NEWT 8

This NEWT (for the Harry Potter knitting game on Ravelry) is finally done! I really struggled to get this one finished; socks are a lot of work!

Purple! This is yarn I got from "Fiberific!" at Bendigo last year. Loved the knitting and the color and the pattern.

and it's got hugs and kisses cables all over it :)

And then I used all the bits of leftovers to make these colorwork socks out of all the rainbow bits, and the black and white :)

The next 8 socks are going to fly by! I've gotten my Circular Sock Machine (it's an Erlbacher Gearhart Speedster) and (as recommended) put a few skeins through it as just plain tubes. Tomorrow, I'm going to see if I can do a picot hem and a heel and a toe.

It's a sharp learning curve but I'm starting to figure out all the parts and pieces. There's a sock thing called a bonnet. You hook it up to all the hooks, thread some yarn down from the top and through the yarn carrier on the side, and just crank the handle around and around. That makes it sound easy. There are lots of things to keep an eye on, like hanging weights from the bottom, keeping the tension right, fixing problems with the hooks, etc.

Did these three skeins in the three days after getting the machine (I call him Bach) and today made the second one into armwarmers and a little bag for Jasmine. Took me far longer to knit the little bit of ribbing at each end than it did to crank the whole tube of sock yarn :)

It's December. No new NEWT for me; I'm having a month "off" (even though I start work again on Friday with 6 nights in a row!) I'm going to figure out how to knit socks properly, and fix a few things that need repairs :)