SailingKnitter

While I was walking around the little nearby town of Fronteras Rio Dulce the other day, I spotted these unusual baby cages cribs.

I love the natural peeled tree branches which were used for this wooden crib. Very rustic, natural and warm. The swinging hammock style crib below is made from strips of knitted fabric, including the bottom. I thought that these were both so innovative as they used materials that were from the parent's environments and were not mass-produced nor expensive. Hey! I want a swinging bed like this little fellow has!

As promised it is now time for some knitting updates. The sock blanks that I dyed while anchored out in the Albuquerque Cays a couple of months ago have been knit up into (surprise) socks. So, here's the reds, black and a touch of gold blank before it was unraveled and turned into socks.
These are the adult-sized socks knit straight from the blank. The photo is a little washed out looking. The heels and toes were knit with a black commercial yarn (Regia 75% wool/ 25% nylon) because the blanks were 100% merino which would not stand up to the daily wear that I expect these socks to take.

Next, I combined the leftover yarn with the black Regia and worked stripes alternating every 2 rounds. I actually like these better - the black sets off the colors.

The "Caribbean Sea, Sky & Reef" colored sock blank produced these socks. The merino wool is so soft! Again, I wanted to use reinforced yarn for the heels and toes so I dyed up a small hank of some Regia off-white sock yarn to match. The leftovers from this sock blank are currently being used to create a Monster Sock by combining it with some yellow yarns in my leftovers.
At the same time that I dyed these two sock blanks, I overdyed a blob of non-matching self-patterning yarns. As I only had rather small bits of these leftovers, these socks were knit as "fraternal twins" rather than identical. The overdyeing color brings a uniformity to the socks. The blob was a tangled mess and I swear I spent more time untangling yarn than I did actually knitting the socks. Lesson learned: Take the time to make neat butterfly hanks from the yarn before dyeing them. I sure hope some kid in Kazakhstan with cold toes enjoys these latest finished knitting projects!


But wait. . . there's more. . . I'll post some more finished projects soon. I certainly don't want to overwhelm you with all the sockingly exciting photos in one post.