Sample Socks Are Knitted.

   These socks are not perfect, but that's mostly because they are made from 100% cotton yarn and the cotton yarn was a bear to knit.  But cotton yarn is a nice cheap way to make a sample pair of socks (these would fit a small child).  I really love making socks two at a time with magic loop.  I love being able to finish both socks at the same time.  So clever and casting the toes on first and getting that section grafted in the beginning is awesome.

    These are my second pair of sample socks.  I made a pair of these a few years ago when I first bought my "Toe-Up 2-at-a-Time Socks" book by Melissa Morgan Oakes.  The instructions in the book were great.  Easy to understand with lots of information on how to do increases, short rows, and knitting wrapped stitches.

      When I made these socks the first time, a few years ago I wasn't ready to commit to making a real pair of socks I could wear.  I'm ready to try my hand at real socks now.

     Here are the socks right before I cast off.

    Here they are with the ends woven in and the some of the major ladders stitched up.  I put the yellow sock on top because the heel on that sock came out better than the orange sock.  I lost my train of thought on the orange sock and didn't pick up my wraps on the orange sock and I'm surprised there aren't great big holes in the heel.  You can still see the wraps on the stitches in the heel cup of the orange sock.  Sloppy.

   These were really good practice.  I'm going to make some notes about how many stitches I need to get good fit on a sock for myself and I'll be casting those on in a couple of weeks.  I have some sewing and some other knitting to do in the meantime.

Testing, 1, 2, 3, Testing

    I bought a brand new walking foot for my Bernina 1530 a few weeks ago and I'm just getting around to testing it.  I want to use the walking foot on the Bernina to straight quilt my Pretty In Pink quilt when I get my batt.  Here is a picture the pretty little walking foot installed on my machine and a picture of my the front and the back of the sample I just stitched.  It's perfect.

   One note about the walking foot and why I wanted to test it.  Last year I bought an off brand walking foot for my Bernina 1530 from an ebay seller.  I was saving over $100.00 and I thought it would be fine.  The motion of the off brand walking foot was not smooth and although the stitches made using the foot were fine, I wasn't happy with how the machine was running.  So I had some extra money a couple of weeks ago and decided to spring for a Bernina brand walking foot.  I am so glad I did.  There is a world of difference in the two walking feet, the Bernina brand foot runs smoothly and you can see how even the stitches are on both sides.  I'm glad I bought it.  I do a lot of straight line quilting and will probably get a lot of use out of this beauty.  

   One other test I did was to make a 5 Minute Block (the pattern is from Suzanne McNeill).  I'm thinking about using this block for a scrappy Christmas quilt, but I couldn't decide if I would like making it, so I had to try it.  Still not sure about it.  But here is my test block.  It was a fun block to make, I probably need more contrast in my fabrics.