Cosy Toes

It seems only appropriate to finish my red Serendipity socks on Valentine's day!

As I was sat knitting on the train home it struck me that these had been a very fast little knit until I realised just how much time I've spent on the train recently - if you work on the basis that in the last week it has taken me almost 2 hours to get to work on 3 or 4 days, add a trip to London and a little bit of time correcting mistakes over the weekend perhaps it isn't that surprising - I've just had double the usual amount of train sock knitting time this week.


Pattern: Ninereed's Serendipity from the Rockin Sock Club 2008
Yarn: STR Lightweight in Dragons Dance
Needles : 2.25mm - medium size
Started: 6 Feb 2008
Finished: 14 Feb 2008

Result: smiles all round!
What is certainly true is that I love these socks - I can really see why people rave about Socks that Rock and I'm so glad we have our own UK equivalent in Jitterbug (STR comes in longer lengths though - a note to Colinette!).

I've still got a good chunk of yarn left over as well as the emergency keyring so I think we'll be seeing these stripes again some day!

I am off to enjoy a delicious steak and chips lovingly prepared by my husband - who also has cosy feet!

TTFN

Red Swirls

Red is

the colour of all the traffic lights on the way to the station this morning
the colour of half the seats on the train
the colour of the passengers fingers and cheeks as we waited in the biting cold for a heavily delayed train.
the colour of my lunchtime soup.
the colour of the files I keep the court orders in
the colour of my eyes on a bleary early start
the colour of a court seal and the judge's robes
the colour of Icarus and my Jaywalkers
the colour of a Port marker beacon out by the rocks at the entrance to the harbour down south
the colour of the peppers and tomatoes in our curry

and...

the colour of Serendipity!

I am turning the heel on the first sock and the spiral stripe continues to be slow and steady and vibrant. When not being totally mucked around by the train company (whose clever idea it was to close a track for 2 weeks so we can only travel by the 2 unreliable trains every hour rather than having 5 or 6 to choose from) I'm making great progress and the colours are deep enough to fall into. No pictures tonight but we'll see how much further I get on a few more train trips tomorrow!

Empty Sock Needles?

Come on! You know me better than that - no sooner were Dad's socks finished than I cast on for the next pair, and these are a real treat all the way from across the pond.

Yes indeedy, my name is Cariemay, my Dragon is Ninereeds and he's started to dance to the tune of the Rockin Sock Club :)

This yarn is beautifully dyed - this isn't the best picture ever as I took it on a whim as I had the yarn out to wind but it has that wonderful progression from mushed strawberries and clotted cream right though blood red and out to the colour of an Oxford hood. Being somewhat infatuated with saturated colours and this being one of my favourite reds I'm very happy sitting oooing this yarn.

I can't find out very much about my dragon through - rumour has it he is something to do with Terry Pratchett novels but I've not got further than that - anyone else know?

When you start to knit, the colours spiral, red vs strawberry/brick stripes and that's where the fun comes in - choosing the right needles and size to get striping that you like and a pair that fits.

I started doing the large on 2.25mm needles but although I liked the striping it was very clear that with my tension (or lack thereof) the sock would be far too large and I like a good chunk of negative ease.

The current incarnation is the medium, still on 2.25mm and the fit looks good. The stripes have been giving me cause for concern, although the side in the picture above has a nice leisurely spiral the other side looks like this:

and I was a bit worried that it would break up into stripy chunks. This afternoon I finished off a pattern repeat and I think I've got back into that nice spiral again. Fingers crossed because the next option is to break out the 2.0mms and go back to a large - eeek!

If you've been reading for a while you'll know that my oldest UFO is not knitting but a cross stitch destined for my SIL. It's a central picture surrounded by a border with plenty of beads, metalic thread and backstitch and I am determined to have it finished for her 30th birthday next November. The centre stitching is done as well as the top border and the top left corner; when all the stitching is done I'll need to go back over the whole piece to do the beads, metallics and backstitch and at that point I'll also put it on a big tapestry frame - a moving hoop will squash the beads and the metalics unless I'm really careful hence they get left until then end.

In the interests of finishing in time to have it framed before November I fished out the stitching bag this afternoon and made a little house with a garden and a bit of blue dream sky; a bit like this:

Maybe when it's finished you can see the whole picture - for now it's just teasers.

All in all it has been a rejuvinating weekend - it was wonderfully sunny which always helps, I didn't feel like I was about to die after my gym class and this afternoon I discovered that Sky Arts was showing the Barber of Seville - oh and things are begining to grow in my garden - I feel spring in the air!

Catching up (spoiler warning)

Every time life steps up a gear and blogging takes a back seat for a while I look at the dashboard and wonder how on earth it's been that long since I last posted. It's been so long I don't really know where to start to catch up; do I tell you that the potted palm trees outside a certain Warwickshire railway station have had their trunks decorated with apples and bananas so that they appear to be fruit bearing? that in the window of a recruitment agency on Chancery Lane are seven knitted owl-barristers and two owl-judges? that last weekend we opened our last box of Christmas chocolates

and that this is not so much a sign of our restraint as H's impresssive ability to purchase most of Hotel Chocolat? or tell you of the blizzard that swept through Birmingham this afternoon two and a half minutes after a colleague e-mailed the team to announce that as it was February and as it wasn't raining we should all go for a drink after work!

But actually there's only really one place to start and that's with the yarn, and surefire evidence that it is not just me that falls down in yarn shops!

Last weekend I popped into Web of Wool to collect a little something for a certain someone's birthday and another little something for a certain someone's birthday. I was going to be good, restrained and aware of the lovely Christmas yarn waiting at home. This would have worked but my lovely H twisted his ankle playing football a week ago and was off sport for the weekend ("playing football" I take to mean that he and the opposition viciously tackled each other at the same time!) so I took him with me...

"What colour would [xxxxx] like?" I asked; "ooh I like this one"


came the response. "What does this knit up like?". I dutifully removed my shoe and showed him the Azure Blue Parrot; "I'd like these please!".

We chose the certain someone's yarn, collected the other certain someone's yarn and then the little voice popped up again; "now, where's the black sock yarn? I need some socks I can wear to work!"

A recent laundry crisis relating to too much time at work and insufficient proximity to the washing machine suggested to H that he should wear his handknit socks to work (where they were duly admired). Now he wants some slightly tamer ones for formal days, hence the black - who needs Marks & Spencer when you've got a wife that knits?!

Work has, as I said, been a tad on the crazy side this week; to the extent that yesterday and today I wasn't entirely sure what day of the week it was any more, just that it involved trains. Yesterday was the final outburst of energy, burning up pure adreneline to get the job finished (for the moment, cue hollow laughter).

I arrived home last night to a cryptic note from ParcelForce - they had left a package in the summerhouse. We don't have a summer house, or at least, we didn't when I went to work. It had been VERY windy during the day so I casually peered out into the darkened garden, wondering if perhaps one had landed, Wizard-of-Oz style, complete with package.

Fortunately it hadn't so I investigated the shed. I give great credit to the man from ParcelForce for describing our shed with a glass panelled door as a summerhouse, I feel he may have a promising career as an estate agent! In the shed I could make out a square brown box and when I brought it inside it looked like this:

When you open it a little bit further it looks like this:

OK enough teasing for now:



This is shipment No 1 from the 2008 Rockin Sock Club from Blue Moon Fiber Arts. I contemplated joining last year, didn't and then rather wished I had so this year I wasn't holding back and I'm not disappointed:




Beautifully soft yarn called Dragons Dance to celebrate Chinese New Year and the Serendipity sock pattern - I can't wait to cast on and the emergency sock key ring works out pretty well as a comfort/stress toy. The folder has lots of useful sock information, size conversion charts etc and places to note down sizes for your family and friends - I can't wait to cast on!

This is my first touch of STR and the fans have not underestimated it; it is almost indistinguishable from Jitterbug which is a favourite sock yarn. The advantage of STR is the skein is 128g, plenty for the giant feet of this 6' amazon.

The other problem with manic working is that it cuts into the time for manic knitting - bit of a problem when you desperately want to finish a shawl to wear to a wedding on Saturday. Icarus has now been knit at home, at Tuesday night knitting, on a variety of different brand trains (but not the tube) and most impressivly in the Masters waiting chamber at the Royal Courts of Justice (I had half an hour to wait for a judge to come back from his lunch).

Yesterday as I got home I was at the end of the final chart and it looked a little bit like this:

If I said the rows had got long by that point it was nothing on the final four edging rows and the cast off; simple rows but with close to 600 stitches it was a time consuming job. Unblocked it looked like this


and after staying up far later than I should have done to block it, it looked like ... actually, I'm not going to reveal all just now, the wedding is tomorrow when I will try to get some daylight photos and at the moment it's still on the blocking wires on the spare bedroom floor.

Well ok, you can have a peek:


And finally, an apology. All the manic working and manic knitting mean that my Christmas hubris (and early finishing) has come back to bite me. Today is my father's birthday and his present is not yet finished. So instead, and as a stop gap until I finish and post it ( Royal Mail not blog), I can do no better than to give a Birthday blog toast:

To my darling Dad, clifftop walk companion, sandcastle builder extraordinaire, and the man whose infectious smile I inherited: HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!