Since the last time I updated on the sock knitting I have finished one pair and started two new pairs.
Firstly I have started the Austrian Socks from Favourite Socks. This is a very hard pattern and so I am taking it nice and slow, and keeping it on the back burner whilst I knit other pairs which are more suited to knitting in front of TV or on a train.
I am using the gorgeous Easy Knit Apple Blossom which really makes the cabling stand out.
To give myself a little break to do something different I knitted my next socks out of Knitting on the Road. These are some fairly plain Dalarna socks in plain orange cherry tree hill yarn. I am not so impressed with the cherry tree hill yarn in this instance. The sheen on the yarn makes it look a little odd knitted up and shows up all the slight tension imperfections in the knitted fabric. Maybe they will look better after blocking.
Challenge 96 on the 101 list was to spend a day at the seaside. As a child growing up in the UK holiday were almost always seaside holidays where I would do all the traditional activities of rock pooling, sandcastle building, swimming (although not after dinner), picnic-ing, kite flying etc etc. I haven't done this in a surprisingly long time because I actually enjoy it a great deal. This is why it ended up on my list in the first place.
This weekend we had a long weekend in Cornwall with friends and I finally got to revisit my childhood. The following things have not changed at all:
- People still wear swimming costume and sunbathe in 20 degrees C and on a cloudy day.
- There is a still a complicated process of putting up windbreaks
- The sea is still 14 degrees C
- Sand gets everywhere - even in my pastie.
I picnic'ed and read a book, also swam, built a sandcastle and did lots of poi. It was my first time on a beach with a little doggy companion which was great fun as well.
I had a fantastic time and remembered all the reasons that I love days out at the beach! I am so pleased that I put it on my list so that I could really remember how much I like that sort of thing.
In fact poi was really successful this holiday as I learnt another new trick from R - previously I have only been able to achieved a 2 beat weave and now I can do a 3 beat weave, not especially smoothly but I have got the basics and will make time to practice.
There are so many new Indie dyers springing up all over and especially in the UK at the moment. I am trying out a very new one at the moment called Knot Another Knitting Yarn and my first two purchases have arrived:
This is Bamboozle which is a bamboo, wool, nylon blend. The colour is more peach in person than orange but it looks good and was reasonably priced.
This is the yarn I am most excited about. It is 50% Yak and 50% Wool, again it is very reasonably priced and has generous yardage at over 500m:
However as always I reserve judgment until after the wash and wear test. I am very keen to use the Yak yarn to make the Coriolis Socks by Cat Bordhi, it will show of the colour really well I reckon.
Before I cast on for the Merino Lace Socks I tried to make the Austrian Socks. I couldn't get gauge because the yarn was too thin. I didn't have any thicker stuff left and I needed to get it quite thick to hit a gauge of 6 stitches to the inch. I decided that I was in enough yarn credit to make a purchase and I remembered that Easy Knits BFL which I have used twice before is pretty thick. I went to the website looking for something very pale since there is a lot of detail on the Austrian Socks and I didn't want it swamped with a brightly varigated yarn.
I found this beautiful Apple Blossom Yarn
When I placed the order I got a nice email from Jon the dyer asking how I found out about the website. Something I can well understand since I always want to know how people found me on Ravelry. I explained and he sent a lovely email back.
Anyway when he sent my order out he included a little free gift. It was such a lovely surprise and I love it.
One of the things I was hoping for from the 101 in 1001 challenge was an interesting time with perhaps some new experiences and a little adventure on the way. I was not expecting this to be found in the Favourite Socks challenge however.
I have been happily making the padded footlets out of some Wollmeise sock wool I had left over from making the Go With the Flow Socks for my sister. Wollmeise comes in 150g skeins so I felt confident that there would be plenty left to make a pair of footlets. Unfortunately I was wrong about this although I managed about 1 and 3/4 of a sock before it gave out. This left me with a problem. Firstly I didn't want to have to buy another 150g, secondly since the exposure on Lime and Violet Wollmeise has had a bit of a run on it. Like Posh wool it sells out in seconds and is incredibly hard to get hold off. What is a girl to do?
Enter Ravelry. I use the experimental search function to find everyone in Europe who has posted completed projects using Sonne Wollmeise Superwash. There was about 5. I sent them all a message asking to use their leftovers. 3 people replied to me. 2 of them had no leftovers because they used them up in blankets etc but the 3rd lady in Finland did. She sent it to me and refused to take any cash even for posting, although she said that the postage from Finland was less than £1. So I got 80g of Sonne in a shade very slightly darker than my Sonne but the closest match I could get.
How brilliant is this, the kindness of strangers and the ability to find them!
I am so close to completing task 38 of 101 things.
This was to make 3 fabric bags from my fabric stash and I ended up finding this great website called Morsbags. The idea is that there is a simple and free pdf pattern on the website and people are encouraged to sew them up, distribute them to people waiting outside the local supermarket and so encourage people not to use plastic bags.
The pattern is fantastic, simple, quick and strong looking. It is much better than the last version I used which had a lining and a plastic bag as a template pattern.
These are the two bags I have made so far and they are so good for storing knitting and yarn that if I do want to make any to give away (I am thinking my sister could use them in her work as a teacher) then I will have to make more. Luckily I have plenty of fabric so this isn't going to be a problem.
Bag 1
Bag 2 (you may recognise this as the vintage curtain fabric I made my last bag from - I am still upcycling it and will be for some time).
Today was a much better day. The house is clean (er), many Nigella recipes have been successfully cooked and enjoyed and I have really taken advantage of my garden's delights. We ate raspberries with our pudding and then I gave my mum a good couple of pounds to take home. Raspberries are Mum's favourite fruit and whereas they have a late fruiting variety we have an early one.
I picked all the ripe blackcurrents (one of my favourite fruits) and pricked them all over and put them in a large bottle of vodka on a sunny shelf. There are still plenty of blackcurrent left to ripen which I can use to make ice cream or jam.
Finally we filled a big bowl with gooseberries and tomorrow night I will either make gooseberry jam or gooseberry granita (or maybe even both).
I also got to catch up with my family which was really nice, I haven't seen them in a long time even though they only live an hour away so I had three sets of birthday presents to give out! My dad then started to tell us about his fabulous plans for the garden. There are some plots of land at the back of my parents house which can be rented from the railway line owners. Dad rents two plots but is now about too rent three more. Not only so that he can expand his fruit and vegetable garden but also so that he can get chickens and bees. Being someone who has aspirations of being a smallholder I am so excited by this and very keen to see how it all goes and to pop down as often as I can to help out. I tried to persuade him to get a pig as well but sadly he wasn't interested. I guess that is one dream I will not be able to live vicariously.
Well I did it, I ripped and reknit and now it is done. Also I have seen the new Dr Who episode and the blue funk is beginning to lift.
So today my mojo (which has been waning for a while has finally failed me. I am tired (for no good reason - well ok I did start my new diet and exercise regime last week), I have little concentration of enthusiasm and everything I am knitting on seems to need re-knitting at the moment which is just depressing.
A new and exciting and potentially great long term builder and carpenter arrived this morning and put only one of our new doors in. He couldn't do them all because two of the three we have bought were the wrong size and need replacing. Unfortunately this caught me at a low ebb and this low was compounded further by binding off a pair of socks and discovering that one of them was too short (hence the re-knitting dismay).
As well as drowning my sorrows in back to back episodes of Dr Who and having a sleep in the afternoon (something I usually hate doing) I need to concentrate on the positives for a while to get me out of this blue funk (tm).
Firstly the vegetable garden is having some great successes such as the salad leaves which all taste fabulous:
And the tomato plants some of which have some trusses on them.
Athough I am ripping back on these socks they are looking good and will be one more towards the Favourite Socks book when the are done. Realistically I am only taking out the toe so an evening of knitting and I will be back on track. This is made of our Hipknits Ophelia sock yarn in the Forest colourway. The yarn is coming out ok but it is a little splitty and could probably have more twist in the ply. I have done some extra slip stitch reinforcing on the bottom of the heel as well as the back in case the yarn does not stand up as well as sock yarns with more twist in them.
My only other triumph this week was to put up a cleaning schedule on the fridge which next week we start to implement. It is an organic process so that we can amend it as we go and come up with a realistic systems that suites our needs. I insist on being optomistic about this!
I finished the Spey Socks from Nancy Bush's Knitting on the Road for J and he has now worn them a couple of times. They are crazy and I will have to stop calling them Banana's as it is making J unsure as to how much he likes them :)
