Rainbow Knee High Socks

My mom asked me what I wanted for Christmas last year and instead of saying, "yarn" and sending her into a yarn shop with no clue what to buy I added 700 dollars worth of shit to my Knit Picks wish list and sent it off to her. Don't hate about the dollar amount, it was about having things on there for her to choose from, VARIETY.

Anyhoo, I added 4 balls of  Felici Self Striping yarn in Rainbow to the list. I wanted Rainbow knee highs.


BAD.

Lo and behold my mom picked the rainbow yarn, my mom rules everything. She's so smart.

What my sofa looked like during the holidays. Sorry family.

As soon as I finished my holiday knitting I decided to start on the Rainbow socks except my pattern disappeared. I decided to write my own. It was both harder and easier than I thought and educational. For now I'll leave pattern writing to the experts.

The socks turned out great. Here are some pics.

 My laptop sometimes does double-duty.

 I had to try it on. Disregard my dry ass legs, it's winter.

 Who doesn't love turning a heel?

 Detail of the decreases.

 OMG. This gusset was the worst thing ever.

Hey look, they match!

It took me 4 seasons of The West Wing (how I measure time) to make these. I'm super pleased with them and I get compliments on them. There is nothing more satisfying than saying "Thanks, I made them."

Finished.

New Ink

I will update on projects later. I've been seriously slacking on that, sorry.

I got a new tattoo last Friday and it fucking rocks!

Metal Mike at Tiger Rose Tattoo did an amazing job. I had been thinking about getting a knitting tattoo for years but had no idea what I wanted and doing a google image search for "Knitting tattoo" brings up a lot of yarn balls with knitting needles. I wanted something completely different.

When I finally decided that I was going to bite the bullet I emailed Mike and explained what I wanted and that I wasn't warm to the idea of having a ball of yarn and knitting needles. He replied saying not to worry about sending him pictures of tattoos from the internet but instead send him pictures of things I've made and like. I sent him pictures of my needles, a cake of yarn that I really liked, my scissors, other notions, and a very cool project I did. Here are some pictures.

The outline. My mom was so excited I had to text her this pic.

The top photo is Mike working. The bottom is the outline still being done.

Before color.

Finished.

I love that the needles look like Knit Picks Harmony's, the detail on the handle of the scissors is fantastic those scissors look like exactly like the ones in my knitting bag. The deathflake is a fair isle piece that I crashed and burned at but I still love the way it looks and I will make it again and I will succeed (you always have to get back on the horse). 

Time to finish this sweater I've had in my stash for a year now.

Pattern Writing.

So, I decided to write a pattern. Calm down, it's just for socks. The thing that lead me to writing the pattern was Rav, I could not for the life of me find a pattern for knee high socks that would accommodate my muscular calves. I like my knee socks fitted so they don't slip and literally nothing was to be found on Rav. I did find this guideline which has been super helpful. But math! I'm not great at math but I'm not terrible at it either.

So here I sit. Writing this pattern as I go, I've started decreases, my laptop now serves as a table on the sofa of doom to hold my notebook, pencil, eraser, and phone (it has a row counting app).

The good news is that after the first one is done the second one will be easy. Right?