2015 In Wool

Last year around this time I decided to do a round up of all my knitting projects in 2014 so I thought I’d do it again.  2014 was definitely about keeping my feet warm.  My feet, I’m happy to report, were just as warm in 2015, but other parts of me got to be warm too!

I knitted the same number of socks last year as I did the year before, but the big difference last year was in the accessories.  All I managed in 2014 was one cowl for Andrew, everything else was a pair of socks, not so in 2015 but we’ll get to that in a bit.

So here’s a month by month breakdown:

January ~ Unsurprisingly the month started with socks.  Pretty lace ones in a bright orange yarn.  The pattern is Crescendo by Laura Jenkins and the yarn is hand dyed from Canadian dyer Tanis Fibre Arts in the Orange Blossom colourway.

February ~ Birthday socks for Andrew.  Cheaper, big box yarn that he picked because of the bright colour and I think subconsciously, they reminded him of Giraffes!  Just a simple rib patttern, he has big feet and I know a rib is going to fit him well.

The first accessory appeared in February too.  Staghorn Cable Mitts to match a cowl I made at the end of 2013.  The pattern was for wrist warmers but I lengthened them into fingerless mitts.  Yarn is Stonehedge Shepherd’s Wool in worsted weight (UK Aran), my local yarn here in Michigan.

March ~Harry Potter inspired socks, these are Socks For The Deputy Headmistress knit in big box craft store yarn but they’re my favourite cheaper brand and they wear really well. (Patons Kroy).

April ~ A hat for me!  This is Clun Forest hat, knit in a different colour of the Stonehedge yarn that I made the fingerless mitts with.  A pretty, simple and quick knit.

And a pair of simple socks, Snow Queen Socks, for the Snow Queen in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe books/films.  The yarn was hand dyed in Maine using old lobster pots as the dye kettle, the colour is Cape Sky.

Another pair of April socks were Alluvial Deposits, these were much more complicated and I thought they’d never be finished.  I knitted them everywhere, even on a beach in South Carolina!  These socks use my absolute favourite yarn for socks, Holiday Yarns Flock Sock, the colour here is Seaglass.

May ~ Back to the Harry Potter themed socks for May, these are Moody Stockings (though technically wouldn’t Mad Eye only require one sock?), a gansey inspired textured knit using a 75% bamboo/25% nylon mix so no wool in these at all.  They’re very soft and surprisingly heavy and more of a sport weight than a fingering.

June ~ It seems I did a lot of fandom knitting in 2015 and I’ve only just realised it!  These socks are Dr. Who inspired, Weeping Angels, named for those creepy angel statues that move!  I bought this yarn whilst on holiday in South Carolina, although it’s a Californian yarn, Pagewood Farms.  I wear these a lot.

July ~ More Literary fandom up next, these are Nemesis, named after the Miss Marple book/program of the same name.  I loved making these, the yarn was sublime, it has cashmere in it, and I adored the simple, yet effective, pattern.

August ~ Mme Bovary socks, yes, more literary themed socks!  These were a mystery knit-a-long, the pattern is split into four clues and you get one a week.  I think these are my least favourite pair this year though, I’m never keen on all over lace at the best of times, but most lace patterns have an all knit rest row between lace rows.  These ones didn’t and I hated the lace on lace rows as they hurt my hands.  I almost didn’t make the second sock!

An August pair I did love though are these, Ugly Duckling socks, so called because you take an ugly skein of yarn and pair it with a solid yarn and a slip stitch pattern and an amazing transformation takes place.  The results are remarkable and they look incredibly difficult, like stranded knitting only they’re neither stranded nor difficult!  I made mine with scraps of yarn from other sock projects.  The technique is called Mosaic Knitting.

September ~ A busy month on the knitting front with three projects started and finished in September, that’s a record.  First up was another hat, Thistle Hat in more of the Stonehedge Worsted yarn, this was left over from a scarf I made for Andrew a couple of years ago.  As you can see, it’s only small, so it knitted up in no time.

Next was a cowl to go with the hat I made in April, another quick knit and it used up the rest of the yarn I had used to make the cowl with so it cost me nothing, as did the Thistle Hat.  It’s called Twisted Willow, and I still haven’t blocked it as I really like how it hugs my neck instead of gaping open.

Finally for September, a pair of socks, and we’re back on the Harry Potter theme.  Tentacular Leaves.  These have been in my queue for ages but they’re pretty complicated, seven charts, and I was more than a bit intimidated, but breaking it down in to individual pieces and not looking at all of the charts as one entity, meant I had them done in just 23 days!  The yarn was also bought in South Carolina, and it’s incredibly soft and a bit fuzzy as it contains Llama.

October ~ I worked on a larger project and two pairs of socks but got nothing finished this month.  I really thought I’d finished something every month last year, but apparently not!

November ~ My most favourite pair of socks all year, possibly of all time, were made in November.  I used Holiday Yarns Flock Sock again (see April) and cemented my love for it, the stitch definition is amazing for cables, and I love cables too!  Pattern is Wheatsheaf Socks and the yarn colour is Amethyst.

The second November pair were another of the Mosaic technique socks (see August) and I don’t know how I feel about these ones.  The bright yarn is 100% Merino so it should be beautiful and sumptuous but it’s not, it’s very splitty; it’s also dyed in very short colour runs and it seems to contain every colour known to man!  I would have preferred to pair it with black but I only had this dark gray.  I think it’s a pair that probably looks better close up as most of the grey pattern on the sock is rather lost.  The pattern is Zarathustra.

December ~ I seemed to finish the year with a bang!  The “big project” mentioned above was finished.  It’s a scarf/shawlette, my first.  I made it with 100g of Stonehedge fingering weight yarn (4 ply) in the Roasted Pumpkin colour; the scarf is called Saroyan after a character in a TV show.

 

I also finished socks this month.  These are Meera & Jojen from the Fire and Ice series of books, so more fandom ones, although I’ve never read the books.  They’re simple ones with a fraternal lace section running down the outside of each one.  The yarn is Araucania from Peru and as it uses pure new wool and not Merino, they’re very woolly socks, but they softened considerably after washing.

And over Christmas I started and finished a hat, Prim, and made my first ever pompom, as an adult at least!, to go on it.  I made it to match the fingerless mitts from February and a cowl I made at the end of 2013, so I have my first matching set now, all made with the Stonehedge Worsted yarn which I absolutely love!

And below is the complete set of hat, cowl and mitts.

There were a couple of other things on the needles in 2015 too.  I test knit for a designer for the first time to check out her pattern and ask questions/report any mistakes/ offer pattern advice for clarification etc.  I only had to make one sock for that, but I do plan on making a mate for it, after all, one sock isn’t any use to man nor beast!  But the pattern isn’t slated to be released until 1 Feb, so I can’t show any pictures of it until that time.

I also should have had a second pair of socks finished in December, but they got put aside in favour of the Prim hat!  I’ve started working on them again and they should be finished soon, I have the heel and the foot to do of the second one, basically 50% of one sock or 25% of a pair left to do.  Here’s the completed sock, it’s called Paragon.

 

So the totals for 2015 were:

• 14 pairs of socks
• 2 single socks
• 3 hats
• I pair of mitts
• I cowl
• 1 long scarf

And all of that added up to 3.17 miles of yarn used, or 5,581 yards, but that total doesn’t include the test sock or the half pair shown above.

So, looking forward to 2016, what’s on the cards, or the needles for that matter?  I definitely want to try stranded knitting, you know, fairisle.  Nothing big, like a jumper, I’ll start with a pair of socks and maybe move on to a nice hat of something like that.  I’d also like to continue knitting more accessories, especially shawls.  I have some fantastic yarn in my stash that’s 100% Merino wool, which won’t make brilliant socks because it lacks nylon content, but it would make fantastic lacy or cabled shawls.  So that’s my plan for the coming months.

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Randomly On My Camera

I take quite a lot of photos over the course of a week or two, most never make it on to this blog, but I thought perhaps I might show you a few once in a while.  Right now there’s a lot of photos of Winter and snow and I could fill up post after post with them but that would get old very quickly!

Trails at our local State Park.

Some Sock Love.

Fingerless Mitts – they match a cowl I made 18 months ago.

Christmas Cactus – Flowering for the second time

Back To The Park For Cross Country Skiing

Andrew had a birthday at the end of February.  Naturally there were Giraffe themed birthday cards and Giraffe themed socks!

And rather randomly taking up space in my dining room right now…

Yes, we’re getting ready for a bathroom remodel!  Looking forward to it but not looking forward to it if you know what I mean!

We’re heading up north again this weekend for more downhill skiing and our camping friends are coming with us for a break although they don’t ski.  We have a little condo booked right beside the State Park in Petoskey that we all love to go to in the Summer months and we’ve all taken Monday off too so we’re making a longer weekend of it.  I’m hoping for lots of knitting time in between bouts of vigorous exercise!

2015 ~ The Year Of The Sheep

And as a knitter, I couldn’t let the start of the the Chinese New Year go unmarked, especially when 2015 is the Year of the Sheep.

This coincided with a beautiful article last week on the BBC Website about a new exhibition that opened last weekend at the Rheged Centre in Penrith in the English Lake District.   Titled Herdwick: A Portrait of Lakeland by renowned photographer Ian Lawson who spent five years documenting the sheep, the shepherds and the landscape, and the results are captured in his stunning photographs and book upon which the exhibition is based. You can see more of his photos from this project here, there is a “Look Inside” link which you really must click to see more of the intense beauty of this part of England, Andrew and I’s most favourite, and most missed, part of the world.

The Herdwick breed is native to the Fells of The Lakes and while it’s lambing capacity is low and the wool is much rougher than commercial breeds (like Merino), the Herdwick is prized for it’s robust health, the ability to survive by just foraging and it’s tendency not to stray.   The wool is of a thicker, courser quality and is really good for heavyweight outer garments and for things like rugs, it’s not something to be worn next to the skin, unless you’re a sheep of course, as they’ve been known to survive up to three days in a blizzard completely buried in snow, by eating their own wool.

It’s thought that as much as 99% of the world’s Herdwick’s live in the rugged West and North of The Lakes, and they have now achieved protected status.  They’re not exactly rare, as anyone who has ever walked the hills of this beautiful area of England will tell you, but because their population is all but concentrated in one area they could be decimated by an outbreak of a disease, like the foot and mouth epidemic of a few years ago, which led to the farmers loosing 25% of the 100,000 breed.

This shepherd is walking his flock towards Wast Water in front of him.  Behind him is the imposing bulk of Great Gable, part of the Scafell range which is the highest mountain in England.  We didn’t do too much fell walking in The Western Lakes but Andrew and I have climbed both Great and Green Gable before, Andrew more than once.

Arguably, the most famous of the Herdwick farmers was Beatrix Potter.  Better known for her beautifully illustrated children’s books, she spent a great deal of her life in this area of England, the latter part as a farmer with fifteen farms, and a breeder and protector of Herdwick sheep.  She won numerous prizes at country shows between 1930 and 1938, and upon her death in 1943 left all fifteen of her farms to The National Trust, and per her instructions, all of them continue to graze Herdwick’s today.

So in this, the Year of the Sheep, I encourage you to get your needles out and knit something, or if you’ve never knit before perhaps now is the time to consider taking up the hobby?  But if that’s too much for you to take on right now, you can always show your support of this terrific breed by supporting The Herdy online and physical shops.  I’m particularly fond of the Peep Mug and will be making room in my suitcase for at least one later in the year!  Click on the logo to be taken to their website.

N.B. – Photos copyright Ian Lawson ~ Herdy Logo TM The Herdy Company

This Week I’m…

…Digging out from Winter Storm Linus which brought us 16.7″ of snow to start the week with.  I stayed at home and worked on Monday, before digging out the driveway and paths and then digging out my neighbour’s son and his car after he got himself completely stuck at the entrance to our street.

…Staying indoors and working on my new socks, Alluvial Deposits:

And casting on yet more socks, like you do.  These are another of the Harry Potter themed socks that I told myself last Summer I would knit more of, 7 months later here are “Socks For The Deputy Headmistress”.  Or as I called my project on Ravelry “Socks For Sheer Dumb Luck” taken from one of Minnerva McGonagill’s quotes from the first HP book and film, which I can still hear ringing around my head.

…Trying to keep warm.  I need more socks because we’re back in the deep freeze, so I’m also not spending a great deal of time outside at the moment.  All my hand knits are coming in useful right now though, especially at 6:30am when I leave my house for the drive to work.  This was the temperature earlier today, after it had warmed up a few degrees.

…Looking forward to the weekend after a seriously stressy week at work that involved a lot of forward budget planning that had to be re-done all over again after I noticed that Accounting had given us starting figures that were a year out of date; and two license servers that decided to have hard disk failures a day apart from each other that left me scrambling to get them back on line and minimize the impact to the users.  But there’s always someone who complains…. and then emails GM level managers to bitch and complain some more.

Still, there’s always next week…

What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday

My first time of joining in with WOYWW again in this new year, I would have joined in last week too, only I got to Friday and wondered what the heck happened to Wednesday!  I don’t think last week actually had one to be honest, at least not in my world!  So I’ll try and make up for it this week.  Since you were last here there was Christmas and a birthday so there’s a big pile of schtuff on my desk.  Thank you all for the cards and birthday wishes btw.

All of the new stuff is on the right, there’s Lili of the Valley, Kaisercraft, Penny Black and Crafter’s Companion stamps, Judikins embossing powder and Memory Box dies. A nice little haul that should keep me busy for a while!  On the mat is a card turned the wrong way as it’s a DT piece for Thursday; there’s also a pile of crap, die cut snowflakes, inks, stamps and stamping blocks, scraps of ribbon and paper and some wool.  The brown is left over from the socks I made in a hurry before Christmas for a gift and the blue one is sized for a dwarf, but I ignored what my brain was trying to tell me, it needs to be pulled out!

And as that was a nice little segway into my socky world I’ll show you this, the first half of my first pair of 2015.  A pattern for LLJ methinks as it’s inspired by Mozart and is called Crescendo.

I really love the pattern and I was loving the yarn until it decided to pool on the foot in a rather ugly way!  I still like it though and I’m working on the leg of the second one currently.  I’m also working on a pair of thick mitts for me as the weather is a decidedly chilly -22C (-3F) at the moment, but you know me and socks!  Besides, if I get desperate I can always wear a sock on my hands but I’ll never be able to wear a mitt on my foot!!  And on that note…. I’ll point you in the direction of Julia and bid you adieu!

2014 In Wool ~ AKA, Keeping My Feet Warm

Due to our trip away over the Christmas break I didn’t do my usual posts of my Top 5 Christmas Cards and my Top 5 Favourite Cards of 2014, so instead, I thought I would regale you with 2014 In Wool!!   2014 was the year that I became obsessed with making socks, I have no idea why but I still can’t stop making them and I never seem to have less than three projects on the go at any one time!  I’m desperate to make something else, but here we are, five days in to the New Year and I already have two pairs cast on and I’m eying up patterns for February too.  In fact, I’ll go as far as to admit that I’ve made an Excel spreadsheet with a month by month breakdown of which pattern to knit in which month with which yarn, there’s even a backup pattern and yarn if my first choice doesn’t work out!!

I started 2014 out really well by making a really lovely cowl for Andrew in a simple basket weave pattern.  He chose Madeline Tosh Yarn in Glazed Pecan for this and I have to say that he was spot on.  It looks really great and he wears it a lot too.

 

Now we begin the Sockfest!!

January ~ Flying Arrows Socks.  My first lace pattern.  I had a goal in 2014 to try lace for the first time so quite a lot of my socks last year featured that technique.

 

February ~ Raspberry Twist Socks.  Cables and moss stitch, I thought they would take a long time to knit but at just three weeks they became my second quickest pair of the year.

 

March ~ A Nice Ribbed Sock.  A pair for Andrew and these ones did take forever!  That boy has big feet!  He likes them very much but considers them to be very special, so he will only wear them in the house!

March ~ Three Leaf Clover Socks.  Another lace pattern, this time in 100% pure Merino wool.  They’re incredibly soft and luxurious but pure wool doesn’t wear as well as socks reinforced with a bit of nylon so I have to be careful with them.

April ~ Cathedral Grove Socks.  Cables, lace and ribbing all combined!  This pair also have a heel knitted in pattern (instead of a plain heel) which was a first for me.

May ~ I worked on three pairs this month but got nothing finished, probably because the weather finally warmed up and I was busy outside more.  Plus we had a 10 day break in, very humid, Mexico towards the end of the month.

 

June ~ Spring Ferns.  Another lace pattern but one that I made a lot of mistakes with for some reason, they’re also a bit tight which is very unusual for lace as it’s typically very stretchy.  They’re my least favourite make all year, I’m not even sure they made it on to this blog.

July ~ Tribute.  A Mystery Sock knit-along!  The clues were released on the first four Mondays in June and you had until the end of July to produce a finished pair of socks.  I waited to see how they were shaping up before starting my pair though.  Another pair with a lot of lace in them.

July ~ Hermione’s Every Day Socks.  Part of a set of Harry Potter tribute socks, I have plans to knit more but started with these, the second most popular sock pattern on Ravelry with 8,471 pairs made so far!  These are a plain-ish sock but they turned out to be one of my most  favourite pairs ever.

 

August ~ Harlequin Socks.  These were a pair of Plain Jane’s that accompanied me to race tracks, plane journeys and even to Mexico.  I had absolutely no deadline with them, they were just picked up and put down whenever but they were finally finished in August.

 

September ~ Amble.  Another pair that I ended up not liking but I persevered with anyway.  The problem was that the sizing was out a bit on the pattern and they could have done with being a bit bigger.  That and the fact that I picked a yarn that mostly obscured the pattern so that they really don’t look like much of anything!

September ~ Jaywalkers.  At 10,564 projects this is the most popular sock pattern on Ravelry, I had to give it a go to see what all the fuss was about!  It makes a really fun pair out of what might otherwise be, fairly boring striped yarn, yet the pattern is super easy to remember so they fly right off the needles!

September ~ Rhombus Socks.  Back to the lace after a break, I loved the way this pattern flowed, it was quick and easy.  A lot of this pair got knitted whilst we were on a break up in Northern Michigan, the weather was a little cooler than normal with a chill wind blowing in off Lake Michigan.  We found a perfect spot on the beach in a sand dune that acted as a perfect windbreak, so I would set my chair up and knit for an hour whilst Andrew read!

 

October ~ Aquaphobia Socks.  A pattern designed to break up yarns that are dyed with very short colour runs, these yarns often look fantastic in the skein but when you wind them into a ball you see their true nature and you think “what the hell an I going to make with this”!!  Thankfully there are patterns out there to make ugly yarn beautiful again.  You can see the colour pooling around the heels, that’s what the whole sock would have looked like if the colours were not broken up by the pattern.  Having said that, the yarn these socks are made from is wonderfully soft and has proved to be hard wearing too.

November – Busy knitting away but never got anything finished.  I also tried toe up socks this month as it’s a very popular way of knitting socks, but everything I made came out huge.  It’s not for me, but as so many people swear by it I’ll probably give it another go and see if I can figure out what I’m doing wrong.

December ~ Neldoreth Socks.  This is the pair that I’m most proud of this year.  It’s by far the most complicated sock pattern that I’ve tackled yet with nine charts to their construction.  They took a lot of persevering and I had to ask a lot of questions on Ravelry as I got confused a couple of times, but I’m so happy they worked out.  They’re probably the most commented upon pair this year, especially by my work colleagues who saw me making them during my lunch breaks!

December ~ Kalajoki Socks.  This pair turned out to be the speediest knit of the year at just 11 days, beating my previous record by a whole 10 days!  It’s amazing what a deadline will do for you!!  I gifted them to a friend, a Japanese colleague who was returning to Japan full time.  I taught her to knit in October and she loved seeing how my socks turned out so I made her her very own pair to take home.  I got them finished the evening before her last day in the office so it was really down to the wire.  I really enjoyed making these ones actually and plan a pair for myself at some point.

And that was it in terms of finished projects at least.  I did mention that I tried toe up socks twice but pulled them out, I also knit one complete sock called Petoskey Stones but it’s sized for dwarfs I think so that needs to be ripped out, and I’m also making another pair of the ribbed socks for Andrew and have one completed, just need to make it a mate.

The stats on all of this was 15 completed pairs.  September was my best month with three finished pairs, followed by two in March, July and December.  May and November had no completed pairs.  In total I used 3.28 miles of yarn on the finished projects, but I’m willing to bet that more yarn mileage than that entered my house this year!!

And goals for 2015?  I really, really need to knit something that ISN’T a sock!!  Really, anything!!  But I do still predict a good number of socks will be knit too.  I also received new yarn for Christmas presents and I have it on good authority that more will be coming in a few days when it’s my birthday, so I have a nice lot of yarn to play with now and will be “Cold Sheeping” for a while, that is, I’ll be knitting from stash for as long as possible.

Already on the needles are two pairs of socks, one of which is the mate to Andrews half completed socks and one is the start of a new pair, and don’t faint, but I’m also working on a set of cabled fingerless mitts for me to go with a cowl I knit myself in 2013.  And as it’s -13C (feels like -23C) outside right now I’d better get a move on with those!!

What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday?

Hello All – It’s been a few weeks since I joined in with Julia, lots to do round here and not a lot of time to get it all done so I had to step away from the computer and blogging for a couple of weeks.  I imagine most of us are in the same boat at the moment though.

Anyway, I have a desk this week, looking a bit neglected I have to say!  There’s a mug of tea in the centre, a couple of newly made birthday cards on top of a box of brads on the left, a tin full of Sickles and sprays and the like, behind that is a sock that’s destined to be pulled out as it’s too small and to the right of that is the Penny Black stamp I made the birthday cards from.  And at the front are a few bits and pieces ready for another card.

ButI do have a few bits of socky love to share too!  Whilst I may not have had much time for blogging in the last few weeks, the socks are easy take along projects, or easy things t pick up in the evening when you have a spare 30 minutes so I’ve got quite a bit done.

I got the complicated Neldoreth socks finished, I’m really glad I persevered as I love how they came out.

 

And here I am wearing them, you can see how the side cable panels join and flow down the foot.

 

And here is my current project, one down, one on the needles.

It’s called Kalajoki after a winding river in Finland where the pattern writer is from.  I’m making them for a gift, to replace the blue one on the desk above that’s too small!  As there are only 18 stitches in pattern and the rest is plain knitting it’s proving a very speedy knit, which is exactly what I need as I’m practically out of time!

Well, this time next week Andrew and I will be up North in a little rented house in Petoskey watching the snow come down.  A different Christmas for us with no sleeping under the Christmas tree, but we’re looking forward to the snow and maybe some skiing too.

If I don’t get to you before Christmas I hope you have a wonderful one and I’ll see you on the other side!

What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday

Hello All, yes, here we are again!  Since I saw you last we’ve had Halloween and Christmas all rolled in to one as it snowed on October 31st, that’s the earliest we’ve seen snow in the 20 years we’ve been here.  Thankfully it really didn’t stick but it was so cold, it was blowing a gale and as the rain gave way to sleet and ice it just pummeled any bare skin it could find.  My poor cheeks were stinging as we walked around our local town taking in the Halloween festivities!  So it was nice to stay home for the rest of the weekend I can tell you!

My desk this week is from late on Sunday afternoon, our clocks went back last weekend too so it’s now dark really early again.  It had been a nice day and we’d been out raking the leaves and tidying up in the garden for a couple of hours.

I was putting the finishing touches to that LOTV Christmas card that’s in the centre, it was posted here on Monday.  Lots of little tools are out but not much that needs explanation I think.  The Christmas themed box holds my Memory Box papers.

I did find time to work on the socks again though and the Aquaphobia’s are now finished:

And my knitting pupil from last week has finished her fingerless mitts, seemed them up the sides and is now looking for something else to make!  And not a single mistake either, puts me to shame she does, lol!

Finally, when we went in to our local town on Halloween it was to see these, the yearly “Skeletons on Main” event.  I took loads of photos (on the Saturday after Halloween) and I’ll do a whole post about them but I’ll leave you with this as a taster.. Outside the “make your own pottery” shop, yes, the potters wheel scene from Ghost!!

That’s all from me this week, hopefully I’ll get to visit more of you this time round, last week just disappeared in a blur!  And as always, head over to Julia’s if you need instructions on WOYWW.

Hello Deskers

Desk day again, number 281 I believe.  I bet Julia has all the info at her fingertips, pop on over for the details.  And yes, before you berate me, my desk is even cleaner this week than it was last week, and that’s because I had a tidy up!  I did make some cards, four in fact, but they were of the quick and simple variety that didn’t make any mess.

 

So, cards in the centre, Unity stamps on the left that I was going to use but didn’t, a line of little ink cubes in front of them that will be heading to work with some other bits I’m sorting out for a colleague’s two little daughters that like to craft; a lot of pearls along with a scalpel and tweezers, an old pink wash cloth at the front with a bunch of newly washed clear stamps that now need to be put away and the grey blob to the right is a new Lili of the Valley stamp that I won in their daily candy.

On the sock front, the purple Neldoreth’s from a couple of weeks ago are lagging a bit, it has to be said, I’ve just started the foot of the first sock so they’re not much further than when you saw them last.  But get me, I found an error in the pattern and emailed the designer about it so I’m now a bonafide sock designer test knitter helper type person!  The Aquaphobias I showed you last week are at the heel of the second sock now, and then there’s these, I’ve gone and started another pair, not content with the two I’m currently working on!

And these ones are toe up.  I’m not sure what I think of the technique to be honest, there are some definite advantages and they’re knitting up very quickly, but it feels odd decreasing when I should be increasing and increasing when I should be decreasing!  I’ve been calling them my dyslexic socks!  Still, it might be another string to my bow, or yarn strand to my dpn depending on how you look at it!

I’m a bit late calling in on my last few visitors from lat week, so I’ll be hitting them up first before randomly popping round a few more blogs.

What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday – 280

It’s the second Wednesday in October folks, only two more left then we’ll be in November, I know, you can always count on me to cheer you up right?

Before I show you my weekly desk…. if you’d like to know more about blocking socks, click here, cause I wrote a post about it last Friday; and if you’d like to see some beautiful Autumn photos from our camping weekend we just had then click here, cause I posted about that on Monday.

So onto the desk:

 

On the right is a box of embossing powders that was in heavy use on card at the back, some punches that should have been put away, some scissors and Glossy Accents.  The pile in the middle is a new stamp storage box from Crafters Companion when they had a sale on last week.  On top of that is a paper pad and some Penny Black stamps to be put away.

And I can’t leave you without a sock!  This one is called Aquaphobia and is a great pattern for heavily variegated yarn, the kind that looks great on the skein but when you get it home you haven’t a clue what to make with it.  You can see some pooling on the ankle so I’m glad that the whole sock didn’t end up like that, the pattern breaks the pooling up generally.

 

That’s all from me this week, head off to Senora Julia for all the details on WOYWW and I’ll see you on the hop!  Oh and I need to mention that I can’t leave a comment for anyone who only allows comments from Google+, but I still do look at your desk.