Tag: Sock Knitting

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Be Careful What You Wish For

A wooden box of tissues, a packet of paracetamol and a strip of Strepsils lie on a small wooden table.

Yesterday afternoon I was bemoaning the fact that I had a dentist appointment for one (maybe two) fillings this morning. One was the large molar I broke back in February, the other an upper tooth with fractures that were discovered during an X-ray at my last appointment.

I didn’t want to go to the dentist today as I was nervous. I have limited movement in my jaw so holding my mouth open for long is painful (and it was a 40 minute appointment!) – that was worrying me more than the injection and more than the fillings themselves.

And then yesterday evening I began to feel ropey. During the night and this morning I could barely swallow – my throat feels like it’s full of razorblades. I’m now sneezing very loudly and repeatedly. Bugger. It seems I have my wife’s cold. I say ‘cold’ and not Covid as we’ve both tested negative recently, though I will check again tomorrow.

So, I rang the dentist first thing and croaked that I would not be able to make my appointment. It’s been rebooked to mid-June. I promise not to wish I didn’t have to go next time!

On the positive side of things I have only one chapter (16 minutes) left to capture still pics from for my Introduction to Lace Knitting Course and I’ve been swatching for my next two in-person knitting workshops – closed ring cables and 2-colour brioche. The first isn’t for another couple of weeks, fortunately.

Three small foam playmate have knitted samples pinned out on them. There are five swatches with a variety of closed ring cables in grey Aran weight and two identical brioche swatches in maroon and silvery lilac 4-ply yarn - one on left washed and stretched a little, the other not.

I cast on Mum’s new bed socks last night – for some reason I had to do it three times as things kept going amiss. That should probably have been a sign that I wasn’t well, shouldn’t it!? I used the alternate cable cast-on that I learnt knitting a Woolly Wormhead hat as it gives a lovely smooth edge to a ribbed cast-on. I also went up a couple of needle sizes for the cast-on to ensure they stretch enough that Mum will be able to use them even when her legs are bad.

One inch of 1x1 ribbing on a top down sock on dpns in purple/white yarn. It is resting on the ball of wool on my blue dress.

So, it’s a short one from me today. Stay safe, keep well, wear a mask when you can and keep knitting! K x

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Silent Night

Last Sunday was Advent Sunday, so we put the Christmas tree up and decorated it. It took a little bit longer this year (maybe we’re a bit older?), but it was good.

A couple of hours after we had finished, the power went out. Storm Arwen did most of her damage on Friday night in our area, so we were surprised to get a power cut on late Sunday afternoon. It wasn’t the tree – we checked and the whole street and most of the town was in darkness.

It’s not until something as ‘invisible’ as electricity goes that you realise how much you rely on it. The heating went off as the boiler itself is powered by electricity. All the lights, except one USB chargeable lamp, went out. We couldn’t make a cup of tea.

So we scrabbled about in the dark to find the small candlesticks and the taper candles and lit three of those. Once it got chilly we lit the gas fire (ignition is battery powered and it had its service less than a week ago!). Carrying the candles into the kitchen to make a quick stove top casserole, we discovered the ignition on the hob is run off the mains, so back to the matches to get that on. We lit the candelabra with the multi-coloured candles that has been on the dining table in the kitchen unused for ages. Going to the bathroom meant taking one of the candles with us.

But it was so quiet. We sat and did a crossword by candlelight and talked. The constant hum of electrical equipment that is always on the edge of our awareness had stopped and it was peaceful.

A free standing Christmas decoration of a plaster sheep, with a rug over its back, with a cat sleeping on the rug and a small red bird sitting on the cat, stands on a base that is inscribed with the text "Sleep in Heavenly Fleece" is on the mantlepiece. Behind it part of a red and white glass clock and a small china Santa can be seen.

The power cut only lasted two and a half hours for us – barely anything compared to the four days some people in Wales have endured. But it made us stop, reflect and be grateful for the many things we still did have and were able to do (even without electricity for a little while). When the power came back on (as we sat down to eat and just in time for the Strictly results show) we were glad, but there’s something in that still quietness we had imposed on us that I don’t want to lose.

Today sees the start of the Fasten Off Yarn-a-Long for 2021 which runs until the end of the year. The discount code (valid from 9pm tonight EST until 11.59pm 6th December EST) is FO2021 and gives the same 25% discount for all patterns (well over 2000) from all the designers who are involved – that’s 101 of us. My page for the event is here.

In knitting progress, I’m back on track with the socks – the first leg is finished and I’ve started the heel flap.

A stripy sock in progress is shown on maroon fabric. The beginnings of the heel flap in blue show at the top of the work. Part of a hand is visible holding the sock flat.

I emailed my pattern with four days to spare before the deadline. I’m almost halfway through the sample for my second secret knitting and last night I knitted a bauble. I used the blank chart at the back of Arne & Carlos’ 55 Christmas Balls to Knit book to create a treble clef design and I’m quite pleased with it. I’ll be making two as Christmas gifts. It’s been a couple of years since I last made one of these baubles and I’m glad I still have the book to refer to for the shaping.

A hand knitted stranded Christmas bauble lies on maroon fabric. The background is cream with two bright red treble clefs showing. The bauble has not yet been stuffed and finished.

I’ve also cast on another design-in-progress of mine as I’ve decided to knit a sample in my size as I finish the write up of the pattern – partly to check the numbers and pattern writing and partly to get a new jumper! Unfortunately this is another thing I can’t show you yet, but I can show you the yarn I’m using. It’s Fleece by West Yorkshire Spinners, a really smooth DK yarn in Bluefaced Leicester wool – I’ve done the ribbing of the back so far and it’s working up beautifully. The colour is called Bramble.

A skein of deep purple yarn lies diagonally on a pale gold carpet. The text on the white ball band says "West Yorkshire Spinners/ Fleece/ 100% British Wool/ Bluefaced Leicester/ DK".

The really tricky decision for today will be which of these projects do I take with me to my mum’s for the next few days? Actually, I think I know the answer to that – all of them.

Take care, have a look at the Fasten Off Yarn-a-Long (it’s for crocheters as well as knitters), wear your mask and stay safe out there. K x

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The Hills are Alive

My plan to weave in a section of yarn ends on my advent sweater (Serenity by Joji Locatelli) each day worked a treat. I seriously underestimated how many there were; I’d forgotten that as I had worked each colour from the top over the back and each side of the front, several colours had six ends not two. It turned out that there were over 80 in total! However, I did a sleeve’s worth and so on and the ends were soon completed. It is such a gorgeous sweater to wear and the yarn is so very soft.

We took this picture on Sunday, during what we call our ‘country walk’. We are so lucky that we can get onto lanes like this within a kilometre or so of our front door. The main pic of today’s post is the view of Moel Famau, to the left of where we were standing.

A woman wearing a hand-knit sweater and a linen dress stands with her back to the camera and her hands in her pockets in a country lane. It is a sunny day and the jewel colours of the sweater almost glow.

Last week I asked you to keep your fingers crossed for me regarding a submission I’d sent, that I was due to hear back about by Friday. Well, it worked! I had an acceptance email on Wednesday morning!! Since then, I’ve been grading the pattern (10 sizes for this one) and starting to write it up and I am now waiting eagerly for the yarn to arrive in the post.

Can you believe that my flowers from last week are still going strong? The yellow roses have opened up and become all frilly on the edges and the deep red carnations are a lovely contrast.

My Fiery Dragon Skin Cowl is done and very cosy in my hand-spun yarn. I still have to pinch myself a bit that I only started learning to spin this time last year and I am making yarn I can use when knitting up my own designs. That disbelief is going to get to a whole new level once I have finished a project with yarn from Doris, isn’t it?!

A hand-knit cowl in hand-spun shades of blue, green and greeny-gold wool is on a mannequin covered with black fabric. A cream wall is reflected in the mirrored door behind.

In the meantime, here is my current spinning, some Southdown fibre, from Hilltop Cloud. The two bobbins are intended to have stripes of different sizes as I am attempted fractal spinning; you split the fibre lengthways, then one half lengthways again and then one of those lengthways again. The horizontal finished bobbin contains the singles spun from the fibre that was split more often and the bobbin still on the wheel is being spun with the other half of the fibre, so there are much longer stretches of colour.

A close-up of a bobbin in progress on the spinning wheel, with the other bobbin balanced horizontally above it to show the contrast. The wheel treadles and rest of the background are out of focus.

As I’m waiting for yarn to arrive for two commissions at the moment, I decided to cast on something small in the mean time. I posted about this sock on social media the other day and I’m pleased with how it’s coming along. It did take me a while to adapt to using the KnitPro single 25cm long circular needle, especially trying to work out which hand the shorter needle tip felt best in, but it’s feeling more natural now. That’s a 2mm needle in the pic with 80 stitches per round. I did once have 2mm bamboo needles, but they did not last very long. Sue likes her socks knit to a tight gauge – it makes them last better – and bamboo just snapped in my hands. The stripy yarn is fabulous isn’t it? This is Zandra’s Rainbow, one of the Zandra Rhodes colourways on their Signature 4-ply yarn for West Yorkshire Spinners.

A brightly coloured stripy sock in progress sits on a wooden desk in front of its ball of yarn. The yarn is pink, yellow, dark blue, maroon, scarlet and olive green.

I have spent several hours on the embroidery so far. You can see progress from last week, but no sense of the image yet. But this is only working from the central page of nine…

A close-up image of a very small scale embroidery in progress. The fabric is a cream coloured linen with black, dark brown, grey and green threads. Bright red threads mark the central lines of the design.

There has been slightly less baking than I would have liked recently, but Audrey2 is waking up again after a short time in the fridge. Hopefully I will be making another loaf in the next couple of days. I was feeling more than a bit off-colour yesterday, so there was definitely no baking, or much activity at all!

That’s all from me for today. I hope you all stay safe, stay well and do what makes you happy. K x

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Behind the Screen

The past few days have been somewhat heavy on computer work with understandably less time available for engaging in the fibre side of fibre arts.

I have finished updating the layout of my website! I am so much happier with how it looks now and each pattern and kit has its own page rather than being a major scroll-fest. This means I have created something like 60+ new pages, but they have a clear and consistent appearance (hurrah for WordPress’ reusable blocks) and it means I can add more photos to each pattern so people can see items from different angles etc.

This is what the main pattern page looks like now, with all patterns organised by type:

Once you click on one of the category images you see the individual patterns within:

And clicking on the pattern image gives you the detailed info about it:

The website update also means that when I finally take the plunge and add a shopping cart, it’s set up in a much better manner ready for that. For now, though, the buttons still take you to my Payhip store. Adding a shopping cart is one of those chicken and egg type situations. It costs more and you need to be on a higher level plan, so do you a) wait for your sales to increase to be able to justify the increased cost or b) do it anyway in the hope that people being able to buy directly from the website will in itself increase sales? Decisions, decisions.

Did you see the sneaky way I also showed you my latest pattern release just there? That’s right, Angel of the North is out and about in the world 😊 You can get the pattern from Payhip, Lovecrafts or Ravelry (the usual eye strain/vision difficulty warnings apply to ravelry – and their current homepage image is REALLY bright!) and one lovely knitter has already purchased it.

So, that just leaves the launch of Into the Vortex at the end of next week – a 7 part MKAL to keep you going through the summer. I guarantee it’s not something that you’ll be melting under while you knit if the weather is hot. You can buy the ‘pattern’ now – what you’ll get at this stage is the info about what you’ll need etc and then pattern updates will be released to you each Friday.

I have started spinning some new fibre – some beautiful BFL (Blue-face Leicester – that’s a sheep breed), dyed by Fibrehut in gorgeously subtle shades of blue/lavender. It’s called Purple Rain. Fibrehut is the company I bought my wheel from and, even though they are only a few miles away from my mum’s I haven’t yet been there in person. Because, well, Covid. I hope to go there soon though, on one of my upcoming visits to see Mum.

I have also been working on a sock for Sue – don’t worry, she will get two eventually! I’ll post pics of progress of this next week.

While I’ve been doing all this, the audiobooks that have been keeping me company have been more Terry Pratchett (Making Money, Going Postal) and Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code. The latter author has me cringing with his descriptions of the (rare) female characters in comparison to the male ones, but it was interesting this morning to hear that one of the reasons women had been burnt as witches was for the ‘heretical easing of childbirth pains’. I have no idea if this is accurate or not, but it was an uncanny link to an awful lot of what I have read lately about the current lack of pain relief used for women’s medical procedures.

On that cheery note I shall leave you for today! I have a schematic to draw.

Stay safe, use sunscreen if you’re out and about, and do more of what makes you happy, K x