hook line and sinker

I've often vaguely thought that one of the few half decent looking ways to use up scrap yarn is to make one of those big multicoloured crocheted blankets. Made out of what the internet has recently informed me are called Granny Squares. I have loads of scrap yarn, so I'm halfway there! Only problem is i can't actually crochet. But today I was quite bored and have mild knitting RSI, so i sat down with the Readers Digest Guide to Needlework (huge hardback book written in the seventies or eighties, procured from a second hand bookshop for about 2 quid) and had a stab at learning crochet. This was more tricky than i thought. The book assumes a certain basic level of needlework proficiency that women probably all had in the more self sufficient times the book was written, but I unfortunately have ten sausages for fingers and a head full of broken biscuits. Amazingly the result turned out vaguely identifiable with the picture, despite a giddy variation in stitch size and tension and a somewhat laissez-faire attitude towards dealing with ends that led to a couple of near-catastrophic unravelling incidents. And I have calculated that at my present crocheting speed, if I give up work, sleep and food it will take me approximately seven lifetimes to create a blanket big enough to cover one knee.
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like a socks machine

Fortunately I have just finished Zelda so can spend more time with my knitting now that I know the future of Hyrule is looking rosy. So I finally finished pomatomus, in trekking xxl, that i started last summer. Phewph! About time really.
Am pretty pleased with these socks but I think to be honest these are the last pair I'm going to make out of self-striping / self-patterning yarn. Individually they are pretty but together they don't look very similar - I think my sense of mathematical orderliness would be appeased more if they looked like they matched.

To be fair it did say on the ball band to knit with 2 strands from 2 balls at the same time, which would do a good job of jumbling up all the colours i reckon. But I only bothered to read this when I got to the heel on the second sock, by which time it was rather too late. Perhaps my footwear would have benefitted from slightly more forethought and less diving straight in.

Mmm warm toes.

Need to think of something else good to do now. Cos I only have one thing on the go now - these socks. I know, more socks, not very imaginative, but I'm doing a lot of train travelling at the moment for work so they are handy to carry round...

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