I'm shuffling through some ideas for some larger projects, and thought it would be good to have a little something on the needles. Alway Be Knitting. And when I need a standby, backup project, I think of socks. After looking through a ton of patterns, I decided on Donna Druchunas' Spiegel socks from the first Fall 2012 issue of Knitty.
These socks use the Bavarian knitting tradition of traveling stitches to make intricate patterns that really pop. I'm using some gray yarn that I got in Boulder last summer at Gypsy Wools. Its color is less solid than I thought, but not so variegated that the stitch patterns will get lost. The design you see runs down the outside of the cuff. This pair will have mirror-image left and right foot designs.
Druchunas uses a chart system that I've never seen before, but I'm picking it up rather quickly. I transposed the charts from image files to PDFs and imported them to Knit Companion, which is making it very easy to keep my place. So far I've completed the first chart. Things are about to get complicated, following multiple charts at once. Probably not a good idea to tackle this next section while watching subtitled movies.
I no longer enjoy subtitled movies as much for that exact reason!!!
ReplyDeleteI don't know how I missed that sock pattern - I know I would have remembered that chart! I love charts but I'm going to have to stare at that one for a bit....
ReplyDeletePlease comment a bit more about Knit Companion. Have a new IPad and I'm looking for the best apps. Thanks
ReplyDeleteTXSallie
Sallie --
ReplyDeleteI commented a bit about this when I got the app in December. I find it very useful for keeping my place in charts -- and for this project, it's proving invaluable as I can use it to track multiple charts at once. It can be a bit tricky to figure out how to get patterns into it -- I use dropbox -- but once you figure that out, it works great.
One issue I'm running into is that using my iPad to follow charts means I burn through battery life faster than normal iPad use.