Tag: Emily’s Favorite Socks

MacKenzie Speaks: A Sleeve and a Sock

Hi. I’m MacKenzie.

To you see how hard I am working?

I have been really helping the Mother of Cats with her knitting this week. Look at how carefully I am inspecting this sock that she is working on. We have been listening to an audiobook every evening while she stitches away on the sock, with lots of breaks to give me attention, of course. I think that she would get bored and fall asleep if I didn’t keep standing on her and head butting her work. It is a hard job, but someone needs to do it.

See how much progress she has made? This is what you get when you have an attention-to-detail cat helping you out.

The Mother of Cats is calling this another Mash-Up sock that combines elements of three other socks that she has made in the past. Whatever. Like I would remember details like that?! What I do remember is that I sent her to the store to buy me tuna flavored cookies and she came back with some kind of substandard chicken flavored ones. This is just typical of the Mother of Cats. So thoughtless. I don’t know why I exhaust myself helping her when she doesn’t treat me the way she should…

Especially when I helped her knit this sleeve this week too!!

I can’t believe how exhausting all this knitting supervision has been. Luckily the sweater is now so big the Mother of Cats can’t keep me off of it any longer. Which is pretty nice since I need a nice place to nap after all of this work.

The Mother of Cats needs to share her things more often!!

Last night the Mother of Cats started ANOTHER SWEATER before she was done with this one. Something about the second sleeve syndrome… Whatever. I think that she just wanted to let me nap a little longer. I deserve it after all. Maybe the Mother of Cats does think a little about my needs after all.

I’m such a good boy.

Can I have some cookies now?

>^..^<

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

  • The sweater is a Koivua by Caitlin Hunter. My project notes are here. I made modifications to the sleeve to make it less bell shaped at the bottom and am pretty happy with how it came out. I put the details into my project notes if you want to see what I did.
  • Oh, yeah. That sock is a total mashup masterpiece. The top is the edging from the Geology socks. The ribbing is kind of an Emily’s Favorite socks deal, and the garter stitch heel and toe are inspired by the Om Shanti Bed Socks.
  • Yep. I did cast on another sweater last night. I also had to made a new set of stitch markers to use with it because a) they had to all be different from each other, and, b) they had to coordinate with the sweater.  What?! Doesn’t everyone do this? There’s no problem here, people. There is, however, another post brewing…
  • The book that MacKenzie and I are listening to is A Better Man by Louise Penny. I love these books!!

Have a great (knitting) weekend, everyone!

It’s the Little (Mash-up Knitting) Things…

My hip is in full rebellion these days and I am spending a lot of time off my feet trying heal up. For reasons beyond my understanding MacKenzie views this as an invitation to make constant demands: Pet me! Feed me!! More cookies! Let me go outside!! I must be on your lap!! You exist to serve me!!!!!

He stands next to me as I knit crying sadly, trying to move onto my lap and into the yarn and knitting. It is sad. So sad. Right up to the point when the yarn chomping starts and the claws start flashing. Sigh.

There is nothing for it but to put the knitting aside, gather the cat up onto my lap and deliver unto him all the hugs and attention that he is craving. Then some cookies!

Caught between a ill behaved hip and a demanding cat I have abandoned the sweater that I’ve been working on and switched to small projects that are easy to move away from chomping teeth and flashing claws. Projects that can be worked on in bed, outside in the garden swing, and downstairs by the television. Projects that can be easily moved to safety or stuffed into a project bag.

Ta-daa! I finished these cashmere blend yummy socks to wear while lounging around and in bed. These socks are knit a little loosely and sport garter stitch heels and toes, so they aren’t suitable for daily wear, but they sure are perfect for my cold feet while babying my ill behaved hip, and were easy to complete while evading a cat.
The socks were knit from the toe up and have cleverly shaped garter stitch heels and toes. I added the garter band to the top of the sock before putting on a K1P1 ribbing at the top.  Please ignore the little gap there in the ribbing… I took the picture before the final finishing as I was losing the light. Here are my Ravelry notes. The sock pattern is Om Shanti Bed Socks by Alice Yu and the yarn is Serenity 20 from Zen Yarn Garden in the colorway “Burning Bush.”
my Washing Stones socks.

Do you remember the light blue ribbed socks that I made a couple of weeks ago? They were just simply ribbed socks based on my rote 64 stitch vanilla sock that is basically the Dave sock by Rachel Coopey with a different rib that I liked when I knitted the No. 5 Union Street socks and then saw again in the Emily’s Favorite Socks pattern in the book “Knits About Winter.” Hey, when you are immobilized by a cranky hip and hounded by a demanding cat, you start to just invent new combinations of socks, right? In this circumstance it is just frankly impossible to have any charts or patterns involved in the knitting, so it is “have some fun” time.  Anyway, there was some yarn left over from the socks, so I kept knitting…

And these simple wristers (short arm warmers)  just fell off my needles.

To make the wristers I just kept expanding on my theme of stealing design ideas from other projects and smashing them together to make something that works for me.  I had made some Geology Socks recently, and the top edging was a nice use of the feather and fan pattern, so I re-used it for the top of these warmers. Then I knitted the body of the wrister using the K3P1 ribbing and finished off with an I-cord BO.

I kind of like to wear these with the I-cord edging down by my hand.
But I think that they look pretty good with the lace at the wrist also.

These wristers will work well this winter under sweaters and over long sleeved shirts in my usual struggle to keep my fingers warm, but I’m wearing them alone right now whenever I get exposed to air conditioning. Pleased with my sock pattern inventiveness I cast on another sock last night…

There is that lacy edging again!

This is another mash-up of ideas and patterns that grew from my earlier projects. This yarn, Fancy Monkey sock, is another cashmere blend for my cold feet. The edging is the same one used for the wristers, but I’m making K3P1  ribbed socks again once I’m past the edging. I’m debating putting on garter stitch heels and toes like the Om Shanti socks. It will be fun! It’s a knitting adventure, I tell MacKenzie.

Who has been watching me steadily from the foot of the bed, waiting for an opening to move onto my lap, computer or no computer. He resents the computer even more then the knitting. Let’s not even start talk about books and reading…

Isn’t it cute that MacKenzie still likes his mouse? The tail has been chomped off at this point, but he still likes to bat it around.

Hopefully my hip will start behaving better in a few days, MacKenzie will become less needy, and I will be able to get back to the Kouvia sweater. I’m getting adventurous with that project, too. I can’t wait to blog about the sweater, and I’m working myself up to a couple of hip/scleroderma posts as I’ve been racking up adventures in that part of my life also.

Have a great weekend, everyone!