Things I've been working on

Aside from painting like a madwoman, I have been doing some knitting projects. I have bought a few yarns, but also wanted to use up some of my stash.

This yarn I bought at Oodles in Santa Fe. I wish you could see in the photo, but it's an ivory yarn with painted on shimmery beige and shimmery ice blue. It's a thick/thin yarn that adds lots of texture. This hat is for me, in an attempt to not hate the winter so much and maybe be a little warmer. I think it will look nice with my wool winter white coat.




I finally finished my A-Line Jacket from "Runway Knits." Unfortunately, when I finally got around to having Mark take a photo, it was the middle of the night and we forgot the flash. I will get a better picture later. It came out pretty nice. It's definitely wearable, but there are some places where I think it looks sloppy.



I've been working on these socks with yarn that I dyed. They are actually almost done. This is an old photo. I have done the entire foot of each and am working on the leg. They were going to be footies, but I had so much yarn left, and since they are toe-up socks, I just decided to keep going.



I made this hat for one of my nieces or nephews, whomever it fits best. It's a thick/thin yarn I dyed myself. I plan to add a pom-pom to the top with the remaining yarn.



Finally, I'm also working on these socks made in a soft bamboo/merino yarn. I'm making stripes and it's my first time using multiple yarns (many sock yarns are dyed to stripe on their own so you don't have to actually switch yarns).




I was having trouble changing yarns. At first I was cutting the yarn and joining new yarn each time, but I quickly saw that I'd have about 200 ends to sew up after the sock was done. I was advised to "carry" the yarn up as I go, meaning to bring the yarns I am not using along the inside until I need them, kind of looping as I go. Once I started doing this, I found I had a really obvious string of yarn up the beginning of the rounds:



It looks pretty bad. So then I started really making sure I was carrying it along the inside of the sock and not the outside. I also started crossing it with my working yarn on the second stitch of the round, and not the first. This helps because sometimes the first stitch as you switch needles is looser anyway, and also because it packs it in behind several knit stitches in a row, which seems to hide it better: