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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crochet catastrophe

On the Blanket of Many Browns, I ran out of yarn this close to the end of a stripe. Aran weight yarn disappears so quickly when you're used to socks! As the yarn is at least twenty years old I doubt I would be able to get more. So I think my only option is to rip back this stripe and end the blanket before it starts. I guess this will give a reasonable sized blanket for a baby, but I am slightly disappointed to finish it now. Mostly because that rather unbelievably leaves me with no other crafty projects that I can currently get on with! Having failed to decide on a sock pattern for my Regia Landscape yesterday, I thought I'd cast on regardless and start a generic toe up pattern. Inspired by reading Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles, I determined to give this method a try. Unfortunately, the circular needles I used have a large, pointless lump betwixt cable and tip, which operates much as a speed bump in a road might. This meant that my socks weren't so much soaring as flying too close to the sun then falling Icarus-like in a singed heap to the ground. In despair, I gave up and scoured the internet for Addi Turbos. Finally managed to find some in stock in the UK, but from a shop which is currently in the middle of moving premises, so I have to wait for them to unpack all the boxes and play find-the-needles-in-a-haystack before they can post them out to my troubled sock. Gah!

But why don't you just get on with the quilt you started? You may think. Well, unbelievably my sewing machine is also playing up. The presser foot has started raising and lowering itself at its own whim, rather than when I press the button. I think it might be haunted. So it is in for repair / exorcism, but won't be fixed till at least the weekend. In the meantime, I need to try and learn how to control my twitchy fingers! *Opens beer, drums fingers repetitively on tabletop*
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