Want to see a box full of Koigu?
Look what came in the mail this week . . . and at the bottom of the box there are copies of Koigu Magazine 2, which I have a pattern in! More on that on Monday, I'm spending the weekend putting together kits for it . . . stay tuned!
This year's sole Christmas gift
Sometimes knitting for others really pays back a million-fold in love. This is one of those stories.
My parents are back in the US for the holidays for the first time in recent memory and I am ridiculously excited about getting to spend Thanksgiving, my birthday (which was last Friday), and Christmas with them. We've been hanging out and going out to dinner and getting along great (we all know that too much time with the family usually ends up in tension!)
Well enter Sunday, when I was hanging out at their place. I was sitting on the couch reading the Steve Jobs biography when my mom came over to me swinging a pair of multi-colored socks. She said to me, "remember these?" and I totally didn't. It was obvious that I'd knit them for her, but I had literally no memory of doing it until I saw the mistake in the leg . . . and then I remembered.
It was more than 10 years ago.
They were knit in ugly pink/white/yellow acrylic.
There's a big mistake on one of the legs.
And my mom still wears them.
In fact, she told me that she "doesn't wear them too much because she doesn't want them to wear out."
I'm still a bit dumbfounded.
So of course I'm making her another pair of ribbed, cushy socks. This time I'm using Koigu Kersti instead of Kmart acrylic, so they'll be even softer and cushier on her feet. She likes these bedsocks the best because they don't have elastic at the top and therefore don't leave a mark on her calf . . . which is something only my mother could care that much about, but there you go, that's who she is.
I cast on 44 stitches with size 4 needles and started doing K2, P2 rib. I'll be doing a contrast-color short-row heel and using the same color for the toe, and I'll post the free pattern here when it's ready. At this gauge I should be done in a few days!
And hopefully my mom will wear these for the next 10 years, too.
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Not related: I just listed more Hexipuff Mini-Skein Yarn Packs for sale, get them while they're in stock! A new Koigu shipment is arriving today too . . . stay tuned.
Wearing your knitting
Now that it's officially "fall" here in NYC, I've been pulling out my finished knits and wearing them more often. We're still in the transitional time here so you never know what the weather will be like from one day to the next, but it's often cold enough to wear something you made yourself.
Today I felt like my outfit was too plain so I decided to try the Sev[en] Circle neck thingie as a necklace and am going to wear it out in public for the first time. I wonder what my more fashionable coworkers will say . . .
As I was considering wearing this I realized I'd never taken FO shots or even talked about it on the blog! I finished this over a year ago, around March of 2010, but I have literally never worn it. Not sure why though, it's pretty awesome! And keeps me just a tiny bit warmer which is perfect for someone like me who's usually running hot, not cold.
Here's another shot that shows the way bottom of the loops:
I like to kind of mess them up so that they don't look too prim and proper. The color of Koigu Mori I knit this out of goes with literally any color, so I think I may just start wearing this "necklace" all the time . . .
Caught the Hexipuff bug . . .
Are you hexipuffin' yet?
The hottest pattern right now seems to be Tiny Owl Knit's Beekeeper's Quilt . . . so much so that there are thousands of knitters on Ravelry who are working on it together!
And wouldn't you know it, the allure of those tiny hexipuffs knit in handreds of colors of Koigu pulled me right in when I wasn't expecting it. I'm totally smitten!
The last thing I need right now is another huge project (especially one that isn't my own design!) so I've settled for knitting a pillow cover with this design instead of a full-on throw or blanket. My plan is to make the puffs for the front of the pillow and then do solid stockinette in just one color for the back. When I first started the project I just picked random scraps out of my Koigu scraps pile, but I'm actually starting over with a more planned color palette now that I know exactly what direction I'm moving in. Stay tuned for some how-to's and photos!
In the meantime, if you're looking for some mini skeins to use for your Beekeeper project, I've put together a few yarn packs to get you started.
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Hope you like them! I'll see you in the Tiny Owl Knits Ravelry boards ;o)
Three more custom Loreley kit colorways at Sandrasingh.com!
If you're not interested in new colorways of Loreley Kits, then this post is going to be kind of boring for you again. I'm sorry about that.
For those of you in that category, I offer you this gorgeous (if I do say so myself) picture I took at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden instead:
Now for the Koigu!
You know I love playing with Koigu colors, and coming up with new kit colorways is probably way more fun for me than it should be. I have three new colorways available exclusively through Sandra Singh. New this week are:
Blue Green Sea
Sedona
and
Cactus Garden
Like all Loreley Kits, these are completely unique and will never be repeated. Three kits of each colorway are available and when they're gone, they're gone! I didn't even record the color numbers as I put them together, so even if I wanted to I couldn't recreate them exactly.
So if you see a colorway you like, hop on over and grab a kit from Sandra!
