Yellow socks

I knitted another pair of socks, with hand-dyed yarn, naturally :)
We took pictures of the socks yesterday, during our hike on Rila. I almost forgot about the photosession and the socks would have stayed tucked away in my backpack, which would have been a shame. Luckily, there were many lakes along our way and we had a very long hike, so almost any time it occurred to me to take pictures, there was a postcard scenery awaiting to be taken advantage of :)

I had 10 g sock-yarn remnants from another pair of hand-dyed socks. As I loved the yarn, I wanted to use it up and pair it with a matching hand-dyed yarn. I decided to play with the yellow in the tropical yarn, so I dyed a ball of white sock yarn in three shades of yellow-orange, using the low immersion twisted skein method. What this means - I prepared a dye bath first with a lemonade shade of yellow, twisted the presoaked skein and dipped it in the dye bath until the dye was exhausted. Then I took out the skein, untwisted it, let it cool and twisted it again. Dipped it in orange-yellow and let it soak the dye. And then again repeated the process with the last shade of color - orange. To make sure that the dye was well fixed, I then heated up again the dyed skein in the microwave for a total of 2+2 minutes.

As both of these yarns - the tropical 10 g and the white 35 g, were remnants from other socks, the resulting socks are short, with small cuffs, but I think the combination works really well and the socks were worth making. I used my favourite recipe for toe-up socks, 58 stitches, FLKH, Lory's twisted bind off.

Pattern: Yellow socks (personal pattern)
Yarn: Alize Superwash, hand-dyed, 45 g
Needle: 2.5 mm
Time to knit: 5 days

Peacock Socks

Yesterday I finished another pair of socks out of hand-dyed yarn. These are for my husband and they were such fun to knit.

The yarn is Alize Superwash, 75% wool, 25% nylon. I wound about 70 g, presoaked the yarn in warm water with citric acid, then squeezed most of the water out of the skein and hand painted the skein. A couple of pictures of the process of painting - first the lighter colors, then filling in with the darker colors.

For these socks I used a new blue food dye, which turned to be bright peacock blue. Frankly, I was a bit skeptical of the color combination, but it definitely grew on me in the knitting process.

Despite the fact that the skein was 4 m long and I tried to randomize the colors, I ended with them kind of pooling. It's not as drastic as with short skeins but still I would have preferred more dispersed color distribution, as in the wound skein above.
The pattern is my usual recipe, toe up, 64 sts, stockinette stitch with fish lips kiss heels.

Pattern: Peacock Socks (personal pattern)
Yarn: Alize Superwash, hand-dyed, 68 g
Needle: 2.5 mm
Time to knit: 9 days

Aleko - Cherni vruh - Kupena - Aleko, 2020

Today we hiked one of my most favourite circular trails on Vitosha - from Aleko hut up the steep "Wall" to Cherni vruh, then along the plateau to Kupena peak and back to Aleko hut along the high circuit trail. This is the fourth time we hike this particular route and every time I'm amazed how much this part of the mountain looks like a wild flower garden.

: On Cherni vruh (2290 m). After another week of cold and rain, the weather this Saturday was cloudy with some sun, the air was crisp and fresh and we climbed the peak in one breath.

: The plateau with Cherni vruh behind us

:Peak Skoparnika. We've passed this peak several times, but never climbed it, yet.

: Peak Kupena

: For a while the clouds gathered threateningly and we feared rain again, but the wind blew them away. The weather kept windy and a bit chilly, but thankfully no rain

: My favourite lonely pine tree

Turquoise Jewelry

A couple of weeks ago Gaby was dressing for going out and trying various pairs of earrings and she casually mentioned that she would like a pair of crochet ball earrings in every color. Why not, actually, thought I :) They are easy to make, I love dyeing yarn and creating outfits, so - there we go!

I bought a string of turquoise semi-precious stone beads and metal connectors, combined them with orange wooden beads and crocheted balls and made a necklace, that sings sun and sea to me. To go with it I dyed half a dozen shades of turquoise cotton, out of which i chose these two to make two pairs of earrings, combining crocheted balls with wooden beads in the same turquoise color as the stone beads.

And another pair of simple crocheted ball earrings in blue, for her various blue outfits. I might come up with a necklace to go with these too, still waiting for the idea to clear in my head.

Men's Shirt Burda 06 2016

Last year I sewed a shirt for my father, using Burda 6874 pattern and I was so proud of my work, until my father measured it. It was small and short. I took his measures properly and this year I made a new one, using another recently bought Burda pattern - shirt #143 from Burda 06 / 2016. This is a short sleeved men's shirt, slightly tailored.

This time I chose size 52 and made the shirt without any modifications. However I skipped some of the bells and whistles, like the split side hems, the shoulder patches and the pocket patches, as I wanted the shirt to have a more formal look.

As my fabric has vertical stripes, I played with the direction of the stripes and cut the yokes, the stand and the color and the patches of the sleeves across the grain, while the body of the shirt is cut along the grain.

I just heard from my father and this time he is very happy with the fit - so it's a success!

Dragalevtzi 2020

In a week of cold weather and constant rain we found a window for a 10 km hike from Dragalevtzi to Simeonovo lakes and back. This is the continuation of the trail we hiked last week, part of the low Vitosha circuit. Lots of green, gorgeous waterfalls, crisp fresh air, happy hikers :)

Aleko's Waterfalls on the Skakavitza river

The rock at the fault line of the bed of the Skakavitza river