Saturday, October 23, 2010

Of kneesocks, lace and chandeliers

So then, what has your ballroom host been up to this past week or so? Well, a substantial portion of the answer would be: knitting. Do any of you happen to remember that tiny strip of red knitting from one of my early posts, which I promised would someday transform into a lace-up knee sock before your very eyes?

Well, so it has...




I haven't added the ribbon to lace it up yet, but almost-completing this inspires me to get finished more quickly with the other sock! I loosely followed the "Victorian Lace Socks" pattern by Lorri Ann Romesberg on Ravelry.com. The primary stitch--the mini-melon stitch--is based on a Victorian lace pattern. The yarn is Country brand.

Not many of you besides my fellow A:tLA fans will appreciate this, but I must admit that whenever it came time to make the "melons" I had the urge to declare, "I am Melon Lord! Mwa ha ha!" ~a la Toph. An urge I gave into more often than not.
  
Speaking of knitting, recently we took a trip to Micheals' (a crafts store here in the US) and my portion of the spoils were mostly of the yarn variety.

I already have some Vanna's Glamour yarn in black with golden metallic flecks, but I fell in love with the grey and silver version too. This yarn reminds me of delicate, spider-web lace--the kind my spider-fay characters would spin.


I remain fascinated by the Yoh-esque black x white asthetic I mentioned before, and I'm in the process of putting together a coordinate that captures it. I have the perfect kneesocks--a pair black with white chandeliers, which may be seen on this page (scroll down) at Goodgoth.com, but there's just one problem. The socks are not the best quality, and to my dismay they're getting holes in the toe. So, I have attempted to recreate the pattern in black and white yarn. It took a lot of stitch-counting and close examination of the sock, and I had to write down the pattern of black and white stitches in each row as I went along. But I don't think it came out too shabbily.



As you can see, the scale of the pattern is much larger in my knitting, because the yarn is so much thicker. (I'm using two different brands of yarn for this practice piece: the black and slightly finer yarn is Simply Soft and the white is, I believe, Bernat Satin). I would like to see if I can adjust the stitch count to make the chandeliers small enough that they would look good on socks. Of course, using a smaller yarn would help too.

All the same, I plan to use this piece of knitting as some kind of decorative...something, probably for my room. You see, I'm in the process of organizing and loli-gothify-ing my things, and it's still in the hectic stage. But if I start with the decorative crafting now, it will give me a head start--and besides, all organizing and no DIY makes DuskRose a very dull goth loli.

So, have you been knitting anything lately? Is there anything that you'd like to knit but don't quite have the courage to begin? I hadn't worked at all with different colors of yarn before making this chandelier, and replicating the sock pattern was another new challenge. That's to say, don't be afraid of trying something new. I know it sounds cliche, but I a little encouragement is never a bad thing. So if you've knit or crocheted anything recently, or just want to, let me know in a comment!

7 comments:

  1. To be honest you could make that two colour knit into a matching scarf for your socks. I think that would be really cute.
    Even if you just have the white chandelier reversed at the other side with black in the middle.

    The only things I have made have been two pink scarfs for my dolls. Though I'm trying to bring myself to make a blanket for one of them, tad scared of the number of stitches that will bring but I need to push myself to do it.

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  2. Thanks for your comment, and for the suggestion. I like the idea of reversing the colors.

    Good luck with making the blanket. I know the feeling--I was afraid my sock stitches would slip off the needle (I was using two double pointed needles for the lace up part before switching to four).

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  3. Your knitting looks lovely! I'm especially impressed by your translation of the chandelier, it would make a super pretty throw pillow.

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  4. Thank you so much! That's a lovely idea--I'll have to keep it in mind. It would probably look nice on a bag as well...hmm, I'm going to end up with chandeliers everywhere! XD

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  5. Toph FTW!!!~

    I really wish I could knit, but I'm much more adept at crochet, lol.

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  6. I must learn to knit someday! The chandelier pattern looks lovely. I wish I could do it!

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  7. akumaxkami: Yes! XD (Yay, another Avatar fan!)
    lol Ironically, I've been wanting to teach myself to crochet. Good luck to both of us? lol

    crimson: Thanks so much!
    As far as knitting, you could try looking for how to books at your local library--or actually, what I did several times with the sock was a Google search on "knitting sock heel" or whatever I was having trouble with. Looking at a combination of written instructions and tutorial videos seems to help more than either alone. ^^'

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