A Sock's Progress

There has been knitting! Not a massive amount, but some. Got to keep my hand in....

So I knitted a scarf. Here is a very poor picture of it (I usually take pictures for the blog on my phone. I thought I'd try using an actual digital camera. The picture has come out blurry, and I am left feeling it wasn't really worth the effort...). The colour looks poor here, in reality it is a lovely lilac colour.

The pattern is from my favourite website - www.knittingpatterncentral.com - and I started knitting this so long ago (having written the two row pattern on a bit of paper) that I can't actually remember which pattern I used or what it was called. Anyway, it consists of some yarn overs, some psso's, and looks all a bit lacy (but not fine lacy, it's DK weight yarn). All in all it was a really quick knit, and it's really warm.

The socks I started knitting about a billion years ago are also nearing completion. I could not get motivated to cast on the second sock for about a month so progress on these has been really slow - but when I finally picked up the needles I whizzed through the leg, turned the heel at the beginning of this week and you can see from this picture (again with the digital camera but this one has come out better) there isn't much left to do.

I knitted these for my dearly beloved husband. He got made captain of his cricket team! These socks are a simple 2x2 rib pattern and I've added a band at the top of each in his team colours (deep red and gold).

Since the heels are not reinforced I doubt they would last two minutes on an actual cricket pitch, but he's pleased with them anyway - I picture them more as a pair of "lounging around the house after a good match and a shower" type socks...

I bought some bedroom furniture, to solely house yarn. It came flat packed, so I put it together, positioned it where I wanted it, then put all my stash in it (organised into colour coded bags). Then I hopped about from foot to foot for a time squeaking. Having yarn specific furniture is a FABULOUS thing.

The stash re-organisation exercise however did make me realise that I have far too much crappy yarn. I subscribe to a knitting magazine (The Art of Knitting. 1 in 10 patterns is actually something you'd wear. But it is full of useful tips and ideas for patterns.) Each edition features a pattern for a square to make up an afghan, and comes with a ball of yarn. I can't be bothered with afghans made up of squares - I love them to look at, and I'd love to receive one, but for me the knitting is just too slow and dull. So I have all this leftover acrylic nonsense yarn to get rid off (I always seem to have acrylic horribleness. Why? I'm sure it's not my fault!). Once the socks are done and off the needles I'm intending to knock out some baby/child hats and sell them off to get rid of the acrylic nonsense.

Then I'm turning my attentions to my "Knitted Idols" book I got for Christmas. I want a Mr T!

Several Babies With Warm Heads

It is probably safest not to mention the names of these two, or my relationship with them. After all, you never know who's looking....

.... but I feel it necessary to share the unbelievable cuteness with the world.

Babies F and C are two months old now - they are non-identical twins, and they came into the world after mum and dad had some help with a tiny bit of IVF magic.

Mum didn't know the sex of the babies until they arrived. We did (thanks to their dad). To celebrate their girliness, I knitted pink hats (in the round using Acrylic DK Nastiness and 4mm DPNs) and then knitted darker pink flower motifs and sewed them on.

Mum and Dad were very happy with the hats. The girls are not in a position at present to comment either way. I like to think that they approve of the pink girliness at the very least.

There has been a spate of baby hats in my life of late. This is Baby S (no relation to Babies F and C) who is proudly sporting a Dillknit cabled hat in fashionable white baby DK:

He's a boy, so pink definitely would not do. And any baby who is ANYONE knows that white is this season's colour.

**I have decided to pretend that I have been blogging regularly since July, and that the glaring lack of knitting or any other signs of life from me are definitely the fault of Blogger. Nothing at all to do with me being lazy. Normal service should now - hopefully - be resumed.

Where Does The Time Go?!

I am an awful blogger. Just awful. After all that complaining about others not updating their blogs often enough! That is very nearly 2 months since my last post - dreadful. This post, by way of an update (because life has just gone CRAZY) will be limited to bullet points only, in order that we can all (myself included) get back up to speed, and I may lay out more simply my list of excuses as to why I have been so quiet.

• I got a new job. This is the main excuse. So I'm back in a real actual office, not working from home, so there is less opportunity to avoid work and knit and blog instead. In fact, there is no opportunity at all.
• I got a new phone. I use my phone as a camera to post pictures on here. I'm slightly scared of The New Phone as I'm not entirely sure how it works (and it's all full of gadgets and a bit intimidating!), so I need to load all of its software on to the PC and play with it properly.
• I just haven't been knitting. My flat is roughly the temperature of the core of the sun with the current heatwave, so picking up any sort of wool or yarn is horrible. I do however live in Britain. I think we can assume that the weather will be horrendous again by the end of next week.
• We've been on holiday. To Glastonbury and Guilfest (the music festivals. Not just to Glastonbury the place. Guilfest is held in Guildford). Both rocked. Hard.

That's pretty much it. Pretty poor on the excuses front, if truth be told. I finished P's cricketing sock, so all being well there'll be pictures of it after my efforts at the weekend. Got to cast on for its mate before I lose the momentum...

I am also forging on with the 60th Birthday Wrap for my mother, but progress is a bit slow - all the wool arrived in skeins rather than in balls (normal in America and pretty much everywhere else, not normal for me) and I had such a bad experience winding up the last ball I'm in no rush to prepare the next one. 2 days, a big mess of tangled yarn, and much hysteria from me - you get the picture. That said - I'm loving the pattern, it's turning out just like I wanted it to, and the yarn just makes me drool. Bring me the skeins...

The Best Laid Plans

A short, pictureless post today, for the sake of an update. Whilst I realise no one reads my blog except me (at present anway... patience, Sam, patience...), I do always feel slightly let down when the blogs I love to read are not updated more regularly... how dare these people take holidays/have to work/have nothing to blog about/have some sort of interesting life that doesn't involve the internet? I have the same problem right now - nothing to blog.

The loudly heralded car boot sale did not happen, despite our best laid plans. We rocked up, sat about in the rain for 2 hours, failed to get a place in the car park, went home again. But there are plans afoot for this weekend... so hopefully some cash will be forthcoming.

There has been knitting. I had a rush of blood to the head and cracked on with P's cricket sock - no point in photographing it yet as it still doesn't really look "sockish" enough yet, but I've turned the heel and am rocketing towards the toe... I would've thought I'll get it done by this weekend.

Booting

I have been conscientiously saving money. I want a new kitchen. I need about 2K. I had about 800.00, and I spent 550.00 on mending the car. I permitted myself a slight sigh as I handed the cash over, but we need a car and I had the money, and I'd rather spend it than get into debt. So the kitchen fund now is just under 200.00, and I need considerably more than that. So I'm doing a car boot sale.

For anyone not in the UK and who might not have a clue what I'm talking about, a car boot sale is a bit like a communal garage or yard sale - you pack all the things you want to sell into the back of your car, drive it up to wherever the sale is being held, and treat it like a shop front. I'm selling a load of stuff - old clothes, bags, shoes, kitchen equipment, and tonnes of knitting. Much of it has been featured on this blog, plus a couple of older scarf and hat sets that I wore for a year, then carefully put away to allow myself to knit another set...! On sorting through my stuff I found some treasures of my art that I'd forgotten about.

Look at these gems! The first picture is of a stripey poncho I made about 2 or 3 years ago, when I first started knitting - it's tiny and would probably fit a 2-3 year old. It was pretty much the first pattern I made up myself! I remember being very impressed with myself that I had managed to successfully pick up and knit stitches to form a collar.

The second picture shows the 2nd pair of socks I ever knitted (thanks of course to the Legendary Cath Grant). They are from the selection of 3 patterns she gave me, these are the "fancy" pair. I would wear these myself, but why hide the "fanciness" inside shoes?! These deserve a better home.

The sale is next week - I'd ideally like to make about 50.00. But who knows what I might achieve, selling fabulous hand knits like these!?

All I Want Is A Tiger Hat For Nickmas

They say that Nickmas comes but once a year... well Chez Us it does, in any case. My brother in law, Nick, has been away in Tasmania for 6 months. Apparently Christmas over the barbeque rocked, but it just wasn't the same as Christmas in the UK (cold, usually rainy, everyone asleep by 5pm because we've eaten so much). So we had Christmas last week - since it was in his honour, we named it especially for Nick - NICKMAS.

It turned out to be the best idea ever. Having not seen them over Christmas proper, we had gifts for Nick and his girlfriend, but we got tokens for the rest of the family (just so's everyone had something to open). There was a tree up, mulled wine (produced from two slo-cookers by myself and the famous FIL), and a full on roast turkey dinner. It was the coolest thing ever, everyone loved it.

My gift from my fabulous P was a ball of wool - often I have said I have the best husband ever, see how thoughtful he is (and how he foolishly feeds my addiction). Fortunately for him, he picked a ball in a colour he actually liked and would wear, so I knat him a hat. It's a simple 2/2 rib over 120 stitches on 5mm DPNs (P has a head like a small planet). I was delighted with how the self striping yarn worked out - I've called it the Tiger Hat as it's vaguely tiger striped. Yet to try it on P (in the picture it is modelled by the lovely me), hopefully it'll fit and keep his head warm!

Scarf For FIL

There has been knitting in my house of late, although the regularity of blog posts does not reflect that. Just when I think I might actually get through a project, another one crops up... and this one genuinely wasn't due to my usual fickleness.

I was commissioned by my father in law (FIL) to knit him a scarf - despite the fact that we're now pretty much in Springtime here, the temperature thinks it's still winter, and the poor man has been suffering with a heavy dose of flu for about 3 weeks. So he wanted a scarf, to protect his neck (as scarves are designed to do). My only instructions were that it was to match his jacket (which is a kind of reddish brown).

I invested a full 3.00 in some acrylic nastiness which was in the sale - but it is aran denim acrylic, and actually feels a lot nicer and softer than usual cheap wool. Sadly my local yarn shop has closed down, and my only other option is a horribly expensive haberdashery - superb for nice baby knits or stuff you've actually slaved over and intend to wear as much as possible, but bad for cheap scarf wool.

I invented the pattern with the raised diamonds, and being a generous soul - here it is:

Yarn: James C. Brett Denim with Wool Aran - 80% acrylic, 20% wool
Needles: 6mm plastic needles (no idea where they came from)

Pattern:
C/o 20 stitches (I held 2 strands together)
Knit 3 rows garter stitch.
Purl 1 row.
Knit 1 row.
Pattern stitch:
Row 1. P9, k2, P9
Row 2. (and all alternate rows) K
Row 3. P7, K2, P2, K2, P7
Row 5. P5, K2, P6, K2, P5
Row 7. P3, K2, P10, K2, P3
Row 9. P1, K2, P14, K2, P1
Row 11. Repeat Row 7
Row 13. Repeat Row 5
Row 15. Repeat Row 3
Row 17. Repeat Row 1
Knit 1 row.
Repeat these 18 Rows until scarf is required length.
Purl 1 row
Knit 3 rows garter stitch.
Cast off.

I blocked it, but it still curls inward slightly on the wrong side as stockinette is wont to do. Doesn't worry me, I like it. Hopefully FIL will too.