These are another pair I finished a little while ago and have only recently got round to photographing (I have nearly caught up with myself!)

The yarn is Admiral dégradé by Schoppel Wolle, colour 1309 bought from Knit n Caboodle. This is very similar to Trekking in the long colour sequences, and the way that it is made up of 4 threads which each change colour gradually at different points. The pattern is my usual ribbed sock pattern with short row heel and gussets in the leg and foot.

I love the colour of these so much 🙂 Socks in shades of purple, what more could I ask for?

I finished these a little while ago now, and have finally photographed them (why do I feel that I am always saying this? I really must get round to photographing things more quickly after finishing them).

They are inspired by the Scrunchie Hand Warmers (Ravelry link) by Leah Oakley from 101 Designer One-Skein Wonders which Jo made. I used the same pattern for the leg, then did a garter stitch short row heel and a plain stocking stitch foot.

The yarn is 4ply Shetland, bought on a cone from Uppingham Yarns. The yarn is designed for machine knitting, and so comes oiled. This time I skeined enough off for the socks, gave it a nice wash, and then balled it up when it was dry. A much nicer knitting experience than knitting with the oiled yarn. I think oiled yarn varies a lot in how much oil there actually is in it. I have knitted with some of the ColourMart yarn, which although oiled doesn’t really feel it. I find that the Shetland, and the lambswool from Uppingham both make my hands feel quite sticky when I knit with the oiled versions. Also I was surprised at how dark and yucky the water was when I washed the yarn, so better out than in.

I love the colour, a really interesting flecked brown. You would be surprised at the different colours you can see when you look closely. Quite a lot of shades of brown, and some yellow, but also bright blue and red.

However I don’t think it is going to be a very hard wearing sock yarn. I wanted to try out the pattern, and the garter stitch short row heel, and will enjoy them while they last. I was thinking of using them as bedsocks once the weather gets colder.

The heel was really enjoyable to do, and I love how nice and symmetrical it is. It is one of the problems I have with all of the methods of stocking stitch short row heels that I have tried so far. Since you are working stocking stitch, you end up having to use two different methods to close the short-row gap, one for knit rows and one for purl rows, and I have yet to find a method where they actually look the same. Leaving you inevitably with one side of the heel which is neater than the other. This is conveniently eliminated with the garter stitch short row heel since all rows are knit, so you only need one method. Incidentally the method I use is to wrap the stitch like you would with a conventional wrap and turn. Then when it comes to close the gap you just ignore the wrap, and because of the way garter stitch lies the wrap just looks like another stitch.

I think this is my favourite heel so far to make and look at. It hasn’t been cold enough yet to wear them, apart from a quick modelling session, so it remains to be seen how comfortable they are and how well they wear.

These took me a while to make, partially due to my experimenting with different tubular cast-ons. The effect being that I lost count of the number of times I casted on, knitted a few rows, decided I didn’t like it and tried again. Luckily I have a whole cone of this yarn, I’m not going to run out any time soon.

The upshot of all the experimentation was that a couple of the methods don’t come out stretchy enough when I do them, but I did find a method I liked. I settled on the following method:

• Provisionally cast on half the stitches you need (I like the crochet over the needle method).
• Foundation row: Work k1, yo all the way across, join in round.
• Row 1: k1, slip 1 with yarn in front. Don’t pull the yarn too tight on the slip stitches.
• Row 2: slip 1 with yarn in back, p1.
• Repeat Rows 1 & 2 once more.
• Start your k1, p1 rib.
• After a few rounds you can take out your provisional cast on.
• Ta da! Admire your lovely stretchy tubular cast on.

This is Tubular cast-on: version A in “Vogue Knitting”: The Ultimate Knitting Book, doctored so it works in the round.

The only difficulty with this cast on is that it doesn’t really work with my preferred cuff rib. Usually I like to work a 3×2 rib cuff, decreasing to a 3×1 rib for the legs. Really this cast on only works for a 1×1 rib. The other main method of tubular cast on can be fiddled to get a 2×2 rib but it does require some gymnastics. I think I will do some more experiments.

In amongst the forays into the garden to wage war on the weeds now that the weather is nice I have managed a little bit of knitting. I actually finished these a while ago and have finally managed to charge the camera battery and photograph them.

The yarn is Fortissima Colori, colour 2419.

I love these socks, great colour and very comfy but they demonstrate that I need to get a bit more organised with my stash. I bought the yarn a while ago, thinking what a nice colour it was. When I got home and looked at it again, it still looked nice, but increasingly familiar. I finally remembered I already owned a ball of this yarn, lurking in the stash. I have done this a couple of times recently with books too, definitely time to get more organised and get on top of things.

Talking of getting on top of things, the weather is still sunny (though the forecast said rain tonight and tomorrow), so I am going to take the opportunity to attack a few more weeds in the front garden. I may be some time …

Yet more socks! These ones were knitted out of Trekking colour 100. This colour was very popular some time ago but for some reason I missed it then. After seeing the yarn actually being knitted, I knew I had to have some! It is definitely one of those colours which looks much better knitted up than it does on the ball.

Yet again the pattern is my basic ribbed sock pattern, these were knitted in my tired-and-brain-dead phase 🙂 I do love the colour, just putting them on makes the day a little brighter.

As well as my nice new glasses, I have been trialing contact lenses for the last week. It turns out that I am probably the most inept contact lense wearer on the planet. Never mind the first hurdle, I fell before I had even got out of the starting gate. The poor assistant who was teaching me how to put the lenses in and out had to put up with me taking nearly an hour to manage it, and then throwing my right lense on the floor. It turned out that that was the only one in my prescription that they had in the shop so they had to order me a new one. I am improving and have got it down to only (!) 20 minutes now, although I did spend 2 hours on Monday with my left lense inside out. These are toric lenses so I think this is actually quite an achievement! I am persevering (or possibly just very stubborn) and after my appointment today they are ordering me in another set of lenses in what I hope will be a slightly better prescription than the trial set. All good (moderately) clean fun 🙂

The teal top is jogging along, I will try for another photo or two tomorrow. I am hoping that the sun will come out (the eternal optomist that I am). It is lovely now that the days are getting longer. It makes so much difference to my enthusiasm to actually do things, although a bit of sun too wouldn’t go amiss. I have been a little distracted from the knitting by the yummy looking silk and bamboo yarn that Elann has on sale at the moment. Both Cassis and Arles Teal have been looking at me since yesterday and my will is weakening, the only decision left is how much to order? I think it would make a gorgeous lacey summer top.