Revitalised Jeans Socks

 I've been going through some piles in various places round the house and decided to get rid of some project bags.
Some projects have ended up dum dum dum in the bin, yes, the actual bin.
I'll be in town tomorrow so I'll be dropping off some yarn to the charity shop.
So, I decided to tackle a project which has been sitting in the living room basket for ages.
When I first knitted these Jeans Socks in 2005 I didn't know much about yarn and knitted the cuffs, heels and toes in a soft Sirdar yarn which was unsuitable in the long run and showed signs of wear and tear much sooner than the proper Opal sock yarn.

I took them apart a couple of years ago and left them sitting, but I've finally refreshed them with the original yarn. Sock one came apart when I took the dodgy heel out so when I had redone the heel I had to graft the whole top to the whole bottom. I managed to avoid that with sock two and only had to to graft the top half.
Quite chuffed I managed to get reasonable pattern-matching with the yarn I had left.
By the way, I'm blogging again, as you can see! x K

Simply Lovely Lace Socks # Take Two

Ok, to quickly get you up to speed.

In 2006 I started a pair of Simply Lovely Lace Socks by Karen Baumer from Interweave Knits Spring 2006 in Opal Uni yarn.
I knitted two at once on lots of dpns until the cuff was as long as I wanted for ankle socks, then laid them to the one side for a-a-a-ages, having fallen out of love with socks again, and not having enjoyed knitting into the back of every knit stitch.

In summer 2007 I decided to give them a new lease of life and made them into fingerless gloves for myself, which actually involved quite a lot of knitting the lace pattern I hadn't enjoyed, and a lot of fudging and making it happen, but I was very happy with the results.

Now fast forward to summer 2008 when during a sock binge I realised that I hadn't actually ever worn my fingerless gloves for real, only in poses for blog posts/ Flickr.
So I fished them out, frogged the handy and thumby bit of the glove, rolled that crazy, tangly stuff and put it aside and did what I should've done in the first place, which was knit on the rest of the sock in stocking stitch. Dunno why that option didn't occur to me last year, maybe just because I was so out of the sock knitting mentality. Fortunately I had plenty of the Opal Uni left.

I am delighted with the results, and they will get much more wear out of these sockazitos than from a pair of opera gloves.

Here are a few photos for your perusal. Two things to look out for are 1) Look at all of the autumn leaves starting to hit the grass and 2) Look at my sausagey feet in the second-last photo. It was taken at a weird angle, but my feet and ankles are very sausagey in real life as well, I must confess.


Thank-you for the kind comments about last week's Dark Galaxy socks. x K

Simply Lovely Lace Gloves

Sound a big hit for myself in the title, don't I?

Just because these are actually the Simply Lovely Lace Socks from Interweave Knits Spring 2006.

They started off life last summer as the socks in question. I knitted the "legs" of both, they languished in a basket for months, and then were re-discovered this spring when I decided that I would convert them into fingerless gloves.

I always wear pink lacy gloves with jeans and walking boots, don't you? I was making the most of a brief dry spell to take outdoor pictures.

Don't ask me how I adapted the pattern it was "do this, fudge that, make it happen".

The pattern is very nice, but rather sloooow because you're always knitting into the back of each plain stitch, which is probably why they never made the final cut as socks for me.

Here they are on the "distressed" picnic table of our holiday cottage. I'll tell you , the table wasn't the only one distressed at the grotty cottage, but I digress.

They were made from a dusky pink colour of Opal Uni which I bought from Get Knitted last spring. I feel a bit like Fagin from Oliver when wearing them, but they're nice gloves nonetheless. x K