Still knitting!

Just thought I'd show you the socks that are currently on the needles: yarn was donated by my friend Caterina, she got it in a yarn swap but doesn't really knit socks so she passed it on to me. It's a basic toe-up pattern, the stripy yarn does all the work.

For some reason the colours remind me of chocolate limes, or some minty toffees or something. Some kind of hardboiled sweet, anyhow. Makes my mouth water when I'm knitting!

Nordic star socks

Well, what do you think?!

I love them!

Nordic star socks designed by Jan Malone from the Vogue Knitting Ultimate Sock Book.
I used 2.75mm needles; the orange yarn is Jawoll sock yarn, the grey is Jaeger Matchmaker Merino 4ply (sadly discontinued).

I used a whole ball of the grey and started into a second one, but only needed one ball of the orange. My tension was a bit different on the two socks - can only just squeeze the first one on, but by the second I'd obviously loosened up a bit and it's much easier to get on!

Tour de Fleece/latest projects

Today and yesterday I have been mostly spinning. Aided by four hours' attendance at the Alternative Village Fete outside the National Theatre on the South Bank. I spun Wensleydale, then when I ran out of Wensleydale, (apart from the extremely mucky bits that needed washing) I went on to Bowmont. The Wensleydale is shown below.



The whole time we were entertained by morris dancing, the Bollywood Brass Band and several other acts, and we knitted, spun and made bits for the Great British Sheep.



This is one of the current socks that are on the go, shown here in Noro sock yarn. I don't really like knitting with this, it is rough on the hands and has a tendency to twist. Hopefully it will improve on washing.



This is the Ribbed Lace Bolero knitted in the Jaeger Extra Fine Merino Aran that has been hanging around for a couple of years now. It looks quite good I think, although the pic isn't great because the Curse is not here to help me with the photography at the moment. See that look of concentration on my face as I try to point the camera in the right direction!



And this is the harvest from the blueberry bush on the balcony. Not as impressive as last year's tomatoes, it's true, but still gratifying and delicious!

Knitting from stash

Yarn diet is kicking in - but it's no great sacrifice! I have dug out the sock leftovers that Laura sent me last year in the Sockapalooza exchange, and am whipping up some cute little sockettes, possibly a prez for little sis if I get them done in time for her birthday!

I love the colours of the variegated yarn, and the two fit extremely well together. Enjoying a bit of no-effort sock creation at the moment - which is just as well since our house is currently dominated by Euro 2008 of an evening. That's soccer, for those of you who are reading this stateside! I would put a link in but it keeps crashing my Mac - suggest you Google for it yourself if you are at all interested (*snore*).

Another new technique!

I finally found the sock bind-off I've been seeking for what seems like eternity. Well, to say I've been seeking it would be a bit of an overstatement, but this loose bind-off suits me very well.

Normally for my toe-up socks I use the sewn bind-off, as described here. My normal bind-off is way too tight for socks.

All well and dandy, as long as you have a tapestry needle to hand. Today I found myself without a tapestry needle, and with a spare lunch-hour in which I intended to finish ribbing and binding off the Express Lane sock I started the other day.

A quick Google later, and I discovered this little hint, which is essentially a regular bind-off with additional stitches added in to make it more stretchy. Easy peasy lemon squeezy! I used it every four stitches on my 60 stitch round, and it makes it well roomy for the over-heel-manoeuvre.

Learning something new every day?

One of the things I love about knitting and crochet is that there is always something new to learn. Think you know how to do short rows? I thought I was an expert, until I read a post by Natalie about her recent mastery of the short-row heel/toe. And I noticed that she mentioned the p3tog and k3togtbl manoeuvres of the pattern she was using. "Ye gads!" I thought. That's not how I do it! I must seek out this method and try it out!

Funnily enough, although Natalie was using the Express Lane sock pattern from The Inside Loop, the sock pattern that I had chosen for my next adventure - the Falling Leaves socks from Knitty - also seemed to use a similar method.

Aha, I thought, I will try this one out and hopefully get to master the same technique. Not so, unfortunately. It was one of those occasions where you get quite a lot of practice at the casting on and it takes a while to get the actual thing going.

First stage - cast on the recommended number of stitches, do a few rows, realise that it's going to be too big.

Second stage - amend to my usual number of stitches, get to the turning point of the toe, then realise I haven't a clue what the instructions are trying to tell me to do!

This is where I got stuck:
"Row 27: Yo, p13, sl next 2 sts knitwise, one at a time, to right needle, sl these sts back to left needle and p2tog tbl, turn work.
Row 28: Yo, k14, untwist next 2 sts, k3tog, turn work.
Row 29: Yo, p15, sl next 3 sts knitwise, one at a time, to right needle, sl these sts back to left needle and p3tog tbl, turn work."

Is it just me? I can't for the life of me work out how to p3togtbl! Tbl suggests that you need to purl the stitch through the loop that you don't usually use when you purl, no? Which makes sense if you are just purling one. But if you have to p3tog, and you have to do it tbl, all I can think of in my head is one hellishly difficult manoeuvre! Or is it just k3togtbl by a different name?

Ouch. I have to stop thinking about it now cos it's making my brain hurt.

That's what happened last night, so I decided to frog it AGAIN and try using the short-row toe instructions from the Express Lane socks. And then when I started on the Express Lane sock instructions, with my amended number of stitches, I thought what the hell, why not just make it easier for myself altogether and abandon the Falling Leaves altogether.

So I did!


I have to report that, just as Natalie said, the instructions are nice and easy to follow. No confusion here! I like the pattern it produces along the edge of the toe, but I do find it a bit excessive, given that I'm used to the 'wrap and turn' method of making short rows, and I never have problems with holes anyway.



Great to have another weapon in the knitting armoury, however!

Finished Zocknis

I LOVE these lacey socks! Although they caused me untold aggravation and I don't know how many times I had to painfully go back a few rounds to find out where it was I'd forgotten to do a yarn-over, or failed to pull slipped stitch over....

But I love how they turned out in the end, they fit beautifully after I went up a few needle sizes to 3mm, and my fears that they might be a bit sloppy have not come to pass.


Perhaps I am making small steps towards taking on some more complex lace? I'm certainly going to try some more lacey socks in the first instance.

Another MAJOR piece of news is that, after about a year of trying to perfect my provisional cast-on for toe-up socks, I FINALLY got one of them to 'unzip'!! Apologies to anyone who's not familiar with the provisional cast on and has no idea what I'm talking about, but those who are will recognise a familiar problem! I'm going to try and work out what I did, at least I've proved it is possible. I will experiment a bit and try to write down a failsafe way of always getting this result (alternatively if anyone can point me to one that someone else has already done, I'd be grateful!)

Please admire

New socks on the left (Regia of some description, love the colours!) and new shoes, courtesy of Clarks.



New carpet, aubergine. So thick, so dark, so much better than the previous one!

Tidy house, tidy mind

Looky looky! New purchases!

The cupboard stash upstairs has been tidied into two large plastic boxes (£10 for two from Deptford High St, home of all things plastic); the under-the-stairs stash has been tidied into a lovely linen storage thingy (£12.95 from Muji, much more pleasing on the eye than the plastic ones) and the weekend promises mental stimulation with the latest copy of Selvedge, and my two new purchases that I picked up from Waterstones in Piccadilly yesterday.

I have to admit I was quite shocked by the number of knitting books now available even on the shelves of a non-specialist store - sure, Waterstones' flagship branch is very well stocked on all subjects, but there really has been a boom in publication of knitting books in the last year or so.

Sadly the watchword is quantity rather than quality - I browsed for quite some time and have to say that most of the books on offer were of the 'Twenty bags to knit' variety (and even 'Twenty more bags to knit'!). The majority were aimed at beginners, with a lot of the space taken up with instructions - great for those just starting off, but pointless for improvers. However, I was very taken with the 'Traditional knitting patterns' book; although it's black and white inside, looks like it was designed in the sixties and hasn't been updated since, it is a wealth of information in terms of traditional patterns and stitches, with detailed instructions for each. When I got it home I was even more chuffed to find from the introduction that the author was a good friend of one of my favourite sculptors/artists, Eric Gill! Many of Gill's sculptures and woodcuts were religious, hence my enjoyment of them is purely aesthetic; he was also the designer of a number of typefaces, such as Gill Sans.

Anyhow, I'm looking forward to hopefully incorporating some of the patterns or stitches from the book into some of my own designs. In due course... The crochet book of course is for another long-term project, to create a throw or something using a variety of crochet squares. Some of the examples in this book are rather monstrous, it has to be said (or perhaps it's the combinations they've suggested) but I think that with a bit of care and good taste, I could create a thing of beauty.

Latest project news; slow progress. Despite getting my needles out during a showing of 'Notes on a scandal' the other night (much to the Curse's disgust), the second sock is showing slow progress. I'm just on the main body of the foot, as sockers know this can be the most frustrating bit, seems to take for ever.

The first sleeve of the Curse's jumper is finished, just cast on for the second. I also cast on for a tea cosy last night, on a whim. Two odd balls of GGH Savanna, which is a strange mix of wool, linen, alpaca and a little bit of synthetic - a dark pink and a lighter one, I'm hoping to make the cosy all in one piece on DPNS, although there will be a bit of to-ing and fro-ing. Tea cosies seem to be everywhere at the moment - at least three in the latest issue of Selvedge and I saw one on Ebay the other day that was being very heavily bid on! Have I started a trend?!

A girl's thoughts

The deadline is over, the clouds are slowly lifting and the panic is subsiding. Much more importantly, when I left work yesterday it was not quite dark! The smell of spring is in the air, and when that happens, a girl starts to fantasise about.... walking!

Now unless you share the passion of a walker, it can be very difficult to understand what's so special about it. And while a stroll along the south bank of the River Thames in central London can be very pleasant, it's Not the Same Thing at all! However I'm not one of those people at the other extreme either - I like a good yomp but not when it's all uphill just for the sake of it, DEFINITELY not in extreme weather conditions (I will never set out in the rain if I can help it) and my favourite walks are those which include some kind of diversion - be it tea shop, chapel, Site of Special Scientific Interest or alcoholic refreshments.

So at this time of year when I'm shackled to the desk and outside the sap is rising, I start to fantasise about walks I have known. This one was a lovely walk up Ingleborough in the Yorkshire Dales a couple of years ago with my friend and fellow yomper Em. It was a glorious day, but there was a very stiff wind, and we never made it to the top of the peak for fear of being blown off. After battling for half a mile along the ridge against a fearsome gale, we gave in and skipped that bit of the walk. Like I said, I'm not one to do it just for the sake! As we walked up the path on the approach to the peak, we passed the entrance to Gaping Gill, where a large group of cavers had set up camp and were manoeuvring pulleys and ladders into place ready for one of the occasional public open days.

In the last few weeks when the pressure has been on I've fantasised about walks I've done, walks I'd like to do, beaches I've strolled along, small seaside towns I've visited, train journeys I've made (the pleasant ones of course!), toasted teacakes I've munched, pints I've downed, even the natural highlights such as birds or plants I've sighted on the walks. I've started yearning to leave London behind and set out on an epic trip, perhaps take the train to Barmouth, the little Welsh seaside town that was such a part of my childhood and now retains a really special place in my heart. As a child, I visited the area every year at Whitsun bank holiday - my aunt and uncle had a cottage there and we used it for a cheap family holiday for many years. My subsequent connections to Wales - visiting my sisters when they were at university, one in Bangor and one in Aberystwyth - and my first job, working on the construction of the A55 Pen-y-clip Tunnel, have left me with a real hiraeth even though I was not born in Wales.


Anyway, you didn't come here to listen to me droning on about the hiraeth, did you? So, here's some knitting news! Jaywalker socks - one down, one to go! The Bejewled scarf has been washed... and the yarn has relaxed somewhat (a bit like me!) and is now twice the length. *Sigh*. Might have to unpick and pull it back somewhat if I don't want the recipient to be tripping over it!