Tag Archives: Blue Moon Socks that Rock

More for feet

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Think of these as my Orange Creamsicle socks. Orange on the outside with my icy ghostly pale feet on the inside. They are my version of Virginia Rose-Jeanes Vanilla Latte Socks. The Vanilla Latte pattern is wonderful, as is. I just made a few modifications.

If you haven’t already figured it out from my prattling on about knitting with discontinued yarns and unavailable patterns, I am no spring chicken. Some of my socks are almost assuredly older than you. I mostly enjoy wearing my handknit socks, not to my hot yoga classes, not to my children’s pre-COVID playdates, but in bed. A hot water bottle might do as well, I suppose. In fact, he-who-will-not-be-named bought me one for Christmas. No joke. He was sure I would like it. But I like to wear my socks in bed. This pair is totally warm and cozy.

The Vanilla Latte pattern is really not vanilla at all. It includes some items of knitter’s choice by supplying 3 toe shapes and 3 heel stitches. I chose the Eye of Partridge heel cuff and the round wedge toe. I modified the pattern to make a long cuff. And I worked a knit 3 purl 1 rib through the whole cuff and the top of the foot, not just for the initial 1 and 1/2 inches that the pattern calls for. I’d like to say that I planned out not shifting to the knit 6, purl 2 pattern the designer sets out for the rest of the cuff and the top of the foot. I just forgot to shift to it at the appropriate point. By the time I was a few inches beyond the shift, I was liking the look of knit 3 purl 1 and decided to simply continue on that path. Instead of fingering weight, I used my favorite sportweight sock yarn: Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks That Rock Mediumweight.

My cold feet are enjoying these socks. A lot. If you’d like to see Vanilla Latte as the designer intended, check here.

These next foot warmers need to be modeled on feet first. Because when you first see them off-foot it doesn’t make you want to knit them.

These are Mone Drager’s Bea’s Slippers. I’ve been wanting to knit them for a number of years. I’d seen some project pages that made them look odd in an interesting way. I found the construction intriguing. And my busy beautiful skein of worsted weight Fynn, from The Yarns of Rhichard Devrieze, was looking for a home.

These were a total hoot to knit! After finishing one I was skeptical that feet would find them comfy. I was wrong.

These slippers start at the toe with “your favorite toe-up cast-on.” Personally, I don’t have a favorite. Judy’s Magic Cast-on is decidedly unmagical for me. I don’t exactly know what a “Figure 8” is except on ice. With help from Brown-Eyed Bab’s excellent photo tutorial I can manage a Turkish cast-on, so that’s what I used.

Knitting these socks produces some interesting stresses on the fabric as you knit. I’ll just leave it at that. Maybe that was a function of the fact that apparently I eschew all magic when it comes to knitting, including Magic Loop technique. Please ignore (I do) that laddering on the cuffs. I typically don’t get ladders in my 4-needle doublepoint work. I’m blaming those interesting stresses, even though by cuff time they’d faded. A bath in Eucalan helped some.

Here’s to warm feet and a happier New Year!

Irresistable Colorways

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I really like Blue Moon Socks That Rock. I love the way this fingering weight yarn knits up with a good sturdy twist. Hardly ever any narly bits to cut out and deal with. But, this skein?  Well, this skein was a challenge. Several years ago I ended up with it via my guild’s brown bag swap. Pick a bag. Open it. Keep it or steal from someone ahead of you. Apparently no one wanted to steal this from me.

I ended up with 800 yards of this Blue Moon Socks that Rock. That was an expensive and generous offering for a brown bag swap.  The aptly named colorway is Muddy Autumn Droplets. I just could not figure out what to do with it and it languished in my stash until the coronovirus started rearing its ugly in early March. It wasn’t just the colorway. It was 800 yards of it.

I thought I’d wind it to get a full view of its barfworthiness.

Hmmm. Looking so much better. Those droplet blobs in the skein started looking more tameable.

I could not be happier with how this turned out! It’s Justyna Lorkowska’s wonderful freebie Close to You. Thousands of Ravelers have knit this beauty. My Muddy Autumn Droplets version is my third. Check out my more sedate versions here. I once blocked the lace section and another time decided against it. This time I lightly steamed the shawlette and left the lace a bit closed up and bouncy.

The only problem with my new Close to You is that it only used up 420 of my 800 yards of Muddy Autumn Droplets.

Reading in one of the main Ravelry forum soon after finishing my new Close to You, someone mentioned a pattern specifically designed to soothe the savage variegated beast. It’s Bristol Ivy’s freebie, Sallah Cowl. Sallah was published in Knitty in 2012. Ivy’s write-up on the pattern says: “Every knitter has a skein of wonderfully hand-painted and variegated sock yarn in their stash that they don’t have any idea what to do with. The colors — beautiful, vivid tones that meld harmoniously in the skein — clash horribly in any project they try. So what’s a knitter to do?” I don’t think that Muddy Autumn Droplets even melded harmoniously in the skein. But the pattern sounded like just what I needed.

This pattern, which is knit flat, used a new-to-me easy technique that made it even more appealing. All wrong side rows are worked on a US size 10  needle. All right side rows are worked on a size 5 needle. Some folks put both needles on the same interchangeable cable. But I decided to break out my straights and just use one size 10 and one size 5. Sallah is knit on the bias, in a twisted rib, and is finished off with applied I-Cord.

I had a great time knitting Sallah. But I admit to being daunted by the finishing. Between the directions in the pattern and Ivy’s supplement on her blog, I was successful in blocking Sallah to the required parallelogram. It took some significant tugging and a serious dunking. The fabric is very stretchy. That made the task easier than I anticipated.

You fold the end you started with (where you see my yarn butterfly ) to the left point.You fold the end you finished with (where you see the ball of yarn) to the right point. The pattern directs that you use mattress stitch to seam the cowl closed. Quite a few Ravelers have been stumped by how to make that mattress seam look neat and to keep it from gathering up. Taking a look at many of the Ravelry projects shows that not too many negotiated that successfully.

I took the lead of a few of the Ravelers, endorsed by Ivy as she answers questions about the pattern on her blog, and joined the seam with I-Cord. I used two needles and picked up the same number of stitches on each side of the seam. Then I worked the applied I-Cord connecting the cord by working through the stitches, using one from the front needle and one from the back–as you would for a 3-needle bindoff. I think it worked remarkably well. It also echoes the top and bottom I-Cord detail.

Here’s Glass Head modeling the cowl. I’ve already worn and enjoyed this drapey colorful cowl.

Sallah used up 330 yards. I declare Muddy Autumn Droplets put to rest and to good uses. The remaining small yardage is now relegated to my fingering weight oddments bag. It may yet appear as a dress for one of Evelyn’s dolls or stuffed buddies.