A few months ago I unearthed a few old UFOs (unfinished objects) that I had stuck into ziplock baggies and forgotten about. They were basically project failures that I didn’t have the heart to unravel at the time. Among them are a couple of wannabe lace shawls, socks, convertible mittens, and alpaca gloves.
The socks were made from a skein of merino/nylon self striping sock yarn in a ugly colorway. I’ve quickly found that buying sock yarn for knitting socks is way too expensive for me. Most 100g skeins are in the $20 range which to me is ridiculous for socks. I’d rather turn the fancy yarn into an accessory.
The pattern that the partial sock was knit in was nice. After doing some searching around I figured out that it was a pattern from the Vogue Knitting Ultimate Sock Book called garter stitch heel sock. After adding 4 extra stitches I was able to knit a sock that fit.
I used the rest of the skein with a leftover ball of yellow sock yarn and made another sock using a simple slip stitch pattern and a spiral toe decrease.
The scrappy sock mojo kept going with some yarn I salvaged from a scarf found in the giveaway bin at school. I paired it with some scratchy gray wool that was frogged from the shawl project I wove earlier this year.
I now have 3 new pairs of hand knit socks. Most of my fancy yarn scraps will probably be used in this way going forward. Using the fabulous stuff for cuffs and knitting the foot portion in tougher, undyed wool.
The spinning wheels have been humming quite a bit lately. The sparkly art rolags were spun up on my supported spindle A Handspun Spring. The resulting yarn was dark and muddy in my opinion. In order to lighten it up I plied it with the white bamboo singles that I had spun on my Ashford Traveler over the winter. The resulting yarn was surprisingly soft and draped despite the large amounts of sparkle Angelina fiber. It was like spinning a Brillo Pad in some sections. After using up all of my bamboo singles the rest of the yarn was chain-plied
The sparkle yarn was knit into a crescent shawl (my first) called As You Wish by Booknits on Ravelry. I used the chain plied yarn for garter stitch ridges to add some punch to the now muted art-yarn.
I am still hooked on the sparkle art batt craze. I spun up a 4oz batt called frosty rum drink in a lace weight and plied it on itself. It yielded about 550yards.
Apparently that’s not enough to settle my art batt obsession. I found an Etsy shop called Gargoylelover that sells artbatts in larger quantities (most are in small batts and the seller only has one for sale). I bought 12ozs of a colorway called Starry Night. It was so interesting to spin I finished it in 3 days. I have plans to knit a hoodie with it.
At the moment I have another sparkle project on the knitting needles. I bought some handpainted sparkle yarn from and Indiana Indie dyers called GoodforEweyarns. It is light fingering lace weight. The plan is to knit my first cardigan on size 3 needles. So far so good. The pattern is called Emelie by Elon Berglund.
Traditions in Cloth 