relaxation

I had a small amount of leftover aran weight cotton, so I started knitting this dishcloth before last Christmas, thinking it would go in my sister's stocking. (It's a bit of a lame family running joke, that we give each other washing up related gifts, to ease the pain of post-meal clearup.) Anyway, I failed to finish it in time. How I'm not quite sure, it's really a one-evening in front of the telly sort of a task. After that it got buried under a pile of yarn and forgotten about until a few days ago when I stumbled across it. So I finished it off, but something weird seems to have happened to my gauge. Can you see? It's a dish trapezoid!!1! I can only attribute this to a more relaxed, summery state of mind, compared with the stress of the pre-Christmas build up. Ah well. I'm too relaxed now, evidently, to worry about it. The pattern is Ball Band Dishcloth, very quick and easy, I can recommend it to anyone else insane enough to want to knit a dishcloth. (Lordy - 5460 other people on ravelry appaz)

I also had to make a slightly bigger pair of unpulloffable baby socks, and there was a wee bit of fiery hand dyed yarn left, so I made these. It's become a bit of an arms race between me and the baby to stop him indulging in his favourite game of pull-my-socks-off-and-eat-them. He is a veritable sock Houdini these days. After my last pair of socks with ties, the little blighter has learned to undo a bow. With these socks I have been forced to deploy my fiercest weapon - the double bow. Bwah hah hah haaaaah! It's working pretty well so far. This pattern is made up by me - I should maybe have a quick go at writing it up, it's a very useful one. Dead quick - takes a couple of hours, uses up the little bits of sock yarn you always have left over after making a pair for yourself, they're nice and cosy and they stay on a lot better than shop bought baby socks. Although there are myriads of other similar patterns out there and they're really not rocket science - I just winged my own because I was on holiday without internets access the first time I made them.

Now the wee fella is standing up and about to start walking, I am contemplating some sort of sticky sole solution for indoor adventures - I have a lot of slippery bare floorboards in the house, which make an alarming noise when his head connects with them. Maybe puffy paint or sew on soles will help - we will see.