Thursday, October 19, 2006

Miniature Socks

When I knit, I normally knit compulsively. Any sweater that gets finished is done within a month, anything that does not is languishing in various rubbermaid bins. Last week I received 6 sock blocker keychains from Felt Up Designs.

I have yarn bins in the garage and my closet, and after going through at least 4 or 5 of the bins, I finally found my sock stash. In the 2+ years we've lived in this townhome, I have not gone through my stash. It was a little scary. Anyway, the sock stash was much more substantial than I thought and I could not remember when I purchased some of this yarn! But I found many great yarns to use for the keychains. From Saturday night to Tuesday I made 7 miniature socks, here are 6 of them:


I don't think I've been this compulsive for a long time, and I rarely make the same thing twice unless I have to as a sample. It really surprised me that I enjoyed making these so much, and my fingers are itching to make more. But I ran out of blockers. The pattern included with the blocker was pretty good, however I had to change my needle size a couple times to get one that fit the blocker like the picture and I substituted ssk's for k2tog tbl. There was no gauge so I set my own. With size 2 needles, after the first 16 rows the piece should measure 1/2" wide and about 1 1/2" long. Some were exactly 1 1/2", a couple were approx. 1 row shy of 1 1/2".

I was originally going to make one for my secret pal, but after further looking through her blog, I realized she already had one :( They all will have good appreciative homes and I'll think of something else for her.

The lonely seventh sock is from some striped regia and looks like this:


Compared to the others, I did not find it very pretty, so it was not blocker worthy in my eyes. I showed my SnB group and some people did like it, so if anybody would like this sock, please let me know ( basicknits [at] yahoo [dot] com ) and if I have more than one person that wants it, I'll draw a name next Friday, October 27th.

On the coffee side of things, I'm really excited because I'm building a larger capacity roaster. I'm loosely using the tutorial from here. My Fresh Roast has less than a 2 ounce capacity, this new roaster will be able to roast 1 1/2lbs. We ate dimsum last week in Rowland Heights, and Sunpentown is only 5 miles away so we were able to pick up the oven (top only) from their offices. I'm going to use a different spacer and I modified the all metal shaft a little. I have all the pieces, I just need my husband's help enlarging the holes in some washers, disconnect the heating element and it'll be ready for a test run. Hopefully Sunday I'll be able to give it a try.

6 comments:

jillian said...

Oh my goodness. Those are the cutest knit mini-things I have ever seen! My jaw actually dropped when I realized what they were!! You are too much.

Madge said...

Your wee socks are so sweet. I love how they turned out. I think my faves are the green Koigu and the LL.

Obsessive knitters, unite! :) Oh, wait, we do that every week, don't we? Heh.

mary said...

You're going to MacGyver a coffee roaster? You go with your bad self! I love the wee sock blocker key chains, especially the pink regia bamboo sock! ;)

Annette said...

The mini-socks are so cute! Thanks for sharing the link. I'm going to order one for my secret pal who is very into socks. I like the unwanted red/orange sock, so if no one else wants it I'll take it. :)

mehitabel said...

Those little guys were soooo cute when you showed them on Wed!! Gosh, I hope making six or seven of something doesn't make a person obsessive... cause then I'd have to own up to my OCD behavior! (and, um, those seven kids...)

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