Sock Pair #38

I mostly knit socks as portable projects for doing on trains or planes and while waiting for various things. These were started for a trip to New Zealand. I only made about half of one sock on that trip and after that, a certain pandemic has meant that I’ve had little need of a portable project. Eventually I decided that they ought get finished so I’ve been working on them a little at a time in between other things. I’ve pushed to finish the last half a sock this week before I embark on a big quilt-a-thon.

Pattern is my now usual Wendy Johnson toe up slip stitch heel, but missing most of the slip stitches and with a simple but effective interlace pattern called “Lizard Lattice” from the book “Japanese Stitches Unraveled” by Wendy Bernard.

Yarn is Fenwick Street Flashmerino in Silver Bear by Miss Click Clack Hand-Dyed yarns. It’s 85/15 super wash extrafine merino/nylon. It’s a slightly warmer grey than the picture shows, I was impatient and didn’t wait for daylight to post this. Hmm, looking at the photo again, I now realise that one cast off is way neater than the other. Oh well, that probably won’t be noticeable in wear.

New dress from old

Somewhere around 6-7 years ago, I bought some beautiful and pricey satin striped linen with intentions of making a skirt. 5 years ago something possessed me to make a dress out of it instead. It was quite lovely when I made it. A simple T shaped bodice with a fairly slim six panel A-line skirt which used very close to all the cloth.

However, it didn’t get worn much. The fabric is really a bit heavy for a sleeved dress, the neckline is a bit low for decency when worn alone and I felt a bit like a marshmallow in it. I don’t think it made it out of the wardrobe last summer, so it was ripe for a remodel.

I chopped out the sleeves

Then cut an extra pocket and some bias strips for binding from the excised cloth. The original had only a tiny pocket due to fabric shortage, which I had sewed on the left side by mistake. Frustrating! So now I have a larger pocket on my preferred side as well. Much better.

I sewed that lot on and put the whole thing in a black dye bath. It went purple, which wasn’t what I wanted so I tried again with more black dye and some yellow for colour correction. Now I have a long black singlet type pinafore frock, which I haven’t ironed, as is obvious.

Here is a detail of the neckline which I rather like, with a bit of the original fabric to show the colour change.

A pic of it on, and don’t I wish I could look like I did 5 years ago? but the years roll on whether we want or not.

I reckon I’ll enjoy it in this form.

Extendo Remodel Success

About two years ago I knitted a capelet. “Laced with Leaves” by Liz Langford Knits.

Really pretty but it so didn’t fit me like the image on the pattern. That looked like it came down to waist level but on me it very much did not. I am probably rather larger than the dummy in the pattern pic.

I only wore it twice and found it annoying. Very warm shoulders, cold everything else. I dubbed it the ‘Stupid Shoulder Frill” and started thinking about how I could make it more wearable, which basically meant longer. I even thought of just pulling it back and reusing the yarn. I decided to start by pulling back just the bottom border, but when I tried, the halo fluff got all jammed up and it wouldn’t frog. Instead I ran one of my tiny circular needles around at a nice identifiable row, then pulled the next row out half a stitch at a time to get the edge section off.

I had some of the original yarn left, with which I knitted another round of the leaf pattern with needles a size up from the pattern. That didn’t make it long enough, so I overdyed some merino yarn that was near the right colours but not quite.

Merino before

Merino overdyed with added possum/merino yarn

The resulting colours melded much better with the original variegated yarn. I also added in some hand dyed possum/merino yarn leftover from https://montjoyeblog.wordpress.com/2018/07/25/colour-coordination-win/ . Bonus, that hat should now look fine worn with this garment, whatever you want to call it.

With this I added a scalloped border and an extra band at the neck of the turquoise possum yarn to help tie in the stronger colours. Overall it is now about double the original length.

pinned out and in the sun to dry

I liked the extra weight of the beads in the edge of my last shawl, so I beaded this one too. Oh so many beads.

I am so much happier with it now. I suppose though it will go into the cupboard until I have somewhere to wear it. Ruddy virus.

This post was written with much frustration as I tried to figure out the new WordPress editor.