At last Blogger has allowed me to upload some photos. I have been trying since yesterday. I’m still not sure what the secret is.

Anyway, we have tiles now! This is the view on Friday night:

and a close up of the sock with one of the tiles:
There is no grout yet and there are still some gaps in the tiling but it is coming along.

The sock is coming along too, I am nearly at the heel. Here is a close up of the pattern on the leg, apologies for the lumpiness but the pattern shows up best when slightly stretched and it was easier to photograph on my hand than on my leg!
The pattern actually isn’t a proper cable it is a pair of twisted stitches one after the other separated by a plain round. I am enjoying doing it but the yarn (Alpaca blend sock yarn from Alpaca Plus ) is thicker than the sock yarn I am used to using and the fabric produced is practically bullet proof! The fact that this yarn is thicker also means that there are fewer metres in a skein which I discovered after knitting the first sock (a beige one which I don’t think I have photographed) and weighed it to discover it weighed 65g and there is no way I can make a pair out of 100g. I have three different colours with 100g of each so I am making a pair with green legs and blue feet, and then there is the lone beige one and I am going to make the pair for it a multi-coloured sock using up the left overs. The other problem with trying to do twisted stitches with this yarn is that I have snapped the tip off my Brittany birch sock needles twice now, I snapped the second one last night. Luckily it is just the tip though so I could just sand paper it and carry on.

m mentioned in the comments for the last post about doubling the ridiculously fine yarn. Would this work ok for lace? I haven’t much experience of knitting lace and although I have happily used several threads knit together on a firmer fabric I don’t know whether this would work on something so open as lace. Talking of lace knitting, what needles do people recommend? I think this yarn is going to require some pretty small needles. The smallest circulars I have are 2mm and are Inox I think, I see on the KCG Trading website that both Addi and Prym make a 1.5mm circular and am considering one of these. I have some 1.5mm dpns so thought I might do some experimenting with them so see if I can create a fabric I like before I dash off buying all different sizes of circular needles.

I’m not sure I will get to the swatching today, this weekend we have been painting the bathroom ceiling. We did the sealing coat on the new plaster yesterday and the first of the proper coats of paint. We are going to do the final coat today and then go down to my sister’s house for a much needed shower! We went there yesterday too and it is so nice to be clean and not to have to do the strange contortions needed to wash my hair in the kitchen sink.