socks and flowers

nospam@example.com (Michelle) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 21:17:13 -0700

The Summer of Socks 2008 KAL started on Saturday, so I decided to set aside the Atomic Toes socks (which frankly haven't been getting much attention anyway) in favor of something that will actually count for the KAL. So Saturday morning I cast on for Ziggy. I've also been trying to get the "Secret Project" finished (getting close!), so I haven't spent a whole lot of time on Ziggy yet. Here's my progress so far:

I absolutely love how this sock is turning out so far, despite my inexperience with Fair Isle. If you look closely there are definitely flaws, but overall it's looking pretty good. If I do say so myself.

Also, I LOVE how the colors are striping so far.

The other thing that's been grabbing my attention here and there is actually a crochet project. I was talking to Shannon at Twisted last week and somehow the topic of crochet came up. I haven't been doing much crochet in recent years, mostly because--in many cases--I prefer the results achieved with knitting. However, crochet is a lot of fun. It goes really fast, and you can make unusual things pretty easily.

Lately, I'd been sporadically looking for a somewhat specific project: a crocheted scarf, with a lacy, maybe flowery, look. Something that could be used in warmer weather than the rest of my scarves. I'd poked around Ravelry and had found some things that were kind of the right idea, but not quite IT somehow. I told Shannon about the idea, and she pointed me to the two issues of Interweave Crochet that were on the magazine rack.

There are a lot of cute things in those two issues! I was tempted to buy both, but settled on just getting the Spring issue. Because the Spring issue had THE PATTERN in it.

I think Shannon and another woman who was knitting at the front of the shop might have thought I was a little crazy, because I took one look at the Floral Lace Belt (Ravelry link) and said, "There's my scarf!"

So that night I went home and did a test of one of the hexagon motifs and got this:

Pretty, no? This is leftover Yarntini from my Twisted Sky Socks--I just wanted to see what it would look like in fingering weight and a larger hook (I used an H for this one). Only problem is that the hexagon was way too big--the scarf would be super wide at this size.

Then I tried lace weight yarn and a G hook:

I liked this one, too, and I think it would block out nicely (I just pinned it for the picture), but it was really fiddly in a way that I knew would make me not want to work on the project.

Next try:

Aha! This one, I love. I love the colors, I like the size (the scarf might still be a bit wide, but not so bad). This is Claudia Haindpainted sock yarn in the "Oops" colorway, with a G hook. It's also fingering weight, but it's lighter than the Yarntini. Between the lighter weight yarn and the smaller hook (a G is a full millimeter smaller than an H), the motif came out to a pleasing size.

I have four hexagons so far (did three very rapidly earlier this evening--crochet is really fun sometimes!), and I'm thinking I'll need 12 or 15. I'll figure it out when I get there. :)

elvis needs...boats? - ziggy socks

socks and flowers