Knitting FO: Bed Socks

In perusing the last few posts, I realized that I never showed you guys the amazing socks I made for myself (and I have to break up the sewing content somehow!). When I heard Clara Parkes talk about socks at Verb (many moons ago) I had recently listened to Brenda Dayne talk about pajama socks. We were able to touch all the samples from the Knitter's Book of Socks at Clara's talk, and I knew that the Strago pattern by Jared Flood would make excellent pajama socks.

My husband and I are both of the same mind when it comes to sleeping: it should be warm enough that you can actually fall asleep, but not so hot that you don't need a blanket or two. We'd both rather be a little too cold than a little too warm. Because I tend to run a little cooler than he does, that usually means that what's comfortable for me is a bit too warm for him.  Also, my feet just get cold if they're not covered.  The Strago socks are perfect bed socks because they're loose-fitting enough that you can slip them off by gently sliding your feet around while half-asleep.



One of the main things I was worried about was choosing two colors that were too similar in value for the pattern to show up well, so I tried to get shades on opposite ends of the color wheel.  The two colors of Shelter I chose (Hayloft and Faded Quilt) match my owl pajama pants perfectly.

The only change I made to the pattern was to knit the entire sock on 4 mm (US 6) needles, because I have pretty narrow feet and was worried about the socks staying on my feet as I pad around the apartment in them.  The woolen-spun Shelter yarn happily accepted my tighter gauge, and the fabric feels like soft cushy felt underneath my feet.  We've been getting a few sunny days here and there, but we'll get lots of June gloom as well, so these will probably continue to get lots of use even during the summer months.  

Weekend fun times!

I had some pretty good knitting time over the last week. On Friday I finished the knitting for a pair of insanely cute slippers:



I know they don't look like slippers right now, but once they're sewn up and felted they'll hopefully look a little bit like this. The knitting goes super-fast on huge needles, and it's perfect if you have lots of worsted-weight yarn leftovers. These are so cute, I'm making more than one pair. But I can't justify having three pairs of felted slippers... helloooo, more gift knitting!



My knitting group and I all cast on for these together last week, and this week we're going to sew them up. But last weekend I finished Damson earlier than I thought I would. I was able to wear my cute new shawl on Sunday morning, but I'd expected that the project would last me until at least the day before our knit night. So in the meantime, I pulled out an old, sleepy, cobwebby (not really) project:





I think I've given up on the spreadsheet, the one I made about 1/3 of the way through the project as a way to keep track of how to maximize the number of miters I could eke out of each skein of yarn. It's getting down to the wire... at one point I optimistically thought I would make a 6x6 blanket (36 squares with 4 miters to each square), but now I'm thinking I may only get 5x6. If so, then I've done 75% of the knitting.

Oh, and we carved pumpkins on Saturday:



We carved two pumpkins, and saved one for eating. I've never cooked a pumpkin before (except for baking the seeds), so this will be an adventure!