3 posts tagged “hokie”

I have only gotten about two hours of sleep in the last 36 hours and I have already said a lot about these socks, so I'm only going to say a couple of quick things and then I'm just going to post a bunch of pictures so that you can gaze upon their awesomeness. I ended up moving to size 2 needles and that worked like a charm. They fit and knitting them wasn't nearly as painful as it had been on the 1's. Only thing I wished I would have done differently is to have stayed on the 1's for the ribbing and then moved to the 2's when the pattern started. The ribbing seems a little loose. These were worth every painful minute. They were worth the ripping out and starting over. And they were worth the orange dyed hands. I never would have thought it was possible to fall in love with a pair of socks, but I'm definitely in love with these. And now pictures:

 

 

 

This is the current state of my beautiful Jaywalker socks. Let me tell you a little about the history of these socks. This yarn orginally belonged to my friend, S. She was making a pair of Jaywalkers, toe up with the yarn and I just fell in love with them. She wasn't loving the process of knitting them and was worried about how much she would wear them once she was no longer a Hokie. So, when she discovered that she had knitted the sock way too big for her foot, she frogged it and decided to not remake it. I convinced her to swap me the yarn, so that I could make the Jaywalkers with the same yarn.

I cast on for the first sock about three weeks ago. I have been hating the process of knitting it, but I absolutely love the sock. I have been concerned about the size of the sock since I was about 3 inches into the cuff. I felt like it was going to be a bit on the small size, but I convinced myself that they were supposed to be snug since the pattern isn't very stretchy and I kept on knitting. Last night I had knitted all they way through the gusset decreases and I tried the sock on again and decided that it was indeed too small. So I frogged it. I have decided that it's the yarns fault. The yarn must be cursed.

I'm going to cast on for these again, because I just love them so much. Now I just have to decide whether I'm going to go up a needle size (from size 1's to size 2's) or whether I'm going to go up a pattern size on the same size needles. My inclination is to go up a needle size, but really this is just because I'm lazy and don't love the process of this pattern. If I knit the same number of stitches at a larger gauge, it will go faster, but if I knit a larger number of stitches at the same gauge, it will take longer. I'm just worried that the increase in gauge won't size it up enough to make it fit.

Last spring when browsing the Malabrigo selection on Webs, I discovered the Oro y Vino colorway which could also be named Hokie.

 

I bought four skeins and put it aside to figure out what to do with later. A month or so ago, it struck me that if I graduate on schedule (*knock on wood*), I'll only be at Tech one more winter after this one. I like the Hokie colors and even have a Hokie colored striped shirt that I bought long before I had even heard of Virginia Tech, but wearing the Hokie colors when not at Tech is not quite the same as wearing the Hokie colors while at Tech. So I decided I better get to knitting with the Hokie yarn so that I could get some wear out of it before I graduated. Even though I had enough yarn for it, I wasn't sure I was ready for a full on hand-knitted Hokie colored sweater. I decided that the yarn would be better suited to a scarf, hat, and mitten set. I started with the scarf.

 

This is the One Row Scarf by The Yarn Harlot. I have knitted this scarf out of Malabrigo before. I loved the yarn/pattern combination back then and that hasn't changed. I did think it was interesting that this colorway of Malabrigo didn't patten anywhere near like the Lime-Blue colorway. This scarf was knitted on size 10 needles just as the other one was, but I like my scarves long and narrow, so I only cast on 22 stitches for this scarf. Once I had the scarf, I moved onto the hat.

 

This is the Better Bucket Hat from Make One Yarn Studio with modifications as per Ravelry user Solaris. The modifications essential made a larger brim by adding more stitches and using a larger needle size for the brim. The original pattern calls for a size 7 needle, the Solaris calls for a size 8 for the brim and a size 7 for the hat, I used a size 8 for the entire thing. I don't like really tight hats because of my poufy hair, so I stayed with the size 8 needle to make the hat a little larger. This was a fun knit because I finally figured out how to do a provisional cast-on, which had previously defeated me. I like this hat and pattern a lot. I already have plans to make another one to be given away. After the hat came the mittens.

 

This is the peekabo mitten pattern which can be obtained for free on Ravelry. The website where it was originally published no longer exists. I chose this pattern because it was simple and I thought a fancy stitch patterns would get lost in the varigated yarn and because I liked the "peekabo" feature of the mittens.

 

I have to say, as simple as this pattern is, I had the hardest time with these mittens. Either the person who designed the pattern had much bigger row gauge than I did or much shorter hands than I do. I kept following the pattern instructions and then having to rip back when it became obvious that the mittens weren't going to fit my hands. I finally got them long enough for my fingers, but then I wished I had put the finger openings a little higher up on the hand. I knitted the entire mitten on size 7's, but wish I would have gone down a size or two for the ribbing on the cuff. Even though I'm not quite happy with the mittens, I'm happy with the set overall.

 

Oh, and just in case you are sitting there thinking, "well, she isn't a true Hokie until she is literally decked out in Hokie colors from head to toe", here's a peek of a one of my current WIP's.

 

These are the Jaywalker socks, also from the same now defunct website as the peekabo mittens, made in the Hokies colorway from Claudia Hand Painted Yarns.