Alpha and Omega

The first and last.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!- drum roll please

As the title may suggest, I didn't quite finish the 2008 Christmas knitting in 2008, as Big Ben struck I was 2/3rds of the way down the foot. But, as of New Year in Hawaii and the other Pacific Islands I'm all finished.

Phew!

On the principle that the first shall be last and the last shall be first, these are the first socks finished in 2009 (but not the first finished socks of 2009):


I call them office stripes; interesting but subdued. The yarn is Regia Strato Colour 5747 Flannel and it does put me in mind of a pin stripe suit with braces. It's a 68 stitch sock to my standard pattern, plain and simple, and perfect for my FIL whose Christmas present these are - along with a promise to knit him a new head cover for one of his golf clubs!



They're certainly a hit with H who has earmarked them for poaching if they spent too long languishing in his father's sock drawer.

With a certain degree of symmetry, the last socks of 2008 are for my MIL. Are you ready for these? If it's still a somewhat tender hour of the morning (or afternoon) you may want your sunglasses. Don't say I didn't warn you because these are the Hot Hot Hopscotch:


Knit in Jitterbug in the colour Alizerine. The pattern is from the Socktopus Sock Club - although my club socks are almost unrecognisable as the same pattern, being in a much more muted mushroom colourway.

Before you worry that I'm on a mission to blind Beth with scary bright socks, fear not, she choose the colour when she came to visit about 6 months ago so hopefully she still likes it. This is after all the lady whose children include (a) my husband, well known for picking the brightest colours off the shelf and (b) my brother in law who chose the infamous neon socks. I think I'm onto a winner.

The Hopscotch pattern is very well written and gives a finished article that looks far more complicated than it really is - hopefully Alice will publish them for general release this year and you'll get to see what I mean - I can't recommend it highly enough.

The other advantage is that they are toe up, which means that I get to play around until I'm left with this:

That's ALL the leftover yarn from the skein!

So, Christmas is finished, a mere 7 days late, but without any IOUs or presents given with the needles still in - perhaps I ought to get started on next year, but first I have a little blanket to knit for a baby girl who (finally) arrived last Monday.

I hope that this year contains everything that you could wish for and more!

Hopscotch in the Park

Sunday is a day of rest. Occasionally, rarely, it is in the UK a day of peerless sunshine in which everything becomes bathed in a golden glow and the world slows down for the afternoon, fulfilling every criteria for English rural life, including the ice-cream van.

Anxious not to waste any part of this unexpected gift Mary and I abandoned our respective other halves and headed to the park for a little tea, a little cake and a little knitting. We had ice-cream and hot chocolate and basked in the sunshine on a bench up above the river and watched people passing by, people sculling precariously up the khaki muddy river, and knit socks, second socks to be precise; Mary a warm heathery blue pair for toasty toes in the winter and me, well Hopscotch:

I meant to blog about these socks part way through creation but as is so often the case, the blog post was in my mind but never actually made it onto the 'page'. These socks are the fifth installment of the Socktopus Sock Club, started as I headed down to the second spinning class on the 14th, knit on a business trip to London on Monday, knit with the girls on Tuesday night, knit on the way to the dentist on Wednesday (but not on the way back which speaks volumes), knit to work and back on Thursday and Friday, abandoned for a wedding on Saturday, and finished on Sunday.

These socks have seen courtrooms, waiting rooms and tea rooms and seem none the worse for it.

They have even seen a very unusual car:

An orange car; part of a parade of unusual cars lined up in the park on Sunday.




I keep saying that each new pair of socks is my new favourite pattern but it's true - this is definitely a pattern that I will repeat. What I really love is the way that it looks all innocent, a slightly bumpy ribbed sock,



and then you spread the sock around your foot and you get this:


Perfect.

Knitting? I do that!

Spinning is now firmly established as part of my daily life. One of these days I'll just be too busy with all of the crafty things to remember to go to work - oh, wait, maybe that's why I was a bit late the other day - oops - too much ravelry at breakfast.

I am though at heart still a knitter first and foremost and there's very little that a knitter can do when the yarn calls, but cast on. An eagerly anticipated parcel arrived from Socktopus on Saturday (does anyone else notice that Alice is turning out to be a most wonderful enabler!) with the fifth sock parcel. I can't believe it's the fifth sock already. I've signed up again for next year because (a) it's been brilliant and (b) otherwise I'd be terribly sad at it ending. Oh and (c) H really likes the shiny parcels.

Before I got further:
SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER
If you are in the Socktopus Club and want to keep it a surprise then move along. Come back tomorrow or maybe Wednesday.

Right then, just us left? Look-see:



Toe-up Hopscotch Socks in yarn that is mushrooms and clouds and sunsets and green leaves all at once. It is more muted than anything that I ever pick for myself, being queen of the bright colours, but it is just gorgeous; and very soothing to look it.

It lasted about 5 or 6 hours in my home before I wound it up.

The little box is my most favourite bell and whistle yet. It opens out to become:


More little boxes - it's almost as good as a tardis. And inside the little boxes there were:

A thread cutter, a plastic sewing up needle, post it notes, a harmony cable needle which is nice and short and has cunning little grooves in it to hold the stitches without stabbing your hand, blue marking tape, little stitch marker elastics and coil-less safety pins. I've added a little tape measure from my work sewing kit and it is my constant companion on my many train trips.

But enough of this, I know what you really want to see:



The first few inches of sock. Mesmerising, engaging cables with lots of lovely plain rounds in between - you can't ask for more.

All that train knitting does mean that I get a fair few socks done and so I have finished each of my socktopus socks before the next one arrives, and so I got badges:



I feel that I need a sash to put them on (although in my day it was the sleeve(s) of your tunic), preferably with a slightly tatty name tape that says 1st Warwickshire Knitters, and an embroidered picture of the bear and crooked staff that's slightly skewiff.

If you have absolutely no idea what I'm going on about try here and here. In the interests of full disclosure I should tell you that I had the Northamptonshire Tudor Rose on my sleeve. I was an Imp. Clearly nothing very much has changed, and I'm still a sucker for badges.