Socks for kindergarten teachers #2-4

As I wrote earlier, upgrading kid to pre-school is ahead. And I wanted to knit socks for all the personnell that we leave behind. Well, I blew it. One of them left two weeks ago, and I only learned about it the same afternoon she left.

 

But now, with one week to go, I finally have the last pair blocking (minus one).

These are for the sweet, kind-hearted one, that has been around all 3 years. She was awsome the first months when DS was so little and really needed her warm heart.

 

 

These are for the one, who held him in his lap two years ago when I came to pick him up, when he had developed chicken pox.

 

 

And these for the one, who has been there all three years, In charge of my kids' group, always on-the-spot when it comes to my children's development and needs. Need I say that she is kind of a goth. Yes, they exist, goth kindergarten teachers, and I am so happy that we got to be in her group all these years.

 

 

Thank you to all of you! It's been a blast!

 

(And fortunately most of you will still be there next year, we just won't be in your group. But we'll still see each other almost every day.)

Knee-high socks in a week?

So, is it possible to knit a pair of knee-high socks in just one week. Apparently it is. Another question is why you would want to do that. Well, having kids sure introduces you to all kind of new challenges. We just learned (last week), that one of the personnell at DS's daycare was having her last work week at hand. Combine that with my decision to knit socks for all personnell in this group this spring as "thank you and good bye", as it will be time for upgrade to pre-school next fall. The girl quitting now was actually the first one I knew what kind of socks I was going to knit to, and I had already bought the yarn (months ago), but I really thought I'd have three more months to do this (and four other pairs...) I had a week. So I started right away when I heard the news. I combined this with DS having the flu coughing all nights, two eye infections of myself and one for DH, and as DS started feeling better DD went down with the same flu and I got diagnosed with a bad sinus infection to accompany the renewing eye infection. Oh, and DH went abroad on a business trip. All together, quite a busy week, when I've been working on distance, looking after 1-2 sick kids and knitting in between on my non-existent spare time. I confess I feel a bit... insufficient. Hyper-efficient yes, sufficient not so much. Well, tomorrow is her last day, I rolled up the socks for DS to give her. No time for blocking as it's almost midnight, but at least they look neat when worn.

Pattern from Novita, winter 2016 I think, Heart socks.

Socks for babies born in Finland 2017

 

Since last summer, there's been a project going on to knit baby socks for all babies born in Finland during 2017, our 100th year of independence. There are lots of projects going on, more info on (all?) the official ones can be found here. As a knitter, a person who loves blue, but with not too much spare time, it was easy to choose this project. Also, I picked up a pair of red socks myself some years ago when my firstborn turned up (Finnish Martha organisation had an anniversary that year) and have always wanted to pass that favour along to other mothers too. I've been knitting on these small socks every now and then, often on the bus when commuting to work, as they're small and easy to carry around. At last, I have made it as far as to actually add the washing instructions and add them to the huge masses of socks that others have already brought around. I have 1 1/2 pair waiting, so maybe I will add them to my contribution later, but the speed with which people knit right now is unbelievable, so I'm afraid the project will end and I'll have to find some charity to take the rest of my socks. Win-win whatever happens.   And as the middle pair needs some extra explanation:

KAL socks

Ok, so what's up. Socks, socks and socks... Last spring Niina Laitinen (pages in Finnish) arranged a flower sock KAL on FB, that I happened to stumble upon. As a beginner, I only knit one sock during the KAL, and was to finish the second sock when the KAL was over. Well, that KAL sure is over now, about a year later. I still have the 1.000.000 loose ends to take care of, but I finally got this far:

The true motivation to get the second sock off the needles was Niina's newest KAL, Valentine's Day socks that started three days ago.  As I learned from the flower socks, I will need to knit both socks simultaneously this time, so I really needed the 3mm needles used for these socks. That should save me from knitting half of sock #2 before noting, that I was knitting it in the wrong size. Which in turn should save me from a lot of frogging and bad temper this time. Other things I learned during this sock project was, that they would have been even nicer had I chosen more similar colors. These colors were what I happened to find around the house, and it does not show that clearly in the pic, but there are two really dark flower colors, and two much brighter, also the leaves are pretty bright. Some more similarity would have been better, but I still like them of course. Very much. Back to the reason for freeing the needles: 

 

I knit with the wooden needles, and keep stitches on hold with the metal ones.