square [ j ] jane's stranded monster socks

Well, after years of being heavily addicted to both wearing and knitting socks, i am taking the plunge into writing my own patterns.  I knit the sock intuitively and then reverse engineer the pattern later.

My patterns will be available as PDF files on Ravelry. The first pattern that will hopefully be available soon is a stranded sock pattern.  It's a Monster Sock as in it makes use of left over remnants that you may have from knitting up other socks.  A Frankensock if you will.  With the charted portions of simple stranded knitting though, it won't look like a Frankensock.

It is currently (as of July-August 2013) in test knit, being worked on by some absolutely terrific fellow Ravellers and should be available as a free pattern soon.  You can check here for availability... i hope you have fun knitting socks!

Update: as of August 8th, 2013, this pattern is now live and available as a free download on Ravelry.

Sock knitting tricks i have learned

Sock knitting isn't just a pass time for me, it is an addiction.  I knit and wear hand knit socks almost all year round.  In the years i have been knitting socks, i have figured out some helpful tricks that i thought i would share.

I really dislike coming to the end of a 3 day or 2 week long sock project and know that i have to weave in 30 ends of yarns, especially in colorwork.  As a result, i have come up with a few ways that will work in most cases to deal with that as you are knitting.

Adding a new color:

When i know i will be adding a new color next round in stranded knitting, i start by draping the new color of yarn to be introduced next round over the current working yarns with a 6 inch tail.

Next, i pull it snug up close to the item i am knitting and hold it with left hand ( i am right handed).

Now knit with one of the previously used colors. This secures your new color, ready to be used next round.

Now simply knit with both strands of the new color held double, after bringing them around the previous yarns to ensure no hole.

Make sure to drop the short end of the new yarn on the inside of the garment (sock) when it is .5 inches long.  It will stick out inside, but won't unravel. I have the world's most sensitive feet and i cannot feel it at all.

Finishing a color you are done with:

When you are finished with a working color and want to break it off, and your knitting isn't pattern dense, you can break that color at the beginning of the round, leaving a 6 to 8  inch tail.  Then pick up a different color of your choice... usually one that is closest to the color that you just broke.  Hold the two yarns double and knit with them until the broken yarn is .5 inches long, and leave on the inside of the sock... then continue with the other live yarn. You can see below in my ombre Blender socks, specifically on the dark toe, there are flecks of coral and black together, that is a broken coral color being held double and knit with black. If you don't mind a mix of the two colors, it's a great way to not have ends to weave.

 You can also knit one to three stitches with the color you have broken off held double with the still live yarn, being sure that the live yarn is behind the broken yarn so it will be more hidden, then for the rest of the round or row, hold the broken yarn in your secondary hand and trap it every 2 stitches like you would when working stranded knitting.

So there you are, two easy to do tricks to help reduce the number of ends you need to weave in. This pair of  Ombre Blender Socks were knit with 6 different yarns.  That would have led to 24 ends to weave in... i had NONE to weave in.

Find me on Ravelry: squarejane

Monster Mash

I knit a lot.  Mostly, i love to knit socks as they are utilitarian, will see lots of wearing, they are small projects and very portable.  They are generally well received as gifts and sizing is not generally too complicated.  When i am cold, wool on my feet is an instant warm hug.  I also just love looking down at my feet to see the crazy colorful socks i knit.  It makes me all hella happy.  Once you start wearing hand knit socks, it's near impossible to go back to cheap crappy store bought.  Sure, you will pay between $9 and $30 for the wool for one pair of socks, but that pair will last 10 times longer than your typical sock and 30 times longer than a dollar store sock if cared for properly. 

Sock pattern is available from Drops Design.  It's a great pattern but for established sock knitters.  These were my first attempt at stranded knitting in the round.

These are Puzzle socks by Violet Green (pattern is available for purchase).

One of my more favorite socks to knit up are Stripe Tease for their unique construction. Yay General Hogbuffer! So nice, i knit them twice. Too bad these ones shrunk.  My son inherited a great pair of socks. This pattern is free on Ravelry too.

Shown here is Kalajoki by Tiina Seppälä... an excellent free pattern available to download from Ravelry.  Note, you must be a member to access the patterns on Ravelry. If you love to knit, and you aren't on Ravelry, well what are you waiting for!? It's awesome there.

What happens when you knit so many pairs of size 6 women's socks is you are often left with 1/6th of a skein of yarn or about 70 yards.  In fingering weight yarn, that is not all that much to make any one item.  you can save them all up to make a scrap yarn blanket which i will be doing this winter but you can also combine those remnants into MORE SOCKS.  These are commonly referred to as Monster Socks.  You can use any old sock pattern, and there are many different ways to combine the colors of yarn including but not limited to, knitting 2 rows each of 5 or 6 left overs or using the Blender Sock formula.  I like to stagger a few rows back and forth with my various yarns and do some stranded colorwork.  It makes for some super cozy socks that are fun and colorful. 

 These were knit for my teen daughter... and i can barely get them from her long enough to wash them.

These are all mine baby!

Squarejane Dyes

Don't fret... i said DYES not dies.  All 3 of my readers can rest assured that i am far too stubborn to die anytime soon. I plan on being an old crotchety lady for a long long time.

I love to knit.  I love to knit socks in particular.  One of my favorite sock patterns to knit is Skew which is knit on a diagonal. Here are a pair of Skew socks i knit before in Zitron Trekking XXL (one of my favorite sock yarns for it's fun colorways and durability).  This colorway is Prism.

It's like Dr. Seuss designed them in Froot Loops colors, what's not to love?

  Anyway... i decided i wanted to knit another pair of Skew socks but i just couldn't find some fun self striping sock yarn close to my rural BC home.  Sure i could wait to order some online but i decided that i had long wanted to foray into dyeing my own self striping yarn.

I started off with some Zitron Trekking Natura undyed.  I wound each section for each stripe around my hand 30 times and then tied off gently with some scrap wool in a different weight.  This took some time.  As i did this, i placed each tied loop of yarn in a bowl... bowl A, bowl B or bowl C to create a pattern.

When done, i carried the bowls to the kitchen and added boiling water with a few drops of vinegar, then poured my various powdered dyes directly onto the yarns.  I didn't want solid colors but more variegated within the colors.  I chose a red to plum to purple, an ice blue to deep sky blue and a pale green to apple green to dark forest green. 

After 15 mins and with much care, i took the yarns out of their baths but kept them in their respective piles, A or B or C and squeezed excess dye from the yarns.  I wrapped each pile in it's own plastic wrap and placed it all in a glass dish.  I microwaved on high for 2 minutes, took the dish out and let sit for 10 mins.  Then i opened the wrap and let them all cool.  When cooled, i washed each section by hand in cool water and rinsed until clear.  It was torture waiting for it to dry.  I ran into some tangling issues (i really need a swift and ball winder!) I had to toss out a portion of the yarn due to bad tangles but in the end, the yarn turned out quite pretty.

Here are my new Skew socks in progress...

and here they are all done:

A stunning yet simple project... the Wingspan Shawl

I have a love for Zauberball, which is a delicious German ball of wool from Schoppel Wolle.  They are crafted in delightful colorways and have fantastic slow color changes that rather appear to evolve as opposed to switch colors.  Just after Christmas, i took a gift certificate my awesome Hubby bought me to the local yarn store and bought my first Zauberball... in cranberries.  Is it not a most delicious color?

 I fawned over it and smooshed it to my cheek many a time and then made not one but two lovely pairs of socks from this beautiful and machine washable wool.   I loved the color and feel of it so much, i went back to my LYS and picked up another Zauberball.  They had a few colors there but the one that was prettiest to me was still the cranberries colorway.  Since i had two pairs of socks already, i was at a loss for what to knit in it. 

This led me to log on to faithful Ravelry... the website and online community for yarn artists, knitters and crocheters from all over the world.  I searched their extensive database of patterns for specific patterns people had knit from Zauberballs and discovered Wingspan. (note that the pattern link will only work if you are a member of Ravelry, which is free to join and this pattern is also free).  I thought the pattern by maylin Tri'Coterie Designs was lovely and looked like good fun so i thought i would give it a go.  I also noted that there was a knit along group going on in the forum there on Ravelry for this particular pattern.  I cast on gleefully and checked back daily to see how others were doing with their patterns.  There were some absolutely awe inspiring versions and they all looked so different.  This pattern can be knit in different sizes, with different gauges or textures.  It really is versatile. 

I decided to make one wingspan with 90 st cast on and 16 st increase patterns AND a 60 st cast on with the 14 st increase pattern. i only had enough yarn to go to 7 triangles on both (knit the smaller one to 7 first and then the larger one… they happened to work out to the same number) i then knit the 4 rows of each and cast off all of the edge on the smaller wingspan minus 36 st. i then did a 3 needle bind off overlapping the end of the larger wingspan with the remaining st. on the smaller one, binding them together… then finished the remaining cast off.

Here is how it looked right off the needles.  Pardon the poor lighting as it was 9 pm when i finished and the only light source was CFL.

 

Here it is once blocked.  I decided to pull the points a bit and really accentuate the fractal look of the finished piece.  I love how it appears to fly like some abstract bird.

 

I love my Wingspan and will be knitting up more of these.  While the first change from triangle 1 to triangle 2 threw me for a bit of a loop, once i figured that out (and it was simpler than i was making it), i no longer needed to even read the pattern.  It is quite intuitive and a good fun knit!

Some handy dandy knitting tricks

I am an avid knitter.  i like to snuggle down on the couch with repeats of Firefly on TV and a sleepy pug on my ankles and spend the afternoon knitting.  There is something zen-like in knitting.  Each simple movement makes a delicate stitch... each individual stitch is replicated hundreds or thousands of times to make a finished product.  It really is beautiful.  It's a time honored craft that has been around for a multitude of centuries and found all over the globe.  Teaching someone to knit is akin to passing on a piece of history.  What a truly lovely thing!

While i love to knit, i often don't take on big projects or complicated lace patterns.  It's not because of skill level or fear, it's more that my life is so busy that i know such a project will sit in my knitting bag as an unfinished object for a decade before i would have the time to get around to it.  Having spent so much time in the past 4 years knitting smaller items like hats or arm warmers or socks, i have learned some fantastic little tricks that help make knitting easier.  I figured i should share these.

1)  Knitting stripes while knitting ribbing:

So often, if you are knitting any type of ribbing (i.e. K1 P1 repeat )  you may shy away from stripes in a pattern.  When you change colors, you will get an odd ball stitch of color on your color change purl stitch:

You can see here in the pink circle on these leg warmers i knit years ago, where the gray and the black intertwine on the purl, there is a clash of the stitches which can make the stripes look a bit messy.  I didn't know this cool trick back then.

It really is the simplest of things that fixes this.  Instead of following your K1 P1 pattern on the row that you change colors, simply knit that row (or purl if you are on the wrong side of your work when not working in the round).  You return to your K1 P1 next round.  Each time you switch colors, you simply knit that row.  Easy as pie.  Sounds like it should mess up your ribbing, right?  It totally doesn't.  

Here is an example on a pair of socks i am knitting in the round.  you get a faint color clash on the top of the knit loop but you don't see that at all when not pulling the knitting apart.  Look at how seamless the color change is on the purls.  Love this trick!

2) Joining your work in the round:

This really is a simple trick.  It's so simple that i can't believe i didn't think of it first when i learned it.  Usually, when knitting in the round, you start with all of your stitches divided evenly between your DPNS or on your circular needles and then you start knitting into the first stitch.  This sometimes creates a bit of a hole at the end of your first round and a bit of a jog too.

Instead, try this;  cast on all of your stitches.  Once you are down to your last stitch, add one more.  Pass this extra stitch to your first needle (or the beginning of your round - careful not to twist your work into a mobius) and then knit the extra (or last) stitch together with the first stitch of your round.  You can click on the pictures below to enlarge.

Knitting in the round doesn't need to be scary.  It's so useful and fun.  Note in the picture above that the working yarn (it's on the right) is coming from within the triangle of needles.  You have to do this when you slip the extra or last stitch to the first needle or it's a pain.  Also notable here is that the bottom of all of the cast on stitches face each other.  Those little nubbies on the bottom?  By doing that, you are joining your work correctly.  This is really the only tricky part to working in the round.  Even using all of those needles is easier than you would think... you are only working with the needle in your right hand and the very next needle to your left.  The other ones?  You just ignore em until you get to them.


3) Loose clean bind off - perfect for toe-up socks:

I really like to knit socks toe-up.  Recently, i knit some rather large socks for someone with ribbing for the leg part of the sock.  I attempted to bind off the sock the way i normally do for socks which is a loose standard bind off.  This drove me nuts as while it was stretchy enough, it was TOO stretchy and made the cuff lose all shape.  I Googled cast offs/bind offs for toe-up socks and i tried many of them.  The looped cast off, like a loose bind off left the cuff too baggy and shapeless.

This is when i found the perfect and EASY bind off that works wonderfully for toe-up socks with ribbing or not.  It ends up stretchy but keeps the shape of the sock.  I will detail how to do this below.

When done your sock,  don't cut your yarn.  Unroll about 3 ft of yarn from your ball and cut. Slip end of cut yarn through a large sewing / upholstery needle.

~ step 1 ~ Pass the tip of the needle through the first and second stitch (from right to left) as if to purl.  Pull yarn through.  Don't pull tightly but don't let gap either.  (Remember, you can click on these pics to enlarge if you need to)

~ step 2 ~ Pass through first stitch of row from left to right and pull through.

~ step 3 ~ Slip first stitch off of knitting needle.

That's all you need to remember. Now you go back to step one and continue until you have bound off all of the stitches on your needle.  If you are using DPNS (double pointed needles), you will find that you will have one stitch left on the needle at the end.  You simply place that one onto the next needle and keep on going.  Here are some pictures below of what that bind off looks like un-stretched and stretched. 

As you can see, it is very close and tidy un-stretched and yet very stretchy when stretched out.

Happy knitting!  I will leave you with pictures of our crazy pink tree this year.

Dang... i borked my old blog

So i had a blog on here, http://squarejane.blogspot.com/ and i haven't checked in there for quite some time.  I got sore, tired and busy... and slacked off in the blogging.  When i went to log back in, i had also changed isp and no longer had access to my email account that i had set up the account with.  Foolish me, i had also forgotten the password.  The long and short of it is that i cannot access it and thus, i must re-start a blog.  Oh those poor 11 people or so who were following me!

Anyway.  I digress.  Those who know me personally, know that is rather a common trait of mine. *blush*.  Since i last posted, i have found out that i most likely am suffering from an auto-immune condition called Lupus.

It's slowed me down quite a bit and many days are extremely painful.  The days that aren't quite so pain filled... (or the days i have more spoons) i do my best to keep busy by crafting.

As i blogged previously on my old now lost blog, i make costumes.  Halloween is my favorite time of year with Christmas as a close second.  This year for Halloween, my kids wanted to be their own Irken characters.  Irkens are the race of aliens that Zim of Invader Zim cartoon fame is.  My 13 year old daughter created and drew up their Irkens and i created costumes for them based on her cool designs.

I also made quite a slew of costumes this year for other people.  I worked on a little girl hotdog,

a slew of sock monkeys,

 there were a few penguins,

and a Cthulhu.

Then i made a bunch of fun animal hats...

 

and then i worked on some knitting.  I love knitting because when i am super sore and useless, i feel a little less useless as i can still make stuffs.

I also made a couple of little, labor intensive top hats.  These aren't made on a pre-formed felt shape but created layer by layer.

Lastly, i have been making HUGE knitting and crochet bags.  I knit a lot and i found that no bags out there were big enough, cool enough or held all of my needles in place.  The bags i make are 1 inch shy of being 2 ft across and are 1 1/2 feet tall.  Massive.

I have to make stuff.  I go a little crazy when i don't make stuff.