Not lost, just a bit busy

Gosh, its been ages since I've been able to update the blog and I do feel a very poor correspondent.  Less interesting things than sewing and knitting are taking up all my energy at the moment and I can't seem to concentrate on anything else.  I hope that these things will eventually turn out to be positive and when they do (for I am certain they will one way or another) I will let you all know what's going on.  In the meantime, I have two posts in one, having finished the third silk shawl for my friend and, now that Christmas is over, am also able to show off my gift knitting at last.  So I have been doing something, just considerably fewer somethings than would normally be the case.  :)

So, first up, the shawl.  This is a SusannahIC design, Annis, which is available free from Knitty.com.  I think its the third version I've done of this pattern, but never in such posh yarn.  It knit up reasonably well, despite the fact that the silk and my winter hands didn't get on hugely well together and didn't take hugely long to do.  The yarn is from Knitwitches and is 100% swiss silk.  I've now knit two shawls, one large, one small, from this yarn and I've still got 50 grammes left to hand back to the recipient who asked me to knit these.  As she has now taken up lace knitting herself, I think she's planning to knit the rest up herself.  The yarn is very thin, I'd say its probably between lace and cobweb weight and I actually went down one needle size for the lace and two for the body of the latest shawlette.  This made it just right for going around my friend's neck which is how she plans to wear it.  I was very pleased to see she was wearing the previously knit silk shawl when we met up before christmas and she says she wears it constantly.  Now that's the kind of feedback I like for my knitting. 
And here are the photos:

And now, my main gift knitting.  I did some socks for Ruthie over on RuthieSews as well but forgot to photograph them, so this photo only shows my mum's gifts.  She was very pleased with them all.  Which is good as I'd been unsure about the whole, "knitting for a knitter" thing all the time I was making them.  However, she had claimed that she loves wearing socks but hates knitting them, so I set off, using some patterns from my current fave designer, VerybusyMonkey.

And here they all are.

The blue pair in the top left are knit from a cotton/wool/lycra mix and the pattern is Bernouille Socks.  Sadly the tweedy yarn hides the true beauty of the pattern, but the fact they are a more summery weight of yarn, and in a stretchy yarn, was seen as an advantage. 

Next up is the Paisley Sock in Cygnet sock yarn.  This was originally a basic lilac colour but I dyed it with black Wiltons (it appears on the line in the post relating to my friend and I's dying day in early September I believe).  I was rather pleased with how this one knitted up and although the photo's aren't fab, the pattern on this one isn't so well hidden by the yarn.

Then, bottom right is the Rufus sock, knit in Schoppelle Wolle Admiral Ombre.  This one came out the nicest I thought.  The yarn came out exactly like the pattern photo showed and the patterned stitches show well.  The sock leg ended up longer on these and this was deemed a "good feature" so now I know what may be required of future pairs.  The stitch pattern is actually a version of the Logwood Shawl that I posted about reasonably recently and thus was quite easy to do as I was already practiced at it from doing the edge of the shawl.

The yarns shown at bottom left were another part of her present.  I dyed these using Wiltons cake dyes.  Working from the left;

Pale pink 100% Alpaca Laceweight

Blue/pink/purplish variagated 100% Alpaca Laceweight.

Christmas red sock weight, 75% merino, 25% silk.  Dyed with Christmas red and it took a LOT of dye to get it to be that red. 

Blue/black variagated sock weight.  75% merino/25% silk.  This was painted using four shades of blue, then over painted with the same blues with black added, then one of the blues was darkened considerably with black and used to paint the darker parts.  Very pleased with how this one came out because it was one of those skeins that went really wrong, really early and I was able to rescue it and turn it into something decent.

Finally, the brown/orange/tan skein is the same 75/25 merino and silk sock yarn, this time dyed with six different browns and oranges.  The orange was Kool Aid actually as I haven't got an orange Wiltons.  It works fine to mix them and I've not had any problems.  Really, really loved how this one came out.  I plan to try to replicate this colourway for myself at some point. 

 

Next up, some simple socks for myself I think.  Sadly I don't have the time to take on anything larger right now, but hopefully that will change soon.  I really hope I can get back to sewing soon.  I'm missing it very much.