Piccies Galore

Well I did promise!

Today's gentle working hours ended at 2.45 so I was almost home in daylight - it's a very odd experience and I don't really recognise any of the stations from the homeward bound direction in daylight. Sadly it wasn't quite light enough to get daylight photos, and it's been a while since there've been any of those, but with the able assistance of the elastrickery and a daylight bulb I can reveal in all glorious delight, the pretty things that have been occupying my holiday - ta da!! (drum roll please)!

First in our victory parade we have the Holly Queen:


Romi described wearing her Ice Queen as feeling like a film star - me, I feel like I still have my head under the duvet and I promise you that is a very good thing on a train first thing in the morning. There is a little blob of yarn left and I probably could have knit another 4 row repeat to make it slightly longer but that would throw out the beading and give me too much fabric under my chin so I'm pleased as is.


I don't have anything else finished - the other finished ta da is a big big secret and will have to remain so for a little while longer (cue mysterious look) - but I do have an update on the Tangled Yoke:

I started with the third size and then decreased almost to the second size and then increased to the second size at the waist which is a bit of an experiment to see how that fits as I'm a classic pear shape, and explains why the waist shaping looks so very triangular!

Green is obviously a very hard colour to photograph under artificial light - I tried playing around with the settings on the camera for a while and came up with these unusual variations - neither of which is really anywhere near the true colour:

It's Herb.

And finally:


This beauty is the start of my Karenina sock, December's Socktopus sock club sock. The pattern is made by slipping stitches rather than fairisle and the yarn (specially dyed Cashmere Merino blend from The Knittery) is soft and cuddly like a very tiny kitten. The colours and the pattern remind me of a series of tree ornaments on my inlaws' tree which are paper mache spheres with oval pictures of icons on; all purply-red and gold. These cast on to celebrate my return to work after Christmas and helped the commute whizz by both ways.

Being the fiddler I am I've made a couple of amendments - the first being to go up a needle size to accommodate my ginormous hooves and the second being to do a provisional cast on and knit the picot fold to the right side of the sock, rather than sew the flap down later; it's a bit more fiddly my way but it will give me a stretchier sock and I'm a little concerned about size at the moment, only time will tell!