Gift Knitting (Part 1)

Happy New Year.

In the last few months of 2011, I was knitting pretty constantly on gifts for Christmas and the Resident Radiologist's birthday. Now that the wrappings have been opened and surprises revealed, I can post some of the projects here.

First up in chronological terms was the RR's birthday. He received the statutory pair of socks and in addition, a new hat to keep his ears warm in the Glasgow autumns and springs (it's not really thick enough for winter proper - not that we're having one of those at the moment).

The yarn for both projects was Colinette Jitterbug in Velvet Leaf. I bought this yarn about six years ago, back when Colinette was pretty much the only show in town when it came to beautiful yarn from a UK dyer. Now of course, there is such a huge availability of indy-dyed yarn, we hardly know where to start.
At the time I bought it, Jitterbug was sold as superwash but I'm proceeding with care in that respect as I vaguely recall hearing felting horror stories from others. The yarn is lovely and springy and the varigation in the colour is really subtle.

The socks are my usual basic top-down, heel-flap pattern, knitted on 2.25mm DPNs.

 The hat pattern was a 2x2 rib pattern by TinksDarkerSide that works the decreases at the top to form a lovely simple swirl.

Both the socks and the hat appear to have entered into regular use which is all a knitter can ask for really!

Simple socks and not-so-simple socks...

It would seem that the reason I'm not blogging as regularly as I would like to is not that I'm not knitting, but that I'm not taking photos as regularly any more (and apparently I can't blog without photos).
At the weekend I managed to get the camera out and get up to date with my projects, so here we have the first project I knitted after picking up the needles again, and something considerably more tricky.

Socks for the Resident Radiologist:


My standard top-down pattern with heel-flap heel. The yarn is Fortissima Colori Socka Color in an Autumnal colourway that the RR chose many moons ago. Knitted on 2.25mm DPNs.

Socks for the Knitter:
These are Skew by Lana Holden, published in Knitty. The yarn is some lovely Trekking XXL. They were knitted on 2.5mm DPNs.

Thanks to some spectacular denial on my part while I was knitting not just the first, but also the second sock in this pair, they were considerably too long for my feet... but too narrow for the RR's heel...
What to do? I couldn't bring myself to rip them and alter the length as they're knitted toe-up so I would have to pretty much start again.

After much musing, I decided to cut a section out of the foot part of each sock and graft the two parts back together. Using a 2mm needle, I picked up the row of stitches either side of the section I wanted to lose...

snipped a stitch and unravelled the yarn to separate the two parts...

then ripped to get rid of the extra rows.

After that, it was just a matter of grafting... and grafting... and grafting...

They now fit beautifully.I ended up taking almost two inches out of each sock (that's how bad the denial was). Despite spending a huge amount of time knitting these socks (and then performing knitty surgery on them), I still can't get over how strange and beautiful the heels are.

I don't think I'll knit these again. I'm glad I've done them and the (final) fit is really good, but they're not relaxing knitting, they're in no way intuitive (even for my maths-oriented brain) and I still can't get my head around how the heels actually work!

Cosy socks

Here's a project that's been finished for over a month that I never got round to photographing until now. The Resident Radiologist loves hand-knitted socks and always seems to look forward to a new pair. I finished the kitchener stitch on these once evening and they were on his feet the next morning!

Details: My usual pattern, 68 stitches on 2.5mm needles with a deep slipped-stitch heel flap. These fit the RR so are about a UK size 12. The yarn is Opal sock yarn and the colourway is the Hundertwasser 'Silver Spiral' design that I got in a yarn swap about 18 months ago. I have a second ball of this yarn - not sure what to do with it, maybe a baby jumper?

His and Hers...

... new socks for winter. (And most definitely not matching! The Resident Radiologist and I are not really matching sorts of people.)


In this case, the only real overlap (besides both items being hand-knitted socks) is the pattern, my standard fall-back, top-down, heel-flap sock pattern.


Hers: Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in 'Girly Stripe'. 68 stitches around on 2.25mm needles to fit a UK6.5 foot. A fantastic injection of colour to combat a very dark Glasgow November.



His: Schoeller + Stahl Fortissima Colori Socka Color. 68 stitches around on 2.25mm needles to fit a UK11 foot. A lovely soft heathered colourway chosen by the resident radiologist himself.

Moody Blues...

... no, not my current state of mind (life is going pretty well at the moment) but you might think so from the predominant shade of my recent knitting.


I've been on another sock-yarn-squares romp and have cranked out about 20 in the last couple of weeks. These are the ones that have been blocked. There's quite a bit of Lorna's Laces in there, plus some Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino, some Rowanspun 4 ply left over from my stealth project and a bit of Artesano Alpaca Inca Cloud.


I've also got some socks on the needles - just my usual pattern with my green and red hand-dye for the Resident Radiologist. I just don't seem to have the will to knit anything bigger at the moment.

Here's who I saw for the first time on the canal this morning.

Last year they had two cygnets and one survived - hope they have a better time this year.