The colours of the season

Warning: Actual knitting content ahead!

Yes, it's true, I have been knitting and even more than that, I have finished some knitting.  Ta da!


It's just taken me two months to knit a plain vanilla pair of socks for myself.  Chief in the acquisition of knitting time was Miss Kitty's decision that sleeping on Mummy is fun, and sitting in the baby bouncer kicking little legs and giggling gummily at Mummy is also fun.  (She also likes watching back to back episodes of Coast while Mummy eats supper with both hands which is wonderful!).

I'm not sure I could manage anything more complicated while she's asleep on me, and it's probably true that my baby befuddled brain couldn't cope anyway so plain socks it is.

Fortunately the stash reveals a collection of wonderful multicoloured sock yarn that needs plain socks to show off the colours to their best advantage.  Very few patterns would be strong enough to match up to this Fire on the Mountain so it isn't really worth the extra effort when these are pretty and soft and warm and so very cheery against the oncoming grey of winter.

They even outshine my sandals.

In fact I like this yarn so much that I couldn't bear to simply tuck the leftovers away in the scraps box, and as I've been meaning to make Kitty some mittens for a while to try to combat the Kitty-Mummy game where Mummy puts mittens on Kitty and Kitty tries to wiggle her hands free without Mummy noticing, I did a little scrap box diving for other STR leftovers:

And here we see that Mummy has won! Port and Starboard mittens for Kitty made out of STR mediumweight in Fire on the Mountain and Lucky and STR lightweight in Dragon's Dance. 

The bright colours are fun for her to look at, and they're big enough that she can wiggle her fingers to her heart's content without falling off, but at the same time her fingers will stay toasty warm.

As you can see she was wildly impressed with them!

We'd gone for a walk to find some autumn colour around Abbey Fields in Kenilworth and to introduce Kitty to the smell and crunch of fallen leaves.

I had a great time and enjoyed the change of scene (and the Scrumpy scotch egg from the Cotswold pie stall), and Kitty, well she had a little snooze:

until we went down one off the off road tracks and she needed to tell me in no uncertain terms that this was too bouncy and not acceptable.  I don't think there was anyone left in Kenilworth that was in any doubt that this was not a baby-friendly track by the time she had fully communicated her point of view!  Sorry Kenilworth.

The snow report: day 2

No snow.

It did snow in Birmingham last night after we'd all gone home. Aston Villa were playing at home and we could see the flakes whirling down, chilling the players and dressing the managers and team staff with American football style shoulder pads, but despite several trips to open the front door and check, we had nothing save for a brief flurry of sleet at about 10 which clung desperately to the cracks in the paving stones before melting into obliteration when the rain returned.

Birmingham seem to have made the most of it though, from our upstairs window at work we could see the outlines of last night's snow angels in the churchyard, gently fading away throughout the day until only the fragile ghostly skeleton of each wing was left.

It is raining now. Were it not for the fact that (a) we won the cricket (b) we're having supper with great friends later and (c) I have a new pair of toasty warm socks on my feet I might almost be downhearted.

The socks in question are my Christmas socks, alternatively known as my Twilight socks. Started when we went to see New Moon and I needed some cinema knitting and then put to the bottom of the knitting basket while I knit Christmas sock after Christmas sock.

I started the second sock on Sunday when I wanted some easy knitting to accompany Coco avant Chanel (subtitles being a tad of a challenge with anything complicated) and picked it up again on the train rides to and from work this week and finally finished it at home last night.

I love the colours in these socks and the simplicity of such a basic pattern (plain 64 stitch sock with an afterthought heel) lets the yarn shine through without any competition. Perfect.


The yarn is Blue Moon Fibre Arts STR lightweight in Knitters without Borders. You should go and buy some, it's pretty and it's for a good cause - what's not to like!

The Cath Kidston in the background by the way is courtesy of a very dear friend who gave me a length of each for Christmas with the note: "it's a bit DIY this year" - he knows me well.

H has also been sporting new socks this week after it appeared that Father Christmas thought that he deserved more than a lump of coal;

and his wife decided that he needed some handspun socks as the icing on the cake.

The first pair are Regia Suprise in Ocean 1268, knit over 72 stitches, also with an afterthought heel to keep the spiral going.

The second are special. The yarn is my handspun 3ply from fibre from Artists Palette Yarns which H picked out at Wonderwool.

I spun it up a while ago and then hid it so that he would forget and then knit it up for Christmas.

The pattern is Sam's socks from Cookie A's Sock Innovation book. It's a great pattern and sized up quite easily (I added an extra repeat width ways) to make it boy sized. The only place it gets a bit tricky is the heel flap - which I fudged a bit and you can't tell.



I think I might be developing a serious weakness for socks knit out of my own handspun, which given the fibre stash is probably no bad thing. I just love the way the colours blur and meld together as they shift through the different colours.


And as I had to rescue them from the boy's feet to take the pictures I think they were a hit!

By starlight

I'm sat here trying to think of the last time that I went to see a film on its opening weekend and I honestly can't. The last but one film that I saw at the cinema was Fast and Furious but that had been around for a while by the time we went. I don't think I've ever been that keen to see a film that I was willing to pre-book tickets and endure the potential of hoards of teenage gigglers. Until now.

New Moon opened on Friday. My fan girl status is laid bare -I lasted until Saturday evening, mainly because H was away Friday night.

It is a very lovely adaptation of the book and both H and I really enjoyed it. All of the important scenes from the book have made it into the film, and whilst some things will have more significance if you have read the books, and can see the foreshadowing, it doesn't make the film unintelligible as a stand-alone entity.

I liked the fact that the pace of the script allowed Bella's happiness at the beginning of the film to be so clearly established, and her despair when it all gets ripped away is all the more real for it. The scenes where she screams in her nightmares tore into me, it is a portrayal of very naked grief, almost uncomfortable to watch without being able to offer comfort.

H is a big fan of the wolves and I think he may have been hoping for a big vampire-wolf showdown at the end - he'll just have to wait and see on that one, I'm not saying anything. It was interesting though, I've always been more Team Jacob than Team Edward, possibly because Jacob reminds me of my husband, and to see him identify much more strongly with Jacob than Edward makes me think that perhaps I'm not too far off the mark.

We both loved the Volturi and Michael Sheen was perfect as Aro. The bit that really gave me the chills was that the last few films and TV dramas that I have seen Michael Sheen in, he was playing Tony Blair, and a bit of the Blair charisma crept into Aro It can't be just me who could see Tony Blair as a centuries-old vampire who exercises secret control over the world - a far more scary prospect than Stephanie Meyer could ever have imagined.

There were two moments in our particular viewing that really made me laugh though. The first was the scene where Jacob first takes his shirt off to mop up Bella's head - cue a wave of teenage giggles, followed by chuckles from the older members of the audience laughing at the teenagers.

The second, I might struggle to explain if you haven't yet seen the film. Suffice to say that it ends on a cliffhanger, a question is asked and then it fades to black.

As the black hit, and in that one quiet pause before the title music began, there was a sharp intake of breath somewhere behind us, and a girl's voice groaned "Huuuuuh!" (as in "you can't be leaving it there!") - the whole cinema dissolved in a roar of laughter.

Whilst I have been knitting quite a bit recently, it is known only to me and to Ravelry because of the time of year. None of it was simple enough for the cinema, so I dug out some very special yarn, to become a very plain pair of New Moon socks for me.

Socks that Rock Lightweight in Knitters without Borders - a very Twilightly colourway. This has turned into a full sock since the picture was taken but with the most wonderful time of the year comes the least amount of natural light for photos. Even at 2pm on a Sunday afternoon I was struggling.

I have one more not-so-secret confession. A group of us at work have tentative plans to go to see New Moon, and I'm really quite keen to see it again. I'm certain it doesn't tip me over the edge of fan girl and into the depths of obsession. After all, how am I going to get the other sock knit if I don't go?

Birthday Socks

So, how many times do you repeat something before it becomes a habit or a tradition? H's good fortune, in allying himself to a perpetual provider of knitwear is that he now increases his 'fluffy sock' collection by at least three pairs a year - a pair for his birthday, a pair for Christmas from me and a pair from Father Christmas in his socking (St Nick being a distinct fan of extremely bad puns).

He now has a collection to rival a centipede with a fondness for extraordinarily bright footwear and as his loving wife, I wouldn't want to disappoint. I realised that the sock giving was now firmly established as a tradition a couple of weeks before our birthday when he asked, not whether he was getting socks, but which yarn I was knitting up!

And here they are:

The yarn is Indigo Moon Sock in Carnival which came from Socktopus last autumn and the pattern is a freebie - the Circle Socks by Anne Campbell - an ingenious design that provides a little interest to the knitting and isn't totally overwhelmed by the colours of the sock yarn.

I did amend the pattern a little, by adding an extra repeat - I used 72 sts - and adding an extra half repeat lengthwise on the leg. Technically there isn't really yarn to do this and the toes are leftovers from H's Fibonacci socks but it's the same yarn base and very similar colours. If you were knitting these for lesser feet you would be fine.

In the interests of equality - I also polished off a pair of birthday socks for myself:

The Cloning Anemone Rib socks from last year's Rockin Sock Club - I love the colours and the pattern is very comfy and has just the right balance between interest, and a bit of mindless stocking stitch for film knitting and standing up on the train. I knit a large and still had a fair amount of yarn leftover so it's success all round.

Two birthdays; two pairs of socks:

Perfect.

Thank you for all the compliments about the cake - it tastes wonderful and is now firmly embedded in my mind as the most fun that I've had with icing sugar!

Sunday Expedition

While my working week involves commutes to work, commutes to places associated with work, and generally crazy amounts of time spent on the train, the lovely H works from home and has a commute of 16 stairs (12 down, 4 up, it's that kind of house).

The net result is that I finish Friday longing to lounge around in my PJs for 48 hours, and he is equally keen to go exploring. We seem to have reached a happy compromise whereby I got to spent an unseemly amount of time in the bath yesterday morning (three ferocious su doku puzzles and a top up of hot water), and today after church we packed up the cool bag and headed out.

H's choice - Waddesdon Manor. It's a house built by the Rothschild family, essentially to house their collection of nice things.

It's a stunning building, created to replicate a French chateau in style, and has even more than usual ornate gilt embellishments everywhere you look. The Sevres collection is just staggeringly huge, there's almost so much of it that it devalues itself; when there are twenty plates, beautifully hand painted with little birds, suddenly that first plate that caught your eye doesn't seem so special.

I think that really sums up my view of Waddesdon; it's a grand house, filled with beautiful things, but it isn't a home, there was no ambiance, no feeling that each of these things was a treasured possession, loved and used, just valuable pieces acquired for the sake of acquisition.

It has to be the aim of all visitors to the big houses to imagine themselves back in time (whatever time that may be), staying or living in this house, but here you couldn't do that - the house was dead.

And this doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy seeing the pretty things and the enormous rooms - perhaps it's just a reminder to myself that the soul of a home matters more than the fabric - at least that's what I'll tell H when he wonders why I haven't hoovered yet!

The surrounding grounds are similarly vast and the (relatively small) formal gardens were truly lovely.

We ate lunch sat within scent of the rose garden, which while a little past its peak, still had plenty of perfect blooms.

Went to the aviary to visit the birds, and found sculptures:




And discovered what happens when you accidentally water the birds with miracle-grow as well as the plants!


The Rothschild family were obviously very keen on their horses and we found them all around, a shire horse by the aviary:

A flower horse (you really needed to be in the house to see this properly but all the windows have blinds to protect the contents):

And a water horse:


Please note the duck!

H had a final physio session earlier in the week so he is now back to driving which means that (sound trumpets and give forth loud hurrahs please) ... I'm back knitting in the car - which to my mind is far more fun than driving:

This is the start of the Blue Moon Fiber Arts Sock Club kit from last September (I think) - the colour is called Tide Pooling and the pattern is Cloning Anemone Rib. The cloning, anemones and ribbing will be more obvious when I'm wearing them/ when they're on sock blockers.

And to round off a perfect summer's day, would you like a fairy cake?

Vanilla sponge cakes with lemon icing and just the touch of Wilton's food colouring (lemon yellow, kelly green and a smidge of lemon yellow, pink, and a whisper of teal) and pretty pastel sugar drops.

It seems a very English picnic to have ham or corned beef sandwiches, strawberries and fairy cakes on a blanket by a rose garden - and it was good!

Glass brim full

It's been a good weekend.

We got off to a good start when My Favourite Baby and his parents came to visit on Saturday. MFB is now 6 months old and all cuddles and giggles and fish impersonations that we think are him trying to blow kisses. If you tickle him he wiggles his feet and gives you a beaming smile - it's unbelievably cute.

His parents are dear friends and we had a great time catching up with them. Quite how the topic of conversation got round to Scalextrics I'm not sure; and how we got from there to setting up our Scalextric track around the lounge floor is another mystery, but you know you aren't really grown up when all four of you are sat on the floor (in the dark because the cars light up) watching the cars go round while the baby sleeps upstairs.

We were planning to play golf with friends on Sunday but it was weather for frogs and submariners so we rounded them up and played Wii Sports Golf instead (and Scalextrics!). The highpoint in all of this silly merriment was the priceless moment when H carefully speared a roast potato with the carving fork, lifted up to transfer it to his plate - and it slid off the fork and plopped accurately into my (full) wineglass. I can now tell you that roast potatoes are enhanced by a dressing of white wine, but I'm not sure I could say that the reverse is true.

All of this sounds far too good to be true, but there is more - there is cake:



And more cake. H made a special request of sorts on Friday. He is studying hard for some exceptionally boring exams and when I e-mailed him on Friday to ask something trivial and to see how he was getting on I fear it had affected his brain. The response read: "I want to sit on a little fluffy gold cloud". I thought that he might be on to something there but he made it clear that it was a condition of little fluffy gold cloud land that I bring cake if I was to come too.

"What flavour cake?"

"Rainbow!"

His wish is my command (at least when it comes to cake):


And if you think that looks enticing - look at the inside:


That is a six egg sponge cake, divided into six portions and coloured individually. I then layered each colour into two cake tins - one yellow, then orange, then red and the other violet, then indigo, then blue, and the buttercream in the middle is dyed green.

It's all done with Supercook colours and the orange and indigo are slightly disappointing - the orange is pretty much red apart from a bit at the very far left that looks slightly lighter, and the indigo is just speckled black and blue, rather than being properly dark blue. The violet, which is red and blue, mixed quite well but I think I need to invest in some proper food colours. They would be good for yarn dying too.

Needless to say, H is thrilled with the cake.

The mixed bag of jelly beans helped me match up all sorts of things too:


Gumdrops socks in the Goody Goody colourway - it seemed only appropriate. My order from Blue Moon arrived on Friday so I finally finished these socks, just in time for the new kit which arrived on Thursday (and is beautiful):


These are a great pattern and a comfortable fit - I'd like to do a pair in Jitterbug for my MIL but I'm a bit cautious about the yardage. She does have smaller feet than me so we might be OK.

And just in case the sugary overload is all too saccharine - here is a palate cleanser:



Autumn sunflowers - maybe next year mine will grow!

The return of Bigfoot

What is the crucial difference between this photo (exhibit A):


And this photo (exhibit B):


Could it be that exhibit A is a delightful, feminine, pastel shade and exhibit B is a more rousing, rugged, masculine blue and brown?

No.

Could it be that exhibit A is knit into a flowing droplet pattern, reminiscent of boiled sweets or fat dew drops sliding down leaves and exhibit B is plain vanilla?

No.

Could it be that exhibit A is a smaller sock, well suited to a ladies step and exhibit B is knit for the foot that covers vast distances with sturdy strides?

No.

Exhibit B has a small ball of yarn still attached to the sock, enough to finish the foot and tie the socks to the recipients foot should he desire. Exhibit A - sob - has none.

This is the medium size of the fourth Rockin Sock Club pattern, knit on the needles recommended to an only slightly looser gauge and I've run out of yarn with most of the toe still to go. If I'd made it over the top of the toe I would fill in with some leftovers from the stash but anything else here is going to be really noticeable.

I have a cunning plan though - the yarn arrived with a choice of patterns - gumdrops socks or sweet tart anklets so if I ordered another skein I could finish these socks and make the sweet tart socks - possibly to be a Christmas or birthday gift if I was really organised.

One of the real benefits of sock clubs is that you learn new techniques and different options to use on your everyday socks. This latest RSC pattern introduced me to the garter stitch heel and toe and I love it:

The reason for it here is that it makes the heel and toe reversible to match the socks but it also makes the heel plumper,


and means that you can do short row heels without needing to pick up the wraps.


Consultation with H late on Friday night had established that he didn't want any fussy patterns on this pair of socks, just nice ordinary socks, and that fitted with my plan to have something to knit at Iknit that would work on autopilot. My autopilot does like a little excitement so I tried out another garter st short row heel; and it worked. Again (why this should surprise me I really don't know).


It makes for a beautiful squishy sock and if anyone is interested I'll write up a mini how to, in terms of calculating numbers etc.


Now then, the important question - if a little something else falls into my basket while I am buying the yarn to finish off the gumdrops socks, would that really be so bad? It might be considered compensation for having unfinished socks in the house!

Two feet - Green

“Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter. Who would think that those branches would turn green again and blossom, but we hope it, we know it.”

C'est finis! Bare sticks and a bit of string have produced these:


My Lucky Leafling socks, finished this afternoon on the train home and with the end wounds in at the traffic lights in the car on the way home from the station (I wasn't driving I promise! and you know there's no stopping a knitter with an almost finished sock!).

These


Yes these

Are the March socks from the Rockin Sock Club in STR mediumweight. The fit is truly lovely which is partly down to the lovely yarn and partly down to the genius of the Cat Bordhi inspired pattern - we likes it, we loves it, we wants it ... oh, hang on, that's something else.

The other thing truly wonderful is that I got home in the daylight to take pictures - hurrah for Spring -sort-of!

I must admit to you my dear friends that I may perhaps, perchance and possibly have had an ulterior motive for finishing the socks. I am awaiting the arrival of a Firebird and as it's already arrived a little bit further north I thought I could tempt it to arrive with the promise of empty needles and a train commute.

Alas no, it was all in vain. Having said that I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that the Firebird might need a bit more attention than train knitting offers so I left off looking for the birds in the leaves, went to the stash and found:


The Ocean!! Gorgeous sea coloured Arucania Ranco from H at Christmas and (more) Cat Bordhi - I'm making the socks at the bottom on the book cover.

(I bet the Firebird arrives 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!