blankets and socks

Well, I undid the final stripe, wove in all the ends, put it through the wash to get rid of the musty dusty 20-year-old yarn smell, and here it is in its full glory. Mr Rubbishknitter thought that social services should be called for wrapping a baby in something this brown. He has a point, but if you can't enjoy a bit of 70s retro brownness on a sunny autumn day, and use up a big pile of free yarn in the process, when can you? And you can pretend you're in an episode of Life on Mars.

It's a Ripple Afghan. 5mm crochet hook, started with chain of 98 stitches. I went for an ordered repeating pattern of colours. This has a pleasing bad-acid-trip effect, but I suspect a better way of making this would have been to use random colours - then you can keep adding to it with scrap yarn until you have One Blanket to Rule Them All, if you like. I was a bit stuck once I had run out of the brown which I had the least of. It is a good size for the baby, although sadly not quite big enough for snuggle-down-in-front-of-the-telly type purposes. But a nice project to keep your lap warm while you make it, if you are too tight to turn the heating on most of the time, like I am.


Here it is drying nicely on the line. (Yes I did make the peg bag too, some time ago). It's all aran-weight 100% cotton which makes a nice soft fabric after washing... mystery brand, a nice present from a friend of mine who was having a clearout a while back.

I also got the Addi Turbos I'd ordered. Hooray! I've never done a sock on two circular needles before. It is pretty straightforward - as Cat Bordhi says in her book, there's only one mistake you can really make, which is to knit the stitches from one needle onto the other. This is easily fixed, but I am a bit of a numpty and do seem to keep doing this. So I wouldn't go quite as far as to say it is soaring, but it is at least gently floating above the ground.

I love these needles. Look how shiny they are! I know, shameless corporate endorsement. I have no soul. If Addi would like to reward me for this by sending me a massive boxful, I would be delighted to furnish them with my address.

You may notice these socks are neither Charade nor Jaywalker. Predictably, having vacillated between the two patterns indecisively, I decided to do neither and make up my own as I went along instead. Doing it toe up so I can maximise my mileage out of the pretty yarn.