Last year Christmas surprised me when it came around the corner, so I started earlier this year with Christmas knitting. Yesterday I started this beautiful sock, designed by Emily Wessel of Tin Can Knits. I mixed her pattern up a bit, because the socks are for my dad and he doesn’t like patterns on top of his foot.

Yarn is Wollmeise Twin in Mont Blanc. Although I very recently didn’t have any nice words for the thinner Wollmeise qualities, this yarn totally changed my mind. It has less yardage on a skein than the 100% Merino yarn, but is so much more comfortable to knit with! Twin is very tightly wound and has a nice spring, so you hardly notice that you knit something – it’s wonderful. Definitely not my last Twin project!

The other project I started during the conference week is my Conic, design by Cookie A, who is better known for her sock designs. Last year she released a clothing collection, and this cardigan has been in my knitting queue ever since.

I had a few differences with this pattern. When I first tried it, sometime last winter, I couldn’t get the right stitch count for the second(!) row, no matter what I did. Turned out I had knit pfb instead of pfbf (increased just one instead of two). Obviously I needed to write Cookie herself an email to realise that. *cough*
Plus, it had been the wrong yarn. I had used Wollmeise Pure on my first try, which was way too slippery. Now I bought Holst Garn Coast for this in the colour-way Blackcurrant.

Today Plucktember starts and although I probably won’t have time to knit a second Monomania, I will certainly knit the Westknits MKAL in Plucky Feet. Totally looking forward to this, September will be – wait for it — awesome!