Started Tour de France sock

I admit I have not visited this blog as often as I should, but when I did I was caught off gaurd by the fact that the Tour de France is underway. Which shows I am a bigger fan of socks than the actual tour itself. But I did learn a lot about the Tour de France from last year's contest. I wanted to participate again so here is my progress so far.

My scanner did not do justice to the actual color of the sock. It is green, even though it might look more yellowish. It is going to be alternating k3,p3 pattern with an alternating all k and all p row every three rows. I want to keep it simple because my time is limited on when I can work on the sock.

I'm on the heel flaps

Photo of the first heel flap & the beginning of the second:

Tour de France progress

Hi, here are me prograss socks for the tour. It was the closest to red, white and blue that I came up with. I am just winging it for a pattern. Hoping to get two pair out of it. We shall see. Took Nathan and Katie to Chuck E. Cheese's yesterday for his birthday and he was pooped at the end of it! Looks so cute had to show you. Forgot my knitting too, bummer. Knit like the wind ladies! Go Astana!

Jody

Bamboo socks started

I'm using Cascade Heritage yarn again for Lorraine Ehrlinger's Bamboo socks. I'm enjoying knitting this pattern and like the bamboo in this green yarn. Much prettier emerald green in person than shows in the photo. Thanks, Lorraine, for sharing it with all of us. :)

TDF progress

from yesterday - don't have today's progress photographed yet:

52 week July birthday socks

I finished Adrienne's Menehunes socks in time for the birthday party and Fred has already asked for another pair. I'm happy to knit them with this easy, but interesting pattern. Next pair will be in blue. I made an 8" cuff and 11" soles so needed 5 gms more than the 100 gm skein of Cascade Heritage sock yarn. It took 460 yds for this pair. I have lots of this red yarn so you'll see it again a few more times, but not for a while. :)

Cast on TDF

The cast on for my Tour de France socks. A little while ago I received a skein of Knit Picks Bare, handpainted with green tea in a swap. It is about time, after and still knitting for others mostly that I'd cast on a pair for myself. In a few I will log off and work on it, ha... watching the 3rd stage in the tour - a team time challenge.

Sock progress

These are for a son-in-law.
MC yarn is Red Heart Heart and Sole
CC is Patons Kroy Socks

52 Week Challange - Debbie (Grandma 07)

I have finally finished the 10 stitch blanket :) I used a total of 6 skeins of Mini Mochi in the Neptune colorway. The blanket is 36" across which should be just right to wrap my new Gandbaby in this fall. I started this project in May and finished it July 4th.

a link to Tour de france video

versus

this year you can watch a lot of short clips of the race online.

after stage 1's start in Monaco, our hero Lance was #10, and Fabian Cancellara -spain was #1

then in stage 2 the amazing Brit, from isle of Manx, Mark Cavendish won stage 2 as sprinter.

from short clips today, there was a fierce wind and the pelleton was split up. as a result, Lance
is up at #3 now.

tour de france kal starts june 27th!

the real tour de france begins on july 3rd. our tour de france kal begins this saturday, june 27th and will end on august 2nd.

the object of the kal is to knit a pair of adult size socks (with minimum 3" cuff length) using the colors of tour de france. (it does not have to be Crystal Palace yarn! but we will have a special prize for socks in CPY yarn if enough people play.)

• yellow
• green
• red and white
• white
• or the national colors of your declared country

a progress picture and a picture of the finished socks must be posted on the carefree kal blog by midnight (PDT) august 2nd in order to qualify for prizes. please label post "tour de france kal."

please leave a comment on this post if you want to play. remember to state the country you are rooting for (and it doesn't have to be your home country). edited to add that the country doesn't even have to have a rider in the race! (unfortunately, i still can't find a country with colors i like! sigh...)

on your mark! get set! RIDE!!!!!!!!!!!

edited to make this a tour de france SOCK kal (per laura's request).

ps. you cannot use the same project for tour de france and the 52 week kal. sorry.

More about the Tour de France

****This year's tour starts in Monaco - remember Princess Grace Kelly? so is supposed to be a big deal*****


Hi folks
i hosted a Tour de France KAL on a separate blog last year and we had a lot of fun- with prizes from Crystal Palace yarns.

background - my husband loves cycling and got me into watching it also. of course that was at the time when an American Hero, Lance Armstrong, was on a major winning streak - he beat testicular cancer to come back and win a 3 week!! bike tour over mountains 7 [seven!] times in a row.
lance is back after 2+ yrs off, and a broken collar bone, with his PlanetArmstrong on the web, and his Livestrong special site to help fight cancer. so regardless of win or lose, he's doing something to help folks

for 3 wks these guys will ride their bikes up and down hills and steep mountains. watching them makes you amazed.

colors:
Yellow for Race Winner [each stage winner gets it for a day and then final winner]

Green for Sprint Winner [fastest across the line - who may or may not have best total time]

Red and White for Mountain winner [they get points to be the first atop]

White for best young rider

and SPECIAL for you.... option to declare a country and knit a country-colored sock.... so R/W/B for us and R/G/Black for germany, etc

................ we will give away at least 1 prize, but how many prizes DEPENDS on how many join in! more prizes if you get more folks to KAL!!

by the way... Teams are NOT based on countries- they're international!!

1. there is NO team USA - columbia/highroad [great Brit rider Mark Cavendish] and garmin are usa based, with a lot of usa riders and many non-usa riders

2. our hero Lance Armstrong (USA) is riding for team Astana, which is from Kazakstan, [unless they fail to pay their bills again] so you have to get used to faves from your country on another team....

LOL, you might google some countries flags to find colors you like!

Tour de France Prizes

First, you can find out more about the Tour here TourDeFrance
or also google for PLANET ARMSTRONG and learn about teams and riders. Lance's channel has lots of little videos

here's a link FLAGSoftheWORLD so you can find a flag to match your yarn! LOL!
example - the flag for Antarctica is Blue & White

Bhutan is yellow, gold and white...


At present, with only 10 "riders" in our KAL, we will give ONE prize.

what i want to do is offer several prizes as we did last year! so get more folks to PLAY! and there are MORE prizes and more opportunities to win!!

we will have a "knit in Crystal Palace Yarns" special category too if a few more folks join - OK?

6/30: as of today; we have 22 "bikers"! so two prizes plus a special members vote for favorite cpy project!

52-week July

Hi, I am going to finish this scarf for the July amount (plus?) I reentered the progress because I do not remen=mber when I started it. It is the Palindrome scarf on ravelry. The yarn is a pretty green I like and the first scarf I have done since my addiction to socks. It is also reversable when wore which I love. I like them long so I am not sure how many skeins I will use. I am also casting on for the TdS today. Yeah, Jody

It never took me that long... (52 week challenge)

...to knit a pair of socks. This time Trekking XXL Tweed in black was used. It seems the colour black and I can't get along with each other, as I had to frog several times... plus the yarn in the center of the ball was entangled. I had to puzzle the knots out and that made me grumpy for sure. 350 meters were used for a 10" foot size.