lots of tiny socks

I made these baby socks for a bring and buy sale today, to raise money for the premature baby unit at the local hospital.
I had a drawerful of tiny scrag-ends of left over sock yarn, so this seemed like a good opportunity to use it up. I quite like doing this sort of thing, you feel uberthrifty, and it gives you a chance to reminisce about Socks of Old.


The yarn line-up, from left to right in the picture above: Cygnet Wool Rich 4 ply (light brown), random nasty acrylic I scored in a bargain bin in Peru for about 1p (navy), Green eyed monsters supersock (pink/green stripy), Opal from the first ever pair of socks I made (green/pink/blue stripy), Violet Green supersock (purple). Apologies if you bought the navy pair, I'll admit you drew the short straw.
Pattern is my own.

I wanted to try and package them as appealingly as possible, using words like 'unique' and 'handcrafted' and not words like 'mindlessly churned out while watching Breaking Bad on the telly'. So I got these cute little handmade paper bags from Fred Aldous and labelled them up nicely.

I think most of them sold, i wasn't around at the end to check. It was fun to make them all, although I must admit it was getting a tad repetitive by the 5th pair - I was going to sleep counting turned heels instead of sheep. I think it's safe to say my next project will be bigger, and not socks :)

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happy chrimbo

Hope you all had a good one! A bit late with my festive wishes, sorry. It's been a bit chaotic round here lately, mostly due to a lot of stupidly last minute christmas knitting. At least now most gifts have been given I can provide photographic evidence for this.


This shawl is another Aestlight. It's for my sister in law who lives in a mightily cold part of Cumbria and recently commented that she didn't have a scarf. Horrors! So I made this, because I already have one and knew it would be a useful neckwarming device. It's also a pretty speedy knit with that big garter stitch section.

The yarn is Posh Yarn Lucia, which has been lurking in my stash for ages, ever since I won it in a competition on Ravelry. It's a luxuriously soft merino/cashmere blend, but at 393m per skein a little low on yardage for a decent sized shawl. With this pattern it's very easy to switch colours for the edging if you run out of yarn. So that's what I did - I went for a King Cole Baby Alpaca DK edging in a solid blue-green shade ('Lichen') which almost perfectly matches one of the shades of the semi-solid sock yarn. Being very slightly heavier at the edge makes the shawl hang quite well I think, although the Posh Yarn was quite fat for sock yarn so there's surprisingly little weight difference. The King Cole was really amazingly nice. I have already made tonnes of things out of their budget merino, which is brilliant stuff. The baby alpaca is totally different and much more luxurious, so very impressive that they've got it so right here too, with the pretty spearmint colour and irresistable softness. *Rubs crystal ball* I can see more of this yarn in my future!

For sis#1 I made these simple stocking stitch toe up socks. She loves pink as much as I generally dislike it. You go into her kitchen to make yourself a cup of tea and fill up a pink kettle against a pink wall from a pink tap as pink-clad children play with pink toys on a pink floor. It's like sensory deprivation, you can't see the edges of things, and when you leave the house everything looks a bit greener than it should do because you have worn out all the pink-specific neurones in your retinas. (Cara - you would probably love my sister's house!)

So I thought she would appreciate this pink and green stripy yarn. Even I quite like pink when teamed with green, it's a classic combination, like gin and tonic or pop-tarts and crack cocaine. This is from my neverending skein of Green Eyed Monsters sock. It's the fourth project I have made from one skein. Seriously - it's like the magic porridge pot in yarn form! When I bought this skein, the lovely Kate from GEM said it was slight seconds and if I still wanted it she would wind me some extra to compensate for the knots. I think she may have been a little overgenerous, by about the distance from the Earth to the Moon. The best thing is, THERE IS STILL SOME LEFT! I might start a sock yarn cosy for my house.
Anyway, I tried to use up some scrap yarn christmas things up a bit with some dark green leftover regia for the toes, heels and cuffs. I wasn't sure about it at all to start with but I think the end result is actually quite festive. They ended up a tad on the large size, I think 62 stitches around is a bit much for plain stocking stitch on my sis's wee feet, but they might shrink a little bit in the wash, or I guess they could be bedsocks. Sis looked pleased anyway.

I finished my other sis's present on Christmas Eve, and I'm afraid I didn't manage to get a photo. So imagine a chunky hat made out of this lovely Misti Alpaca yarn, a bit like this one but with a stupidly large and fluffy pompom on top instead of a crochet flower. I was inspired by Vikki H's lovely Misti bobble hat and basically shamelessly copied it. It's a great quick-but-luxurious one skein project, and other sis was also pleased with her prezzie.

There are still a couple of things left under the tree that I rubbishly failed to finish in time to give to the correct people before they disappeared for the festive season, so the christmas present round up will be completed at a later date...

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book review: think outside the sox

Due to my previous adventures as a magazine editor, the nice people at Search Press sent me a review copy of this book the other day. Woohoo! So, er... as there aren't currently any more issues of Bobbins in the pipeline, I'm going to put the review up here for you lovely online knitterfolk to peruse.

So basically there was a design competition on the internets called 'Think Outside the Sox' open to any budding young knitwear designers, and the winning patterns were published in this book. Don't be put off by the excruciating title, which made me want to stab myself repeatedly in the eyes. (Is it possible to release a crafty publication without a terrible pun in the title I wonder? I fear not, and usually I have a pretty high pun tolerance.) Anyway, this is a big, beefy old bookful of socks. 180 pages, and 61 patterns, no less. You can see most of them on the ravelry page. The publishers have achieved a seriously impressive density of knitting information. If they squeezed any more in, it would probably collapse under its own gravity and form a black hole. It's well organised though, and there are plenty of nice pictures, so it's not too overwhelming. Starting with the simpler socks, it has separate sections for lace, cables and colourwork, before moving onto more complex and inventive patterns.

And there is certainly no lack of invention. People seem to have risen admirably to the creative challenge posed by the title of the competition. My mind was boggled by the construction of some of the patterns, like the hexagon socks on the cover. These are basically made of mitred hexagons, with stitches picked up around the edge to join them together. I was fascinated by what wizardry actually transforms this flat structure into a sock shape. It's like an episode of Grand Designs, but with yarn.

These socks are knitted in a spiral, done by starting from the toe and knitting a strip, picking up one stitch at the edge as you go to hold it together. Perhaps the designer had just peeled an orange and was inspired to fashion a sock using the same sort of principles. I am quite tempted to give these a go out of sheer architectural curiosity.

And there are some which are tempting because they are just really pretty. Like Wandering vine or In the Peaceful Forest- I am a sucker for a leafy cable. Or Drip Candles, which are a beautiful way of using up leftovers.

If I had to grumble about something, I would point out that there aren't a whole pile of men's patterns here. They're not separated out into genders, they're just categorised as adult small, medium and large sizes, but the adult large ones seem to be mostly adorning the feet of lovely ladies. I spotted one pair of manly legs sticking out of some kilt hose, but haven't found any others. Personally i do like blokey sock patterns, I don't tend to go overboard knitting for my fella, but I do stretch to a pair of socks occasionally.

But all in all, an inspiring book, and a valuable addition to the shelf. It has been quite dangerous to my queue, and has made me remember what a small but pleasingly intricate thing a sock can be. If you like ingenious and imaginatively constructed ladies' socks, this book is for you.

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hmmm

Random jumble random jumble random jumble MASSSSIVE POOLS OF COLOUR random jumble random jumble. Is what my proto-cardigan would say if it could talk.

I am beginning to change my mind here... after a bit of Pooling Maths and investigative onward knitting, I feel action has to be taken with the cardigan weirdness. Possibly, with such a confined area of bad yarn behaviour, I could get away with ripping it back to the start of the pooling and replacing that particular bit with a stripe or two of another yarn... am pondering.... I feel I have to act swiftly before I get distracted by another new project and meander off down a woolly avenue of novelty. If I can find a similar solid colour yarn in a suitably matching hue, it might do the trick.



There have been other projects in the meantime, some small gifty things, like these cute baby socks in Green Eyed Monsters yarn. They are really very small, 32 stitches around, so they're exactly half the size of adult socks, to fit a 6-8 month old baby. Sort of made up, based on my notes from these ones last year. So the stripes in the yarn came out two rows wide rather than one. It all worked out quite lovelyly in the end. Sometimes, hand-dyed yarn can be your friend!

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laxton's superbs

As a child I was slightly overexposed to Pacman and underexposed to sunlight and fresh air and stuff, so I've always been entranced by glowing brightly coloured fruit. Long term blog readers may have already suspected this. The first thing I planted in the garden when we moved house a couple of years ago was an apple tree, followed closely by a pear tree, a cherry tree and a plum tree. Was strangely tempted to leave a trail of power pills between them all. Anyway, the apple tree was a Laxton's Superb, and I was very taken by the vivid colours of the fruit, with its bright swirls of green and pink. So when I saw the Red Delicious socks in last summer's Knotions I immediately queued them, then pondered about how I could personalise them a bit to pay tribute to my little tree. Tricky. Fortunately Kate from Green Eyed Monsters kindly indulged me in my appley fantasy with some custom dyed sock yarn. It's a 3-yarn stranded sock - the other plain white and dark green yarns were leftovers, Regia I think, from the bottom of the sock yarn drawer.


I loved knitting these, stranded colourwork is so satisfyingly intricate, and the variegated yarn gave it that little element of randomness to make each repeat of the apple pattern feel unique. The soles are particularly pleasing with their dense stripes, and with such a tiny colourwork unit they look relatively neat. My tension for the rest of the socks is all over the shop, even after blocking, because these socks have been my carry-around-everywhere project. I can see from here the bit I knitted in the Kings Arms, which is much more, er, 'relaxed' than the rest of the sock. I have been rather busy of late so have been trying to make the most of what knitting time I get. There are tiny bits that were knitted on buses and trains and platforms and waiting rooms and basically anywhere I got a spare minute, and to be honest it doesn't annoy me that it all looks different because I enjoyed the whole thing so much it pleases me to remember the creation of all its component parts. The dodgiest looking bit in my view is the toe, which is considerably baggier than the rest of the sock. It might just be me, but going back to one colour after the stranded section made the fabric much looser. So for other knitters, it might be an idea to go down a needle size for the toe, as the author suggests for the cuff. I'm not too bothered though as I'm a compulsive toe-wiggler, and this facilitates my irritating habit. And even though the socks are slightly silly it's not possible to put them on in the morning without grinning foolishly.
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finiiiished

This, unless I have any more last minute harebrained ideas, marks the end of my festive knitting. Only prezzies for my sisters this year, because one sister asked for socks and the other one would be jealous if I didn't knit her something too. (My brother has fallen off the xmas knitting list because he doesn't wear the nice handknitted-in-wool-from-local-farm hat I made him, favouring a cheap shopbought acrylic one that doesn't even fit his head. Hmph.) My sisters have Very Different Tastes. One likes muted neutral colours, and would consider some shades of beige to be too garish. The other likes her colours as bright as physically possible, and would probably enjoy wearing a garment made of radium.

I highly doubt any of them will read this so ta-daaaa! Above are the rather unadventurous socks for Muted Sis. Made from recently acquired Regia 4ply in shade 'I can't remember'. (Whilst in my possession it was so fleetingly in a unknitted state that I'm afraid I have failed to put it into Ravelry or save the ball band). Just a plain toe up garter rib. Interestingly, though, they are much baggier than the last pair I made, despite using the same pattern, the same needles and almost exactly the same yarn. I don't know what has happened to my tension. Initially I blamed gin, but the second sock is just the same so I think I am just slowly turning into a Loose Woman.

Dayglo Sis is getting these mittens. They are made from some alpaca from the stash, aran-ish weight, multicoloured and brandless but beautiful (a gift from some friends who went to Patagonia on holiday). I've started making various things with it before and abandoned them because they didn't really suit the yarn. I wanted to do it justice - it is very soft and warm and quite short colour repeats, which I think come out rather well in this design. I winged the pattern, they are very simple. I couldn't tell you what I did, I was using a new strategy: 'I can't be bothered to write down what I am doing as I go along, so I will make them fairly soon after each other and trust myself to make the same decisions each time'. It nearly worked, and the resulting mittens will be ideal for anyone with one fat thumb and one thin thumb. My sister doesn't really fit this description, but maybe if I distract her with a small dance while she opens the present she'll never notice...
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super speedy sister sock

So I really wasn't going to do any Christmas knitting this year, as I have been dead busy with various Big Projects lately. (If you are wondering what, there is a hint here! I know, it's all quite exciting). Then my sister phoned a couple of days ago. I hadn't done any Christmas shopping so needed a quick run down on what her eleventy billion kids wanted from Auntie Rubbishknitter. She suggested, as there has been a dearth of income in this house of late, that I could make the kids something. I politely declined, as not only am I a bit strapped for time but they are mostly teenagers and probably excruciatingly embarrassed by my creations. So she reeled off a list of presents and mercifully, as they were all the sort of thing that could be easily achieved on a 10 minute Amazon spree, I was starting to feel a bit calmer and more organised about the whole Christmas thing. Until I asked her what she wanted, and she casually said, 'oh i don't mind, a pair of socks or something'.

To be fair, a non-knitter probably sees this as a pretty innocuous request, easily fulfillable in a supermarket if you're lazy. But someone like me is physically unable to buy socks as a Christmas present for a close family member. Especially when a recent Kemp's sale cleared out a load of Regia sock yarn at £1.20 a ball, some of which mysteriously found its way over my threshold. I may not have a lot of time these days but I wasn't Manchester Yarn Day Speed Knitting Champion for nothing! So I found myself hurriedly casting on for the fastest sock in the West. It's plain toe up garter rib using my old fave knitty universal sock pattern, and I have to say this is possibly the world's quickest sock to make. Look, two days of evening-only knitting in and I am nearly there on sock one! The trouble is, you see, this is a bit of a can of worms I have opened....I have another sister too, who is likely to get jealous. Good job I stocked up at Kemp's really ;)
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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.
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flaming socks of fire

In this weather these feel like an appropriate knit. It got so hot, my socks caught fire!1!1 They're Charades (sorry, the non-ravelry link seems to have died) and the yarn was a Christmas present for me hand-dyed by Cat. Isn't is lovely? Don't think I've ever made anything out of hand-dyed yarn before so it was a new and exciting experience.

I'm a big fan of this pattern too, would definitely recommend it for hand dyed yarn. (You can still get it as a free ravelry download fortunately.) The slip stitch pattern breaks up the pooling / flashing / whatever you call it, and adds to the general chaotic effect. I think I messed up the heel a bit - it's the first time i've attempted a top down sock on two circulars and the pattern's written quite specifically for dpns. I stubbornly continued with the two circulars anyway and somehow seemed to end up with eight extra stitches after turning the heel. Oops. So the heel gusset is pretty big, but this is actually a really nice feature - the socks are super easy to put on and take off. And fortunately whatever I did wrong on the first sock, I did wrong in the same way on the second, so they are the same shape. Now I just need a bit of slightly cooler weather so I can wear them!

In other news, I am an extremely minor internet celebrity this week. I was interviewed by Girl and Dean at UK Ravelry Day, and some of it made its way into the video below. You can't see me but you can hear some of my inane witterings. Always weird hearing yourself, I sound like a bloke. Quite a funny little film though anyway.



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on the needles

It struck me that I have been a very lazy blogger and for ages have just been putting up pictures of finished objects. For all you people know, I could have bought them all in Primark and passed them off as mine. I could be the sort of person who invites people round for tea, orders a takeaway, dishes it out and hides all the evidence, pretending to have slaved in the kitchen all afternoon. (I don't, but I do enjoy a nice greasy takeout curry. Mmmm).

So here's some evidence for you all, of what I've been up to...

I've being getting on quite well with the Deep V Argyle tank top. This is great fun so far, I love stranded knitting. Seems to fit ok as well up to this point, I have been trying it on slightly overzealously, like every row or so. I know a lot of people have had fit problems with the top half, but that is steeked so I'll just have to see how it goes. Some have complained of wide shoulders but I currently look a bit like Mickey Rourke in the Wrestler after carrying a fat baby around all the time, so I'm not too worried about that. I've moved the V neck up about 10 rows on the chart though - I just felt it was a little draughty looking as originally designed. (I must be getting old.)

Now my sock needles are free again, I have been able to cast on some socks with the lovely hand-dyed yarn that Cat gave me. I was originally going to make the Herringbone Rib Socks out of the Winter 2008 Interweave Knits, and made two egregious attempts at starting these yesterday. For some reason, I kept ballsing up the stitch pattern, and found it incredibly difficult to tink backwards and fix errors. Normally I can do this no problem, even in lacey things, but I couldn't seem to sort it out yesterday and it was annoying me. I think the socks are beautiful in this sort of yarn but after the second frog, when I read on ravelry that someone with the same size feet as me had found them too tight, and with very little stretch, I gave up. So I'm making charades instead now, which look like an easier version of the same sort of stitch. A nice simple project to take on the train to UK Ravelry Day tomorrow!

I'm also pleased to report that the made-up-on-holiday baby socks have remained on rubbishknitterjunior's feet all morning, which is nothing short of miraculous. It's definitely a good idea to put eyelets and a tie onto a baby sock. They're pretty simple but I may even write up a pattern for these if I get a minute. (Yes, yes, I know they have pink stripes and he is male. So I have freed myself from the cultural hegemony of Prescribed Baby Colours. He's too small to be embarrassed yet. And it was all the yarn I had with me on holiday ok?!)

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big sock little sock

Advice to Knitters: When going on holiday, make sure you pack enough yarn.


Otherwise you will finish the socks you are making, then have to improvise reeeeally smaaaall socks for the baby from the teeny tiny leftover bits, then sit twiddling your thumbs, idly wondering if some sort of fibre could be made from grass. Ah well. The baby socks turned out ok, although I didn't really have enough yarn to do very much after turning the heel. I put an eyelet row in just before the top and a crochet tie through in an attempt to stop him pulling them off and eating them (his favourite sock based game). I love my new socks and like the length of them - maybe not very summery but I do wear boots a lot of the time for dogwalking and allotment digging purposes so I suspect they will be very useful. Pattern was winged a bit, based on my usual toe-up measurements from knitty's universal sock pattern, but with a k3 p2 garter rib, which is sufficiently mindless for inebriated holiday crafts. I spent ages agonising over what sock pattern would be engaging to knit without being too hectic for the stripes, and I think in the end this struck a good balance. Yarn is the very lovely Kaffe Fassett for Regia Landscape Celebration. I used every last millimetre of 2 balls.
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Maslow's hierarchy of craft-related needs

I seem to have fallen off the bottom of it recently. If knitting things of intricate beauty, taking photos and blogging are at the top, and urgently making warm stuff to keep your family's extremities from falling off during blizzards is at the bottom. (Maslow's hierarchy is defined here if you've never studied psychology. Obviously he wasn't originally talking about knitting, more about life in general). So I've been mostly spending January being distracted from my major WIPs by small but important projects for the warmness and general wellbeing of those around me.

Like the above tiny baby socks made out of DK yarn scraps. Pattern is Socks in a box from the January issue of Knitting magazine. I've never read this before but I rather enjoyed it - I bought the mag, cast on and finished this project on the same day - don't think that's ever happened before with a magazine. They're just like normal socks to knit, but gratifyingly swift. Not quite as awesome at staying on as Christine's stay on baby booties, but they took almost no time at all and used up tiny bits of yarn that were otherwise utterly useless.

I also had to fulfil a request for head warming gear from Mr. Rubbishknitter, so made this manly muted coloured hat. It's just a plain 1x1 rib beanie from Rowan Pure Wool DK. I thought it would be a tedious knit but it is the loveliest yarn ever I have to say, so it was actually a pleasure. Really springy and light but warm merino, feels lovely against the skin. (Yes, I have stolen this hat a couple of times to walk the dog, although pleasingly it is rarely off the big fella's head.) File under boring-but-useful. Oh - and I did have something of a hat-knitting epiphany - I knitted it on two circulars. Honestly, how much unnecessary hassle have I caused myself in the past by using dpns for this? Constantly picking up dropped stitches off the ends, and wondering if it's going to fit, but not really knowing until I reach the crown because I am too lazy to put all the stitches on scrap yarn. With two circulars you can cast on, knit a couple of rows of ribbing and check fit straight away while it's still on the needles! Easy enough to start again at that stage if it isn't totally perfect... I feel like something of an idiot for my previous slapdash trial and error approach. No more giving away failed hats I had earmarked for my large-headed self to children! I can see more hat knitting in my not too distant future...

I'm also in a frenzy of activity to finish the baby's quilt, as my mother in law pointed out winter is nearly over and he might not fit it next year... and it's gone mightily cold in the nights round here... it's quite laughably amateurish looking but excitingly, I'm nearly there....

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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.

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highlander - there can be only two

So I finally finished the Highland Schottische Kilt Hose [ravelry project link], from Folk Socks by Nancy Bush. This is quite possibly my favouritest sock pattern I have made so far - I really loved knitting these. There are so many intricate and engrossing details; the picot hem, the lacy tops. And yet just when you think the socks are going to take forever to make, you get to the straight bit on the leg, a fairly basic lacy wide rib that zooms along at hyperspeed in comparison. This bit is easy to keep in your head and churn out in quantity and yet so pretty in its simplicity, that it never gets boring.

The yarn is Regia Heather 4 ply in Linen. It took just over 3 balls. There is a slight tweediness to it which I like, and it has that almost indestructible feel to it which suggests that your foot would probably fall apart before the sock did. I toyed with the idea of a supertraditional 100% wool, as I'm guessing they will just be used for occasional wear, but it's a lot of sock knitting to be doing for something just to develop holes immediately and I couldn't quite bring myself to risk it.


The socks did take me quite a while but that's because I've had a lot of other stuff going on this summer, and I've picked them up and put them down many times. I actually rather miss them now. I may well even make some more, as I am giving these away. They're supposed to be sized for a bloke although that's me wearing them in the photos and alarmingly, they seem to be about right. I'm hoping the rib will stretch enough to accommodate an ampler calf! Hopefully it will. If not, I have instructed his missus to steal them. The calf shaping is quite lovely in this pattern, it's my favourite bit I think.

They are mindbogglingly comfortable as well. Sooo snuggly warm... It was difficult to take them off after these photos, but I managed it, and they are on their way to the intended recipient now...

Now I seem to have a lot of empty sock needles. What to do with my Regia Landscape? Jaywalker or Charade? It's a tricky one!

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multicoloured dreams

I think it's the weather... I must have mild sensory deprivation from exposure to perpetual greyness. So without really even noticing what I was doing I seem to have bought some lovely bright stripy sock yarn. Yes, I too appear to have succumbed to the delights of the Kaffe Fassett for Regia sock yarn series. This is Landscape Celebration - a new colourway.

Mmmm pretty. And a good incentive for me to hurry up and finish the Highland Schottische Kilt Hose, which have been occupying my sock needles since forever - but I'm nearly at the heel on the second sock so the end is in sight!


In other colourful news, I have started to make a quilt for the wee man, from the wodge of patchwork squares I picked up at the Stitch and Creative Crafts Show. Somehow, even when I cheat outrageously and everything is cut out exactly for me, I still don't seem to be able to get all the corners of shapes to match up exactly neatly. I suspect this is because I sew like a drunk person walks. That mitred corner in the border at the top is all over the place too - I will have another go at that before I take a deep breath and start doing the proper quilting bit, where you attach the warm stuff. Incidentally the big piece of warm stuff under the quilt top in the picture cost me the princely sum of £1... it was the end of the roll. I love my local fabric store. That means the whole quilt will have cost approximately one bargainous tenner to make. Which makes me feel much better about the prospect of potentially ruining it during quilting...

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what did the postman bring?

Sock yarn! hooray!

Some lovely heathery regia 4ply, colour 2143 (linen), courtesy of woolly workshop. I realised when making the rainbow booties how much I had missed making socks. My other ongoing project is a big crocheted blanket so it feels more interesting to make something intricate and fine gauge again. So I've already cast on for Highland Schottische Kilt Hose from Folk Socks. Which is an awesome book, but I haven't actually made anything from it until now. I am making them as a surprise present for a very nice kilt wearing gentleman I know. This may well turn out to be madness as I have no idea if they will fit or not... I may have to recruit some other male sock models with similarly proportioned calves to test my progress!


Check out that picot hem! I am ridiculously overpleased with this... impossible to convey in a photograph how tactile this is. It's a double thickness, like, er, most hems are i guess, so it feels lovely and solid and nubbly.
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bootie call

So I finally found a use for leftover sock yarn! These only used about 20g of zitron trekking xxl i had left from making these ages ago. Here they are in ravelry - for the unravelled, the pattern is Christine's Stay on Baby Booties. A nice fun quick knit. Living life on the edge as I invariably do, I decided to risk running out of yarn halfway through by just using the leftovers from one 100g ball. There are plenty of options really if you do run out - it would be easy to use stripes or do a contrast sole, or do the laces in a different yarn. Or even if you end up having to frog the whole thing in despair, really there's not that much work being lost there. Just a couple of train-journeys-worth (from Manchester to London, interspersed with gentle snoozings). Interestingly, if you are 8 months pregnant and knitting on the train I've noticed you tend to attract fond, approving glances from fellow travellers - like, phew, there's another stereotype reaffirmed - rather than the usual head-craning intrigued stares from people who can't quite work out what's going on and haven't quite got the nerve to ask.


This maternity leave malarkey is great. So much knitting time! Hopefully the postman should be delivering more yarny treats any second now... *drums fingers impatiently*. Good tinkering time as well, I have spent the morning playing with xubuntu on an old laptop, so I can now blog / ravelry / generally waste time from the sofa rather than having to walk upstairs. (Yes, I am getting that lazy.) So if this post looks weird, it's because I have shunned all software usage conventions for the day. Take that, establishment!

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finished monkey business

These monkey socks have been quietly festering on the needles for some time. They got harshly deprioritised in the run up to Christmas, and now I'm finally able to work on stuff to keep myself warm again. Hooray!

I enjoyed these very much as a nice portable background type project. Once the mild trauma of the tubular cast-on was over, they were fun to make, if not terribly original (3602 other people on ravelry making these at the moment - yikes). I very much like this yarn as well. It's Stroud SuperSock in Semisolid Chestnut. Semisolid sock yarns are quite possibly the new variegated yarns, for me. Oh yes. Good for lacy patterns anyway.

Nice and muted too. Having made lots of headache-inducing bright socks in the past, I wanted a pair that were a bit more wearable in the winter months. These can safely protrude from under a pair of trousers without confusing hibernating animals in the vicinity into thinking it's spring already. Don't do it yet bees / dormice / tortoises / hedgehogs - there's snow on the way! Stay warm in that pile of leaves for a bit longer! And my feet can also continue to hibernate happily in these socks. Under a nice warm blanket on the sofa. Everyone's a winner.

Here's a super-duper-close-up if you are one of the remaining 3 knitters on the planet who hasn't already seen the stitch pattern for monkey socks.


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