Candy girl

In your mind's eye can you remember a childhood summer where it poured with rain? I can't (except for spectacular thunderstorms), and yet I know it must have been went plenty of times. In my memory, summer smells of sandy Soltan on hot skin, feels of the tightness of salt drying across your shoulders, and tastes of ice-cream.

This week I appear to have been trying to conjure up summer by knitting to match the sun-drenched (and probably largely inaccurate) memories of my childhood. Et voila:


The Sweet Tart Anklets. This was a bonus pattern from the 4th instalment of last year's Rockin Sock Club in STR Lightweight Goody Goody. I ran out of yarn to finish the main pattern (the gum drops socks) so I ordered another skein and what I didn't use to finish the first pair of socks, has turned into these little anklets.

The pattern is quite wonderfully simple and I can't wait to try it out in full size sock mode on any number of multicoloured yarns in the stash. I made the largest size which fits my size 7.5 feet perfectly and I was about to say that I hadn't made any modifications to the pattern, until I remembered that I made one - I did a provisional cast on to make the picot edge rather than picking up stitches from the cast on edge at the appropriate moment.

All of this means that I have finished knitting all of the socks from the 2008 Rockin Sock Club!

These are the originals and the best:
Serendipity
Leafling
Cleopatra's Stockings
Gumdrops
Cloning Anemone Rib
Holidazed.

And now the wheel of wonder looks like this:


Or if you like them better folded up and ready for the sock drawer:



I started 2008 having never knit with STR but deeply curious (hence joining the sock club). I've finished up 18 months later with (a) a great collection of socks (b) a heavily increased stash and (c) a deep and abiding love for this yarn and the beautiful colours it comes in. All I need now is for the dollar/pound balance to go back to how it was 18 months ago and the world/yarn would be my oyster/bursting out of my cupboards.

I've just had a terrible thought. It is true that my sock yarn stash is becoming a little all engulfing of the stash cupboards (especially since I started spinning sock yarn as well) and to be honest, more STR would present me with an issue when it comes to closing the cupboards. Perhaps (in the way that knitting for babies can postpone/advance their birth) my full cupboard has inadvertently caused the devalue of the pound against the dollar!! Or worse, could sock knitting have caused the entire economic crisis?! It's a good job I've already cast on another pair.

I could leave it there, but really, if you were me, and you'd knit a pair of socks called Sweet Tart, out of yarn called Goody Goody, would you? would you really be able to resist doing this:


Wa heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Sweeties!



I can report that Rainbow Drops (despite a more to escape artificial colours) remain resolutely vibrant and still taste like hallucinogenic ricicles leaving you with the niggling doubt that you aren't actually eating sweeties, just breakfast cereal.

Love hearts were a disappointment though - there was only one pink one in the packet, the rest were white, cream or green, and the messages included "no way", "dream on" and "just say no".

Teen romance is dead - clearly somethings should be left in your childhood!

Yesterday being a gloriously sunny day I had the camera out while I was knitting in the garden and I was mucking around with the different settings to get some shots to play with in photoshop. I've been working through a few tutorials in photography magazines and so I turned this one:


Into something that looks like it should be the front cover to a murder mystery:

"Death at the Heel Turn" perhaps - the story of a knitter so deeply frustrated by the lack of peace and quite in her chosen knitting location leading her to continually miscount the stitches for the short rows that she stabs everyone with the needles and then sits quietly by, knitting the foot of the sock while the police search for the murder weapon (borrowing from the Roald Dahl short story 'Lamb to the Slaughter')

This second effort was even more fun - this is the original picture

And here it is overlayed with the texture of an aertex shirt, a linen tablecloth and our back fence.

It looks like a picture painted onto driftwood and left to weather for a bit and I love it.

I hope you all had a good weekend!