Gearing up for another pair of socks

Back in January I spun and knit a pair of socks for a friend of my mother-in-law, which were these:


I had also agreed to knit a pair of handspun socks for his wife, and I finally finished spinning for them today. The yarn I spun for them is a 3-ply fingeringweight yarn from a Fries Melkschaap fleece:



I have a rough idea in my head for a pattern for a simple pair of stranded socks in two colours for this yarn, so I have to halve the yarn that I have here and dye one lot before I can get started, and that will probably be later in the week.

Meanwhile, I am still slogging along on a pattern for my goatshead socks, but I fear that the next project will have to take precedence since I am supposed to be getting 2 new fleeces in return. Most farmers are now shearing too, so I have to get a move on to keep my promise on this second pair of socks.

The Goat's Head Socks are "finished"

The socks are finished in the sense that I now have a "protosock" and a proper sock to wear.

I just have a few videos left to edit to go with the pattern.

ETA: pattern for these is up.

Turkmeni Goat's Head Socks: Video of three colour carry and dominance order

After a mini conversation on ravelry the other day about colour dominance when purling from the purlside wrt multiple colours, I decided to vlog it on my youtube channel. The video is about 3 colour carries, and this is it:

Turkmeni Goat's Head Socks Update

Update on my Turkmen socks - I have finally finished one sock:
I have to say that a three colour carry using the old eastern style of knitting is easy relative to doing it continentally (with or without a yarn guide).

Turkmeni Goat's Head Socks

Ha! Another post for 2010! :P

I am currently knitting a toe-up sock with Turkmeni motifs. The motifs are from a pair of Turkmeni slippers that I now own, and they are of great interest to me as a knitter who enjoys stranded knitting. I am reliably informed that the motif on these socks is known in Turkmenistan as "the goat's head" - kind of reminds me of the Turkish "ram's head" motif. But the thing that excites me is that the pair of slippers I own were knit with the yarn tensioned around the neck in the old eastern way, and utilize a 3 colour carry. The great beauty of knitting with the yarn tensioned around the neck is that multiple colour carries are easy, and instead of it being annoying to look at the floats rather than the pattern, it is fascinating to see how carrying the colours in a particular way affects colour dominance.

Anyway, as the slippers do not fit me, I have charted the motifs and I'm now in the process of creating a pair of socks (not slippers) which use the motif on the slippers.

Bosnian crochet in Colour

This maybe the only post that I make this year because of my infrequent blogging habits, but I have been inspired by a couple of posts on Ravelry, the most recent being this one.

By shear coincidence, over the last couple of weeks I've been experimenting with Bosnian/slip stitch and other forms of crochet. My chief interest though is in Bosnian or slip stitch crochet which I blogged about a couple of years ago (in another rare post). Over the last year or so I have been collecting images of crocheted socks from Central Asia which utilize this simple but much ignored crochet stitch. Much as I would like to post images here, I am going to refrain because it would probably be a violation of some form of copyright.

Instead, here are some images of my own. These are test swatches that I crocheted using colourwork slip stitch crochet and motifs I have seen in eastern socks:
The above is slip stitch (aka Bosnian) crochet through the back loop carrying three colours.

In the following image the black and white section is slip stitch crochet through the front loop in two colours.
I am hoping to one day crochet a pair of Tajik-style socks in this manner, so just doing a bit of experimentation for the time being.

I have also made myself a couple of crochet hooks for the purpose. Here is a picture of one of the hooks:

It doesn't have the thick handle like on pjoning hooks, but the head of the hook is relatively flat so it slides nicely into the slip stitches which tend to lie rather flat. I am thinking of putting a nice fimo handle on it, but it seems ok to use as is. I made this hook from a "twig" from our privet (or maybe even box) hedge that my husband pruned earlier this year.

Finished my socks

I finally finished these socks a couple of weeks ago, and they were an interesting knit. I put the videos in my last post on youtube, but have since taken them down for hopefully a clearer video of how to "trap" or "catch" with stranded knitting around the neck.

My youtube channel is gradually building up as I make interesting discoveries in the world of stranded knitting around the neck.

But for now, I am working on a pattern for a new pair of Central Asian style socks, and also spinning for them, so it will probably be a while before I get around to adding more discoveries.