Year of the sock- March

Phew! these have been a long time coming, they have actually taken an entire month to finish and I will fess up that I still have about 30 ends to sew in, but am planning to do them tonight and wanted to post the photos while it was still March.

The entrelac pattern was not overly complicated once you get the hang of it, but it is slow going. I also had to ignore the pattern a bit to get the colours to line up, thats where all the ends come from!

The first sock in progress:

Working with six balls of yarn and seven needles proved to be a bit of a nightmare, lots of tangles, plus I only have one set of 2.5mm needles and had to use 3.0mm. I ended up storing stitches on safety pins and pinning the yarn balls to the work. Made things a lot easier.

Working back across the piece rather than turning and purling helped as well, a bit slower though.

I also had to do a bit of frogging, pulled back the first foot from about 1/3 of the way to try and do jogless stripes, these worked out ok but could be a lot better. More practise needed. The first foot was too short once I had finished it so I pulled it back and added a few extra rows.

Finished socks:

The second sock went much more easily than the first, fewer ends to sew in as I had learnt to ignore the pattern directions and just use the technique, no frogging and the colour change runs around the base of the foot so the hash I made of the colour change is hidden.

Although I spent most of the month working on the socks I did get a bit bored at one point and cast on for a shawl using some handpainted sock yarn in burgundy and black. The pattern is called AeRang, I am hoping it becomes easier to see when it is blocked.

I think some mindless knitting on a simple pattern is in order for the next few weeks.

Attack of the yarn eating beasties?

More yarny chatter today, hopefully pictures of actual knitting tomorrow if I can get what seems to be the slowest socks in the world finished tonight.

A bit of a disaster at the weekend, I pulled out a 400g ball of undyed DK to prepare it for dyeing and found a lot more ends than there should have been. I couldn't find any evidence of yarn eating beasties, and it's possible I accidently snipped it myself whilst cutting some trial dyeing lengths (yes, I really can be that dumb). Still, if it was the work of bugs, ugh!

On the upside the damage was only in once place and left a lot of useable lengths of yarn, these have been put through the dyepot so if any nasties were in residence they are now well cooked. Pictures to follow when the yarn is dry.

As a precaution I am also going to have a bit of a stash sort next weekend and freezer bag anything wool.

On happier, non bug related, note, the roving I dyed up ages ago to hand spin has finally been spun and finished. It sat on the spindle for ages until i had built the niddy noddy to skein it up ready for washing.

It's approximately the same weight as commercial 4-ply of sock yarn, which is just as well as I have lined it up for making April's sock of the month. Not yet decided whether to go for plain or try for some sort of cabling.
Finishing the yarn meant I got to put my new toys into action to wind a ball from it.


Swift in action:

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee! It is SO MUCH FUN! I am just disappointed that I don't have any other skeins to wind at the minute.

The finished ball is also super and can be used as either centre or outside pull.

Knitting toys

This week has mostly been about knitting toys.

I traded a skein of handpainted sock yarn for a ball winder, this is the first time any of my hand painted yarn has had a value of any sort so I am kinda chuffed.

I have been after one of these for a while and they seem tricky to get hold of in the UK, not sure why as it looks like they are standard kit in the US.

I then ran into a bit of a problem, a ball winder doesn't work so well by itself, at least not unless you have a minimum of three hands. Next on the shopping list was a swift. These are also not so easy to get in the UK and are really expensive (like REALLY expensive). With a bit of help from the ravelry DIY tools group I found this website:
www.craftydiversions.com/patterns/homemade_yarn_swift.html

A bit of converting from inches to mm and a trip to B&Q later I had the stuff to make it for less than £10.

I had a bit of help from my lovely OH to make it, and here it is:

We made a couple of adjustments, like adding a pair of nuts below the CD and another above the arms to minimise wobbling.

The final missing piece of kit in my knitters arsenal was a niddy noddy to wind skeins for dyeing and after spinning.

I opted for a very simple one made from PVC waste pipe and a pair of T joints. Instructions were from www.doctordirt.com/blog/niddy.html but it is pretty straight forward.

Fortunately it didn't need glue to hold it together so can be pulled apart for storage or to change the length of the centre bar to make different sized skeins.

Lots of fun ways to get the toys I need, I have my eyes on a homemade ball winder and maybe a drum carder at some point in the future.

Have you any wool?

Another quiet week on the knitterly front. The entrelac socks are making slow progress and I am currently staring at them and wondering if I want to frog them and alter them a bit.

Knitting progress may ahve been slow, but stash enhancing has been carrying on at its usual pace, in spite of plans to use up some of what I have!

A trip to Wales over the weekend meant locating a souvenir yarn (first time I have tried that). I thought Wales-> lots of sheep-> lots of local and delicious yarn. I even did a bit of a search and located a "craft shop" in the town we were visiting.

It was not quite as easy as I had imagined, the craft shop turned out to sell only nasty plasticy souvenirs. Fortunately a wander round the shops and someone pointed me in the direction of the local interior design shop (for yarn!?). They did indeed have some yarn from local sheep. Here it is:

Not sure what to make from it yet, I only bought one ball and am thinking maybe pair it with either black or a neutral to try out some colourwork. Mittens maybe?

Some more stash enhancement took place when I found out the website I get lion brand wool ease from is closing up so they were offering a 20% discount. This led to stocking up on a range of colours for making chunky boot socks as gifts (possibly enough for the next two to three years!).

I am usually a bit of a yarn snob on the acrylic front, but this does manage to combine squishyness with machine washability (very important for socks) and doesn't look too plasticy. Also so far the socks I made in December are standing up to use.

I think one month's sock challenge will be to turn that lot into a pile of ready to go socks in various sizes.

Some trumpeting and an unexpected knitter

I have had a pretty slow week on the fibrey front, but I guess that balances out the super fibre filled week before.

Mostly I have been working on my sock of the month, an entrelac pattern with two green yarns, its pretty slow going but hopefully I will be able to finish them before April.

Now for some self indulgent trumpety big up of the self- I have my ravelympics medals, whoop whoop. I am going to put them up here and be unbearably smaug (sorry :D), but mostly because I have to put them somewhere!
For my first try at wheel spinning (see previous post):

For my crazy verygated toe socks (Feb sock of the month):
For the pair of light and dark green yarns (currently being made into an entrelac sock):

For the knitted boobies:

And for this shawl:

These three:

Anyway, enough of my being annoying.

Finally, knitters really do pop up in the strangest of places. I bought a copy of the illustrated Discworld fable The last hero. In it there is a character called Vena the Raven haired who dispatches her enemies with some pink yarn and knitting needles when they disturb her knitting.

Spinning the wheel way

Last week was well and truely fibre filled, as well as desperately trying to get my ravelympics projects finished in time I had a spinning wheel lesson (thanks Nu! x).
I cannot believe how much faster it is than the drop spindle and now am planning to get a wheel of my own and retire the spindle. It will be kept for trying out new fibres.

Learning how to draft for drop spindling definately helped me to get the hang of the wheel as I just had to worry about what my feet were doing rather than learn to draft and drive the wheel at the same time.
I spent the next afternoon practising and got a skein of about 40g spun and plyed.

In for a close up:
I have also finished the drop spindling project I had on the go, it took about 6 hours to ply last night but has produced about 100g of 2ply fingering type thickness yarn. Pictures to follow.

I now have a bit of a dilemma, I have nothing cast on and no spinning on the go, I am totally fibre free! This is can't be a good thing so I will have to pick my next project quickly.