Year of Projects 7: Week 16

• Petty Harbour Socks - complete
• Vanilla is the New Black Socks - complete
• There & Back Again Socks - complete
• Crosshaven Socks - complete

• Somewhere Socks - 60% done, into the leg of the second sock
• Gschnitztal Socks - 10% done, slow progress with dark yarn
• Tuxie Love - surgery required to make these work

• Alfrick Socks - using Sandnes Garn Sisu in grey and white 
• Twisted Flower Socks - using Hikoo CoBaSi yarn in Egyptian Blue 
• Feny Socks - using Lang Jawoll Superwash in turquoise and chocolate 
• Double Heelix Socks - using stash yarn TBD 
• Yaacov Socks - using Lang Jawoll Magic Dégradé 
• Brigit Socks - using stash yarn TBD 
• Crenate Socks - using stash yarn TBD 
• Somewhere Socks - using various shades of blue scraps 
• Merripog Socks - using stash yarn TBD 
• Mad Mix Socks - using various stash yarn scraps 
• Rrribb-it! Socks - using stash yarn TBD 
• Glass Slippers Socks - using stash yarn TBD 
• Ringwood Socks - using stash yarn TBD 
• Leyburn Socks - using stash yarn TBD 
• Hearty Man Plaid Socks - using stash yarn TBD 
• Mojo Socks - using stash yarn TBD

After a lengthy hiatus I'm back to my Somewhere Socks. This week I finished the first sock and made a good start on the second. I'm motivated to finish these quickly as they'll make the perfect gift for a friend born at the beginning of November.

The yarns are scraps from my stash. The pattern sample is shown from a rainbow of colours  - which is consistent with the Somewhere Over the Rainbow theme of the pattern as part of the Socks from Oz collection - but I was curious to see how the pattern would knit up in a range of neutrals. Thinking ahead, I ordered my scrap colours so that the cuff, heels and toes would fall as Kroy black yarn, since it's nice and sturdy. Quite handsome I think, and Gavin agrees, so that's saying something.

The pattern is super easy; it uses slipped stitches to create the pattern rather than stranded colourwork. It goes quick too, but oh, all those ends! Two for every colour change, so 28 ends to weave in per sock. *sigh*

After "finishing" the first of my Tuxie Love socks, I asked a friend to try it on just to make sure I'd guesstimated the size right. DISASTER. She couldn't stretch the leg of the sock over her heel. NOOOOOO! The sock promptly landed in time out while I swallowed my disappointed and reasoned out how I planned to fix it. Now that a few days have passed I'm calmer and am thinking that I'll cut the cuff off the sock, and a row of still-to-be-determined increases, adjust the colourwork chart to knit over the increased number of stitches and then reknit the cuff from the bottom up. It was my own fault. I knit the leg on smaller than specified needles because my yarn was a very light fingering. I was asking for trouble.

On Thursday afternoon I dropped in on a local knitting group "Warm Up Haldimand" who meet on the second Thursday of each month in Hagersville. The info I found online indicated that the group knits for local distribution, so I thought I'd better cast on something suitable like mittens. Seems to me that sock yarn might be just perfect for mitts - it's 75-80% wool so it's warm and a good insulator, it's 20-25% nylon so it's durable, and I've got lots of it! The green yarn is a handpainted yarn that I bought impulsively. It's been sitting in my stash for years for two reasons: it insisted on pooling no matter what pattern I tried, and the colourway was so much prettier in the skein than knitted. Much nicer as mittens, I think! As for the knitting group, the ladies were all very pleasant and some quite entertainingly funny, so it was nice to meet some local knitters. I'll definitely go again!

All in all it was a pretty quiet week, other than the dishwasher fail. Turns out our cabinet opening is non-standard and the dishwasher I ordered will not fit. That dishwasher has been returned and now we're trying to figure out whether we can source a dishwasher that will fit, whether we can make alterations to our kitchen to standardize the opening to fit a dishwasher without rebuilding all the cabinets, or, whether we were just not meant to have a dishwasher. Que sera, sera. After all, hand-washing dishes for the two of us is not that onerous.

We had a furnace inspection done and it was confirmed to us that the built-in electronic air cleaner was kaput. We had been alerted to that by the Home Inspector before we bought, so the news was not unexpected. The technician removed it and replaced it with a filter assembly. Otherwise the furnace was given a clean bill of health, so that's great. And the filter for the new assembly is a standard size, so we can buy replacements at local hardware stores so that's great too.

I hope everyone's week has also been mostly great! See you next weekend!