Pattern Collection Release: A Year in Socks!

Finally, the mystery is over! Some of you have been wondering and waiting to know what all those secret socks were for (nobody have been more impatient than I) and here it is:

A Year in Socks - a collection of 12 sock patterns

by me :)

A knitting pattern collection of 12 different sock patterns - one for each month of the year - where I've let each month inspire me. I've always found calendars and their division into days, weeks, and months fascinating, and I take great pleasure in the seasonal change we experience here in Northern Europe - especially just now, in late September/early October where summer turns into autumn; my favourite time of year!

The product is a collection of 12 different sock patterns reflecting the seasons and featuring a variety of stitch patterns and designs all using the same foundation - the sock.

With this, I hope to inspire you, too, even if you feeling about each month is not the same as mine.

The pattern collection is up for purchase in my Etsy shop - 12 patterns for $22 USD!

Each pattern includes:

- one or more photos of the socks

- information on gauge, suggested yarn, and needle size

- brief description on how to make larger/smaller sizes (the patterns are written for a woman's size medium)

- instructions on how to knit the sock, i.e. the pattern :)

- charts showing the stitch pattern

The collection is a 43-pages .pdf file.

Now, I want to show you all those socks I've been working on. Chronologically, of course:

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

(yes, you've seen this one before...)

December

You can find more information on Ravelry and more photos and details on my Flickr page.

Finally, I want to thank Britt for indirectly giving me this idea: a sunny day in June where I ought to be studying for my exams at the terrace I started knitting a sock to add some percentages to the Sock yarn O'Meter that Britt just got me started with. The sock was knit in Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock Multi in the colourway Shadow; the colourway made me think: This is so January! And there it was. I already made the November sock last year and thought: Hey! I'm making a collection - a sock for each month! The rest, as they say, is history and so is the Sock yarn O'Meter I - all this sock knitting over the summer made me pass the 100%; more on this later.

FOs: More secret socks

It never ends, does it?

Well, it does, quite soon, but up until then you'll have to do with another of those toes only photos of the two pairs of socks I've completed recently. In fact it's all about sock knitting around here these days.

Two lovely yarns and two lovely colours: Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock Solid colourway Firefly and Colinette Jitterbug colourway Velvet Damson.

It's another 188 g = 18.8 % added to the Sock yarn O-Meter. That adds up to 91.4 % on the O-Meter - another pair of socks should bring me over 100 % then - yay! :)

FOs: The Cardigans

Or rather, a cardigan and a vest (but I couldn't help it choosing this title...:)).

First up is Twinkle's Biker Vest from Big City Knits. The pattern is meant for the Twinkle Cruise Yarn, but I wanted it to be more like those small quilted vests that were in fashion earlier this year (and hopefully will be for another few months... ;)), so I adapted the pattern to the super bulky wool yarn and knit on Needles size 9.00 mm to get a dense fabric. My Ravelry project page is here.

Next up is my 8th garment for NaKniSweMoDo: Polly from Kim Hargreaves' Thrown Together. It's knitted in Araucania Nature Wool Chunky (a really nice yarn!!) in a semisolid dark grey colour (a bit overexposed in the photos). I used the well-known trick of swapping skeins every two rows to avoid pooling or visible skein differences. According to the pattern and several Ravelry project pages the yardage I had in my stash was insufficient, so I decided to make the sleeves 3-4 cm shorter to be able to use this stash yarn anyway (I've used quite a lot of yarn from stash recently - yay!). It turned out that this wasn't at all necessary as I still have a bit less than half a skein left over, but I didn't really want to redo it after seaming it all together... :)

Like most Kim Hargreaves' designs this is a really nice one too. Simple yet effective - and wearable. As you can see, I used four different buttons; I didn't have four similar ones of that size in my inherited button stash (yes, my grandmother's again), so I found it better to use four different ones of similar size and colour - a bit more fun to carry these buttons and their history around than heading off to buy four new ones.

And here's my Ravelry project page for Polly.

FOs: Accessories

Right... I have quite some FOs to show you this time - mainly because I must the laziest photographer/photo uploader known to mankind. The 8 FOs I'm going to show you (divided into 3 posts or so) have finish dates from the middle of August up until last night. That is to say - I didn't finish it all at once! :)

To avoid drowning you in FOs I've split it up into 4 posts, this one showing hats and scarves:

This vibrantly yellow shawlette is Damson by Ysolda knit in two strands of Posh Yarn Eva 2 ply (55% silk, 45% cashmere = incredibly soft and smooth), colourway Daffodil. It's in Ysolda's new collection Whimsical Little Knits 2 and already all over the place.

Speaking of said collection, another item from there is the slouchy hat Ripley:

It's available in 2 versions: a smaller, more girly one with lace edging and the slouchier unisex version which is the one I knit using two strands of Posh Yarn Lei (also incredibly soft and smooth), colourway Vermeil.

(I sense a pattern here: Ysolda accessories in Posh Yarn...)

Finally, some chunky knits to use up every inch of my super bulky stash (Cascade Magnum and Twinkle Soft Chunky): the Aspen Hat from Twinkle's Big City Knits. I tried out another of her hats first, but I didn't like it - luckily knitting a hat with this yarn is not so time-consuming... :)

The other item in the photo is a (rather short) scarf using up the very last inches after I knit the hat (and a vest you'll see in another post).

In case you're interested, links to my Ravelry project pages are here:

Damson

Ripley

Aspen Hat

Chunky Scarf

Next up: Open front garments aka cardigan and vest :)