For the love of Faux-isle

Arne and Carlos for Regia; colourway "Summer Night" 

If you follow knit-bloggers or are active on Instagram, you'll probably be feeling like these Arne and Carlos sock yarns are just everywhere at the moment.  I've seen dozens of posts featuring the beautiful self-patterning fair-isle in gorgeous Scandy-colourways and was pretty keen to get my hands on some to try for myself.  

Although not normally a fan of faux-isle yarn, I must admit I adore everything about this yarn for a number of reasons. Regia has always been a favourite sock yarn of mine.  It's got a sturdy fibre content with the inclusion of 25% nylon, knits to a decent mid-size gauge, and is good on price point too.

The self-patterning yarns do give you maximum impact for minimum effort too.  I had many converations on the train with people fascinated by how the pattern was emerging, and almost disbelief when I told them it was no knitting magic skill but just the yarn.  The most I did towards the patterning was to wind a bit off before starting the second sock so I could manage to get them matchy-matchy.  Still, impressive apparently so who am I to argue?

I worked them toe-up, starting with a Turkish cast-on and then following on from my pledge to keep trying new things, I decided to try the Fish Lips Kiss Heel.   I had been wondering about this heel method for sometime, as it had been mentioned of several of the podcasts I follow and people were singing it's praises.  

It is very simple to work - don't let the 16 pages of pattern notes put you off - and it fits my heel rather well.  I have rather skinny heels and ankles (as can be seen in the first photo!) and to date I haven't had good results with the fit of short row heels in the way I find a heel flap fits me.  This heel still struggles a little to address this, however the detailed instruction within the pattern notes on how to determine when to place the heel has resulted in a more accurate foot measurement, and that has definitely helped in this instance.

I will be interested to see how these wear in comparison to a slipped stitch heel flap, as my feeling is the stocking stitch heels may not be as sturdy along the "seam"?  As mentioned the yarn is true sock yarn, so I think it has been given the best chance possible and I remain hopeful. This is a limited edition colourway, so I am keen to have these socks last.

The sock drawer is looking decidedly healthy again now, but they are such good projects for the train so I think I'm just going to keep knitting them and start a little stockpile for gifts.  There is no shortage of sock yarn in the stash, and there are only so many socks and shawls one person needs, right? 

Do you ever have a quandary of the need for knits and the need to knit?  I'd love to hear all your methods of managing it, if you do?

Colourwork in a flash

I've spent some time this passed week getting to know my knitting machine, and having a bit of a play around with punch cards.

Colourwork is incredibly quick on a machine.  Well, when I say quick, I should clarify.  

Once I get passed the 2 days of frustration and bewilderment as to exactly why it's not working; the numerous cast-ons only to realise I've forgotten to flick a switch to position B, or I've threaded it wrong, or the tension is too tight/loose, or as I pass the carriage over for the seemingly simple row, half a dozen $*&#% stitches jump off the hooks and run aalllllll the way down - then, after all this, it's incredibly quick.

I was determined to pass on at least some small thing to the very friend that I got this sweet machine off, before she sets off on her adventure to live in Scotland.  It seemed only fitting that small thing be a piece of machine knitted colourwork.  It tied in a good deal of things I've been lucky to learn from her since meeting up in 2013, and I felt very proud to hand these over to her last week at lunch.  I did not, however, manage to get a photo of them completed!

Once I found my stride, I went in search of more yarn and came across two balls of Jo Sharp Alpaca Silk Georgette.  I think this yarn has now been discontinued?  It's a lovely alpaca blend in sportweight and I'd picked up these two contrasting colours in a sale. Two balls of sportweight isn't quite enough with which to do much, though.  I settled on a small cowl, buttoned for ease of getting on/off.

The yarn went through the machine beautifully, and the high contrast swan white and charcoal have worked together in such a perfect way.  I handknit the ribbed bands because although I know you can simulate rib, and create buttonholes on a knitting machine, my skill are not there yet.  I personally also like the blend of machine and hand.

Buttons gleaned from my recently felted (sob) cardigan were a perfect match, and the cowl was quickly snaffled up by Lily with her now-patented trick of "Oh! Did you make that for me?!".  I might secretly decide that we'll share it though.

There was even more colourwork experimentation, but I might save that for the next post.  It involves a Very Special Skein, and I think this one deserves it's own day in the sun.

I did a quick progress shot of my Summer of the Single Skein progress yesterday and I'm happy so far.  Depending on your interpretation of when Summer "ends", I feel like we are at the halfway mark?  March seems like as good a time as any to wind things up and start thinking about Autumn, don't you think?

How are all your special skein plans working out?  Are you planning or winging it?  I'm doing a little of column A, a little of column B.  Don't forget to tag your projects with #summerofthesingleskein on Instagram, or do a bit of show-and-tell over on the Ravelry group - we've got over 100 members to date, and lots of inspirational posts, chat and encouragement.