Temperature Socks

You’ve probably heard of temperature blankets before. The idea is that you have several colors that each represent a range of temperatures. Each day you knit or crochet a row with the color for the high or low or average temperature of the day.

I decided to take that concept and make socks.

First things first: the yarn. Several years ago I bought several skeins of sock yarn at the thrift store for less than $1.50 each. A very good bargain, even though the color was not exactly my taste. I figured since it was mainly light colored, I could over dye it to make it prettier. I dyed 2 skeins pink and made some socks (I have plenty left for 1 or 2 more pairs) and I dyed some with a tiny amount of black, hoping to get a mottled gray. It turned out more of a very very dark blue. I still haven’t made anything with that yet. For the temperature socks, I decided on only 6 colors.

• Purple: up to 29 degrees
• Blue: 30-43
• Green: 44-57
• Yellow: 58-71
• Orange: 72-85
• Red: 86 and up

I wound the yarn around my kniddy knoddy 35 times and ended up with several mini skeins. I dyed several yellow with acid dye. Then I took 2 of the yellow and 2 of the undyed and dyed it red with acid dye, hoping to get orange out of the yellow and red out of the undyed. It didn’t work; they all ended up the same shade of red. Back to the drawing board. Next I dyed some green using food coloring. Next came purple, dyed with grape kool-aid, then orange dyed with orange tangerine kool-aid (note to self: that flavor smells bad. I like oranges and orange juice but not fake orange flavored things). Last of all was blue, dyed with acid dye.

Next up was making the socks. I used David’s toe up sock cookbook, which is my favorite sock pattern. I did the toe in undyed yarn because I didn’t want the first several days of the year to get their feelings hurt by being knit in shorter rows. Once I had finished increasing, I started the color changes. One sock is the high temperature for the day, and the other sock is the low temperature for the day.

For my mom’s foot length, I started increasing for the gusset once I got to February 26. The guesset was finished by March 29, then I turned the heel and knit the heel flap in undyed yarn. The leg is 4×4 ribbing, starting with March 30.

I decided for these socks to document 6 months of temperature, so the leg ended with the end of June. I knit 2 more rows undyed yarn, then bound off.

Jan-june high and low

Why, you ask? Because I wanted to make a semi matching pair, documenting July through December. And there are 3 more days in the last half of the year than the first half.

Since I wanted the socks to kinda sorta match, I decided to knit the July-December socks from the top down.

I cast on with the color for July 1, knit ribbing through October 3, then 1 row stockinette stitch (October 4), then the heel. After knitting the heel flap and turning the heel, I picked up stitches (October 5) then decreased every other row from October 6 through November 5, which put me back at the correct number of stitches. Chug along until December 31, then I knit the toe in undyed.

July-Dec high and low

They don’t match exactly. Probably, for my region, the best way to get a kinda matching pair would be to make one pair February-July, and the other August-January. But, fraternal twins socks are still fun.

I would recommend, if you make these, to dye extra for the middle temperatures. You’ll use them for the high and low for both halves of the year.

Left to right: jan-june high, july-Dec high, jan-june low, july-dec low

I did not have any yellow left. In fact I had to knit the last row and a half with a scrap that I wove in earlier.

I only had 2 grams of green left. Maybe less. My scale is not that accurate for small weights.

Next most used colors were orange (10 grams left) and blue (14 grams left).

I had plenty of purple (30 grams) and red (33 grams) left.

Left to right: jan-june high, jan-june low, july-dec low, july-Dec high

Hedgehog Flip Tops

On December 9, I decided to make a pair of mittens for Mama for Christmas. Deadline? Not a problem for me!

I used this brown Shetland handspun and the white for the hedgehog face was Correidale crossbred handspun left over from Dad’s hat.

I used a pattern from the book Knitted Animal Scarves Mittens and Socks as inspiration, but I didn’t follow the pattern because it was knit flat and seamed which is just plain silly.

Since I used it as inspiration only, I decided to check my gague and follow the correct instructions for the size I wanted in The Knitters Handy Book of Patterns.

Except I don’t actually own that book. I saw it at a second hand store once and I really regret not getting it, but at the time I thought I was smart enough I didn’t need it.

No worries. I decided to check it out from the library as an e book.

Except my library doesn’t have that book as an e book.

No worries. I was able to preview the e book, and luckily for me mittens was the first project in the book. OK, easy peasy, time to get started.

The cuff took several false starts because it was huge and it took me a while to get it the right size.

But I finally got the cuff right and proceeded to the hand. I finished all the thumb increases before I finally had to admit that it was too big due to I didn’t check my gauge right, and I had to restart. At least I got practice making bobbles. And I only had to rip out the lower palm, not the cuff.

I restarted and then it was smooth sailing. I watched some movies while knitting to make it go faster and I also had a work meeting in another city and someone else was driving, so I got some knitting in then too.

The design is pretty straightforward. 2×2 ribbing for the cuff. The palm is stockinette stitch and the back of the hand is elongated seed stitch, with bobbles every 4th row. I stopped the pattern stitch a few rows after separating for the thumb. I did the fingers in 1×1 ribbing and used a tubular bind off.

For the flip top, I followed the instructions in the snapdragon flip top pattern. I kept up the bobble pattern until I switched to white for the face.

Once I had decreased to 6 stitches, I knit 2 together in brown then knit an I cord in brown until it was long enough to wrap around the button, then grafted it to the top of the mitten.

Even accounting for my errors at the beginning, it only took me 11 days. I don’t think I’ll make any future projects that quickly but it was nice getting this done as quickly as I did.

Pretty Red Things: 2024 Yarn Club #3

March’s yarn club was some pretty red cotton yarn that I used to make some dishcloths. Or more likely, fruit bowl liners. I don’t actually use my knitted dishcloths to wash dishes.

The first two I used this pattern. The second two I used the square shawl shape from here for the center then the lace edging from the hap blanket pattern once I had increased to enough stitches.

It is such a lovely color. I will need to change out my fruit bowl liners more often so as to see more of my “dishcloths” in action.

Yarn club 4

I opened April’s yarn club early, because I will be kinda busy in April, so on March 24 I opened a bag that contained a lovely skein of pure white alpaca sock yarn.

On March 26, I started dyeing. My inspiration was the sadly discontinued knitpicks imagination in the colorway wicked witch.

I started with green. I used jacquard acid dyes for all the dyeing. For green I used sky blue and yellow sun. It wasn’t quite as dark as I wanted.

Next up, on March 28, was the purple. I used fire red and sapphire blue. At first it looked too light. In combination with the green it looked like Mardi Gras colors. But it got a little darker.

Next up, on March 29, I dyed one white section in between with sapphire blue. This is starting to look really good! My favorite part is where the blue and green intersect and my second favorite part is where the purple and blue intersect.

On March 30, I dyed the other white section sky blue. There was still some leftover dye in the water once it got to a color I liked, so I added some yellow and redyed the green to make it darker.

I love it! The colors are gorgeous. I plan to make a granny square hat and a pair of flip top mittens.

Headband the Second: 2024 Yarn Club #2

When I was 16 I made a headband. Despite the fact that I learned to knit in 5th grade, I had only really been actively knitting for less than a year before I made the headband. I didn’t know how to purl properly at the time, and it would be about a year before I figured out how to do it right. I finished the headband sometime in February. It may have been a snow day, or possibly President’s Day around the time I finished it.

The old headband

The pattern was Hugs and Kisses with Love from the book 101 Desiner One Skein Wonders. The yarn was some lion brand cashmere blend yarn. It’s a really nice headband and I love wearing it.

The February yarn club this year was some red yarn (Filatura diCosa Zara Kid). I wanted to make a hat, but after a while I weighed the yarn and realized I wouldn’t have enough. So I decided to make a headband. And what better headband than the one I love so much?

Lately I have been wanting to make projects that challenge me. So instead of knitting the headband flat and sewing it together, I decided to knit it in the round.

I used Judy’s magic cast on, which was tricky. I recommend using a whole bunch of dpns the first few rows until you can get the stitches onto just 3 easily.

I had to translate the instructions to knitting in the round, which basically meant, on the rows where I was making the hearts, to knit where it said purl and purl where it said knit.

New on the left, old on the right

The xoxo cable was a 16 row repeat and the heart stitch was a 12 row repeat, so I made a little cheat sheet to help me keep track of where I was on each stitch pattern.

The headband is just a teensy bit too loose. Or maybe the yarn is just slick because it slides off my head some. It is almost getting too warm to wear a headband so I will have the summer (all 5 months of it) to think about if I want to maybe sew it up a bit tighter.

Bow Tie Shawl: 2024 Yarn Club #1

The first yarn club project was a success! The yarn was 2 balls of Kollage 1/2 n 1/2 which is 50% wool and 50 percent milk fiber. I got it on sale at some yarn store in Savannah in 2015.

I really loved the dragonfly shawl pattern from the book Crochet so Fine, but I didn’t like the way the crochet shell pattern on the edges looked.

So I made 2 half shawls, and a row of dragon flies. That is steps 1 and 2.

Step 3 is to gather every stitch marker you own and pin the dragonflies to the shawl halves.

Then crochet together, block, and weave in the ends.

It looks more like bow ties than dragonflies but I still like it.

Also, photographing the shawl while I was wearing it proved to be more difficult than photographing bigfoot, as you can see in this collage of quite bad photos.

The Book in the yarn club bag was pretty good. I read it in one day, then when I got ready to put it on my bookshelf I realized…

The one that I already had is in better shape. I’ll keep it and donate or try sell the other.

Yarn club 3

This month’s yarn club is some red cotton yarn. Classic Elite Seedling. I actually had this yarn in the yarn club options in 2018 but I never made anything of it. I will make a dishcloth. The book is another Dear America book, but this time I don’t think I already own it.

Yarn Club 2

February’s yarn club is some red yarn I got on clearance at the needle tree a while back. My first thought was a hat. Then I wanted Flip top mitts for myself. But I think this yarn isn’t sturdy enough for mittens so a hat it is. I’ll only worknon it during my phone free hours. I can finish up on other projects for TV knitting.

I finished January’s yarn club but I am waiting on getting good pictures before I post about it.

Since I finished the first yarn club early, I moved the second one up 2 weeks. I could have moved it up 3 weeks, but I decided to take a week to wrap up some other projects. But it was tough waiting.

The book in this yarn club bag is a sequel to the little house books.

I’ll save the other yarn in the picture for a future yarn club.

Brown Alpaca

Nearly 1 year ago, I got my Electric Eel Wheel. I love it. I recently finished some brown Alpaca fiber.

It is over 8 ounces, and only cost $22. I got it at SAFF in 2022.

At first glance you would think it is just solid brown. Maybe undyed fiber from a brown Alpaca. But up close you can see there are various shades or brown and deep blue, even a little green and red thrown in.

It was fun to spin. A lot more fun than the yak silk, which was the last thing I spun.

It is 3 ply, which is maybe my favorite way to ply fiber.

I did a lot of this yarn while visiting my parents for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Seriously, spinning is a better hobby for when you are out of town than knitting. No stitch markers or scrap thread or tapestry needles to bring. No pattern to have to keep track of, no measuring to make sure it is long enough before you start the next step. Just pure spinning.

And sometimes plying. I used a cardboard box with holes in it and dowel rods as a makeshift lazy Kate while I was there and it worked OK.

But I think my wooden tray with holes in it from goodwill works better.

Except sometimes the yarn is spun too tightly on the bobbin that it doesn’t want to come off easily, it just keeps breaking.

When that happened I got annoyed and wound it off on my yarn ball winder.

Then I just slipped it back on the bobbin and it wound off much better, significantly less breakages.

The total is 8.55 ounces and 690 yards. I plan to make this vest out of it, at some point in the year in between my yarn club projects.

2023 Fiber Stash Challenge

I have really enjoyed my electric spinning wheel. I did quite a bit of spinning in 2023 and finished a lot of projects.

I also acquired a lot of fiber, so now is time for rhe reckoning of how much in versus how much out.

Fiber in
+4 ounces apple pie
+4 Rambouillet red and neutral
+3.5 White polwarth
+4 Pink shaniko
+8 Colorful Alpaca
+4 Alpaca with red
+4 Gray Jacob
+3.9 Agua azul
+4 Tango
+4.35 Fiesta
+1.25 Cupcakes
+4.2 Fireworks

Total fiber in: 49.2 ounces or just over 3 pounds.

Fiber out (spun to yarn)
-3.8 Corredale cross
-2.2 oz Blue gulf coast/Alpaca
-4 oz Romney
– 2 oz Blue colonial fair
-4 oz Apple pie
-1.75 oz Pencil roving
-4 oz Shetland
-2.1 oz Yak silk

Total fiber out 23.85 ounces. Some of which I had already spun or partly spun in prior years, but I finished in 2023 so it counts.

Net fiber for the year: +25.35 ounces. Means I’ll have to spin more in 2024!

Also let’s count up how much fiber was REALLY fiber out, that is handspun that was knit up into a project.

-2.3 oz (handspun) Gansey hat
– 4 oz (handspun) Entralac hat
-2.2 oz (handspun) mittens

Total handspun yarn in (same as fiber out): 23.85 ounces.

Total handspun yarn out: -8.5 ounces.

Net handspun yarn: + 15.35 ounces.