Holiday knitting

I knit these Monkeys whilst not exactly on holiday but whilst travelling at least. On the train (and tube) to London, whilst helping to look after my niece, whilst on another train up to Bolton, and the very last bits on my bus to and from work. All this knitting whilst on the go, all the gathering up of parcels and stuffing knitting into bag to change trains (or nappies) might explain whilst I slipped up a teensy bit on the second sock. You don't see it?



I'm a repeat short in the foot, argh! I only noticed last night at knitting and there's no time to fix it now before these are whisked away to be samples for Megan at FibreFest. The consolation is that I only noticed the mistake after some careful comparison and counting so maybe no-one else will spot it, right?

That apart, I love these socks. I'm so happy with how my handspun sock yarn turned out and quite suprised that I was able to spin a 3 ply fine enough to knit on 2.5mm needles. The bfl/silk blend was lovely to spin with and I really love the blend of solid and heathered colours that emerged.

As there wasn't actually anything I could do about it last night I tried to put it out of my mind and get on with some more sock knitting. Having just finished two projects and not having another in a state where I just just pick it up and start knitting I was scouting around last night for a simple project that I could just get going on and came across this long neglected sock.



At one point I had knit these up to the heel of the first sock using what I thought was a proven formula for me before I tried them on and realised that I would risk DVT every time I wore them. I ripped back, obviously did something reall weird with the yarn (there's a whole separately wound ball inside the yarn cake), re-knit as far as the toe and then got distracted.



i'm not quite sure why because I love this yarn. It's the last of my Jaeger Matchmaker Merino which I dyed into a rainbow stripe pattern using food colouring. Each colour change is just about a single round and the effect is both gorgeous and designed to keep me knitting, just till the next colour change.

Double potions

More yarn dyed through the magic of Super Cook. This turned out rather more autumnal than I had planned - I may have been influenced by all the amazing leaves around work.



I think that some leaf pattern long hand-warmers would be lovely in this - at least my arms would look warm.

I've learnt anyway that I need a lot less dye than I had thought to get deep colours and I need hardly any dye to get lighter shades.



For my next attempt I went for a light pink and green. I mixed up much less dye and added it very carefully to the yarn to avoid the colours mixing and to avoid saturating the yarn.



This is almost exactly what I was going for - it's like stalks of rhubarb.

Still on the hand-dyed theme I'm onto the second wavy leaves sock but I'm mostly working on a Kiri shawl in silk laceweight for one of the bridesmaids at Aliki's sister's wedding. The yarn is Grace by the Australian Live 2 Knit and it's so beautiful (if a bit of an arse to knit with).



This is the first time I've knit lace with something that gives that proper pre-blocking "dishrag" effect in that it looks like nothing at all at the moment. Still, it's going to make the blocking seem even more miraculous. If you want to see what it looks like blocked you can check it out on Aliki's blog. Didn't I mention that I'm only knitting the third one of three?



Talking of lovely things, I found this link to Ulla (the Finnish Knitty) on Kirsty's blog - the patterns are gorgeous - so much so that it might be worth learning Finnish!

In which all is revealed

I can finally reveal my secret project - my Mum's birthday socks - now that they've been proudly presented. Mum was very pleased with them and they seemed to fit very nicely which was a relief (must remember in future to keep floats nice and loose at the back).

Keble College socks

Pattern: my own
Yarn: Rowan Wool Cotton (one skein each of 907 Riviera, 911 Rich, and 930 Deepest Olive)
Needles: 3.25mm dpns





The socks look great with my favourite shoes - shame I don't get to keep them! Still, never mind, because these look just as good:

Hopscotch socks

Pattern: my own
Yarn: Oxford Kitchen Yarns
sock yarn in Raspberry
Needles: 2.5mm dpns





I was so happy to finish these socks as a) I get to wear them and they are gorgeous (she says modestly) which is due in no small part to Katie's beautiful yarn and b) I was able to finish writing up the pattern.

I'm still ironing out some of the wrinkles but I should be posting the link to the pattern pretty soon. In the meantime I'm looking for volunteers to test knit or test read the pattern. This is the first of my sock patterns that I've written up and I'm sure there are areas for improvement. If you'd like to see the pattern (either to knit or read) drop me a line in the comments, via Ravelry or at thomasinaknits ATT yahoo d0t co d0t uk.

With those socks done i was able to cast on a fresh pair with the merino dk that I had dyed a while back. I'm using a stitch pattern based on a cardigan I saw in Marks and Sparks a few weeks ago and they're progressing very nicely.



In fact I like them so much that I've just put my remaing cream merino into a mordant bath to soak so I can start some more dyeing tomorrow. I fancy something in reds and oranges this time but we'll see how it comes out. I'm using the cream of tartat again, 25 grams to 2 litres of water and 100 grams of yarn.



This is turning into a monster post, but I just wanted to draw your attention to the Scion Craft my Ride competition. This is one of those times (like when I think about Knit Picks or STR) that I'm really sorry I don't live in the US. Not that I really want a Scion, but it's such a fun competition. For those of you who do live in one of the 48 contiguous states the closing date is 22nd October. I'll definitely be checking back to look at the entries.

Each peach pear plum..

Some kindly person brought plums from their garden into work this week and so I made a plum and apple pie, using up the remaining apples from the ones we picked a few weeks back (apples really do keep well).



Luckily I took a picture before serving the pie as it all fell apart rather on cutting!



Still, all the constituent bits were delicious.

Today has been a day of small successes.

I've reached (and now finished) the heel on the second Hopscotch sock and there's still a sizeable cake of yarn left which bodes well for the length of the leg.



I've also finished (at long last) plying the hand-spun MoBair fibre which I bought back in May. It's currently hanging up in the shower to drip dry after which it's off to Katie's for the ball winder treatment (I've frankly had quite enough of winding this stuff around chairs!). It's worth it though, it's come out at a nice laceweight and I think I should be able to knit something very pretty in lace from it.



Lastly I've skeined up some yarn which I had over-dyed in the leftovers from yesterday's red dye bath. This was Debbie Bliss cream merino dk which I had a go at hand-dyeing with Supercook food colouring back in May. The results were not so much variegated as blotchy.

Before:



After:



Cooking the yarn in the somewhat diluted red dye bath has softened out the over-concentrated aqua and filled in the undyed gaps with a dusky pink. The result is a variegated yarn in petrol blues and greys with some rose and purple. It's beautiful and I'm torn between being thrilled at having produced it and somewhat regretful that it was completely by accident.

Craftapalooza

I've been ticking nearly all the craft boxes this weekend as I've been knitting, spinning and dyeing.

This morning I headed round to Lara's lovely new abode to drink tea with her and Katie and to watch Lara wind wool. I've been making decent progress on the Hopscotch socks. The first one is resting with its stitches on some waste yarn and the second one is already knit up to the gusset. I'm very nearly (huzzah) at the end of the yarn that I have knit and ripped once before, which is always a good feeling. I have to say, though, that Katie's yarn stands up very well to being ripped back and re-knit which is a good property in a yarn given that all of us make mistakes from time to time.



Last night I had put my found fleece (picked up whilst wandering about in the park) in a pan with 1.5 litres of water and 12 teaspoons of cream of tartar as a mordant. When I arrived home in the afternoon I split the fleece into two batches and mixed up two different red dyes using Supercook food colouring. I added the dyes to the fleece (still in its cream of tartar solution) and put them on to simmer for an hour.



I just love this red colour.

While the fleece was cooking I put in some more time plying the hand spun. There's still quite a way to go but I can at least now see that the amount of single ply left on the bobbins is getting smaller. It's coming out at a laceweight and I'll definitely have enough for a lace scarf if not a small stole or shawl. If anyone has a good way of accurately estimating yardage that doesn't involve super precise scales I'd love to hear about it.



An hour after it went in I fished the fleece out of the dye baths and washed each batch separately. Floods of dye came out at the first wash, not so much thereafter and the colours are still satisfyingly deep and bright. I've ended up with two shades ofred, one a bright cherry colour, the other a rich blackberry.



I've not yet decided whether to spin them up separately and knit them as singles, whether to spin two different coloured plies and ply them together or whether to blend the two shades before spinning. I don't even know how this fleece will spin up as yet but I can't wait to find out.