skein

I can accomplish so much in two evenings.

Hmmm. 
April - one pair of socks finished.
May (to date) - nothing finished.

What's going on?  What's happened to my garment a month? 

I really would have liked to have finished the West Side Raglan, Something Red and my Project Spectrum socks by the end of May.

Being very realistic, this isn't going to happen in two evenings!

Leaf lace socks (Project Spectrum).  Current status is 1.25 socks done.

West Side Raglan
Second sleeve raglan shaping to go (sorry about the out of focus shot - it was very late and quite dim. The button has been sitting on the corner of the table for weeks, since I last vacuumed).

I'll be over at the stashflat (where WSR abides) tomorrow, but I'll not do the sewing up until the w/end, when I have plenty of daylight. So this is certainly a June FO, not a May FO.

And finally, Something Red, second time around. 
At some time during the Spring holiday weekend I broke past the point where I had to frog last time around. Believe me, it was not nice. This 100% cotton is splitty, not at all as pleasant to knit with as the All Seasons Cotton. I've had to grit my teeth and carry on.  The increases are much more noticeable this time around too, but I'm thinking this is down to the cotton I'm using which shows every imperfection. I don't care.  It'll be wearable.  I predict that some of these cotton cones will soon be on ebay!
Body

and sleeves in progress.

These are so very nearly finished, maybe another 15 minutes tonight. Then it's the short row collar and borders!  Maybe not tonight, but this week!

So the knitting drought continues, but I anticipate a positive flood of Finished Objects in June. I'm really going to try to get that WIPS list down a little bit.

Which is just as well, as we have a little yarn enhancement trip lined up in June.  More in two weeks!

And there's a new shop opening! Stash Yarns, in Putney, my manor!  I've walked past and peered in and I can see very nice yarn in there!  I'm going to have to be very restrained I see.  For anyone wanting to visit, it's a few minutes walk from Putney train station, or about 10 mins from East Putney Tube. If you're feeling very lazy you can catch a 37 from the tube station, it's just two stops away.  You can get to Putney from Waterloo out towards Richmond, very regular and frequent trains. Can't wait!

Knitting round up

We spent last weekend at the stash flat, great for me (surrounded by my knitting books and stash), bad for actual knitting progress.

My knitting, over the past two months hasn't been as productive as I would like it to be. I like to finish at least one garment and one or two pairs of socks per month.  Last month I managed a pair of socks.  This month, with 9 days to go, it's even less!   
Never fear. When I sat down with the camera last night I was pleasantly surprised to see that I'm progressing, slowly.

Leaf lace socks.

West Side Raglan.
Not a difficult knit, but I loathe knitting with Summer Tweed and am dragging my heels with this one.  Every row is a pain.  I'm on the last sleeve. The first sleeve is now sewn in, after a bit of a disaster.  Late at night, poor lighting, no concentration = front and back raglans sewn together, instead of the sleeve.  Then I managed to miss the mattress stitch thread and snipped an end stitch on the raglan, half way down. All sorted now though. Here's a very poor shot of the garment in progress. It poured down yesterday, so I had to make do with the front door.  It's raglan, though the garment's hanging oddly and looks like a weird drop shoulder on the armless side.

My bath rug
Based on the cotton and rag rug in Mason Dixon Knitting, I've knitted a second strip. This is really cheap cotton from texere and feels like string.  I intend to knit four strips and then reverse the colour and knit another four strips, so that it's double thickness and reversible (and I can knot the ends).

Henley

I'd forgotton all about this one, until Chris reminded me that we were going to the cinema, and I had no cinema knitting!  Leaf lace socks can't be knitted in the dark!  So I dug this one out and took it along to see MI3.  This is a much better choice for action movies, no dpns to drop, and if stitches are dropped, they're aran weight and easier to pick up!

I've divided for the armholes and it's now lunchtime knitting while blog reading at work. It's a bit scrunched up, most of my circulars are 60cm!

And finally, a new project!  Blame Yvonne for knitting one, and Polly and Jill for mentioning just how nice this is in real life.

It's the twisted T from Knitty!  Using some Cotton Anglora from Coldspring Mills. In Project Spectrum green no less!

This will be left at the stash flat for mindless knitting, so the progress will be slow...

Phew!  Now tonight it's Something Red's turn.

This and that

Really, where does the time fly?
Suddenly another week goes by, and I've got nothing to show, knitting wise.
I've been so busy at work, and so tired in the evenings, that knitting has taken a backseat.

My commuting project is the Leaf Lace socks. I dithered over that first leg; the 2.25mm needles, and a rather tight cast on meant that I struggled to get the sock over my high instep. So I've started afresh with 2.5mm needles, not something that I'd usually use for sock weight yarn.  They look pretty similar in this photo, but the sock on the needles is wider and I'm happier with this.  I may go down a needle size for the heel and foot though.

NOT a true colour on this monitor, my yarn's much more of a lime green.

Stash enhancement.
I've been so good with the stash enhancement, since shocking myself by the size of my stash on flash the stash day.  I've bought 3 lots of lorna's laces since then - 2 pairs are knitted already - the sockapalooozer and my vera socks.  The last pair are destined for a birthday gift.  It couldn't last forever, though I think I was extremely restrained!
Jill, Polly and I went to Caterham on Sunday, to the Yarn House.  I bought enough yarn to knit a baby blanket for a friend. It's still early days, so I shall leave it for a few months before I start knitting. She has a scan in June, when we'll (hopefully!) find out the sex of the baby.  I hope my colours are fairly neutral.  I can always finish off with a bit of blue or mauve once we know.

I really must get my knitting act together this month.  I've been thinking of all of the wips I have on the go, and I think I'll concentrate on a few of those for the rest of May, hopefully finish them off.  Top of the list for finishing off are the current leaf lace socks, Something Red (just divided for the bottom bit, again) and West Side Raglan (1.3 sleeves to go). Can I finish these things off in two weeks? That's two weekends worth of knitting.  Must. Finish.

 

Project Spectrum

I've succumbed to project spectrum!  I looked in vain for green things on the way home last week but all I could see were trees!

This is the tree outside the flats in Putney, what a grand specimen! I'm afraid I cut off the top of the tree...

Last weekend at the stashflat I hunted out some greens.

Not very green, is it?  I really struggled with this colour. I have a stack of olive cotton (on the right) from the Eltham sales several years ago, and some gorgeous lace yarn (centre), but I really wanted to do something small with this colour, not a massive project - I have far too many things on the needles at the moment, and with major stash enhancement on the way for the next two months, I want to clear the decks a little, not increase the wips!

My initial choice was this sock yarn. It's called Spring, and its from Curious Yarns.

I really like this colour, a spring green and a bright yellow, but I wanted more green!

So the plain Opal won out. I'm knitting fibertrends leaf lace socks.

and this is my progress so far

A very simple pattern to memorise, but they're looking very narrow!

Knitting new socks means, of course, that I've finished the last ones. So here are the Vera socks, knitted in LL Vera, plain top down socks, with an afterthought heel.

Pretty, pretty!

Sockapalooozers socks

What a great package arrived in the post today!

A wonderful postcard of headless horeman of Sleepy Hollow.
A fabulous signed copy of Knitting Rules and a photograph of the yarnharlot herself holding my sockapalooozer socks-in-progress. (And I don't have this book!)
The socks themselves!

Thank you, thank you, thank you Bev!

The socks are from IK Winter 05, and are the Embossed Leaves Socks by Mona Shmidt.  The yarn is the ever so soft Andean Treasure, Wild Rose, from Knitpicks. I've had the whole office touching my feet to feel the socks! 

Of course, when the camera came out they all had work to do!  So I've attempted to take a photo of the socks in situ.  21 photos actually.  It's very difficult to take a great photo of socks that you're wearing, especially if you haven't exfoliated for months and your legs are ghastly white, and you're trying to get the sock in the photo, but no leg!

Here are three, picked at random (after deleting all of the ones with too much leg, not enough foot etc.)

Very nice socks! Thank you so much Bev! (there's a much better picture of the 'goods' on Bev's blog here.)

Try, try again.

Another attempt at Something Red.
This time I'm using 100% cotton, so we shall see how it goes; all of the ribbing might make for a very heavy cardy.
Another bargain from Coldspring Mill, where they occasionally sell Designer Yarns rejects. This time it's similar to Lavold's Cable Cotton.  I bought four cones, unseen. They're the four cones on the far left of this picture (office stash!). Red, yellow, cream and green.

This won:

and is now this:

Pretty similar to the ASC one, eh?

The West Side Raglan is coming along nicely.  I've finished the back and have just started the raglan shaping at the top.

So we are still knitting here, chez Dawn. Hopefully (that word signals knitting doom in some form or another) I can work on this one over the weekend and make good progress.  The new Something Red is rather housebound, that kilo cone is not a great commuting project, so will be s l o w progress, but hey, as long as it's finished this month I don't care!

What a disappointing month!

I managed to finish two FOs for April - and they were socks.  How bad is that?  At the very least I expect to knit a main garment as well.  Many thanks for your suggestions on more yarn - but I've frogged it!  The sleeves were far too wide, and when I do get around to knitting this again (soon!) I'll be making adjustments to the raglan increases on the sleeves - this is where I need to narrow the sleeve. 

Which means May will be catch up month.  I intend to knit at least two pairs of socks, and two garments. 

My first pair of May socks are my Vera socks.  I put in a bit of work on them at the cinema today.

Hopefully these will be finished this week. Surely I can't go wrong with a plain sock?

I picked up Martha's sleeve and knitted a few more rows. I have about 3" to go to the armhole shaping.  Then a second sleeve, and the second front.  Must finish this this year!

And finally, Milinda.

LOVE this pattern!

It suits Cathay very much!  Unfortunately (drumroll, you know what's coming!) ... I messed up the tension.  Cathay's a dk weight, the pattern calls for a worsted weight, which isn't a major proble, as I can use the called for 4mm needles for cathay and this will give me a worsted tension.  Except I automatically reached for the 3.5mm needles, and knitted this much before I realised that it's a couple of inches narrower than expected. Back to the frog pond!

So I'm resting my projects tonight. I might work on the Vera sock, I might work on Martha, but no more new stuff for me!