Here are my lovely Laurelhurst socks in purple and black with always 2 rows per stripe. The pattern is from ravelry and I followed it closely except for the heel and the toe decreases.

Purple Laurelhurst socks

….and here is my second pair of Laurelhurst socks. This one I modified a lot more. I didn’t do the slipped stitches along the sides and also used a different pattern for the heel and toe.

Colorful Laurelhurst socks

Below is my pair of crazy stripes socks. I used two different multicolores yarns – one with different shades of blue and the other with various shades of pink, yellow, orange, lilac and blue – and worked 4 rounds before switching to the next color. I just love how they turned out and they are supercomfy to wear.

My crazy stripes socks

At the moment I’m working on the green and black-white-gray striped socks for K. Basically it’s the same pattern as my crazy stripes socks, only in this case I’m switching colors after only 3 rounds. And I’ll probably start the second sock with the black-white-gray yarn and also do the heel and toes in this color.

First sock for K.

And finally here is my sock yarn blanket, which of course is still very much in progress. At the moment I’m working on the 6. row of squares and it’s still a lot of fun…. though I need an occasional break from doing them, as you can see by the amount of socks I’ve done lately.

Sock yarn blanket in progress…

Oh and there is one small thing I changed about the blanket. What I at first intended to be the broad side of the blanket is now the long one… I got a little carried away when doing the initial squares and it got WAY too long for a broad side.

For info on how to get the beads onto the yarn and which method I used to position the beads, see my earlier post.

Here is what I did:

CO 60 stitches and distribute them evenly on DPN (there should be 15 stitches on every needle)

Ribbing: k2,p1 for about 10 rows (or till you’ve reached the desired length)

Bead Pattern: knit 3 rounds before working the chart below. Click the image for a bigger picture. (I’ll eventually redo the chart to make it easier to read) Only work the chart for every other round. The rounds inbetween (or even numbered rounds which arent shown on my chart) are knit.

To position the beads I used the method of bringing the yarn to the front of the work, bringing the bead into position and just slipping (purlwise) the according stitch. For me it works best if I position the bead close to the last knit stitch before slipping the stitch.

The pattern itself is worked over 13 stitches with 1 stitch as margin on each side. That puts the whole pattern on just one DPN and makes it quite comfy to knit. Start working your favorite heel after row 55 and continue with the pattern after the heel is done. At the end of the pattern knit another 3 rows before starting the toe decrease.

The pattern is designed for medium sized feet (European size 38). So if you are working it for bigger feet, just add a few extra rows of plain knitting before working the toe decrease or just continue by drawing your own pattern. When doing your own drawing just make sure that no more than 2 beads are directly next to each other. Happy Knitting!

Here is how the pattern looks once it is done:

Finally, here is my project on rav. with a couple more pics.: http://ravel.me/aravis83/mp104

The book consists of two wonderful stories – “Am Silser – und am Gardasee” and  “Wie Wiseli’s Weg gefunden wird” for kids. Both stories are about orphaned children. In the first it’s a little Italian boy, who goes out into the world because of a song his father used to sing and in the second one a little girl has to go and live with a relative after her mother dies… and though both stories are very sad at times they both have a happy ending.

Here is one of the chapters I read:

The whole project can be found here: http://librivox.org/heimatlos-geschichten-fuer-kinder-und-auch-fuer-solche-welche-die-kinder-lieb-haben-by-johanna-spyri/

Now something totally different. I’m down with a rather nasty cold at the moment and so I had quite a bit of time for knitting. So here is another sock to show off:

Acutally the first sock is almost finished by now, I just haven’t had time to take new pics. But there will be a couple soon.

After knitting those black beaded socks I blogged about last time, I wanted to try something a little more complicated. I didn’t find good pattern for working with beads online, so I’m kinda making it up as I go. It’s superfun and I think the socks will look wonderful when they are done.

Bead Socks

Before starting to knit put the beads on your yarn. If you do it with the same number of cast on stitches I used, each stripe requires 20 beads, so that makes 120 beads per sock. That’s quite a lot and working becomes quite tedious because you have to move all those beads along the yarn as you go.  So after doing the first sock with all the beads on the yarn from the beginning, I only put half of them on the yarn for the second sock and just cut the yarn and added the rest after finishing the 3. stripe.

Also to get the beads on the yarn I found it easiest to use a piece of very thin wire. I created a kind of needle by bending it in the middle and twisting the long ends together. By slipping the yarn through the tiny “eye” of the needle and by picking up the beads with the other end, it only takes a couple of mins to get a huge amount of beads on the yarn. Here is a pic of it… not a very good one though:

So here is what I did exactly:

Co 60 stitches and distribute evenly on DPN (15 stitches per needle)

Ribbing: k2,p1 for about 10 rows (or till you’ve reached the desired length)

Bead Pattern: knit 5 rows before starting with the stripes

1. stripe: *k2, bring the yarn to the front of the work, bring bead into position and slip 1 stitch (for me it works best if I position the bead as close as possible to the last knit stitch before slipping the next stitch)* repeat to end of row

k 3 rows

2. stripe: *k1, bring the yarn to the front of the work, bring bead into position and slip 1 stitch, k1* repeat to end of row

k8 rows before repeating the bead pattern 2 more times (or till you have as many stripes as you like), work another 15 rows before working you fav. heel/rest of sock.

Bead socks (close up)

Oh and here is my project page on rav. with a couple more pics: http://ravel.me/aravis83/uqbpu

Happy Knitting!!!

…and to show off the pair of knit socks I made. It’s the first time I worked with beads and I think they turned out wonderfully. I’ll do a proper post with details on how I knit them soon.

The only thing I’m a little worried about is that the beads might not be washable…. that is, that they might loose their color when put into the washing machine.

Sock Yarn Blanket

The pattern is from ravelry and I just love it. It’s easy and fast to do and I just LOVE working with all those pretty colors. So far I’ve only used either Lana Grossa Meilenweit 100 Cotton Stretch and Schoeller+Stahl Fortissima Mexiko Cotton Stretch. They are almost similar and go wonderfully together. Also they are soft and stretchy and great to knit with.

Oh, I almost forgot, the very best about the pattern is that after knitting the first squares seperately all other squares are knit directly into the blanket. So no scary sewing together afterwards, except for all those loose ends.

Sock Yarn Blanket

As usual all yarn, needle and pattern detais can be found on my ravelry page: http://ravel.me/aravis83/yfch7

Super Mario & Goomba mittens

For the mittens I used size 2,5 needles (US 1) and worked with my favorite Lana Grossa Merino Superfein yarn. As I did the mittens for K. and as his hands are pretty big, I cast on 56 stitches. The ribbing is k1, p1 for about 5 cms followed by 3 rows of 3k, 1p.

Then I knit 7 rows before starting the tumb increase and working the chart. For the increases place marker, kfb, k2, kfb, place marker knit to end of round working chart. Knit the next two rows (always working the chart), before working another increase round as before. Increase till there are 18 stitches between the markers. Work another 5 rows before slippling those 18 stitches onto some spare yarn and then knit till it has the desired length. For the ribbing I did 3 rows in k1 p1 before binding off.

Super Mario Chart

For the thumb, pick up the stitches from the spare yarn and pick up another 3 between the thumb and the palm. Then knit to the desired length. Work again 3 rows of k1p1 before binding off.

The chart for Super Mario is above and the one for the Goomba can be found on my rav. page: http://ravel.me/aravis83/4jcmh

Lilac mittens

And here is another pair (well actually two pairs) of mittens I did for mum, which I simply need to show off.

Here are the lilac gloves on rav.: http://ravel.me/aravis83/wbj8i and here are the black ones: http://ravel.me/aravis83/6bys3

We used a pencil to draw a draft of the outlines before we did them in more detail with a very fine black marker. Afterwards we colored everything with simple colored pencils. The hole on the top of each we did with an ordinary hole puncher. I was little worried that the holes might be too large, but it shrank SO much, that it’s now the perfect size to draw a string through them.

Here are our shrinky dinks right before shrinking. I put a 1 Euro coin next to them for reverence.

And here they are after shrinking. They shrank so much that all of them are really tiny now, especially Blinky.

Doing them was fast and real fun. Oh and I just love how they turned out.

Doesn’t it make a lovely pattern for a hat too?

The yarn is Schachmayr Bravo Big, which I got on sale shortly before Christmas. It is cosy and warm, but was a real pain to knit. I don’t think I’ll work with it again.

For the hat itself I cast on 48 stitches with size 8 (US 11) needles and then just followed the pattern…. all other details are on my rav. page as usual:  http://ravel.me/aravis83/1udbw

Oh and here is Kitty having fun with the extra pom pom I made just for her out of some old left over sock yarn.

As I couldn’t find a suitable pattern I made it up. Here is what I did:

CO 80 stitches

1.-5. row: *knit 6, purl 4* to end of row

6. row: *slip 3 stitches on cable needle, hold cable needle in front of work, knit 3 stitches from the left needle, now knit 3 stitches off the cable needle, purl 4* to end of row

7.-14. row: *k6, p4* to end of row

15. row: *slip 3 stitches on cable needle, hold cable needle in front of work, knit 3 stitches from the left needle, now knit 3 stitches off the cable needle, purl 4* to end of row

Repeat rows 7 – 15 once more. After that is done, work another 4 rows of *k6,p4* (or till it was the desired length) before starting to shape the crown.

Decreases:

1. row: *k2, k2tog, k2, p4* to end

2. row:  *knit 5, purl 4* to end of row

3. row: *k5, p1, p2tog, p1* to end

4. row: *knit 5, purl 3* to end of row

5. row: *k2tog, k1, k2tog, p3* to end of row

6. and 7. row: *k3, p3* to end of row

8. row: *k2tog, k1, p2tog, p1* to end of row

9. row: *k2, p2* to end of row

10. row: *k2tog, p2tog* to end of row

Cut of the yarn and thread through the remaining stitches, pull tight and sew the end in. Have fun knitting!

My hat and more pics can be found on my rav page: http://ravel.me/aravis83/st5a8