any old any old iron

A friend of a friend's grandmother died and as the closest knitter of any infamy in the area i have been bequeathed this fine haul! I wasn't really expecting quite so many - having cycled into town to meet up with the donor, on the return journey i found myself significantly weighed down by the huge tonnage of scrap metal on my back. There are knitting needles both straight and bent, metal and plastic, dpns and, er, spns, and crochet hooks. So if you are in the Manchester area and thinking about buying any new knitting needles - I would advise giving me a shout first, as I now have about 3 of every needle size in existence, and I suspect several in between. I really need to go through and organise them a bit into something better than this vase.







Which is in itself an upgrade from the Pint Glass of Justice, my previous knitting supplies organiser, which sadly no longer really cuts the mustard.











Also with the haul there was this rather stylish box, but this is woefully too small to accommodate the full extent of pointy sticks now in my possession.

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hearty-stripy sock slight return

So I reknitted the top part, and made another one. And they fit this time! Not only on my own feet but also on those of the intended recipient, which is a fortunate turn of events. I've learned much about stranded knitting and my own inner psyche during this process.

• Getting the tension to look right is pretty hard for stranded knitting, but gratifyingly, if i half close one eye i can see the second sock is sliiiightly neater than the first. I think.


• Weaving in floats as i go seems to make the sock even less stretchy. So I stopped doing it for the second sock: the maximum float length is 5 stitches so hopefully not really long enough for any toes to be severed


• The stitches I knit continental style are looser than those I do English style. I was pleased to note this is like a microcosm of the different cultures: laid-back devil-may-care European knitting with the left hand, up-tight stiff-upper-lip what-ho English knitting with the other.


• I have made some pattern notes on what I did in this post.


• I am developing an obsession with bulleted lists

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socktastrophe

A warning to the curious. When making a stranded-patterned sock, bear in mind that the finished fabric will hardly stretch at all. This means that it becomes pretty impossible to navigate the heel of the foot past the upper tube-section and into a practical position within said sock. Thereby rendering your new artifact utterly useless :D

I need to have a bit of a think about ways to redeem this thing. I tried frogging back the ribbing + one pattern repeat and still couldn't get the bugger on. The foot part fits fine, fortunately, but not sure what to do about the top bit. Options i can currently think of are

• Throw in some random increases past the heel for a bad 80s saggy ankled look


• Leave Huuuuge floats inside, for the wearer to snag unwary toes on


• Lose the stranded pattern at the top, past the heel, and just have plain stripes

Sadly, though, these ideas are all a bit rubbish. I will continue to ponder...
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