First Pair of Socks

I finally knit my first pair of real socks on the Autoknitter (also ever), using Roxy's "10 Minute Socks" pattern/recipe. It took me a bit longer than 10 minutes, but I found it a really useful live-trial of working increases/decreases for the toe and heel (not to mention kitchener-stitching the toe).

Et voila:

Socks! In 2-1 mock rib.

I used the 80-cylinder for these. The yarn is Aktiv's "Finnmark" self-striping sock yarn.

Onion Bags

Did some multi-tasking: I have onions that need to be stored after harvest, and an Autoknitter that I needed some practice on. The obvious solution was to knit small onion bags out of scraps of crochet cotton.

Onion socks! And two proper net bags.

I used the opportunity to mess around with the machine's tension, hang hems, learn mock ribs, and do a lot of kitchener stitch on the closed ends. My favorite onion sock is the one knit plain on the loosest machine tension (left of center), which produced the most open web.

Before jumping over to the machine, I did try to hand net bags for all the onions, but found that even with a generous mesh it simply took too long. I'll need to try this again when there's more time and the onions in question haven't already been harvested, cured, and in need of storage bags.

Early Harvest: Summer & Winter Squash

It's been a weird (unusually dry and warm) summer in the garden, which I assume is the reason that several of my winter squash reached their full color and size before most of the summer squash reached edible size. 

 

I expect my plants to be a little idiosyncratic and not always optimized for the climate I'm in: I focus on growing mid-19th century and earlier heritage varieties, because that's what I want to cook with. For instance, my only pumpkin to produce fruit last year (a Connecticut Field pumpkin) was still green when I had to clear my plot. It ripened off the vine, and I ended up saving seeds from it. This year, two of its four offspring had produced orange pumpkins by early September (one of the other two is larger, but dark green, and the fourth plant still only has a tiny fruit on it).

First haul of squash from the garden: two pumpkins, two Boston Marrow (winter) squash and a yellow crook-neck (summer) squash.

 

Original: Fancy Plait Straw Bonnet, c.1855

Bonnet, c.1855. From The Met.

 I've been looking for straw hat ornaments in situ, and this fancy-plait bonnet is one of the better examples. "Better" in the sense that I could see myself attempting to copy at least some of the brim elements, especially if I can get a higher resolution image...