Sock Design

I finished the gray sweater yesterday and it is in the laundry room drying. I have some mid-finishing photos that I took on the fly. I'm kind of in awe of the sweater...it's just so big. It was supposed to be big, don't get me wrong, I am just in awe that I managed to create it and in two-and-a-half weeks as well! Not having a job has been a very good thing for my knitting needles. Unfortunately, it's not been a good thing for just about every other aspect of my life.

Detail of the cabling.

The sweater! How'd it get so big?

I started another sweater last night and then restarted it this morning after I realized I had twisted it and was knitting a mobius strip. I had only gotten an inch or so done, so it was too big of a deal to frog it.

I've managed at least six sweaters since November and decided this afternoon that it was time for a change of pace. While browsing knitpicks, I found this yarn and fell in love. Upon seeing it, I started imaging deep blue socks with shooting stars done in the lollipop color.

I've knitted approximately 2.75 socks in my life. The three quarters of a sock was a misshapen mess that I created in high school. It's probably still on the needles somewhere. The other almost two socks are socks that I knitted last fall or early winter. I just need to bind off the toes of the second sock. Actually, I probably need to reknit a round of the toes to fix where the needles have fallen off while being jostled about from place to place and stitches have been dropped before I close up the toes.

I don't think the fact that I'm a ridiculously inexperienced sock knitter should stop me from conceiving my own sock designs though. Knitty.com has an amazing sock tutorial and I used it to knit a miniature sock with some scrap yarn. That was easy enough, so now I'm knitting some slippers with more leftover yarn. The slippers are a little trickier because I don't want them to have a top until I get down to the toes. We'll see how that goes. For now I've knitted both heels and gussets; now I'm working on the foots. I'm doing them at the same time using a long circular so that they'll be the same length. I'll figure out the toes when I get there.

Itty-bitty sock.

Slippers-to-be.

As a side note, I'm always amazed at the difference between using a speed light and a pop-up flash. I used the pop-up yesterday for the photos of the gray sweater. I pulled out the speed light this evening for the socks. The difference is really substantial. Moral of the story: if you spend all that money on a dSLR, you might as well add in another hundred bucks or so to get a proper flash. Also, learn how to use said flash!