Pumpkin Sunrise

I was gifted this lovely yarn by a knitting friend last Christmas.  It has sat patiently in my knitting basket waiting for me to create a perfect knitting project.  I love all the colors in the yarn and I knew it was going to be difficult to think of a pattern that lets the yarn do all the work. I decided on a simple garter stitch and rib design and just went with it.  And now I have a lovely long infinity scarf (or cowl) that can be doubled around the neck! The pattern can be found here .

I finished my socks over the weekend and felt so very liberated!! My son was nice enough to donate his feet for the photo shoot.  It did not take very long and it is the middle of summer.  I did not want any unnecessary suffering to occur, you know, being to hot with wool socks!  There is never any suffering with wearing hand knits!! Best of all, I wrote up the pattern as a pdf download that you can find here . Or you can click on the patterns page above and find it there.  Or you can download it on Ravelry .  It is FREE.  Have fun knitting away-maybe a holiday gift for someone special??

Last week I discussed my sock construction and some of you wanted to know the rest of the pattern.  So here is my feeble attempt to explain the heel flap and turning the heel.  This sock is for my husband and I knit about 8-8 1/2 inches from the cast on edge.  Remember that I am on five needles, four needles hold the sock stitches and the fifth needle is my knitting needle. When I begin my heel flap I just knit across the first two needles!  Yep-that is 34 stitches and that is half of the stitches I casted on (68 total).  I knit and purl back and forth NOT in the round until the flap measures about 2 1/2 inches which for me is 26 rows. End your flap so that the right side is showing.  Here comes the challenging part.  Some math is involved.  To construct the heel turning you have to divide your flap into thirds....I know!  My total number is 34 stitches so my division will be 11 stitches-12 stitches-11 stitches.  My middle third ...

I think everybody has a preference of how they knit up socks.  I knit my first sock in the early 1990's before there was internet and before knitting socks was a trend.  I picked up a pattern at a LYS (so lucky there was one in!) and just started knitting.  Yep.  I did not do gauge.  So the socks came out HUGE because it was DK weight yarn.  Also the socks had about 50% cotton content so they were soaking wet whenever you wore them, they did not wick away water.  I have them somewhere in my cedar chest and I do love them because they were my very first pair. Now that I am a seasoned knitter, I have certain criteria for my sock knitting.  I always knit on double pointed metal needles.  I think I knit the fastest on these and I do not get ladders.  I am guessing that I have been knitting for so long that I have perfected my tension.  I have done magic loop and just did not care for it.  I'm old fashioned??? I ALWAYS buy...

I finished this little cowl a couple of days ago.  After soaking I have been very impatient for its photo session.  The cowl took forever to air dry.  Well forever for me. I loved knitting with Blue Sky Alpaca , it was soft and squishy!  The cowl knitted up quickly since it was on size eight needles, instant gratification-what could be better? As a treat, I have made this pattern available for free to all of you lovely readers.