Doodling in Yarn

This past weekend was a good one for finishing. On Saturday evening, in addition to finishing up the skein of handspun I shared on Sunday, I also finished the latest pair of socks I've been designing. That was perfect timing, because on Sunday evening I had to cast on a new project that is time sensitive.

One of the make-alongs I've been participating in recently is the Down Cellar Studio podcast Pigskin Party. Jen hosts this annual event to coincide with the NFL season, and throughout the event there are various challenges and short-term mini events. This year Jen introduced a new team challenge, and one of the final events for the team challenge is a head-to-toe relay. The goal is to produce items to cover a person from head to toe, with each participating team member completing an item. The catch is that only one person can be crafting at a time, so it's a bit of a race to finish up the project so the next person can start. There are bonus points for yardage used and more difficult techniques, like cabling and stranded colorwork.

Because I'm pretty fast as them, I volunteered to do one of the socks. The other sock knitter and I also agreed that we could do colorwork for bonus points. I had an idea for a stranded sock pattern, so I figured this would be a good way to swatch -- because a sock is small enough that knitting one isn't much more work than doing a serious swatch. I cast on Sunday evening and as of this morning have most of the heel flap complete.

This photo was taken at the end of my lunch break yesterday, so there's a bit more knit by now, but you can get a good feel for the pattern (the rest of the leg is a mirror of the smaller motifs). I am using some Knit Picks Felici for the main color, and the black contrast is some very deep stash Knit Picks Essential. You can tell it's old because Knit Picks hasn't used that name for that base in a long time; it's now called Stroll. I'm quite pleased with how this "yarn doodle" has worked up, though I can see where it needs a few tweaks. Fortunately I don't have to have a finalized pattern for the relay, just a completed sock, and I imagine another couple of days of knitting with take care of it. I will likely make some changes to the stranded pattern on the foot, and once I figure out what works/what I like best, I can start over with the real thing (which might end up being a pair of socks for Rainbow, as she's already mentioned that she has no colorwork socks and heavily hinted that she'd like a pair). I have to say, it feels really good to be doing some serious swatching and getting something useful out of it in addition to the swatch!