Socks – Page 2

Foot steps, and paw steps.

Published on January 29, 2020April 30, 2025 by Jen15 Comments

jenjoycedesign© striped socks 1 Wow, January is nearly over. So much is going on, with Spring really just around the corner! I have SO much I want to do, I’m feeling a little naturally overwhelmed, so I’m forcing myself to rein in too much excitement, and keep it to a dull roar.

jenjoycedesign© striped socks 2

Finished a pair of socks, in unexpectedly fun self-striping sock yarn I found at Michael’s Crafts, not believing it could be so beautiful of a colorway. I’m really attracted to the ochre stripe, that deep mustard, next to the grey. I think I’m ready for something mustard yellow & grey colorwork, which is a stellar color combo and yet perhaps already a bit tired in the fashionable trends, but I was never one to care about trends.

Pattern: Another pair in Walking With Emma, modified with rib chart A and stockinette leg.

Yarn: Kroy Sock Yarn in color 55102

♥ ♥ ♥

And speaking of Walking with Emma, she’s three months away from 15, indeed a very old girl. She naps a lot of the day in her car cave, which is her very own hermitage & safe place of contemplation, complete with electric heating pad, and she tolerates being out of it only for short intervals. With the help of a good harness, together we have four good paws and so she comes in for the morning , and again mid-afternoon, sometimes evening for a snack if she’s barking for something. Here she is just now finished with her home-cooked dinner. Each day she’s still here is a good day, um, even if she is not squarely on her bed!

jenjoycedesign© Emma Jan 28, 2020

Short days and long shadows.

Published on January 16, 2020May 24, 2024 by Jen9 Comments

jenjoycedesign© small quilt 2
This morning was very exciting when we got hit with a storm, and with the temperature dropping degree by degree, I won’t be surprised if it snows in the next few hours. I have been taking a break this January from all self-expectations and enjoying some slack! Three months living in our new house, I’m wanting to work on new habits and trying a few new things, in addition to keeping up the knitting. One of the new things is starting sewing again, which actually is a lifelong passion of mine, but has been pretty much not for a few years. Lacking a lot of confidence, I have to start really small, so after the holidays passed I made a bunch of quilted coasters and a small coffee table quilt for Jeff’s den, done in the Amish quilt style.

jenjoycedesign© itty bitty quilts

Also I have tentatively begun sewing some much needed clothes, for making my own clothes is truly is a mark of my authenticity, and so I am experiencing a beautiful reunion with the needle, thread & thimble after a long hiatus. I’m really enjoying hand stitched finish work, delicious felled & French seams, slowed to a snails pace, and frankly I couldn’t bear it to go any faster for the hand-sewing just tickles some innate part of me which must have lived a hundred years ago. But more on that later. The month is already half gone and not wanting to lose my knitting mojo entirely I decided to quick knit a pair of socks. I picked up a few ‘flavors’ of Kroy Sock yarn at Michaels some time over the beginning of the holiday, and am now finally enjoying some calm hours to knit. Here beneath the sleet coated sky window, I thought I would photograph this unexpectedly fun pair I’ve got going . . .

jenjoycedesign© Kroy striped ragg — Pattern is Walking With Emma , chart A ribbing and modified with stockinette.

The days are short but getting noticeably longer by the week, and the wet snowy sleet is falling. I love January!

Ten at a time . . . heels.

Published on May 12, 2019May 24, 2024 by Jen6 Comments

jenjoycedesign© 10 at a time heels

Socks knit ten at a time is the thing ! But I am a little embarrassed to admit my collecting so many dpns for the project is rather excessive, but I’m invested in this ten-at-a-time conceptual thing. All craziness is good, one does what one must in order to live. For me, obsessive tendencies like this are just the norm. Ten at a time heels, done. Ten at a time gussets just waiting for me to post this and get to the pile.

jenjoycedesign© 10 at a time heels(2)

Meanwhile, something hand-made has arrived in the mail all the way from Ukraine, and will make an appearance soon, when these ten socks are finished and ready to show off.

Never far from a prayer.

Published on April 7, 2019May 24, 2024 by Jen10 Comments

sunstruckdpn104 — Sunstruck needles by Knitpicks

I have been going a little off the deep end hunting & sleuthing out the best finds on ebay of small vintage baskets, as well as made an order for a few more sets of Sunstruck dpns. Add to that the sox box I found only weeks ago, and my recent filling it with half-ball cakes of sock yarn. Can you guess where this is going? But first let me give you a little backstory; I have for a long time, even years, wanted to have a simple little knitting project in a small basket in every room of the house, like socks, so I am never far from a prayer. I suppose I aim to find peace in constant knitting. I have only to wait until the house is complete of course, before I can fully actualize this notion, but I am intending to start as soon as my first little baskets show up, filling them each with something simple like a sock project and setting them up everywhere about. I don’t know what’s happened to me, but in these last few days knitting with the beautiful birch wood double-pointed needles is nothing less than a sock knitting epiphany. I have been feeling rather spiritually lifted from it all. I know, strange how it is. So please hang around this space as I begin to transform and organize something deep within me which has been nothing short of lost, but now seems nearer to being found.

Yarn Tasting: Berroco Ultra Wool Fine

Published on April 5, 2019May 23, 2025 by Jen3 Comments

In these glorious down-pouring rainy days of April I am knitting socks and trying out a new yarn that I’m really excited about, Berroco Ultra Wool Fine. 100% Superwash (Peruvian) wool, three somewhat lofty plies, with 400g – 366m per 100g ball, and made in Peru. I’ve wound two colors into half-balls and got started . . .

I love this yarn so much that I bought several balls of it, and planning on over-dying some of it too, and I have ambitions for a “rustic country cabled sock”. I am not exactly sure what breed Peruvian wool is, but on one website I read that it is a cross between Merino & Corriedale sheep (can anybody out there add to this , or correct me?) , and seems to me to have a nice long staple length when I try to pull a ply apart it is very difficult, a long haired wool quality which I love. Out of the socks I knit this last year my favorite yarns are the 100% Blue-Faced Leicester wool, or BFL, which by the way, presently is an extremely popular knitting wool, and um… good ol’ modest Kroy sock yarn. Neither are Merino.

Berroco Ultra Wool Fine is 400 yards per 100 grams and is ever-so-slightly thicker, or has more loft, than the finer fingering sock yarns I’m use to, such as Malabrigo Sock, Knit Picks Stroll, or Cascade Heritage, all which are around 440 yards or more per 100g. These two starts of socks I am knitting with Ultra Wool Fine are giving me impressions of the lovely rustic kind of wool almost a homespun feel, that I have in mind, and which my often booted feet are hungry for.

Also having a bit of a needle tasting too! I am trying a set of dpns in a size smaller than I usually use for socks, a set of US 1 – 2.50 mm wooden dpns, given to me from knitters’ donations after the wildfire, which I am now ever so thankful for. I went to the dpns because I didn’t have that size in the nickel plated circular needles I have been so use to using for sock knitting, and I must say knitting with wood traditional dpns is the most aesthetic of experiences, even if not the fastest (due to my clumsiness). These are Knit Picks Sunstruck, and the color and feel is warm, light, and masterful feeling.

With these needles and this yarn I will knit some wonderful socks that will be a pleasure, and there is a very likely possibility that I will switch over, and a couple of pairs of socks will tell. A couple of posts ago I talked about my new Sox Box I picked up at a thrift shop, and my ambition is to fill all fifteen compartments of this box with knitted socks, and oh what gleeful anticipation of sock knitting is ahead! My Sox Box is filled with good intentions for now, at the very least, but I am bracing myself for a colossal head-start on next winter’s gifts, perhaps out of it even a bit of a pattern to develop ( hint) but for now, I’m keeping you all in suspense.