Midsummer

We spent Midsummer weekend at the cottage with my parents and M's dad. The weather was kind of blah (like it rained all Midsummer's Eve) and the kids played outside most of the time so I got quite a lot of resting and knitting done. I brought three projects and expected that to be plenty, but not so...

I finished the Embossed Leaves socks!

Pattern: Embossed Leaves from Favorite Socks by Interweave.
Yarn: Apple Laine Apple Pie in Garden Party
Needles: Addi Turbo 2,5 mm
Mods: I did a long-tail cast on instead of the one in the book, which incidentally isn't the one used on the socks in the pictures in the book. Those are made with a tubular cast-on, see the designer's blog for tutorial on that. As I mentioned before the socks where long enough after 7 full pattern repeats instead of 7,5 so I used the reversed star toe described on the designer's blog.
Verdict: Love! A fun fast pattern and it looks great. I will certainly knit another pair in a more solid colour so that the pattern pops better, but I like this version too. The yarn I have gushed over before ;-)

Here's a detail shot of the leg:

My car knitting was my first cast-on for Summer of Socks. A Mata Hari sock using Claudia Handpainted Sport in Caribbean Blue.

I love this colourway and have been agonizing over what pattern to knit with it for ages. This one is nice and simple. I'm doing a round toe and trying Wendy's gusset heel. They are on the large side but I have decided not to rip them. I'm going to make them as high as the yarn allows. Which won't be very high, I suspect...

The third project I brought was my Swallowtail shawl. It has been neglected for quite some time now, poor thing, but now I managed to progress from 5 to 10 finished repeats of the Budding Lace 2 chart. This is how it looked after 6 repeats:

About 6" high and 12" wide. Tiny. However, I found hints on how to make it larger on Mintyfresh's blog. She knit 19 repeats of Budding Lace 2 instead of 14 and I think I'll follow her lead.

When we got home I felt that I needed another sock on the needles... So I decided to find a pattern for Dad in Favorite Socks. I bought yarn for him last autumn... Trekking XXL in dark blue and greens. I like the lattice look of the Uptown Boot socks, but when I knit it up it looked nothing at all like lattice.

Just some sort of diagonals. So I ripped them and tried Cable Rib socks instead.

Much better!

Notice my new pattern row counter I made from Turtlegirl's instructions. This one is for 10 rows. Very nifty and not too fiddly to make. I made a shorter one too, for 4 rows.


I'll definitely make more as I need them.

Oh, and I got some yarn in the mail. From you-know-where. I have been waiting nearly a month for this package, it got stuck in Customs :-/

Woolly Boully sock yarn in Brooklyn Candy.

Claudia Handpainted fingering in Peppermint Mocha.

J. Knits Light Sock in Vermont. Yes, that colour is accurate, at least on my screen. Veeery bright.

And five skeins of Louet Gems Sport in Indigo for the Highland Triangle shawl in Fok Shawls.