Knit on with Confidence

and perhaps just a smidgen of faith in yarn miracles!

This week has passed me by in the blogging sense but happily the crazy work that keeps me away from my yarn/camera has given me lots of train knitting time and the lava has been flowing.


The advantage of having something totally new is that it's new and shiny and fun to play with. The disadvantage is that if the yarn runs out there isn't any more this side of a rather large pond.

I had 100g of Noro Silk Garden in a single ball, so when I finished sock number one I weighed it, just to check that I was on schedule.


Ah. Yes, slight hitch there. The remaining yarn weighed 49 grams so no yarn miracles to be expected there.

I cast on the second sock fully in the knowledge that I probably should have stopped one lava flow sooner on the cuff and that I would have to substitute something else for the toe on the second sock, or have uneven cuffs to make it match.



I decided to go for the substituted toe look and as of this afternoon, this is how much yarn I had left in the ball:



I knit and knit, and knit some more, and then knit a bit, and as I started on the toe shaping I started to think that actually, I wouldn't need too many substitute rows.

And then the miracle happened:



Alleluia! (cue heavenly chorus)


I finished the toe. With about a half a yard to spare. There was a slightly hairy moment where I thought I had knit it too short and got very close to ripping back the toe, but after counting, re-counting, and triple-counting the number of repeats, and trying it on, I finally completed the kitchener and darned in the ends.

And just to prove that there was no trickery:


One sock of 55g and one of 49g - you wouldn't believe it if you couldn't see it, surely the knitting muses should have taken the opportunity to smite me for knitting too long a cuff for my feet - actually maybe I shouldn't say that too loudly!

The lava flow pattern is easily memorised and very well written and I really enjoyed knitting these socks, even if not so volcano-coloured as I anticipated.



Actually, if I put my feet up and wiggle my toes it's fairly Vesuvial, with the hottest magma descending down my feet to meet the meadows of pink and green on the cuffs. The colour is Noro Silk Garden Sock 84.

And where are they now? Well where did you expect?

Pink Lava and mermaids

My Noro obsession is spreading! Having finished the blanket I think my subconscious has been casting around in the stash for a new Noro project. Happily, my stash can satisfy that need.

This is Christmas present yarn from H; Noro Silk Garden sock yarn, currently unavailable in the UK (although I think it is expected shortly so I may be wrong on that). H picked it for the colour (I'm on such an orange kick at the moment), or at least the colour that you can see from the outside of the ball - as with a Noro, it has a few surprises hidden inside.

I've started of one of two patterns that make up Pink Lemon Twist's Fire Series. For each of the elements there are two patterns, one simple and one a bit harder. This is the simple one, called Lava Flow, and as you can see, my expected tumult of crashing orange and volcanic ash has turned out to be pink and green. Less lava, more lava lamp.

Silk Garden Sock is billed as being standard sock weight yarn but although it has thick-thin parts, it feels more solid than a plied sock yarn so on 2.5mm needles it feels a little more sturdy than other sock fabric. Given that it's a singles yarn I think it's sensible so that it will hold together better, and I imagine that it will soften and drape with washing, just like its older sibling.

In the meantime, I've been playing colouring in. I've been intrigued by shrink plastic for a while and when we were in town on Sunday I spotted this mermaid.

It feels like the flimsiest plastic every when you colour it in,

but after a few seconds in a warm oven -

it's tiny, and rather cute. I've put her on a little split ring and thread that came with the kit to hang up on my pinboard to make me smile.