Mama's Little Baby Love Sport Weight, Sport Weight...

Mama's little baby love sport weight socks. (Ten points if you're singing along. I used to love that little jig.) Great...now I'm going to have that ditty stuck in my head all day.

Warning: It's a long one. I've been blog-slacking, but I've also been knitting.

I had, somewhere in my li'l sock lovin' heart, misplaced my adoration for sportweight yarn. I'm only about four rows farther along on poor Travis' second Gentleman's Fancy Sock. For some reason, the size 0s and the fingering weight in a high sock finally got to me. I've started no less than five projects since that second sock....and I've finished four of them.

I whipped up a pair of sportweight Jaywalkers in about four days. Love that.



The Stats:
Yarn - Vesper Sock yarn, superwash sportweight, in Tropicali
Pattern - Jaywalker, of course
Needles - Size 3 Clover bamboos (boy, those suck, don't they?)
Start - July 24th (late, late in the evening)
Finish - July 29th (early, early in the morning)
Changes - Adjusted the pattern for the sportweight, neglected to slip the stitch on the top of the foot as directed. (That's not a change, really, just a screwup.)



The colours are completely insane. They're not absolutely true here - it's oranges, blues, reds, and every possible variation on the three. It may be a bit headache-inducing, and I don't know what possessed me, but I wanted some crazy socks. And the Fruit-Stripe-Gum/Ice-Cream-Truck kiddie nature of the yarn appealed to me.



The yarn is wonderful to work with - not splitty, and soft and squishy. The only complaint I have is the pilling - I'd only worn these a bit around the house and for maybe a few hours with my Docs, and the heel is already pilled up pretty badly (click the photo for a closer look). But I can certainly live with that.

The next bit of the post is photos of gifties. One's a secret pal thing, no big. The other is a hat for Travis' mom....I don't think she would stumble on here, but if she does - Becky, go away. No cheating. I mean it - I'll give it to someone else if I catch you!

First up, the One Skein Secret Pal project. The assignment for August is to knit a one-skeiner for your pal. I wanted to avoid the patterns in the book (not that I don't like them, just wanted to be different) and I found a neat simple pattern for a lavender eye pillow included with a knitting novel I'm reading. (Can't remember the title, or I'd tell you.)



It's knit out of hemp (Hemp for Knitting's allhemp 3, which was a beast to work with, and would have been much more pleasant had I soaked the skein first) and stuffed with organic flax seeds and organic lavender buds. (Actually, that stuff gets stuffed into the toe portion of a pair of tights, then sewed up and seamed into the pillow.) I had a bit of a struggle with this little baby...I hated the finishing when I was done with it, so I popped the seams out and did it again, backstitching instead of whipstitching (a no-brainer, but live and learn). It's MUCH better now than it was before...I deleted the "before" picture - it was embarassing.

(I also felt it necessary to include miscellaneous goodies in addition to the knitted thing - partially because it's fun to spoil someone and partially because the project was relatively simple. If I'd knitted her an Icarus shawl, that would have been different. Hence....goodies.)

Okay, Becky, you seriously better be gone now.



This is actually a Christmas project. (I'm really reaching for stuff to put between me and that sock for Travis, ain't I?)

The Stats:
Yarn - Lorna's Laces Lion & Lamb (50 silk/50 wool) in Black Purl (one of my favourites).
Pattern - Odessa...of course
Needles - Size 8 Colonial Rosewood 16", size 8 Addi DPNs
Start - July 29 (immediately upon completion of Jaywalkers)
Finish - July 30th
Changes - Left out the beads, adjusted for worsted weight (cast on 90 stitches instead), worked ribbing for 1.5" instead of 1" (my standard Odessa deviation).

This is a pricey but GORGEOUS yarn. I probably have enough left for another Odessa, and the sheen is so great I really didn't think it needed the beads. (They would have had to be huge for a worsted yarn anyway.) It actually seems like it's more silk than wool - the sheen and crunch are really pronounced. I love it.



The odd angles are both to emphasize the hat, and de-emphasize my makeup-less mug and bleh hair (stuffed under hat). I'm intrigued by how the colourway worked up...the pattern spirals in one direction, the colour in the other. Neat.

I'm currently working on a little washrag in organic cotton, linen stitch. I picked up the Vogue Stitchionary, Knit & Purl this weekend, and there's some cool stuff in there. More washrags expected.

Finally, there was this little number.....to date, my masterpiece. Unfortunately I can't show you the whole thing - it's a secret. But here's a little peek:



Okay, I'm off to do some more knitting working. I'll leave you with a blatant Wendy rip-off:



Rooster says, apparently, "Go Sit Down".

(Let me share the story of this briefly - we've been working in our guest bathroom, so there's newspaper about. Rooster came in and spread the papers about until he arrived at this configuration, then settled down, satisfied. I was so amused at his posing himself in such a way, with such a phrase, directly in front of a commode, that I had to get a picture.)