Becky

As I mentioned yesterday, there’s been a lot of sock knitting going on around these parts.  I finished the Silky Socks and will post those soon.  Of course I couldn’t be without a mindless project, so I cast on my Tropical Punch socks.  I won this yarn from Courtney - she dyed it herself and gave it my naming suggestion.  While the colors are super bright, I think they’re really fun.  The base is Louet Gems - very nice.  I’m just doing my basic sock pattern, which I’m thinking about writing up if there’s any interest out there.     

I’ve been able to work on Daniel’s Conwy socks a little bit and am almost done the first one, but these are a little tricky to do while studying because there are lots of twisted mock cables every other row, so I’m not sure if I’ll be able to pull these off for Christmas.

I was planning to make socks for Daniel’s dad for his birthday in February, but last week he made such a sweet comment (that was a very obvious hint).  He said, "You know, I’ve received a lot of great gifts over my lifetime, but one of my all time favorites was those socks you made for me last year."  He was referring to these.  Luckily, I’ve had some Cider Moon sportweight/DK yarn (Glacier) in my stash that I bought to eventually make socks for him, so I pulled it out and quickly whipped up some Garter Rib socks from Sensational Knitted Socks.  This is sock 1 on Daniel’s foot (he wears a 7.5 and his dad a 10.5, so that’s why the toe looks so weird).  The colorway came out to look very much like camo, and because I was worried about yardage, I used Gems in a dark brown for the toe, heel, and cuff.  It looks really good, and was definitely a good choice as otherwise I would have had to make the leg really short.  I am using 4’s for the Glacier, but dropped down to 3’s for the Gems which will hopefully help them with wear. 

I’m almost to the cuff on the 2nd sock, so these will be some of the quickest socks I’ve ever made.  I hope he likes the sportweight, because there will be many more socks in his future if I don’t have to do them all out of fingering weight.  It’s amazing what a different it makes, and the size 10.5’s were far less painful this time. 

It’s funny because right before this request came about I was thinking about how much I like the Cider Moon yarn (I made my mom socks out of Glacier that I still need to blog about - oops).  I’ve been sad, though, because the company was closed.  After doing some research on Ravelry, I discovered that it closed because the two ladies had a huge disagreement.  Happily, I also discovered that each has recently started their own store.  I am guessing that they’re both still using the same yarn base, so I definitely plan to order from them in the future.

One is called Tuscan Grove.  It looks like Bellagio is the same as Glacier.

The other is an etsy store: Gaslight Dyeworks

The second has pretty limited supply, but Tuscan Grove has lots of colors and even a chart saying what new colorways match the old Cider Moon colorways!  When I need more DK sock yarn, I’ll definitely be getting some from them.