I have finally got around to applying myself to what to knit with this fabulous yarn.

It’s Schoppel Crazy Sauberball sock yarn in indisch Rosa and, it turns out, is ridiculously hard to photograph in any kind of light. Even in quite strong natural light the pinky red turns a horrid orange. The photo below is the closest in colours as seen on my screen but quite honestly it could look awful on your screen and I would never know. The colour changes from a rish, deep purple to a sumptuous fuschia pink/red and then variegates on those themes. It was a ball I felt unable to leave in the shop, the shop being a yarn outlet in a garden centre in Solihull, and it’s been languishing in my stash for I think at least a year, because I hadn’t thought of a project that deserved it.

After many months of on and off thinking about it, I decided to flout my usual rule of keeping patterned yarns and patterned knitting for separate projects, and decided to go for Pomatomas, a Cookie A pattern from Knitty.com. I’ve made these twice before, one pair I gave away to a university mate (who, I gather, has subsequently felted them, oh dear) and another pair for me in (I think) malabrigo, which are quite honestly a little bit large & have a tendency to “bag”. I wear them around the house or in the winter, with boots. I thought that the graduated colours would look fab, and the colour change is slow enough that the pattern wouldn’t get lost.

I was right.

However, my reckless approach to gauge (swatch? What swatch?) on this occasion has bitten me on the arse. It’s a stretchy pattern but, it turn out, not that stretchy. When I tried it on, having turned the heel (as you see here above) I could get it on, but I could *only just* get it on, it turns out. Also, the distressingly sudden colour jag you can see at the bottom of the picture disturbed me greatly, and I couldn’t think of an easy way around it. I know that for the most part this bit is likely to be hidden within shoes at times when other people can see them, but
1. I know it’s there, and
2. WTAF do you mean people aren’t going to be looking at my socks? and
3. I know it’s there and making me feel distressed.

In spite of it having been much admired at the knitting thing I went to on Wednesday (thanks, guys) I agonised for what will seem to others to be a surprisingly short amount of time before unleashing the frogs. The demi-sock has gone the way of the Norwegian parrot, it is an ex-demi-sock.

What, I hear you clamour, is plan B? That would be Hexagons (Ravelry link) by Kirsten Hall from “Think outside the sox”, a book I was given for Christmas in 2014. 

The socks are constructed with a series of hexagons where you pick up each one in turn to construct the main body of the sock, and then add in a toe & cuff in a semi-conventional fashion (or not – I haven’t actually read that far through the pattern yet. Again: reckless is my middle name). So far so exciting, and it’s working well with the colour gradations. One problemette is that I’m finding myself squinting quite a lot when doing the picking up for the next hexagon. I’m really, really hoping that it’s because the light was too dim and my eyes were tired rather than because I’m turning into one of those Old People who need reading glasses. I’m reasonably confident it is as I’ve not long had my eyes tested (in January or so) and I was perfectly fine then.

So – onwards & upwards. I managed 2 hexagons last night. Let’s see if I can beat that record and get 3 on there tonight.

I finally got around to sorting out my mum’s art stuff, having come to the realisation that as much as I might like to, I’m really not going to take up painting with acrylics or oils. The image above is from a birthday card mum made for me a few years ago.

I took the opportunity to combine my paper crafting stuff with mum’s, have a bit of a clear-out, and do some paper crafting.

I’m not super-pleased with the results but hopefully with a bit of practice, I’ll improve.

Also, I think having so many embellishments & features is a bit of a distraction and I’m better combining original script with actual crafting of paper – cut-outs and stamps in place of pre-made things.

I like the “your day” script as part of the main feature here. I’m not convinced by the embossing – that was something I’d did years ago, and I tried adding today’s stuff to improve the card. I’m not convinced it’s worked…

In other news, we took the opportunity of being short of polenta for tonight’s dish to try out the Lebanese restaurant in Southport. We got to their door, only to find they are temporarily closed.

So we went to the new Pizza Express on Lord Street. Classic time had by all.

For those who don’t know, my mum was a potter. I grew up surrounded by skilfully executed works of art masquerading as everyday objects and didn’t think it was anything unusual, because I thought everyone’s mum could do this stuff.

In much the same way, when I pull my knitting out, the children react in the same way the cats used to respond to concord taking off – a brief eye-roll-ey glance and an expression that sighs “this again”.

However, this evening, when I pulled out my African Flowers project to try to make some progress, I got a “ooh, _that_ looks lovely!” From Joel.

So, I can only assume that it does indeed look lovely. Hopefully the colours are a bit closer to reality than the last time I posted about this ~ I’m told the beige looked like salmon pink which would be a very odd choice indeed. It’s beige, not salmon pink. The project ultimately will become a small bag and I have yet to decide whether some lucky person will get it next Christmas, or whether I’ll “just” use it as a project bag.

I may go for the latter. It is a thing of loveliness, after all.

For about the past 2 months I’ve been suffering something of a lack of knitting mojo, which in the world of knitting is a darned long time. At the beginning of December I was feeling a lack of focus, I had non- knitting stuff that needed to be done, plus I’d decided to knit Xmas stocking decorations, so any knitting effort went in 40-minute bursts which didn’t allow for much creativity.

In November I’d been all about the crochet, and enchanted by African flower hexagons. The enchantment wore off a little when I started to fear my stash-busting project was going to run out of yarn. It’s still salvageable, but I may need to employ some creative thinking to make it work.

However, I felt that something big & engaging was in order to kick-start the knitting love again.

I bought yarn (hands up who’s shocked) at new year for a cardigan that Lily has chosen, Fezziwig by Melissa Schaschwary, with the intention of having it to kick off when I got back from Kenya. I took her to the shop, stood her in front of the right size yarn & asked what colour she fancied. Fairly stunning me, she chose the exact colour I would have gone for – a medium-light teal. You could have knocked me down with a feather. Anyway, having checked 3 times I was convinced she wasn’t choosing it just to keep me happy, so it came home with us. (It’s a lot more green than it looks in the picture below – this was taken with my iPad. I’m not impressed with this camera.)

It took me a few days to re-acclimatise, and it was 6th Feb when I cast on. I dutifully did a gauge swatch and determined that I needed to go down 2 needle sizes to get gauge. I may have slightly overdone it – Lily’s chest is currently 29″, I’m knitting the smallest size, 32″, and in the couple of times I’ve tried it on, it’s looked like although it will fit, she can’t afford to gain too much girth before it’s sweater season again… Or maybe I can get it done for *this* sweater season! since after a mere 5 days I’m on the bottom hem, which means I just have sleeves, pocket linings, button band/collar to do, plus source & attach buttons.

Hmm. Having finished that sentence, I’m not sure now that “just” is the right word to use.

However, it feels like it’s zipped along, and so long as I don’t do my usual trick of leaving the finishing touches for 3 months, we should be reet.

I’m trying something a little different on the 1×1 rib on the bottom – having recently read Ysolda’s top tip on how not to have baggy stitches in your ribbing, I’m winding the yarn the other way round the needle for my purl stitches. This is having the happy side effect that if I knit continental style, the actions are much smaller & neater and feel loads more efficient. The rib isn’t growing as fast as the body did,with its stocking stitch and bigger needles, but I suspect it’s going a damn sight quicker & easier than it would have done had I not decided to do this.

In other news, I finally visited a physio tonight to see about making my legs less sore after over-training in November. Much consternation over the severity of the flatness of my feet (to the point where I felt somebody’s part was being built up a teeny tiny bit), however it turns out there is no permanent damage done. I’ve had a quite painful massage, I’ve got some exercises, and an appointment for next week. It seems orthotics may feature in my future if I persist in this crazy running phase I’m going through, but we’ll see how we go. I may have to learn to love low-impact sports, although how I can do that & still be a Julia Buckley disciple I don’t know. A little more time biding is in order, I guess, before I can truly clamber back on the horse again.

And in the meantime, my hands are now quite stiff from all the enthusiastic knitting with the big yarn.

The stack of African flower hexagons is growing…

The grey thing will be a cowl. I like to think you can see how it will look from this progress report. I plan to add a decorative label or patch once it’s knitted.

And, man alive, my eyes are looking tired. I’m off to bed!

My latest finished object in the world of knitting is this pair of lovely socks.

I got the yarn at Unwind Brighton. One skein is a classic Regia 4-fädig and the other is a Regia Angora Merino yarn. I wanted to try jogless stripes and it turns out the pattern I have is no more sophisticated than “knit a round in colour A, knit a round in colour B”.

Even so, making them was quite enjoyable and I think that afterthought heels (which these feature) might be my new favourite heels. Certainly less gappy than how I do my usual short-row heels. I also added a very small 5-stitch naïve gusset for a bit more ankle room.

These are warm and comfy and so will do nicely, thank you. I’m a bit disappointed that the coloured stripes are somewhat lost when stretched around my leg, but the cuffs and heels are still there to lead the eye in and have you look for both colours. I’m just going to have to make sure I wear short-legged trousers so that everyone can appreciate them…

Just in case you think I’m all about the gardening these days, let me show you what I’ve been crafting. I recently finished these beauties…

They are a variation on the Dude socks which, frankly, nearly robbed me of my will to knit socks. I used a twisted rib for a lot of the foot and the leg so I had to actually look at it quite a lot. It felt like it took a really long time…

And now I’m working on these.

They are jogless stripe socks knitted in 2 colours of Reggia I picked up at Unwind Brighton. Turns out they are different actual yarns but I’m hoping the soft one will offset the less soft one. I’m nearly finished one, bar the afterthought heel. They are more enchanting than the last pair.

And… Update from later in the evening: heel done.

The striping is disappointingly lost when the sock is on. Quite a shame. But they look good anyway, and hey. No jog in the stripes.

I carefully worked out the yardage requirements for the top I’m currently knitting (and re-knitting, see previous blog posts). The size I’m knitting requires 600 yards of yarn. I have bought 6 balls of yarn, each claiming to have 98 yards per ball.

As I started my LAST ball of yarn, I was about to divide for the sleeves. The back is not at all scooped, although there is a v-neck in the front which means slightly less will be used in the making thereof.

It’s really not looking good. This feels like I will be more than 12 yards short.

I’m just hoping that John Lewis still have some balls left in the relevant dye lot, otherwise I’ll be knitting this again. Again.