Christmas stockings

Only two days to go! However, by dint of knitting "like the wind" for the past day I am one sock down and on to the toe of the next!



A bit blurry but you get the idea. The very cute background paper is from John Lewis (is there anything they don't do?).

Whilst knitting I listened to the entire Librivox recording of Rilla of Ingleside"* written by L. M. Montgomery and read by the extremely talented Karen Savage (she sings and does a British accent when required). The sock is not quite as long as could be desired (there's so much instep to knit in men's socks) but the mistake rib is lovely and chunky and the Kitchener stitch bind-off is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. There is plenty of knitting (as part of the war effort) in Rilla of Ingleside (I seem to notice knitting in books a lot more nowadays, funny that). In chapter 10 Rilla reports that:

"I finished my sixth pair of socks today. With the first three I got Susan to set the heel for me. Then I thought that was a bit of shirking, so I learned to do it myself."

When I knit my first sock about 18 months ago I remembered that passage and felt very superior as I picked up my heel stitches. No mention is made in the book as to whether or not Rilla uses the Kitchener stitch to graft the toes of her socks but as Lord Kitchener is Susan's idol it seems highly probable!

I also picked up the yarn for the final pair of Xmas socks (which do not have to be complete until the new year), Rowan Cashsoft 4-ply in a lovely berry red. I plan to knit them up in reverse garter rib. It would be great if I could work out how to do this without having to purl every other row though. Maybe if I can knit the sock inside out. I've done it before (although not from the toe up) when I started a sock with the tubular cast on and then couldn't work out how to get it right side out for the leg without reversing the direction of the round.



I suspect this shot will provoke more amusement from my knitting buddies. They couldn't stop laughing when I told them I had taken photos of my hands in the Fetching mittens whilst placing angels on the decorative twigs (see below). But don't they realise how important styling is? It gave me a great idea for a future Christmas tree anyway. Instead of presents under the tree you could just decorate it with balls of yarn then on Christmas day you would just invite people to take a ball. You could even hang those hooked Clover cable needles from the branches instead of candy canes. Of course this would only work with knitters!

*no Cast-On this week as Brenda Dayne is down with the dreaded "podcaster's throat" - I knew there had to be an occupational illness attached to podcasting!