What you knit is what you get

I got a modified pair of socks as I didn't pay too much atterntion to the pattern.

What: Wendel / General Hogbuffer

How: Circular needle 2.25 mm

From: Drops Fabel, 60 g

Yep. I started working on yet another pair for The Box which is getting quite full. This time I chose a free pattern by General Hogbuffer. I've been meaning to try the pattern for years already. The General writes his free patterns to fit his quite big feet so I left out one repeat to get a suitable stitch count.

The socks have a pretty lace pattern spiraling around them. The pattern repeat was quick to memorize and the socks were a breeze all the way to the heels.

And then I found out I would need that one repeat I left out if I wanted to follow the pattern for the insteps. So from there on, these are my own mod. I'm an experienced enough knitter to deal with this and keeping my stitch counts correct with the lace.

The pattern would have let the spiral go on for a bit and then it would've been mirrored for the rest of the socks. I didn't want to think how I could make it work with my stitch count so I continued the lace as it was. It worked nicely this way too.

The box is truly running out of space. I had to resort to a little violence to fit this pair in. And now there is only room for one more pair on top.

You see, Santa's little helper made a pair too! My sister knitted a pair of lovely colorwork socks. So maybe I don't have to worry about whether or not I have time to make one more pair.

Colorful stripes

Or not.

What: Basic socks / Own pattern
How: Circular needle 2.25 mm
From: Scrap yarns, 60 g

Few years ago I came up with a fun way to use scrap yarns. I made a pair of socks for a friend knitting stripes with two yarns that were almost the same color. You couldn't really see the stripes but they made the colors behave differently and I had such fun making them. It may well be that I'm the only knitter on earth who has fun making invisible stripes but I liked them so much that ever since then I've wanted to try it again.

I went through my scrap yarns and picked out all creamy neutrals and knitted a pair of stripy socks. I cast on 60 sts, worked 12 rounds of ribbing and then started working 3 round stripes. The heel is a French heel, the kind that has a round shape.

The colors didn't work exactly as I planned. They had a bit too much contrast and you can clearly see the stripes. And then there was this cute but unfortunate blue glitter yarn that turned out the be way more blue than I imagined. Look how loud it is! How rude.

You can't really blame the socks for having too much color but I really like them. I've been longing for a pair of light colored socks in my wardrobe and now I have them.

I am a bit bothered by the amount of contrast in these and I will probably have a do-over at some point. I still have a bunch of light mint scraps and deep green scraps so we'll see.

Hilla

I've grown old. Or at least grown up. I'm into hiking and broccoli. And now, even cloudberries even though for all my life I've been convinced that they are just too sour for my taste. Speaking of cloudberries, I designed a new sweater called Hilla. It means cloudberry in Finnish.

What: Hilla / Own pattern

How: Circular needles 3.5 mm and 2.5 mm

From: Uschitita Merino Single in colors Braveheart + Owl + Grounded + Moccacino, 96 + 75 + 69 + 84 g

Fading has long been a trend in the knitting realm. As usual, I'm joining the party late - but nevertheless, I'm joining in! I finally got around to designing and knitting my very own fade sweater. I have designed a gradient cargidan, Utu, but fading is a bit different. In a gradient, you're using different shades of the same color. In fading, you can use totally different colors as long as there are some speckles etc. to join the colors together.

I bought the yarns last spring at Edinburgh Yarn Fest. I had wanted to try Uschitita's yarns for a long time and now, I took my timing selecting the perfect quartet. Unexpectedly, I ended up with this yellowish color scheme.

Last winter, I designed a DK weight brioche sweater with these lovely little vables running down from the shoulders to the wrists. And ever since, I've been asked by a friend if I could some day design something else with the cute cables but leave out the scary brioche. I finally got around to it. This one's for you, Jenni!

The sweater starts off with narrow shoulder flaps with cables. Those are left on holders while stitches are picked up from their edges to work the back and front. Once the back and front meet at the underarm, the rest of the body is worked in the round.

Fear not! Even though the sweater looks like it's reverse stockinette stitch, the body is worked inside out - so endless rounds of knitting with no purl in sight. Though, the sleeve are worked on the right side with reverse stockinette stitch because of the cables.

The sweater itself is very simple and relaxing knit. The only exciting part happens right at the beginnig with the shoulder flaps but those are quick to make. The rest of the sweater might be even boring if it wasn't for the fading of colors. Waiting for the next fade keeps things interesting.

The pattern is designed for a fade of four colors and includes detailed instructions on how and when to work the fades. There are also calculations for how much you should have yarn left upon finishing the body so you won't run out of yarn for the sleeves etc. The keep the color changes as neat as possible, the first fade happens once the back and front have been joined to work in the round. Therefore the bigger sizes require more than one skein of color 1.

I'm eagerly awaiting for this weekend's craft fair at Tampere, Finland. It's a great opportunity to find your favorite color quartet for Hilla sweater. I'm also giving a 20% discount to the pattern until the end of the week if you use the code "cloudberry" in your Ravelry cart.