Sunday, January 15, 2012

Socks, Wristwarmers and a hat

I was trying to clean up leftover works in progress from last year and so picked up a pair of wristwarmers I had started last December for Gail. They had sat in my basket for a year. So I tried working on them and was finding mistakes, or I wasn't reading the knitting well. Couldn't get excited about the pattern and really, they should have been done in a week, not languishing in my project basket for a year. So I frogged them and went looking for a pattern to use the yarn with. I tried looking for a different wristwarmer pattern and didn't find anything that excited me so looked at socks and found the International Sock of Doom pattern, simple but interesting. A nice fast knit with lovely results:
I used leftover yarn to reinforce the heels of this pair, but also the previous pair I had made for Gail. She had worn a pretty good sized hole in the heel of the first pair and the second sock was getting thin in the heel also. Both have added reinforcement so hopefully no more holes.

I then got to work on a pair of wristwarmers for Wendy. She had bought some lovely Road to China yarn - baby alpaca, camel, cashmere, and silk in a gorgeous blue called appropriately - Sapphire. The pattern set was for wristwarmers as well as a cowl.

Soft and warm for the hands in a chilly office environment!

I had fun coming up with how to used the five yarns that Lorajean sent me for a sample hat. Ida's Kitchen calls for seven yarns but I was working with five and so some math and making sure that there wasn't going to be the color I reassigned right next to itself took some planning. I still then ended up doing some reorganizing of the colors. I might not have personally picked one of the colors, but once it was altogether it worked out really well.



Currently, I'm working on the shawl to go with the wristwarmers for Wendy.  Its sooo awful to work with this yarn - NOT! I'm looking forward to giving these to her soon, I know she'll love them.

I have one item leftover from last year that I'm still going to procrastinate on. Its a blanket for the nephew, and is a spiderman style blanket. He's six now and I need to check if Spiderman is still a favorite. I might also get crazy and try to make a pullover for him instead still using the theme.

Anyone else trying to clean up WIPs? Stash that's been in there unused for more than two years?

3 comments:

  1. You know it! I've busted through three very long-lived skeins and even started back on a WIP from 2007! This might actually be the year I finish things.

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  2. The wristwarmers look great! I think I have a skein of road to china in my stash...
    Been thinking about finishing some WIPs - still need to finish the hemp bag from the class at Knitting Bee (I think that was when I met you...was that 4 years ago?)

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  3. Blogger now has the "Reply" and "Delete" links under someone's comment, will it let me use them? Currently not. Sigh.

    Good luck Elizabeth with getting WIPs under control and finished!

    Camille, yup it was 2007 when we did the market bag class. :-) They really do make a nice farmers' market bag.

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