Current Works In Progress - October

Remember that whole "WIP Monday" and how I knew there was no way I was going to keep up? Yeah, I called that. I still felt like updating my two readers on the current projects I am working on.

On the top I am working on my second/third Christmas stocking for this year. I finished Charlie's and I actually finished Sammy's except for the seaming and I hated it. I tried a bunch of stranding behind the Santa faces and some Fair Isle techniques on the name and I hated it when it was finished. I decided to redo it completely and it's much better this time. This year was also the first time I tried duplicate stitch on the eyes, nose and mouth, and on Charlie's it looks so incredibly nice. I am going to do a swatch for the next one to see if I want to do duplicate stitches for the names, which will make it so much easier to make it a surprise who I am making the stockings for. And BTW, I have a goal for a total of 7 this year by Thanksgiving. Think I can do it? We'll see.

On the right you can see my Hitchiker for the "Behm-along" from the Knitmore Girls. This is my selfish knitting I do when I need to congratulate myself on a job well done on something. I am using the lovely Madeline Tosh Prairie yarn I picked up in Portland for this one. The pattern calls for sock yarn to make it squishy and nice and you knit it on fours, but my yarn is lace and I'm knitting on sixes. When I block it I'm planning to stretch the snot out of it (I know, classy) to make the stitches very elongated and the ribs very pronounced in the garter stitches. I saw a shawl blocked like this at a yarn store once and it was lovely, so I wrote myself a permission slip to do it how I wanted. I actually wasn't going to participate in the Behm-along until I read the description for the Hitchiker, how if you use 150 g of Wollmeise yarn you should come out with 42 teeth and 42 is the answer to everything and the entire universe on the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In other words, it's nerdy but not obviously nerdy, which is the absolute perfect project for me and I had to join in. I currently have 23 teeth on mine and I don't think I will reach the full 42, but I'm okay with that. 

On the bottom left you can see the Vanilla Latte socks from my purse. I have the first one finished but I definitely have second sock syndrome on this one. I don't know if it's the fiber or the colorway and literally as I am typing this I am realizing I forgot to add the "latte" part to the body and will have to rip back to the ribbing. Dangit. Oh well. I am making plans for the next sock yarn I am going to buy, probably something really nice from the Loopy Ewe. We'll have to see.

Anyway, that's it for now. Up next in the queue are a couple of amigurumi birds, more stockings, and possibly beardy hats, though those might not make it this year. Happy Thursday!