M-Space: The Blog

Wed 03 Feb 2010

Head and toes

As promised yesterday, here's details of my knitting projects so far this year that don't include cables.

The first thing I knitted this year was a pair of socks (that may have been started on 31st December or the first couple of days of January - I can't remember precisely). Unlike the other pairs I've knitted, I actually followed a pattern fairly closely for this pair, although to account for the thicker yarn I was using I followed the direction for medium sized socks to get large ones. The pattern, entitled Adult and child socks, comes from the book One Skein Wonders by Judith Durant, and I decided to risk using the same yarn that had given me so much trouble last year. These socks are fairly straightforward top-down ribbed ones with a peasant heel, but have the interesting feature that the ribbing continues into the heel and toe:

I finished these socks without too much hassle and was so pleased with them that I almost immediately started on the cabled socks I described yesterday (which I'm still working on).

Having taken care of keeping the lower end of my body warm, I decided to turn next to the other end and work on another hat for myself, although my previous ones are still doing fine. For quite a while I'd intended to have a go at the Tam O'Shanter that was described in Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitting without tears and an impending Burns Night supper towards the end of January gave me the impetus I needed to actually get going on it.

Unfortunately I didn't quite get it finished for Burns Night, but it was greatly admired by my fellow Scottish dancers at our class the following week. In addition to the pompom (apparently a traditional feature of tams) and the 3-colour checked headband, I personalised the hat by knitting my name into the hem:

Although I already had a couple of projects on the needles (my cabled socks and antler scarf, in case you weren't paying attention earlier), which I think is a good number to have at once, I decided to start on my next project a couple of days ago. If nothing else, this would give me a break from the copious amounts of cabling involved in both of the others. I came across a pattern for a waffle knit dishcloth which looked quite fun. I think the stitch pattern is officially called raised box stitch, but waffle stitch seems to be a more evocative name. As well as the interesting stitch, I was attracted to this pattern because (i) it's fairly small and potentially quite quick to make, (ii) it uses cotton yarn (and I've had a skein in my stash since almost the beginning and been wondering what to do with it) and (iii) it doesn't involve cables :)

That's probably enough about knitting for now, at least until I get one or two more projects underway (hopefully once I've finished my current batch). I'm hoping to keep on knitting over the coming months - perhaps this year I'll even keep it going throughout the summer?

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