I may have lost count, but I’m pretty sure this is my 18th WIP, I think my last one was in October!

These socks were knit for Sockdown, month 4. They’re called Basket Case Socks and they were a pretty quick knit. I kept getting distracted by Christmas prep for the kids – first Christmas in a new country with all our stuff back home meant I needed to round up a lot of the traditional comforts for them and to be honest, that wasn’t easy. Most of November was eaten up with planning and then of course December was full of doing! I just casted on for Aramis Socks last night, so there’s not much to report on that front other than to say I’m making a dent on my first day out of the gate!

Between socks, I’m still working on my Beekeeper Quilt. I have a list of projects I really want to work on this year, but I think I will make a rule for myself that everything has to be made with sock weight yarn so I can use all my scraps for the quilt. I’m looking forward to finishing my quilt this year but I do love the look of all my hexi puffs on the table like this. When I come to the end of a scrap ball, I start up with the next in line and I love those puffs the most! Here are my favorites out of the 200+ that I have so far.

I’m nervous to admit that I want to take on another knitting challenge this year, in addition to the 12 pairs of socks for Sockdown 6 and the finishing the beautiful quilt from all these puffs – I want to do Tiny Owl Knits 13 in 2013. The Beekeeper’s Quilt is a Tiny Owl Knits project and all her (Stephanie Dosen) projects are equally adorable and full of whimsy. Dare I try it?! Someone encourage me!!

I’ve been working hard this week updating our family photo site. I take a ridiculous amount of pictures in a day and an even more ridiculous amount when we’re road tripping or having an adventure of some kind. I took heaps and heaps of pictures and videos on our journey from Ontario to Los Angeles and though we’ve been here for 3 1/2 months, I just finished uploading them all this week.

Since this project was meant to be a ‘scrap yarn’ project I’m trying to work on it between projects with whatever is left from the sock I last made. The issue there of course is that I’m usually racing to finish a pair of socks for someone’s birthday (and therefore I am a week or so behind on knitting the next pair of socks). So when I finish a pair, I’m casting on for the next pair.

However. Since we’ve been in LA, I’ve been a lot more relaxed about everything. I’m sure it has a lot to do with not being ‘home’, even if we are living here for the foreseeable future. I posted a while ago that my mindset started to change just before we left Canada when I had to accept that I was going to have to start our trek down to California without having a new place picked out. That was pretty huge for me. I’m a planner. Like woah, I’m a planner. I almost want to say I was a planner. It hasn’t even been 4 months yet but I feel less of an urge to plan things now. The whole drive down here instead of stressing out about where the next hotel was going to be, we just drove on and stayed where we stayed. We got tired, Googled the closest hotel and checked in. And guess what? It was fine. It was better than fine. I was super fun and I actually felt really relaxed about the whole thing after the first night. So what does that have to do with socks? Um, everything!

In January I made a list of the 12 pairs of socks I wanted to make and who I wanted to make them for. I used to see it as a timeline (as in I have to finish Brigitte’s socks in April because that’s when her birthday is) but now I see it more like an ordered list (Brigitte got her socks at the end of May and was perfectly happy with them). I also took off a few names of people I have already knitted socks for and added a couple that I haven’t knitted for – and no projects are tied to birthdays. So I will keep knitting on my puffs until I feel like casting on for the next pair of socks in my list!

My favorite puff right now is the purple and green one in the second photo. I knew when I casted on that I didn’t have enough purple for a whole puff but in the spirit of a scrap project, I just added on the next ball of scrap yarn and kept knitting. It reminds me of our first apartment – it was green and purple. Haha. yes, really.

I am still working on that this week and today we’re meeting up with a homeschooling group in our area. I’m so excited!

Today I’m linking up with Freshly Pieced

I finished the Hedgerow socks and popped them in the mail yesterday! So in the next week or so my husband’s wonderful Nanny will get her extremely late handmade birthday gift! Photos of that after these little cuties.

At some point last fall, one of my besties Talea, my sister Nikki and I all started knitting our own versions of this amazing blanket. Since it’s a scrap yarn quit, or at least that’s the idea, it’s generally worked on in between projects with the leftover yarn. Very similar that way to the sock yarn blanket comes together (the one I linked to here is my sister’s). I’ve always wanted to make a sock yarn blanket since socks are like, 90% of what I knit, but the puffs are just too cute to resist so away I went. The problem was I’d find myself casting on for new socks as soon as I finished the last pair and my ‘must do things in order’ brain would not let me put down the socks to work on the puffs. However, as I mentioned before, I’m thankfully growing out of that and have been able to put down new socks (these are next) and crank out some puffs.

Each puff takes me between 20-30 minutes, but with three wee ones underfoot I’m lucky if I get the opportunity to have 20-30 uninterrupted minutes when I’m not supposed to be doing something else. Originally I figured this quilt would take me approximately eleventy billion years to finish but then I thought, I’m sure I waste 20-30 minutes at a time doing random things. I’m just going to channel my randonmess into puff knitting and I’ll have this thing done by next year! Do not snap me from this delusion, thankyouverymuch. Right now I have 43 and I’m keeping a tally going in the sidebar, I have to see what happens when they’re all laid out but I will likely need upwards of 400 puffs! It’s going to be a fun, colorful quilt! Some of the yarn scraps I’m using are in the bag in the back of the first image. I can’t wait to see it!!

Here are a few pictures of the finished Hedgerow socks! Socks #4 for the year!

Today I’m linking up with the WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.

As if I haven’t posted a WIP Wednesday since I got to LA! The last one was in early March and those socks are finished!

I casted on for these babies, Hedgerow Socks almost a month ago! I had a serious issue lining up the pattern after I broke off for the heel. Ugh. I knitted and knitted and then ripped back daaaaays of knitting and then? Then?! I did it again. This time it has lined up and I’m keeping my fingers crossed the second sock lines up too!

Pattern syncing issue notwithstanding, these socks are a quick and painless knit. The pattern is a four row repeat, but really it’s just two rows repeated twice it’s even easier!

The effect is a pretty but not too fancy sock that hopefully my husband’s Grandmother will love (and wear).

I’ll also show off the finished sock from March’s WIP, the lovely Bintje. These are pretty special socks because while just like a lot of the socks I’ve made in the last two years, they were cast on in the woods of Central Ontario, but theeeeen they were knitted on across the United States. I knitted on these socks in ten different states (Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada and California – for the curious). The recipient of these socks will absolutely love that little trivia about them so she’s the right person to have them for sure!

Today I’m linking up with Work in Progress Wednesday, Whatever Goes Wednesday, and Welcome Wednesday

This week I casted on for Sock #3 of 2012 – Bintje. Super super pretty. They’re meant to be knee socks, but we’ll see what happens. Ha!

The cuff on these socks is so neat!! I had seen it in other patterns before, but truthfully I had thought it was more complicated than it actually is and I had skipped it every time I saw it and knitted a normal cuff. I know, super lameo. This year however, along with my resolution to knit a pair of socks every month (I’m on my third pair right now, so far so good), I’m going to follow the patterns I picked out last year and actually knit up this year’s socks as the patterns tell me to. I’m glad I did, look how cute!!!

Essentially, you knit 6 rows, then you knit a row of k2tog, yo – giving you a row of holes, then you knit another 6 rows. I’ll take pic of that on the second sock. Then you fold it over so the holes are the middle and the yarn overs between the holes form the little ridges you see. You can either sew down the top of the cuff or do it the way the pattern says, which I did thankyouverymuch. You pick up stitches at the very beginning and knit them to the last row of the cuff, of course you have to do this when you’re actually on the last row of the cuff, but it was fairly simple. All sock knitters can pick up stitches because we have to when we do the gusset anyway, right? In the third picture you can see the inside seam where I did this. Maybe when I get to the second sock I’ll make a video.

I also chose to use slightly thicker sock yarn (Stroll Fingering hehe fingering instead of Stroll Sock) on 2.5mm needles instead of 2mm needles so the sock would be a little denser than other socks. They’re for someone in a wettish coldish area who reads my blog so that’s all I’m going to say, though that’s probably all I needed for say for her to know they’re for her. Sigh.

There is a lot going on around here in the next couple of weeks and then we depart for a serious adventure that I have no doubt I will fill you in on in horribly painful detail once it begins. I hope to have at least the second sock started by this time next week!