What I Did Last Summer

It turns out that one of my daughters, A, is allergic to latex. It is amazing how many products in this life have latex or rubber related substances in them, including anything with elastic, like commercial SOCKS. This means that we always have something we can give her for birthdays and Christmas, and she really really appreciates the handmade socks. This last summer my older daughter, M, and I decided to get with the program and make A a lot of socks so she could be comfortable all the time. I made some by hand and some on the machine, and ended up making about 17 pairs. I tried a lot of different yarns, and a lot of different methods. Now that I have the basic sock wardrobe done, I can have more fun with colorful yarns, like Socks That Rock and Lorna's Laces.

Most of the socks I made on the machine were the white ones. Machine knit socks usually have short row toes and heels, and you can knit a pair in about an hour. I usually do the ribbing by hand and knit the socks flat with a flat seam up one side.

My sister was gifted with a huge bag of wool yarn from a weaver who was clearing out her stash, and she gave this gigantic bag of red, black, pink and purple yarn to me. I have been making clogs from the Fiber Trends Felted Clog pattern with this yarn. I had never really felted anything on purpose before, but this pattern is great and all three pairs of clogs are being much used.

The pink clogs show the before felting and after felting. They felted up OK though the black ones ended up looking like a character from Sesame Street and I had to give them a haircut.