Meet Zork and Lala!

There are a lot of gift-giving occasions coming up in my family these next few weeks, so I've been working hard out on getting stuff ready. And yesterday I finally finished the two last presents, so I proudly present to you - Lala the Panda and Zork the Alien!
I can't quite decide whether they're cute, ugly or just plain weird... a bit of all three, perhaps? I hope the intended recipients will like them, at least :)

After working concentrated on a lot of deadline knitting (pretty much all I've done so far this year, although much of that is deadlines I've set myself, e.g. to take part in the Clean Slate Challenge) I felt like a long term project, where I could focus on the process rather than the product, so I've picked my Cozy Memories blanket back up, and have added another 16 squares to it :)
I've decided on the width now, so from here on, it's just straight up! Still a loooong way off from finishing it, but I absolutely love how it's turning out! I'm keeping a record of all the yarn I use for future reference, but already now I think it's cool to be able to say "Oh, those are the socks I knit for my sister" or "That's the sweater Mum knit me" etc.

I've also finished my first "real" spinning project. The others have mainly been for practise, but I got some amazingly gorgeous Merino fiber in a rainbow colourway that I just HAD to use for something real. I finished spinning it up this weekend, and after meassuring out how much yardage (or meterage ;) ) I got out of it, immediately went to Ravelry to see what I could do with it.

It went from this:
to this:
and finally to this:

I was thrilled to realize I'd have enough for the contrasting colour of the Conjunction Cowl and immediately added it to my library... only to turn around and realize I'd miscalculated the yardage, and only had half as much as I thought I did! So I had to great creative and add another CC. I went yarn shopping Monday and found two colours that I think will look totally awesome with my rainbow skein, so here is the first step towards knitting the cowl!
(I'll use black as MC and then the light blue and rainbow as the CC. I was inspired by this yarn which I think is absolutely GORGEOUS!).

I've decided this will be my London knitting (small, easy and portable), so I won't cast on until after Easter sometime, in order to have it ready for when we leave :)

Sock Machine

I've finished not one, but TWO pairs of socks in the month of March! Don't ask me how I accomplished that, because I have no idea!

First is a pair of Vanilla Bean socks with Must Stash yarn that I was fortunate enough to get for the sock-a-long she's hosting in her Ravelry group:
I started these on March 1st and weaved in the last end the day before yesterday! The yarn is amazing and very colourful indeed! ;) I decided to try the OMG heel by Megan Williams, but haven't quite decided what I think of that heel yet. It's every bit as easy to do as the fish-lips-kiss heel, but in order not to interrupt the striping sequence, I knit the heel from the other end of the ball, which meant I had two extra ends to weave in, and some of the stitches got kinda stretched. I think I'll withhold judgement on this one until I've tried it a couple of times more. (And on a pair of socks I can actually fit - these are for my sister whose feet are a lot smaller than mine, so I can't really tell.)

The other pair is the Simple Skyp socks with an afterthought heel for GooseBearKnit's Sock-A-Thon. I knit these toe up, two-at-a-time using Regia's Stripemania sock yarn in the Rainbow colourway.
Also very colourful! ;) I'm not sure whether or not it's actually faster to knit them TAAT, but it certainly prevented the dreaded second sock syndrome from rearing its ugly head. Also it made it a lot easier to ensure I placed the heel and the ribbing at exactly the same spot for both socks.

I'm linking up with Gracey's Goodies at Stitch Along Wednesday.

WIP Wednesday - All About the Socks

I've gone kinda nuts with the sock knitting these past few weeks :-D Somewhere along the way I've turned into a real sock-knitter. They're quick, portable, and generally only take 1-2 skeins of yarn a pair, so they make for affordable souvenier yarn ;)

All this to say that I've finished two pairs since my last knitting post, and have started two more ;)
Simple Vanilla Bean socks with a fish-lips-kiss heel - that's become my go-to heel these days as it's much easier than a heel-flap and gusset. The picture doesn't do the green justice though. It's a vibrant light green that goes perfectly with the brown :)

Second pair finished are "Socks on a Plane" socks. Almost plain vanilla socks, with a fun cable pattern. Learning how to cable without a needle made this a really easy pattern as well.

And then the three I have on the go :) The top ones I'm knitting two-at-a-time (gotta learn something new!) in some slightly thicker yarn. I'm enjoying them so far, and am keen to see whether knitting them TAAT will actually make them feel like they get done faster!

The bottom one is another simple Vanilla Bean sock, but with a new heel! I've signed up for "Stash U" on Ravelry, in order to learn the OMG heel. I've never been part of as busy a knit-along as this before, so I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes. So far I've been having a blast!

Finally, I've started knitting up some of my homespun yarn. After a few false starts (it's MUCH too uneven for any kind of real pattern to show up) I decided on a modified version of the Hitchhiker where I do every second tip in garter and every second tip in stockinette. I rather like the way it's turning out so far :)