At last! I have finished my socks!

Yay! I'm so happy. It took like an hour of my time today to finish what could have been finished over a week ago. These have taken me about a month and a half to make as I put them off so many times. I know that if I were to make them again, though, I'd be able to make them very quickly. Here's some pics I took:

They're soooo cool! So worth the wait.

 ..and they're so comfy! If you look at the way they've been knitted, the stripes don't match because I didn't start each ball of wool at exactly the same colour point, so it gave them this unique effect.

 See here, they're off by a fair bit, but the patterns do actually match up. I just love it. If I made another pair, I'd make sure I started at the same point, but I absolutely love these. If I knew these would have been worth it, I would've knit them a lot quicker.

So, a whole post dedicated to this pair of socks. And now my hands feel cold in comparison to my feet, so I'm finding some wrist warmers to make. Yay! ♥

Lots to do, lots to do! Update of the past week

I've got so many new projects lined up, and have a fair few things to update you on. Fortunately, my projects aren't large as I'm going to make house-warming gifts for my house mates in September, so they're little teddies. Unfortunately, I don't have the right colours of wool for them, so I can't get them done quickly anyway. The 'queue' function on Ravelry is a god-sent to be honest, I don't bother writing my projects down now, I just save it all on there and can access it whenever.

Firstly, I'll update you on my socks. I had a mad knitting spree when I finished the first one, and knit about 2/3rds of the second one in about two days. Then stopped. No idea why, but I didn't feel like it, and I'm so close to finishing:

I need to knit another half an inch or so before decreasing for the toe. I need to give myself a kick to finish these, then I can wear them in bed when it's quite cold. :)

I absolutely loev the colour of this wool. I'll definitely be buying some more of this wool (DROPS Fabel, I think?) To make other stuff in the future. ...or just make more pairs of socks with it!

I also started designing my own blanket squares. I'm making a charity blanket as I've mentioned before, and I've made notes on the design for it. I need three different kinds of squares, and I was making notes to design my own. This is how far I've got:

 Above are my notes and general scribblings and the start of the square. It's a basic "YO, K2tog" pattern but it looks pretty cool. I did a little test-knit, and I should've taken a picture before I unravelled it all. But yes, hopefully it'll be good enough to make as part of a blanket. But I'm not sure about the colour, because the wool is horrible cheap stuff that doesn't feel nice at all, but I use the wool for test knits, or making teddies, as they don't have to be softy soft.

Speaking of teddies, I've started making a 'Miffy' bunny for my house mate, but encountered a problem. I ran out of wool. I've made the head:

...which needs stuffing and the face, but, I don't have enough wool to start on the body:

This isn't enough for the body. Plus, I bought the wool years ago and have no idea what it is, so I've got to go to my local knitting shop and ask them if they can help me get something similar. So this project is on standby until after the bank holiday.

So, I don't have many projects that I can do at the moment, other than finish the socks, which I'm going to crack on with right now.

Oh, one final thing, I was reading through some blogs earlier and they mentioned wordle. I used this ages ago, but now they've introduced a feature which lets you add your blog URL. I did this, and created one from this blog:

They're so fun to make, and you can sit tweaking them for ages, changing the colours, angles, etc. I've been playing with it for quite a while now. It's very interesting. And of course, the largest words would be knitting and socks and patterns. So yeah. That's about it from me today. Happy Knitting! ♥

Finished elefante!

Yay! I finally finished the little elephant! His ears are floppy, and his head lolls about, but nevertheless he's still very cute and my sister is going to love him:

He's so cute!  He's my proudest achievement in knitting, I'm so pleased. I feel sad giving him to my sister but I know she'll look after him. He was quite easy to make (and the pattern can be found on ravelry), and the hardest part was sewing his head onto the body - I'm terrible at sewing, and the reason why his head is floppy is because of this, but yeah, he still looks cute.

Also, I've been getting broody to knit baby clothes, but don't have enough wool or the right size needles to make cardigans, so I made a teeny tiny sock from a pattern on ravelry that I found:

 This is the ickle sock on it's own...

...and this is it next to the sock that I made for myself to wear (with my diddy size 3 feet, so even that sock isn't that big). It's so cute, and I'm in love with this wool. I'll have to remember what brand this wool is, and get some more in different colours. Speaking of my pair of socks, I've almost finished the second one of the pair - I need to knit a few more rows then begin the decrease for the toe, so soon I'll have lovely warm socks to wear.

Right now I'm not sure what my next project is going to be - I might finish off this little orange chubby chirp that I'm making, as well as finishing off my sock. I'm also trying to come up with a design for the teddies that I make - y'know, the ones that I showed in my first post:

 I want to change the pattern so that it can be knitted on dpns, and will show the purl side on the outside, rather than be made with garter stitch. All I've got to do is work out the frequency of increases and decreases, and do a test knit for the sizes of the arms, legs, etc. Should be a fun project. One day I'd like to create my own patterns, such as sock patterns, and see about selling the patterns or the actual socks. I know it'd take a while before I get to the stage where the patterns are good enough to sell (I'd have to start off with free patterns) but hey, you have to start somewhere.

Right, I'm off. It's my sister's birthday tomorrow so I've gotta sort my stuff out today to travel down tomorrow morning. Adios, knitters!

I am a bad person!

I haven't posted in goodness knows how long, shame on me! Unfortunately I've become somewhat addicted to World of Warcraft, so a lot of my spare time has gone to playing that. On the bright side, I have a new job (making milkshakes and smoothies), so I can start earning some pennies and hopefully buy some more much-needed wool, and in even better news, I've literally just finished my first sock!

It's sooo pretty, and sooo comfy! And the greatest thing is that I have size 3 feet, so it was quick to knit the sole part of the foot, haha. I'm looking forward to knitting the second one - my initial idea was to make any old pair of socks, just to say I've done it, but this one fits so snugly, I actually think I'll wear them!

Also, I've been making an elephant for my sister's birthday, which is the 24th August. I found the pattern on ravelry (called 'elephante') and so far I've done the body and the head. I'm struggling with the ears as they need to be crocheted and I haven't the foggiest how to do it, so I'm going to nick some ears from a different pattern. Here's my progress so far:

(Mm, and look at the difference in picture quality. I may start taking more pics with my actual camera rather than my blackberry). It was so fun to make, and the stripy pattern is so cute. I'm so pleased with this. These two projects, the elephant and the socks, are my more complicated but rewarding things to have made.
So I'm off now to finish watching The Back-Up Plan (which is hilarious) while the other half is doing a raid on WoW, and to continue by finding something else to start knitting. ♥