Socks and stash

I hope that every woman had a fabulous International Women's Day on Wednesday!
I came into work to champagne, chocs and flowers.

and then we had a party at Glaziers Hall, London Bridge (but no photos.  I downed a lot of cocktails and vodka though). 

Now onto socks.

Vintage Child's French Sock is no more. Twinkletoes yarn had just a tad too much mohair to make the broken rib stitch pattern a bit blurred. I'm only ever going to knit patterned socks if I can see the effort is worth it.  No wildly variegated yarn with lace, no mohair with texture!  I think I'll skip this month's knitalong, see what the next one is. No pressure!

Socks  that rock!
I've started a plain toe up sock in STR yarn gifted to me by my scarf exchange partner Jenn. The colours are beautiful. STR isn't available, as far as I know, in the UK yet.  I've heard rumours that a knitter managed to order some, must find out! 

I'm happy to report that this is just as nice (I can't say which one is better!) as the Other Three, aka Cherry Tree Hill, Koigu and Celestial merino for sock knitting. Would be just as nice in a lacy scarf!

I've roughly divided the hank in half, and I'm knitting toe up socks so that not one metre is wasted, and I don't run out of yarn halfway through the foot.
No pooling! You can click on the photo to enlarge it.

And some more socks (I'm usually a one sock at a time person, this is odd)
Lorna's laces, in Vera.  Vera was my favourite grandma, so these socks are certainly for me. I'm knitting them plain to show off the colours.

Sockapalooozer knitting
Not started yet.  On Tuesday I went through the stash that contains the CTH, lorna's laces, koigu, celestial merino  as I want to use some of this for the sock knitting.

Hmmmm, I seem to have lost some skeins of yarn! 

These are all odd balls of lornas laces and koigu, and I promise you that they had mates somewhere!  My Curious Yarn seems to have joined the missing skeins as well, help!

(I've since found the missing lorna's laces in Cool and Tuscany, at work for some reason, but the others are still MIA)

It's getting close to decision time for sockapalooozer. I have no idea what to knit yet though, I have free rein from my secret pal. No colour preferences, no pattern preferences.

As if this sock knitting isn't enough, I have enhanced the stash!

Kim Hargreaves, Ali, in Gypsy wool/cotton.

Great service, friendly emails. A big loss to Rowan (have I mentioned this before?).  It's a shame that she sells kits only, and in limited sizes (she's increased her sizes, to include smaller and larger sizes, but she's fast running out of descriptions for the top end of the range. Finished sizes of 43" - extra extra large?)  Fingers crossed that there's a pattern book soon, she's got some great designs. I had a hard time deciding which one to buy!

And finally

I've joined yet another knitalong. This time it's the Evelyn Clark Knitalong, and our project for the next two months is the Flower Basket Shawl. I've looked at this pattern so often that I feel I've knitted it! The Knitalong is just beginning, so why not join up and join in?  It can be knit with 4 weights of yarn, in 3 sizes, according to the pattern (mine's temporarily lost!). Get knitted have this one as well as loads of other Fiber trends patterns. Tonight I'll be hunting down my pattern and maybe some yarn!

Apologies if I've not responded to emails. These past two days I've not been able to send emails, either from gmail, yahoo or my bt accounts, unless I went via webmail. I could have sworn it was down to Norton (email scanning seemed to mess up the connections) but it turns out it was the broadband connection in our area!  Weird how these things work, and worrying how dependant we are on the www and email!

 

Comments

[Mary]

The STR sock is looking very good. You can't order direct from Blue Moon Fibre Arts, but The Fold will ship to the UK. Maybe all the UK sock knitters should get together and do a bulk order. Missing sock yarn - that sounds very serious!

[Andrea]

Kim Hargreaves's ALI kit is on my wish list as well. It's gorgeous isn't it? Not sure when I will get around to buying it though as I have 2 other KH kits that I haven't finished (1) and started (the other) yet!!!

[francoise]

I am looking forward to seeing Ali on your needles!!! You will have fun too with the Evelyn Clark knitalong, so many beautiful shawls... You will be busy (and I am not counting the socks!...)

[Tracy]

Champagne, chocs and flowers? How'd that pass me by???? Me thinks somebody around here needs a bit of subtle reminding. Watch out boys there's a screen print popping out now!

[Amelia]

I've been eyeing up that Kim Hargreaves kit! Oddly I seem to like the mustard colour - there must be something wrong with me... Please stop being a bad influence on me - that lovely kit and all that gorgeous sock yarn... Big sigh.

[alice]

UK STR...

I emailed a few stores to ask if/when they'd stock it. apparently getknitted keep trying to contact them and get no reply!

So I emailed Blue Moon abot it, and got loooong emails saying how busy they are etc, etc. I was annoyed at first, I'd like to try that yarn, but there are enough cool UK based things, or at least stuff people like GetKnitted can stock.

[Lynn]

I am makin sock in the same vera colorway. Did you use 2 skeins and knit alternately? Mine is pooling a bit.