Knitting: Irish Oats socks (and a blog announcement!).

Here's my third pair of socks for the year! I'm halfway through my goal. :)

These socks are pretty special. I won January's giveaway for Liesl's Monthly Sock Challenge, and the prize was a gift certificate to Quince & Co. and the Irish Oats sock pattern. I used that pattern and some of the yarn I chose to make these socks. :)

The Irish Oats pattern is so lovely and well written. I've only done vanilla socks and simple textured socks so far, and I expected the cables in this pattern to make it more time-consuming. But I was amazed at how quickly they knit up! The pattern was so easy to memorize. (I know sportweight is closer to fingering weight, but these socks knitted up almost as quickly as worsted weight ones for me.)

I've mentioned before that I actually knitted three of these socks. The first sock was a bit snug. Not uncomfortably tight, but the stitches were stretched so much that I worried they would wear out quicker. I finished that first sock, anyway, because I wanted to make sure I'd have enough yarn left over to make them bigger. When I started over, I ended up adding some extra stitches, and it worked out well. I probably should have distributed the extra ones a bit differently, because the heel turn worked out at a slightly odd place. I knew that I had wide, fat feet, but this is the first time I've had to alter a pattern because of it. :)

The yarn is Quince and Co.'s Chickadee. I was thrilled to have won this giveaway because I had been wanting to try Quince and Co.'s yarn for the longest time, and I was not disappointed. It's 100% US wool, which is awesome. And it was so soft and springy and tightly spun (which I tend to like). Even with ripping out an entire sock, the yarn was just as beautiful as it was before it was knitted. I didn't wash these socks before taking pictures, and I can't tell which one used the frogged yarn and which didn't.  (I used the colorway Belize, by the way, which is a lot prettier and darker in person. It looks sort of washed out in the pictures.) The next time I buy a sweater's quantity of yarn, it's going to be something from Quince and Co. It'll cost a bit more, but it will definitely be worth it.

Ravelry project page. I'm linking up with the Monthly Sock Challenge again this month.

Okay, and now for the blog announcement!

For a long time now I've been wanting to get a custom domain for my blog. I've put it off because I was worried about messing something up, but I'm finally going to do it. I'm changing the name of my blog from Sew Technicolor to Wool and Wheel. I'm doing all of this now because my new Etsy shop name will be Wool and Wheel, and I wanted my blog name to tie in with that. Either today or tomorrow, I'm going to be going through the process of switching things over, and hopefully it's going to be a simple, seamless transition!

I just wanted to let you guys know in case something goes wrong and my blog posts stop appearing in your feed. I'll be back with a Yarn Along post on Wednesday, so if you don't see that post, you might need to manually change my blog url in your feed to woolandwheel.com. But like I said, everything should switch over fine. (Fingers crossed.)

P.S. To you readers who don't care anything about yarn or knitting or spinning, don't worry. The content of the blog won't be changing at all...there will still be movie reviews, book posts, etc. mixed in with the knitting posts. :) The only thing changing is the name of the blog and the url, and like I said, I'm only doing it to be more cohesive with my shop.