Lang yarn men's socks using Winwick Mum techniques

These are not photographed in the best surroundings due to the rain when they were photographed so they are taken in my very eclectic and colourful conservatory. The light is OK its just the miss-matched furnishings!

Well I have knitted several pairs of socks for myself as well as a few pairs of child sized socks. Now my partner wants some and I wanted to get these done well before winter so I really went for it in knitting these. I even did a swatch to work out how many stitches to fit his feet - using the Winwick Mum stitch count method.

The yarn is Lang. I bought it in Krakow several years ago so have no idea of the current price and I also lost the ball band so I do not know the colourway. I am quite sure it, or a very similar colour will still be available if you wanted some. Lang do some amazing sock yarns and they wear really well. The pair I made for myself back in 2022 are still in really good condition despite being worn regularly. In fact I have made a couple of Lang sock yarn pairs and they all wear well but the 2022 ones are my first in actual sock yarn. I have since reduced my stitches to make them a bit smaller but even with the first pair being slightly loose they are still going strong.  My rainbow socks were also Lang and I bought all these sock yarns together in Krakow. That was my souvenir present to myself when we had a holiday there. I still have a couple of balls in my stash in fact that have yet to be knitted. 

Anyway after doing a swatch, in the end I needed 64 stitches to get socks to fit my UK sized 10 shoe partner. And you can see they do fit which made me very happy. You can never be sure until you finish this kind of project after all though we did do several tryings on as this project progressed.

I followed the basic sock free pattern from Winwick Mum so not too difficult and the only real thing is getting your head round using 2.5mm needles. That said its now my 9th or 10th pair of socks. I have actually lost count! Wow! Nit something I would have considered possible a few years ago.

Anyway here se my latest socks. 

Depending on how useful he finds them I may be knitting my partner a second pair. But I am waiting to see if these get worn first. My partner cycles in all weather's so they may get well worn this winter. We will see.

When I made these I wound each part of the sock yarn ball into two separate balls. With Lang thats easy because the centre of the 100g ball has a plain white bit and then sock 2 starts. So its pretty easy to pattern match these Lang yarns. You start at the centre of the balls though each sock on the ball band must be a toe up because I have all the patterns in reverse. Mine are top down socks. That really does not matter about the reversal of the stripe pattern though. 

My only annoyance? 

Well I did exactly the same number of rows and exactly began the yarn at the same point on the ball for both socks but the yarn is not exact in printing because one toe has an extra purple row to the other and I am positive its the yarn not my knitting. Still its not really such a problem and except for me no one will ever know. My partner cannot see it even when I pointed this out.

Thanks for visiting and see you again soon.

Take care

Bracken 

Leggings 3

These are my 3rd pair of basic leggings made in activwear fabric - and made the correct size to fit me!

They are an almost tie dye effect and very summery. Perhaps more than either of the other pairs.

These are my first two pairs:

I have actually made a 4th pair but have yet to get good photos of one of these but they are swimwear fabric so similar, but different. These are a wicking activewear fabric.

I just ordered another 1m piece of activewear fabric in a different print but I suspect the last pair will get made next spring because its already August and I tend to wear fleece lined lined leggings all winter.
I am intending to see how french terry with lycra works this winter. I bought some to try but I really do not know yet if leggings made from French terry will just become baggy and out of shape.
Anyway this last pair are thin active wear fabric ( though not thin fabric it's 210gsm and feels safe for doing "active stuff in and lovely for cooler days in summer. Especially so in this print in fact.

I am hoping to get some photos this weekend of other items I have made because my photographing has fallen behind somewhat meaning its impossible to stay up-to-date with my blogging and that is something I find very frustrating!

Of course it also means when you wear things you made their is also a chance they could be damaged before I get to catalogue them and I like to do this as much for myself as my bog because I find I forget the making details over time and when I want to replace something its very handy to have it available to me to look up so I can do the same again. Or of course make any differences that I decide would be advantageous in my next rendition of this or that item.

I do hope Blogger keeps going because I did start a WordPress account but never got round to moving everything over to it. Its probably something I really should get round to in fact. Ah for a few more hours in the day!

So thats it for this week until I get some photos taken. Have a great weekend and thanks for popping by,

Take care

Bracken

Knitted Clanger- 2 weeks to knit, 7 months to construct!

This toy was incredibly hard to photograph well. Normally I ensure my photos are the right way up and make sense when I write my posts. This time it seems to not matter and when I adjusted one photo I ended up returning it to how it started so please bear with the slightly off photos for this blog post. 

This is a Tiny Clanger from the BBC TV series which despite its aimed at very young kids I still love and have been a fan since the original 1970s series. The BBC released this knitting pattern for Tiny Clanger many years ago and its something I have had on my to-do list for absolutely years. So this toy is made using free pattern I downloaded years ago. It's still free though. The pattern uses 4 ply. I used DK hence my upscaling of the clothing is out of scale. I did ok with the feet I think but not the tabard ( if that's what you would call it?). Maybe Armour is better?

Feet are black felt (synthetic from amazon,) on top but brown underneath cos I didn't want to buy any more so used what I had. It's the same stuff I used for the Easter basket last year. It comes in 50 or so coloured squares per pack. I accidentally ended up with it on subscribe and save and didn't realise till the second pack arrived. Anyway according to the pattern both top and bottom of the feet should be black felt. I added a piece of tupperware for strengthening in side each foot to make them more rigid.

The pattern does not do this but many many years ago myself and several friends got into the Rave movement and I made, for lots of people, velvet baseball caps. To make the peaks I used tupperwares so if you fancied doing that its a cheat way to get a harder but washable strengthened area. It works for the Clanger feet anyway.

You can see here the armour is a bit small!!!

Has to be said though it useful to have two sheets of each colour of felt so if you did buy some with the idea of crafting rather than for children then you probably want two packs. Though the colours are slightly different per pack. Though I received them a month appart so maybe if bought together you get the same mix of colours. The tabard is actually 2 slightly different shades of red. The pattern uses pink but the child this was for chose red. It works. 

The clanger us 100% wool except for the hair. That's acrylic because I had some stashed. The wool was cheaper per 100g than acrylic so I went with the environmentally friendly option. It might turn out to be a mistake. It's meant to be washable but the child who now owns it is 2 so it's likely to need washing quite a bit. 

Small person who now owns this Clanger seems not to care a jot its all a bit small but it is not I beleive going to stand up to play well so I reckon I will ask small person if he would like me to alter it. It occurs to me while writing this I could glue these pieces to new felt pieces which would thicken the rather thin felt sheets and in turn make the armour more substantial. Then just use a sewing machine to sew them together nd cut around each piece to make them larger. 

If you look at the CF panel as well I did the embroidery the wrong way round it should lie the other way so the longer side across the Clanger body not down it.


Anyway the pattern is odd in the way it's constructed and the strange increases and decreases to get shaping buy its easy to knit. It's however in loads if bits. Like each ear has 2 knitted bits plus felt. So I spent just over 2 weeks knitting this then 7 months to finish it. 

Armour/ Tabard is far too small!!!

The tabard is embroidered in gold thread. I bought this when experimenting with using odd bits of yarn. The silver skein was used for my blue aran. Though I still gave enough of both gold and silver for several mire garments. I think its easier to sew with than knit with actually but I am not an embroidered. I am truly rubbish at embroidered so this took ages.

So yes the entire project took ages actually and I am so glad Tiny Clanger finally got finished. Its a project that started to really get to me because it was taking so very long to get her finished. When I began I had ideas to make all 5 of the current Clangers but I don't have the heart to repeat this right now so have just stopped with Tiny. This does mean I still have 4 balls of this pink DK and I am not a pink person so now need to find a way to use that. Hopefully something will come to me because its a good quality yarn. I really don't want to just give it away. 

If I really do want to knit more Clangers I can always buy more yarn.

Ah the yarn is the Drops Karisma that I used for a jumper previously and its a very good prive from Wool Warehouse if you wanted some. Its 100% wool. Red is also Karisma left over from the mushroom season jumper. Black is embroidery thread. Yellow is acrylic from Aldi.

Have a lovely week, thanks for visiting,

Bracken