As you may have noticed I have bitten the bullet and finally gone over to the new version of Blogger. I’m not sure if this will make much difference to you as you read. If there are any problems, let me know and I’ll work out how to fix them.

The snow has nearly all melted today and we are having a rather gray day. A perfect day for some nice indoor sock knitting! In the best Blue Peter tradition, here are some I made earlier:

These are made from the same yarn as the bullet proof socks, alpaca blend sock yarn (60% alpaca, 20% merino, 20% nylon) from Alpaca Plus , and using the same two stage cable pattern.
I knitted the brown sock first and then discovered that it weighed 65g which didn’t bode well for getting two socks out of a 100g skein, which explains the choice of a green foot for the second sock. This is very robust yarn and I actually snapped the tips off two of my Brittany birch sock needles while performing the cables!

Talking of birch sock needles, I have been having a think about sock needles generally and was wondering which were your favourites? I like to knit on 2.5mm needles and because I have wide feet and so quite a lot of stitches on the needles I prefer the 20cm long needles rather than the little short glove-type needles. I think my current favourites are Susanne’s ebony needles bought from Scottish Fibres (I notice this size is out of stock at the moment), with the Susanne’s rosewood needles a close second. I have a set of Brittany birch needles which really I am not that keen on, even though lots of people seem to like them. I have a pair of straight Brittanys in about a 6 or 6.5mm and I quite like them, they just don’t really seem suited to my way of knitting socks. I recently bought the Susan Bates pretty coloured set of small metal needles, and while I love them, they don’t come in a 2.5mm so they are not favourites. Also lurking somewhere I have a set of Inox bamboo sock needles but it has been so long since I used them I can’t remember whether I like them or not! So what do you like? I am a total sucker for needles of different sorts and would love to have recommendations for different ones to try.