Socks, one of my favourite things!

Last night I commented to Alex's youngest nephew that socks are one of my favourite things, to which he promptly replied "no, they're not!" (which in turn caused Alex and I to start singing These Are a Few of My Favourite Things while chasing him around the house). But really, they are. Ask Alex. Or my Mum. I have all different kinds - plain ones, colourful ones, wool ones, cotton ones, fleece ones, and, of course, hand-knit ones. So far I have knit three pairs of socks (one chunky and two fingering weight) and am working on my fourth pair now.

This will become a pair of Hermione's Everyday Socks and I'm loving them already! I modified the pattern to be toe-up rather than cuff-down: I cast on 28 stitches using Judy's Magic Cast On, increased two stitches on each needle every other row for a total of 56 stitches, and I'm reversing the chart so that I work from rows 4 to 1. The yarn is Fibranatura Yummy which has, unfortunately, been discontinued.

Working on these socks reminded me that I haven't shared these socks that I finished a while ago.

These are my By the Sea socks in Madelinetosh Sock in Iceburg (this colour is discontinued I think). The sock pattern is actually available for free on Wendy Johnson's site and is called Seaweed but I renamed them because of the the names of both the pattern and the yarn colourway.

This yarn is so hard to photograph - it's a really nice blue in real life. I actually have a lot of completed knitting that I've never shared on the blog (including my first adult-sized cardigan) because it's hard getting a picture of myself wearing it all - socks are much easier!

In case you didn't already know, I'm a little bit of a closet Potter head and I have plans to turn all of Erica Leuder's Harry Potter themed (free) sock patterns into toe-up socks for me! I cannot wait for my Hermione socks to be done!

Home is Wherever I'm With You...

Hey y'all! How's it going? I have been working really hard to make time for crafting in my new routine (which is why I haven't been around these parts in the past couple of weeks) and have managed to get a few things finished in the last little bit - hurray! My brain is finally starting to get adjusted to my new normal which I am so grateful for. I've made a few things as gifts which haven't reached their new owners yet, but I've also finished a quilt-wall-hanging-thing for our apartment.

I made the top for this back in the summer/fall but got stuck with how to quilt it. After making another little mini quilt using this same alphabet (which I'll get to in a moment) and doing semi-straight line quilting on that, I decided that straight line would look great for this one and would also give it a little structure for hanging.

This wall hanging was inspired by the song "Home" by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros which is a song that Alex and I both really like (you can listen to the song on their website if you want haven't heard it). We haven't decided exactly where it's going to go yet; options so far include: above our bed, above our couch, or in the hallway near the front door.

I used Elizabeth Haugh's Refrigerator Magnets alphabet pattern for the letters, but with a few changes. I used the 5" templates here but paper-pieced them rather that using freezer paper as she specifies in the directions. I found paper piecing the letters was less time-consuming and I only had to adjust a couple of letters to work as paper pieces - as far as I can remember, only "s" had to be cut to work for paper piecing and I was able to follow the numbers on the templates for the rest.

The letters were all pieced using various prints from Anna Maria Horner's Little Folks collection - I didn't have any problems paper piecing with the voile but I wonder if using freezer paper with it would be a problem. Both the background and binding are Kona Charcoal and I used a purple toile I had hanging around for the backing. I still have to make some little hangers before we hang it up. I should probably also put a label on it... ya, I guess it's not technically done yet.

Home

For: Me! (and Alex!)

Finished Quilt: 28x40"

Completed: April 08, 2013