coming up i don't think i'd have it in time for her birthday but um it might be a bit a bit of a belated birthday present for her my other work in progress is the dreaming of spring socks i have finished the first one this is a pattern by this handmade life also known as olivia via real i've spoken to you about her over the last couple of episodes and this is one of her more recent patterns that i cast on and have really enjoyed knitting it's just a very nice feather and fan pattern and i think i'm actually starting to enjoy knitting socks top down and i'm thinking that i'm going to practice a little more with my next pair and do another pair of top down socks just to continue to get the hang of doing the heel which i suggested to you last time was causing me a little bit of angst just because i hadn't done one in so long and also getting the length of the sock right i had bought a sock ruler uh and i what i did was i used the sock ruler to compare my other socks and when i should start the toe because in the past i've had a hard time getting the toe in the right place and sometimes ending up with longer socks i had told you last time that i hadn't made a bottom or a top-down sock in at least a decade and that wasn't true i had made a pair uh last summer or the summer last summer i think i tested uh a pattern for tracy miller of the grocery girls her georgia socks and um they my first pair ended up too long for me um because i had a hard time gauging where to put the tote with the sock ruler that i had bought last time or a couple of episodes ago i showed it to you um i was able to measure the distance between you know the gusset and where the toe started and i ended up getting it right and these socks fit beautifully this yarn is uh the natural sock base by woolly mammoth yarns my friend kate had gifted this to me when she visited i think the first time and so i have used this yarn this is the jasmine base which is this very very light uh very very light pink and uh this was an interesting yarn to work with i'm curious to see how this wears i i'm going to be honest i'm a little nervous about how this is going to wear but i'm i'm curious to give this a try and now that i have some mending skills if they need to be mended they'll be mended but um yeah really really lovely i'm i'm working on the second sock at the moment which is being housed in this wonderful bag that my friend kate had made for me and all of us actually who were at the retreat with her and emma of woolly mammoth fibers in november of 2019 and i'm just on the second second sock and i have this cute little progress keeper here well not progress keeper but more than anything just to show me that this is the right size this cute little mushroom is that focused mushroom progress keeper from whimsy and sassy on etsy she is a canadian progress keeper and stitch marker maker so i'm just at the point where i have to start the heel um so i'll be doing that i've been working quite furiously on the ranunculus wanting to get that second ranunculus done so that then i feel i can start another sweater so yeah so those are really the two works in progress that i have left um i had had a question in the uh the the comments down below i believe on youtube somebody asking how many schemes is a sweater quantity and that's an interesting question i think it depends a little bit on your size i know that i tend to use about a thousand yards of yarn per sweater and that's for a sweater that is normal sized not something that's really long or um [Music] something with cables which will require more yarn just a plain sweater as i said um this one in the blue cascade i used about i'm going to say 950 yards of the blue and then another 300 yards of this if i had not used any color work if this had just been like a plain sweater i'm going to say i probably would have used about 1050 yards to make this let's say 1100 so i usually make sure i have about 1100 yards of yarn for me to make a regular sweater this sweater the ranunculus both of my all of my versions have used about 750 yards of the two yarns or the yarn that i'm using so this used about just i had a little nugget left from the second scheme two skeins of this yarn which was less than 400 yards so it was about 350. so i used about 700 yards on this and the other two ranunculus as well but i would say that most sweaters that i that i make are probably about um about 1100 let's say and i am somebody with a 41 size bust um i'm not tall i'm only 5'3 uh what's that 163 or centimeters something like that i'm not a tall person um and uh you know i'm kind of a medium large build so i wear about a size 10 sometimes 12 somewhere in there so and i use about 1100 yards of yarn so when i see yarn i just naturally buy whatever is closest to that sometimes it ends up well usually it ends up being a little bit more than that especially if you buy three skeins of fingering you're probably going to end up with about 1200 1250 yards and three skeins of fingering will make a sweater for me unless it's going to be a longer sweater or have like a big collar or have cables cables seem to take up more yarn because you need kind of more fabric to to when you include the cables so that was an interesting question in terms of you know how much should you buy obviously if you are a very small person you probably need less um and buying a thousand yards of yarn is probably more than you really need if you're a larger person you might want to add one or 200 yards um and and so forth so it's it's and if you're a tall person of course that will have an impact as well if you need more for the sleeves and more for the torso so just want to answer that question so i decided that i wanted to share some old socks with you and um i had planned to actually wash a couple of pairs and then realized this morning that i had not um and as i said my life's been a little bit crazy so i missed that little detail so i'm gonna be showing you a couple of pair of old and dirty socks i hope that's okay anyway feel free to look away um so why did i decide to do this part of the reason is because i think it's always interesting um and what started this whole conversation was this particular pair of socks i made these socks in 2015. so six years ago the yarn uh is uh night owl fibers and at the time rachel was a very young lady i think in fact she was a teenager and she started this uh striped yarn dyeing business and this was her colorway one of her first colorways called sherlock holmes and i bought a skein of yarn from her and um made these socks now in 2015 i didn't have that many socks so my socks got worn a lot right the more socks you have the less often you're wearing them and the longer they'll last but at the time i think i had three pairs of socks and one of them felt it and i didn't wear it very much and and and actually i didn't even think i would talk about those ones because they're actually a dyer that no longer makes yarn um it was um les femme yarns i think her name was but um i was very disappointed with those socks because they were supposed to be superwash i had made a very intricate lace pattern and they felt it and the lace pattern just kind of went and got lost that's the only time that's ever happened i always wash my socks in the washing machine on the delicate cycle just so you know i tend to accumulate them and i do a delicate wash so these have always been through the washer so i put these on recently and i realized i've worn these socks a lot and they are now starting to wear in the heel six years later i don't even know if i have any cotton socks that i've bought at the store that have lasted that long they are starting to fray a little bit on the heel but nothing on the bottom although that for me is not an area where i tend to use my socks that my socks tend to get used up in the heel primarily but only now six years later and even though i have a lot of socks i really like these socks a lot so these are a merino nylon sock i think they were 75 25 if i remember or 80 20. um they have a good twist on the yarn but it i wouldn't call this a bouncy yarn you know some yarns are really twisted and they end up being quite a bouncy yarn this is not one of them um and so i actually wrote to rachel who is still dying yarn night owl fibers and she always does self striping and her self striping yarns are absolutely fabulous and i just wrote to her and i said i just want you to know that your socks have lasted so incredibly well are you still using the same base and she wrote back of course happy that somebody had said that her socks have lasted so long and said that she's in fact not using this base anymore but that she has another base and she has sent me her base uh her new base and this is a 75 25 super superwash merino and this is the life and death brigade so uh it is based on the gilmore girls and this is a self striping yarn that's got blue and purple gray green brown um and she'd let me choose from her selection on her shop or in her shop she's got an amazing selection of yarn by the way all based on things like the gilmore girls harry potter friends different fairy tales and lots of fabulous color combinations this was the one that i fell in love with although i have to say i've never actually watched the gilmore girls but i feel like i probably should start watching the gilmore girls when i'm knitting with these with this which is going to be next once i have finished the dreaming of spring socks i'm going to cast these socks on i'm really curious to see what it's like it's got a wonderful twist so anyway if you're in in the mood to check out night owl fibers uh she does beautiful work but and i really was so touched that she said this to me that's not at all why i wrote her i just wanted her to know that i was really impressed with her yarn and i know that you know she's been going along for for the last six years if not seven years making beautiful yarn and so this made me really start thinking about the yarns that i have used in my socks and wanting to share about that and some of the things that i have learned so um a couple of things that i've learned generally i prefer 60 to 64 stitch count that's for me particularly i know that my the area where i tend to wear my socks the most is in the heel and on this heel i had used the basic gusset heel by wendy d johnson so unlike a heel flap there is a little bit less fabric there so that's another reason that i have started thinking i had already put this away i took a little break that heel flaps may be more long wearing for me because if you do a slip stitch heel a slip stitch portion here or the partridge heel you're ending up with a little bit more fabric so it might actually last longer that's my thinking there and um one other thing i've come to realize is that having lace near the heel where the heel is rubbing against the shoe is not great so generally if i have a pair of lace socks that i'm making i am likely to not start the lace all the way around the foot after the heel if i'm going toe up um right away and continue in stockinette for a little while so here is another pair of socks that i made and i made a long time ago and they're wearing really really well this unfortunately is a dyer that is no longer diary dying this is bittersweet woolery and this was a bfl base and this is the nutkin sock pattern which is really lovely except that it twists like it's really hard like when i put it on my foot um it twists a lot but i started the heel ends here and i actually knit a little bit more um because i was concerned about my heel and the end of my shoe hitting this portion here so that's just something that i've done because i had a pair of socks where the lace started quite low and they just completely just got destroyed um i threw them out i don't even remember what they were um i don't know what the yarn was uh i don't know what the yarn was i'm afraid but because i didn't actually make them a friend made them for me and i had given her the yarn so i realized then that having lace like right around here where the shoe is hitting is probably not a good idea but these are another pair of socks uh that i made when did i make these i don't know 2015 or 2016. um another yarn and this is one of my dirty socks i'm sorry another yarn that has been quite an uh impressive to me is by as you can see like they're totally stretched out i'm so sorry this is a yarn by um samantha in montreal scrumptious pearl and she uses quite a squishy base um and uh here's another one where i started the lace a little bit higher up although i think i could have started up even a little higher um and this is a base that has worn really well and samantha is another one of these people who does a um self striping yarn in beautiful beautiful colors um and it has lasted quite well this one was a an afterthought heel which i don't enjoy doing but i did because i wanted to keep the stripes intact so a really nice she has a very nice base and it has been quite long lasting another pair that i made i'm realizing a couple of things here first of all some of these dyers are no longer dying the other thing i've come to realize is that i have kept very few in fact i've kept no commercial sock yarns for myself for the most part generally when i've made socks for other people i have used commercial yarns thinking well under the premise that they're more likely to last longer perhaps they're a little bit more predictable whereas when i've bought yarn from a yarn dyer and it's my first time i don't really know how their yarns are going to how their yarns are going to wear so giving those to somebody who's getting one pair of wool socks may not be the best idea so my friends have usually gotten the more commercial yarns this is yarn by fondant fiber who is no longer dying but this is yarn that hasn't kept up particularly well because um i haven't worn these that much now i know that this yarn was a mix of british yarns i really loved working with it but it has also felted just a tiny little bit um but it's one that that i haven't worn as much and i have to say the sock itself has worn quite a bit there and i'm in the process this was one of the darning projects that i had where i realized i needed a little bit more practice with duplicate stitching before i really take on this sock so i haven't worn them in the sense this winter because i've been waiting for that to happen but um yeah one sock yarn and this is another one of my dirty pairs i'm afraid and really quite dirty one sock yarn that is a an indie dyer and that is very very well known um that has actually impressed me is hedgehog fibers um this is a sock that i made in 2016 so five years ago um i don't remember what color way this was but this was and this is a 90 merino and 10 nylon so it has a little bit less nylon in it and it's actually held up quite well um there is a tiny little bit of thinning happening at the bottom of the heel there but um and i made the fine and dandy socks these were really fun to make actually i made two pairs of these i made a pair for a friend of mine as well as for me the fine and dandy's by jessica gore and it was a very fun pattern to make and i would make it again but yeah i have to say i've been quite impressed with uh this yarn from hedgehog fibers uh you know the the heel has kept up quite well um and it's not a yarn that i've bought a lot of in fact i think i got this in a trade um and uh yeah but it's it's actually kept up quite well i have to say and it just seems like this is the area for me that tends to get worn out i know the bottom of the foot is the area for some other people that that tends to to wear out i have one more pair and i'm sorry i'm realizing that a lot of these dyers aren't even dying anymore because i don't think that pirates yarns is dying anymore we'd have to look she is based out out west i made this during our road trip to pei this pair of socks out of her yarn i did just a plain vanilla sock this was called pirates love rainbows and uh this has actually been an impressive base as well because these socks i've worn a lot because again they're also only 60 stitches and so they hug my foot so they're just really nice to wear under boots or little booties because they don't take up as much space and this is a 75 25 and i made these yeah in 2016 on our road trip to pei i again did the basic gusset heel and um it is a yarn that has has kept up well so one thing i feel like i need to do is definitely make some some yarns or some socks with commercial yarns i did this year i did some west yorkshire spinner yarn socks so i'm curious to see how those wear and um i already mentioned to you the um hyena and petticoats sorry that's what the brand name was that just felt it on me another couple of pairs of socks that i no longer have because they fell apart uh was won by lorna's laces in her shepherd multi sock they really just fell apart on me and at the time i had no darning skills and i just chucked them i didn't really like them to begin with and um the yarn really didn't hold up for me at least and i remember it um tore apart on the the heel and the bottom of the foot which is a place where i don't normally wear my socks that much and another pair that completely fell apart was using a yarn by julia slain however i'm going to say i'm going to put a caveat there because i'm not 100 sure that it's really the yarn's fault it's in her um lazy fingering which is 90 merino and 10 silk and silk is often not often it is sometimes used in sock yarn because silk can be strong as can be mo hair and i had two pairs of socks made out of one skein one for isla which i outgrew very quickly and then another pair for myself and one day isla was going out on an excursion and so i let them have uh my lazy fingering socks and the socks came home completely destroyed so i have no idea what isla did i have no idea what those kids were doing in the forest because they went on some sort of forest walk but i i i came home and i was like what happened here and there was no explanation offered so um they just got destroyed and i they were fine before she took them uh so um yeah i don't know what happened there i do have another scheme of the laser fingering and so i'm kind of feeling like i should make a pair of socks with those and see what happens with them um so yeah i find kids can be really really hard on socks so perhaps a merino silk base is not something for uh i don't know how old isla was at that time 10 or something like that maybe not for a 10 year old i don't know um so yeah so those are some of my my old socks that i thought i would share with you um oh and one thing out also i have some little notes here uh one thing i've realized as well is that socks with cables tend to be quite tight so these um these socks by fondant fiber these are all little cables and i have another pair upstairs that are newer so i wasn't going to show them to you uh that also have cables uh all around and that kind of a stitch pattern and that makes the socks a lot tighter um and i have found that they can tend to be a little bit harder to get on the foot and tend to have a little bit less give than something else whereas of course a stitch pattern like this and this i didn't tell you is the groovy sock which no longer exists it's a no longer published pattern for some reason but i happen to have it um so of course a lace sock is going to have a little bit more a little bit more give but i found the socks where i have cables to be harder to get on my foot the nutkin which is actually kind of a cable-like sock a bit has like it's it's got a very skinny ankle and i have a hard time getting these socks on of course once they're on they stay on so yeah so there you go i hope that that was interesting um i do regret that i don't have that many commercial sock yarns to to share about um so i'm gonna have to make that a goal so perhaps that'll be the next sock share at some point in the future before heading out i just thought i would share a couple of beautiful things that have come my way first i wanted to share a package that came from my friend kate of the hawthorne cottage craft podcast she has sent a bag for me and a bag for the podcast so thank you so much kate now my biggest problem is that i cannot decide which one of these bags i would want to keep and which one of these bags i would want to give away because i actually love both of them this one is absolutely stunning with these bees on them and then this one is just i actually really like this fabric and actually she bought this fabric here in ottawa so that's also kind of special which makes it makes me think that perhaps that would be special as the giveaway but anyway her bags are so beautifully made kate used to make bags and have a shop she no longer does but she does occasionally make bags as she did for the olin retreat that i was on with her and emma and a whole bunch of other wonderful people hello wonderful people if you're watching but kate is a really wonderful bag maker so these are both beautifully made and one of these will end up as a prize kate as well sent me some stunning yarn oops which has gone flying if you happen to watch kate's podcast the hawthorne carnage craft you'll know that she recently has made a felix sweater as well as a felix cardigan out of yarn by adele mcbride there's her her her label and kate had actually made uh her felix cardigan out of sort of an emerald green out of this base which is the moment base which is a 30 mohair and 70 percent merino and so kate has sent me some in this fabulous purple color the only thing i don't know is what i'm going to make with this it's about 330 yards so i have to figure out what i would make with 330 yards this is going to be a creative endeavor in trying to decide what i'll do with that so thank you so much kate in the package with some chocolate the chocolate's gone and some little buttons or pins rather so i have to actually get those onto a bag speaking of bag i also bought a bag from harriet who uh has just opened uh a website she was i think selling her bags kind of through direct messages and now has a website and her bags are called oh dear what was it now wild wild i'm gonna have to put it down here i think it's wild in the woods um i'm gonna put her shop down here she makes beautiful bags using harris tweed as well as uh just studying nature inspired fabrics and so i had to partake i had seen this bag on kate's uh podcast and so fell in love with it got in touch with harry and said can i have one too so yeah um it is a smaller bag i was actually thinking that i'd gotten a larger bag so this will probably end up being used for a small shawl or socks yeah it's it's really beautiful and very beautifully made as well just beautiful and she has just lovely details like this wood here and i only just noticed that she's actually got the harris tweed tag on the inside so beautiful bags that have come my way something else that i wanted to share with you was i got myself the newest issue of the making stories i've never bought making stories before i've never felt compelled to try it honestly but this edition is so beautiful and it was principally this cardigan the bindweed cardigan that i needed to have in my life so i've actually i started swatching but i've realized that my yarn is not quite the most appropriate yarn for it so i've bought some yarn that when it arrives i'm going to be casting this on because i cannot stop thinking about this beautiful beautiful cardigan it's just stunning this version is made with knitting for olive their merino base plus the mohair i started swatching with my alley cat yarns you may recall sorry i've got a bit of a mess here you may recall i showed you last time my alley cat yarns this stunning color and i got some knitting for all of mohair that goes beautifully with it and i started swatching with it and it's beautiful but it's a little bit dense of fabric i realized for that particular cardigan the knitting for olives is a lighter merino um i would say that that the the leo base by alicat yarns which is a bfl nylon base it's a it's a good sort of solid fingering weight and i think i need something a little lighter for that cardigan because the cardigan's got such a light feel to it i think it would be a little dense with this combination so i ended up ordering some knitting for olive to make the cardigan because i wanted i realized i don't have i don't think i have anything else that would really work at that time at this time so when it arrives i'll be casting the bindweed on but there are really very very beautiful sweaters in this in this particular edition there there's this gorgeous dk weight sweater that has this wonderful element on the sleeves um there are mohair sweaters there's uh here's that dk sweater from the front um so many beautiful beautiful things but then there's this sweater omg this sweater it's just like yeah this is a beautiful edition really beautiful and i also got the most recent making i think i have just about every single one of these i really really enjoy the making magazines for all the beautiful projects not only knitting that they have in here this one also has really lovely lovely patterns in it in terms of knitting because there's also sewing in here but there's this pattern here which is a three color sweater very simple that's very lovely um there's this shawl that i find really intriguing this normally would not be up my alley but there's something about this that i just really really like um beautiful cardigans beautiful socks also as always really the making magazine is is always a delight and i actually lent these to another friend of mine who a bunch of them i said here look through these who's not a knitter but she does do some sewing and she was like these are so beautiful i was like they really are so uh if you you know if you if somebody's not necessarily knitter there's so many lovely sewing projects and quilting projects and needle projects whether it's embroidery or needle felting there's lots of different things every time it's it's very very interesting and a couple of other things i wanted to share with you a podcast that i watch is uh nikki from knitting with cat hair nikki is in northern ontario would you say that's northern ontario nikki and um i just really enjoy nikki's podcast low-key she's just really lovely and somehow nikki seems to enable me um i ended up buying the um georgian bay yarns a few months back and that was because of her and this time i ended up buying yarn from the small bird workshop which is located in bc and the yarn is milled in italy but died in bc and this is a 50 linen 30 cotton and 20 bamboo lace weight excuse me and i ended up buying this in these two colors and i got two skeins of each it's a lace weight and there are 660 meters in each i ended up having a bit of a snafu with my winder because this had some weirdness to it and linen type yarns are not the easiest to wind if there's any sort of kinks in there it's going to cause problems so i ended up winding it by hand started it on the winder and then finished it by hand so i decided to try swatching these yarns together to see what would happen when i put them together i have no idea what's going to happen with these yet but if you know me i'm a sucker for linen linen and mohair i really should put them together shouldn't i um so i've got two skeins of the paler pink and two skeins of this bright sort of salmony orangy color and i don't know if i'll color block them or if i will mix them together but we'll see what this becomes but thank you for enabling me nikki um yeah so that's another thing that came into my life and then in terms of yarn i got a bunch of neutered and yarn if you know about nutaden yarn this is unspun yarn kind of like flo tulopi that comes from sweden from a small company called poner oc something like that and the yarn itself is called newton and she does about four or five updates a year and they're essentially always one of a kind her yarns go quickly and this time i was able to to grab some so i ended up getting three cakes of this beautiful brown which is just lovely called trofast which i think has something to do with truffle probably and i ended up getting two cakes of this beautiful pink pinky orangey color it's coming across more orange in the picture than it is in real life and i actually got some mo hair and i'm going to be stranding this with mohair to make some sort of a vest that's my thinking at this point this is going to become some sort of a sweater maybe this should be my my princess leia look um and i also got one cake of this other yarn i don't remember what this one was called this one was called cinna not sure what this one was called but it's a beautiful oatmeal that's got like reds going through it and then this beautiful little pink color so these might end up going with the brown in a color work i'm not 100 sure this is very very unusual yarn i do think that it is well if you've worked with plotulope you know what it's like to work with basically unspun yarn and i think this may be a little bit more delicate than plotulopi um so a lot of people are either stranding it with another yarn often mohair or double stranding it with itself um and that will make for a stronger yarn to work with so i haven't started swatching with this yet or playing around with it um i'm very very excited to try that uh we'll see when that starts happening in the package they also sent along a couple of little bits they tend to do that when you get a package from them so i i ended up getting two bits like this that are i think this is a new one that's actually coming out so they were already starting to experiment with that this was a special edition yarn they did and i think this must be an older yarn in here along with probably um another brown not the one that i got a deeper brown that they had before so that's kind of fun you get you get uh to experiment with other colors this could easily go into color work as well we'll see we'll see what ends up happening with these um but i was just very excited to have these and to give them a try so that is something else that has come into my life and the last thing i'm going to share with you is the lovely lovely gift that was sent to me last time i podcasted i talked to you guys about um my knitting ring you may recall it's the knitting ring that i use to um do color work and i got it from finland from a woman named sonny lahtinen but i had done some sort of research when i checked out the hashtag on instagram knittingring um and found this other person and i know at least one person who's bought a ring from her and i spoke about her on my last podcast her name was corrine well the shop is called karina lunita the dyer's name is karina and um she found out that i mentioned her i'm not even 100 sure how she found that out and contacted me and said thank you so much for uh mentioning my shop it seemed to have generated some business for her and so she sent me a knitting ring and it arrived this week and i am very very excited about this so i think the next time i knit a color work because i'm going to take a tiny break from color work right now i'll definitely be using this it is so beautiful so this is the ring for three colors because the yarn would go between these loops and i don't know if you can is it gonna is it gonna is it gonna focus there she just made a beautiful beautiful ring the ring is open there so it's a little bit adjustable i got the medium for three color knitting just in case i have those three color moments but um uh it's just so lovely and i have to say that when i saw it in the picture it seemed like i just loved the whimsical design of them um i was not expecting it to be as sturdy as it is it's a really really very well made ring so if you are in looking for one she was based in mexico but has now moved back to the states and uh is out of one of the w states can't remember if it was wisconsin or washington state she's there and making her rings there she's got a lot of stunning jewelry so if you happen to be if you happen to have a weak spot for jewelry be careful but she also has these knitting rings and i think has made quite a few so i know some of you have bought these and i'll be very curious too to find out about uh your experience with um karina's ring or if you got the sunny ring um i know some a couple of people did so i'll be curious to hear about your experience with those as well hers also came with a lovely cleaning a pad and a little pouch which i think i will use for my two rings i think they will go in here together because they're both highly valued by me i love my knitting rings so i think i think that's all that i had to share with you i feel like that was a lot so hopefully i have no idea how long this is going to be because i tend to film it in segments but hopefully it was interesting to you and um yeah so that's what i've been making that's what are the beautiful things that have come into my life and um yeah and as i said life's been kind of a little weird for me lately uh with just being at hospitals doing a lot of phone calls um trying to work in between getting some knitting done quiet time and uh i've watched some some interesting things um i'm actually in the middle of watching actually i'm almost at the end of watching the series called my brilliant friend you may recall me if you've been around for a while last year i read the book my brilliant friend by elena ferrante and i really didn't like it very much um i just had a hard time really understanding the relationships in it um it was interesting from the point of view of setting the scene in naples in the 1950s and the undercurrent of the mafia and the poverty and the gender relationships but i really i think was poorly translated for one thing i just really had a hard time enjoying it but i am very much enjoying the series it's just season one i don't know if there is a season two in season three and season one is based on the first book which is the book that i read and it is very well done i'd almost say that it's better than the book since i didn't enjoy the book that much but they really did a beautiful job of conveying the time and it's just it's very very well done it's very subtle it's beautifully filmed the actors are very good and i really have really enjoyed it i'll be sad when it's over so that's one to watch for i ended up getting it from the library as a hard copy dvd i don't know if it's online somewhere but i've really enjoyed that i've also started watching peaky blinders um uh on my son's recommendation in fact he'd already watched it he said mom it's violent there's lots of sex i'm like i think i can handle that so i've been watching that with him um and uh uh i was reading in midnight in the garden of good and evil you may remember which is by baron john berrant it was written in the 80s and turned into a movie i got to be honest i had to stop listening to it i just it was a little bit meandering a little bit too much through the social lights of savannah georgia i just it just i was kind of like can we just get on with it and when we finally did get on with it i realized i'm just not invested in this and um usually books make me want to go out and walk and i just i'd forget about it for days i'd listen to something else and i realized if that's happening i'm just really not just really not into it so i haven't finished it i think and that's the first time i've done that um i think i might watch the movie again um just to see what happens at the end because i don't remember and i didn't finish the book and um i have not started anything else yet my reading has been slowed down um just also with what's been going on i haven't had the time to go out for walks as much so i haven't been listening to books as much um so yeah and i thought if i'm going to listen to something i want to listen to something that grips me so that i'm taken off to another place and not something that kind of i keep thinking can you just get on with it the characterizations were wonderful it's really well written i just couldn't get into it and it could just be not the right time for me i don't know and uh i think that's really about it uh i finished watching shit's creek which i really enjoyed in the end it took me a while to get into that one uh it wasn't an instant love but i really enjoyed it in the end and uh and we are watching the last season of kim's convenience which is another canadian show that i really adore about this korean family uh owning a corner store in toronto and uh yeah so that's kind of the the other sort of light fun stuff uh we've been doing some nice walks i took the kids to omega park which is a sort of outdoor drive through zoo that has native animals to to this climate so there are uh bison and deer wild boars wild turkeys and moose and bears and things like that not all their animals run free some are in large large outdoor sort of cake pens and some of them just walk around freeze such as the turkeys and the wild boars and the deer and the bison actually so that was fun and uh you know it's been just lovely walking around my mother is in rehab in the very center of the city so i did take a little bit of time yesterday when it was gorgeous to walk around so um i've shared some of that with you as well and uh yeah so it's just been kind of simple um just getting through all of this and also finding moments of just enjoying we went out to the forest as well yesterday and you know enjoying some good tv when i can and taking it easy and i think that's about what's been going on around here so i'll leave you with that and hopefully this hasn't ended up too long and i'll see you next time hopefully in the next three weeks or so take care friends bye [Music] so [Music] [Music] do [Music] you

Channel: Little Big Knits

Views: 30,662

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Id: t0igZrdtxAE

Length: 83min 46sec (5026 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 26 2021