Capsule knitting

The football season kicks off on Saturday so I'm up off north tomorrow to watch the Wanderers' first match of the season against the mighty Stoke City. Tomorrow is also the second day of the Festival of Quilts at the NEC and I'm going along with Katie, Ellen and Katie's mum and sister. On the one hand this means that I get a lift as far as Birmingham, on the other hand it means I have to pare down my packing to something that I can tote around the exhibition centre all day without putting my back out.

Thankfully I am a past mistress of this arcane art (plus I'm going up to my parents' which means that things like PJs, shampoo and my spare toothbrush are already in situ) having in the past succeeded in fitting the contents of an overnight bag into a regular sized handbag and those of a weekend bag into a bag that would fit under my seat for the boyfriend's latest degree ceremony (he's a repeat offender). Given that most of the seats in the Sheldonian Theatre don't have legroom, let alone room for anything else, this is some feat.



Clockwise from the top: ipod (stuffed to the gills with listen again Agatha Christie), toiletries, spare tops, underwear, lucky Bolton shirt, socks, knitting, printout of sock pattern.

Seriously, what else do you need?

The socks in question are the Cedar Dancing socks from Cat Bordhi's New Pathways for Sock Knitters. Aliki remarked a couple of weeks ago that it was slightly odd, given how eager we all were to get our sticky mitts on this book, that none of had actually knit any of the full size socks yet. Anyway, I'm going to be knitting these in the lovely lavender yarn from the Artful Ewe.

By the way - do you notice anything odd about the pair of socks below?



They're not a pair - I've got one Monkey and one Elfine's sock! I thought that switching to all handknit socks was meant to stop this happening.

Progress on the raglan cardigan last night was patchy to say the least. I had to reknit the right button band (the one with the button holes) about 3 and 2 halves times (i.e. three times in its entirety and twice when it was half knit) and I made a similar number of starts on the first sleeve. I think it was worth it though - I'm pretty pleased with my two-row button holes and the sleeves are looking OK now. I'm knitting them back and forth rather than in the round in order to avoid jogging in the stripes and holes in the underarms.



On the minus side this means I have an extra 32 ends to add to the gazillion and one ends that I already have to weave in.