Life must be filled up

I bought this sock kit as soon as I saw it and now it seems to be sold out everywhere! The socks should be fun to make. The plain colour will be for the cuffs, heels and toes.

All the fun of fairisle without the faff. These are knitted in Regia Design Line by Arne & Carlos. The colourway is ‘Summer Night’ but they have a wintry look to me. No sooner had I grafted the toes than I cast on another pair, this time in pale sherbert colours.



In other news, it’s fifty years since Like a Rolling Stone came out. Frightening to think that I was at school then. Wonderful that the record still sounds great. I turned it up as loud as possible, regardless of what the thatchers might think, and shouted out every word.

I decided my socks would look more gifty in a lttle bag. It was going to be just a tube tied at the top. Then I decided to make eyelet holes, then to use a wavy cast off, then to knit cord instead of using ribbon. Just managed to stop myself making some little medallions or flowers for the tie ends! It was rather tedious but I'm glad I did it.

It was third time lucky for this sock (apologies for the photo) knitted in Colinette Jitterbug sock yarn. I decided to try a pattern and picked one with a slip stitch design. I worked the six pattern rounds and got a nice textured pattern; the trouble was, it was quite a tight honeycomb look, not the desired Lazy Daisy effect. So I frogged that and tried a very simple ‘ynfwd then pass stitch over next three’ idea, which gives a sort of brick effect. I decided this added nothing at all to the sock so that came out too and it was back to the same old socks I always make, only varying the rib and the needle size.

I’m a stick-in-the-mud generally when it comes to socks. Sometimes a new sock pattern will take my fancy but as soon as I see that it calls for a circular needle, a provisional cast on, wrapping stitches to shape the heel or some other daring innovation I recoil in horror and see if I can adapt the design to my safe old ways. I still need to check a pattern when I get to the heel, just in case, and as for grafting the toe,


which still seems to me like magic, I reach for the Encyclopaedia of Knitting and learn all over again. It’s thanks to dovegreyreader that I know this method of grafting is called Kitchener stitch. I laughed out loud at her recent account of her knitting technique, which you can read here. I knit like a lady, apparently.



This shade is Copperbeach if you go by the ball band; Copper Beech according to most web sites. The brown(ish) sock will remain a singleton for a while, as I’ve moved on to Christmas presents. I’m changing my mind about Colinette being my favourite sock yarn and starting to favour Regia. This is their Design Line by Kaffe Fassett: ‘Carribbean’. It’s gorgeous!

The other evening I was sitting admiring the way the late sun was lighting up the bright red new shoots of the rose which climbs into (and is probably killing) the mossed cottage tree. Today I saw that the whole lot had been sheared off. It didn't take any detective skills to know that a deer has been in the garden. Rats. Yesterday's rose opened out like this.



More oh dear. I finished the pair to the socks that have been about a year in the making and have unaccountably made the second one longer than the first. Duh!



I finished Case Histories and then thought yes, very good but if you want to read a gripping mystery story it's not as good as Robert Goddard. Oh dear.

I've just finished the socks made with Colinette Jitterbug sock yarn. The patterns are intriguing, sometimes making a spiral effect round the foot.