A shawlette and socks

I started them the same night and finished them the same day. Different times of course but same day. The Crimson Haruni ended up being more of a shawlette than a full shawl. It will look nice wearing it as a neckerchief. There are "secret" plans for this project, but you'll have to wait until the first part of August for me to let you in on what they are.

Pre-blocking:

Blocking:

 Blocked:

The yarn is Stitchjones Titanium Sock in Crimson, ten stems instead of the twelve. Ended up with 19 grams leftover. I think it will be come a baby hat.

The Roppongi Orion's Socks are also done. I was able to make them identical instead of the fraternal that the pattern designer had to do. Wonder if it had to do with the different heels? I ended up with just 21 yards leftover of the Staccato Butter. Will definitely go towards a blanket square. I also have 80 yards of the Roppongi leftover but haven't found a pattern to link it.

They are bright and cheerful and a pretty easy pattern for the first socks of the year.

Tuesday in the late afternoon it started to snow and there was concern about freezing rain, so didn't get to do the monthly Portland Spinnerati spinning. I was also really tired Wednesday morning and ended up not having the regular spinning, so this afternoon I have been spinning to make up for both. I've made progress, but still have more to go before I'm done with this batt. Wednesday morning it was 31 degrees, by evening it was up to 50 degrees. Today it hit 57 degrees. Creeks that had gone down are rising and cresting their banks again. We're also supposed to get a lot more rain over the next week.  Hopefully the Seattle Yarn Train people are prepared for rain!

Three-quarters done

I cast on both projects shortly after midnight on January 1st - Crimson Haruni and Roppongi Orion Socks. The shawl was a much more successful cast on and progress:

 Almost to the halfway point of being done

Half of the second half is done. You can see the lifeline between the two halves. There's just ten rows left to do and then I'm binding off.  So its three-quarters of the way done.

 First sock in progress - notice I modified the heel to be a short row heel. I also modified the toe. Original called for a 14 stitch cast on and then increase to 64 stitches, that just made it huge on my toes. So I frogged it and again using Judy's Magic Cast On (I finally have it down pretty well, but will have to make sure I do another toe up sock this year) did an 8 stitch cast on and then increased like I would with the decreases on a top down.

 Once you get into the leg of the sock it just kind of flies doing the stranded work. I followed the needle bind off that the author suggested. It's very stretchy I guess. It kind of seems loose to me.

As of this afternoon, I have the second sock done past the heel, so the pair is also three-quarters done.

I ended up missing weekly spinning through the month of December through one thing or another. So I was determined to make it this first week of January. There was three hours then and today another couple of hours of spinning at The Knitting Bee for its monthly Spinning Bee. 

 Progress after Wednesday's spinning. It's a Spinner's Hill batt that Shelia brought back in 2009 from Rhinebeck. It's a Finn-Rambouillet-Mohair-Silk mix.

 If  you look on the left side of the bobbin you can see the height difference between Wednesday and Sunday's spinning.

 I'll try for a daylight shot tomorrow of this. It's 1 ounce of Upstream Alpacas in Rose Grey. It's going towards the State Fair spinning I have planned.

I feel good about this week's progress. I'm not sure what will be up next in the plans, but I have some queues that I'm sure will help guide me. ;-)

I know its from the back but the sun was shining and I thought she looked cute. Leeloo turns eleven months old tomorrow. Her hair is growing out (needs to be brushed) and we're trying to get her nose/muzzle hair to grow out and get out of her eyes.