Socks: Needlefood Martinborough Vines in Crazy Monkeys

Here's my beautiful Needlefood Martinborough Vines yarn balled up using my new wool winder (looks a bit grubby here but I gave it a clean). I'm so glad I bought the winder, saves me the main thing that frustrates me about knitting from hand dyed yarn, balling it up by hand.

I got the idea to knit Monkey socks using this yarn from KiwiRaven's wonderful Plumberry Ambrosia No Purl Monkeys. I don't like to purl and always knit tow up so I was really pleased to find the Los Monos Locos pattern. Here's how my Crazy Berry Socks are knitting up:

I think they look great, and so did kitty, after this cute photo was taken (below) she un-wound and messed up all the yarn which resulted in a very frustrating two hours getting all the knots out.

I've since turned the heel and here's where I deviated from the pattern. I had tried with the toe to reinforce it using the Eye of Patridge stitch which didn't work so I was not going to try it on the heel. I absolutely adore the short row no wraps heel from the Lifestyle Toe Up Socks so that's what I did, holding 12 sts on each side with 8 active sts left in the middle. I turned after row 1 so started again using row 2 from the back and front. It's going to look really cool with the triangles lining up the side of the ankle.

The yarn itself is wonderful. It doesn't split and wasn't damaged by the numerous test knitting of the toe and the hammering that the cat gave it. The resulting fabric has lovely stitch definition and quite a stiff hard wearing feeling that I'm sure will soften beautifully with wear. It feels so soft on my feet when I try them on with a nice feeling of elasticity. I love how the colours are playing around in the sock pattern, especially the yellow against purple.

The next Needlefood yarn I'd love to have is Black Forest:

I love the new pictures: skeined on the left (how it comes) and re-skeined on the right (how it knits up).

Update: Hats

I've been very remiss in blogging about crafting lately, not because I haven't done any but mostly because I've been using Ravelry instead. But here I am with an update on hats. I've knitted two spiral hats which was really fun with cheap but nice Warehouse single ply variegated wool. Here's the first one (with my cat & without).

For some weird reason the pattern didn't result in the spiral working evenly but I fixed that in the second hat which was blue & grey. Amazingly my second one was a commission! I was paid $20 for it with yarn coming to about $6 and labour of about five hours it certainly wasn't living wage but I really enjoyed making it and gives me confidence with hats that I didn't have before.

I've almost made two hats hisotrically with Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Chunky. I completely mal-sized the first one for a baby so frogged it, it was also ugly because I didn't know how to knit in the round (left). I then reknit the yarn as a ribbed beanie once I learnt how to knit in the round and I gave it to my dad (right).