All work and no play...

...means another week without much sewing!

I have been squeezing in some sock knitting in instead, on work breaks and occasionally in the evenings. Despite what the Government seems to think about healthcare workers not working outside of 9-5pm, I worked a mixture of 9-5pm and 12.30-8pm shifts Mon-Fri last week, then launched straight into a run of 3 night shifts of 7.30pm-8am on Saturday. Thankfully my hospital puts us as off duty once we've worked our allocated contracted hours for the week. Tonight's my last 12.5 hour shift and then I'm off until next Monday.

It's been such a long time since I've done any knitting, Chrome has completely forgotten that if I type R I mean for it to go straight to Ravelry! The last two projects I worked on have regressed from WIPs to 'forgotten in a bag somewhere'. I have a hat that was intended as a Christmas present, and a lace shawl that co-ordinated with the outfit I wore to my cousin's wedding over a year ago. One of the Domestics at work no longer calls me 'Woolly' as a nickname, she's changed it to 'Tink' instead - presumably cos I'm always tinkering away at some project, even if it's not wool related!

I dug out a ball of now discontinued Regia World Circus Colour in 3752, a blue self-patterning yarn that alternates between light & dark blue, with some green & navy thrown in for good measure. According to Ravelry I stashed it back in April 2011 so it's about time it was used! It's quite pretty, and a mindless knit. Think this is the 8th pair of socks I've made now, and the 6th one using Silver's Sock Class. Highly recommended pattern if anyone fancies knitting socks - it'll hold your hand all the way and the photo tutorials are brilliant for beginners. I still use it cos I know it will just work!

Heeling Synesthesia

Awful picture, but just a quick snap of a freshly turned heel. Yellow colour is from the strip light in my placement accommodation. See previous post for the true colours!

I'm really enjoying knitting this :-)

Synesthesia Socks

Synesthesia - an interesting neurological condition where the senses become a little mixed up. For example, someone might hear music and see colours. I noticed a free pattern called Synesthesia on Ravelry in 2010 and saved it. It's been languishing in my favourites list ever since.

However since rediscovering a skein of Sugar Hippo from a month or so back, the beautiful colours & sheen were playing on my mind so I wanted to use it as my next project after I finished my exams. I happily (& successfully!) completed my CT practical assessment on Friday, so I spent the weekend relaxing and am feeling much happier about starting a new project now. I know from years of experience, I start projects as distractions and procrastination devices.

I proudly present synesthesia:

The sheen is just gorgeous. It's a 75% merino & 25% silk blend so I'll have to be careful when washing it. I don't want this to ever felt. 

I'm really enjoying knitting with it so far and the pattern is easy to memorise. It'll become 'mindless' after a few more rounds I think. Perfect for lunchtime knitting! I love the colours of the yarn as well, especially as each round of knitting is producing differently coloured stitches - makes counting rows a breeze!

Craig's Socks

The first sock took weeks. Craig has size 11 UK feet.

Picture of my laptop included for scale! It's a 15 inch screen lappy.

The yarn looks totally different with a flash!

Unfortunately with the crap weather we've had lately this was the best light I could get, and I swear it wasn't that dark when I took them! 

The top yarn is the body of the sock. I had one ball in each colour from Craig's Mam. So I bought another ball of the top yarn so he can have fraternal socks. The bottom ball (sounds a bit rude!) will make up the rest of the sock to his preferred height.

Mam's Socks

Morning,

I promised to have these finished this weekend before I left, so just adding a few more rounds of ribbing and then casting off.

xx

Growing nicely

My TAAT are swimming along. I've already done more thank this, but I didn't have time to take a picture before I left for work. They are now 19.5cm long, and ready to begin the heel.

These are size 6 socks, and I'm going to give them to my mother. The yarn is Debbie Bliss cashmerino, which as you might be able to guess is made of merino and cashmere, with a little rayon thrown in for durability :-)

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Finished!!

It's surprisingly hard to take pictures of your own feet! 

First one down...

Finished the first of a pair for my March socks :-)

xx

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My First Socks!!

Evening,

I am rather proud of these babies :)

They fit perfectly, and are knit in Abstract Cat Crafts Pool Party. Love them! Go get yourself a skein and join in the fun :)

xx

I have great news!

Morning!

It's Wednesday today and the last two days have been pretty nice to me.

On Monday it was the return of my knitting course, week 7. It's been going really well and I like everyone there. Although my partner Betty hasn't been for the last 3-4 classes so I'm hoping she's okay. We covered lace this week, and it's given me a bit more confidence to have a go at some lush shawls and scarves I've seen on Ravelry. I suspect that I wasn't doing yarn overs correctly before, which would explain why the scarf I tried for Angharad back in October which needed lots of them every 3 stitches didn't look right! I haven't tried doing them since then so I can't really remember how I was trying to do them.

Good news!! Gabrielle (the class leader) announced that (it looks like) the course will be continuing for an extra 6 weeks, yay! There'll be a 3 week break after we get to week 10, and then the 'new' course will start for 6 weeks and finish just before Easter. This means there'll be even more things to learn :)

Bad news! My jumper is too small. I've always known I'm a tight knitter (something I desperately need to rectify) but so far it hasn't been too big a problem because I haven't done anything apart from socks that need shaping. Well this time it is. My front panel with the diagonal rib pattern is too small by 3 cms, which is a fair amount! And that's with using an already bigger size of needles than the yarn ball band recommends! So I'm going to frog it (unravel the whole thing) and start again casting on 68 stitches instead of 64. It's not too bad, I'm not really attached to the whole thing as yet, thankfully!!

Good news!! I can put my socks in as my project for the class instead! Yay! And *phew* because I suspect I won't get the jumper finished in time otherwise.

Good news!! Knitting trip to Winchester on Saturday to visit a museum which is free and part of the course.

Bad news! Tom isn't impressed that I won't be visiting him instead.

Good news!! Last night we got out of work at 8.40pm. We normally leave about an hour later on Tuesdays as it's one of our busiest nights. We still had shit loads of samples, we just got through them really quickly somehow! Plus we had luck with 2 of the last 3 couriers not having anything for us :)

My second pair of socks is now about 3 inches long. I'm knitting the stocking stitch rounds until I get to the heel. I hate this part :( It's never ending.

xx

xx

Crafty New Year Resolutions

Morning,

I've decided to make some crafting new year resolutions. Care to join in?

This year I intend to:

- learn to use my sewing machine properly, and make a garment that I can wear
- knit more socks!
- complete my knitting course, and my project for it
- update this blog more often
- complete a 52 photography project (1 picture a week, minimum)

At the moment it's fairly open ended, which for me is good because I get tied down in specifics and then if it doesn't look like I can do it then I give up.

I'm going to join and knit up more socks as part of the Ravelry group 'Year of Stash Socks 2011' which aims to get people using all the lovely yarn hidden away in stashes and make some lovely socks to display them.

I'm going to sign up because as of right now;

- I have 5 skeins of sock wool that I need to use before I buy more in the next Knitting & Stitching shows, and so that I can get better at knitting overall.
- At least one pattern of the 2 provided each month will be free, so that will help budget wise - and I won't be buying yarn and then not using it, which will also be better for my budget as it will (supposedly) stop me from buying any new yarn!
- I liked knitting my first sock, and I want to see where it goes :)

I also subscribed to Making magazine yesterday, so that will provide lots of lovely inspiration for dressmaking ideas, and the more crafting I do the more pictures I take of what I make, and the more the blog gets updated!

It all ties in very nicely! What are your new year resolutions?

xx

Sock Progress!

Morning!

Gosh I haven't updated my sock report on here for ages! I literally spent the week before last knitting my sock every spare moment I had - on the bus, breaks, at home... Then an expansion for one of my favourite games was released and I spent a week pretty much just playing that!

I've completed the gusset (which took forever). Knitting 7 inches of stocking stitch is really tiresome and boring, to the point where I was just getting bored of the whole thing so the game was a good distraction.

However I'm pleased to report that tonight I have finished the toe shaping! Yay!! I'll post a picture when it's finished, but I think I've just got the kitchener stitch to do to stitch up the seam on the toes. Not really looking forward to it as it does look a little confusing on the tutorial I'm using (Silver's Sock Class) but if I can turn a heel then I can definitely do it :D

More pictures soon!

xx

Turning the heel!

Well, not quite. But I'm getting to that point! Exciting :-)

xx

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Ripped my Sleeve

Evening,

Monday night was Knitting Night. Week 4 of the Knitting course. I'm really enjoying it so far. I'd nearly finished my sleeve so I took it along with me, and Gabrielle came to have a look at it. Me being impatient and overeager - it turned out I'd read the pattern wrong, and instead of doing increases on each end of a certain row, I'd only done them on one side. I ripped back 82 rows! Then started another so that I can steam the kinks out of the old ball so as to not affect the tension in any way.

Bit of a horrible day in work last night. It seems like everywhere apart from Reading has had snow this week. One of our courier collection points was snowed in, and meant that instead of us getting ~100 samples at 5pm when there were lots of us around and plenty of time to process them, we were told we were getting 120 of them after 10pm!

Didn't make the for the best evening. We finished all the samples by 9pm, and then had to lose 1.5 hours. Thankfully I had my knitting with me so I did about 12 rows of my sleeve which is good.

The exciting news for yesterday is that more wool arrived! I naughtily bought some more Abstract Cat yarn last week. I blame Laura (the lady that makes them) for making them look so pretty! She currently has a sale on (so be quick) and I picked up two skeins of Pool Party. I'm not supposed to be buying any until after Christmas but I justified it because it was on sale... hehe!

I rolled one into a ball while I watched a documentary on iPlayer, thankfully it didn't take very long!

I did think about using them for a shawl or something, but I've impulsively just cast on my first sock!

It's so pretty :) There's plenty more left on Abstract Cat if you fall in love like I do!

I didn't fancy knitting any more of my sleeve, and this week was Sock Knitting focus week on the Knitting course. We have two ladies making their first pair of socks on magic loop, and on Monday Gabrielle brought in several pairs of hers to better show how to construct and turn the heel, and finish the toes.

I've been saying that I was going to make socks for a while, I bought my 2.5mm dpns two days after I went to the Knitting & Stitching Show back at the beginning of October. Well now I'm finally using them! I'm using Silver's Sock Class as a tutorial, which has plenty of pictures of the different stages on dpns and I'm trying to get used to holding 4 needles at once!

Wish me luck!! 

xx