While having a bit of a tidy up on my camera I discovered these pictures, and realised that although I finished these socks before Christmas I hadn’t actually blogged about them.

The yarn is alpaca sock blend (60% alpaca, 20% merino, 20% nylon) from Alpaca Plus in Canada.

I ordered 3 skeins (100g each), one in dark green, one navy and one brown. Unfortunately I discovered after making one sock in the brown that one skein would not be sufficient for two socks, so decided to make a pair with green legs and blue feet, and another pair using the left overs from the first pair, and the brown.
The pattern on the leg is a kind of cable, over three stitches and 4 rows. On row one you cable the right most stitch over the centre stitch. Rows 2 and 4 are plain, then on row 3 you cable the centre stitch over the left most stitch. A cable in two stages. It doesn’t pull in as much as cabling two stitches over two would, and I like the look.

This yarn is very robust and a lot more rustic than I had really been expecting, and the socks have come out practically bullet-proof. They are very good for cold days though and I am wearing this pair today.

Well it has been a busy few months! A little over a week ago I finished editing the patterns for Issue 2 of Yarn Forward Magazine , and now I am also up to date with the other job that I do from home. The job I do in the office is also a bit less manic now so I am starting to calm down and get back to some serious knitting!

As you can imagine not a lot of knitting has been done over the last couple of months, although I do have a bit to show you, I’ll get the pictures sorted out in the next day or so. First of all Annie , I haven’t forgotten that absolutely ages ago you tagged me for the weird things meme, so here we go:

Six weird things about me:

THE RULES:Each player of this game starts with the ‘6 weird things about you.’ People who get tagged need to write a blog of their own 6 weird things as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose 6 people to be tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave a comment that says ‘you are tagged’ in their comments and tell them to read your blog.”

Of course I think I am perfectly normal and that it is the rest of the world that is weird, but I enjoy playing along anyway 🙂

So 6 weird things:

1. I am a total creature of habit, and always get up and ready to go out in the morning in the same order. As I am not a morning person at all I have found that this is the quickest way of getting out of the house without having forgotten anything essential, like trousers.
2. I hate it when it is so dark that you can’t tell whether your eyes are open or not. I would rather sleep in broad daylight with the lights on than sleep in pitch blackness. Luckily where we live there is a streetlamp right outside our bedroom window so it is never very dark.
3. I have more qualifications in computing than my other half, although his job is as a programmer, and mine doesn’t really involve much technical computing at all. He knows a lot more than I do but just didn’t get round to doing the exams.
4. Following on from 3, I am a total education junky. Give me a course and I’ll go on it. I absolutely love learning new things and actually don’t mind exams (although my degree came close to putting me off my love of exams!). While I was at school I took about 30 Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music exams altogether I think. I have also just started a City and Guilds in Hand Knitting with Fiona Morris – great fun, more on that in another post.
5. With some circular knitting patterns, despite being circular and so you could just stop and start anywhere, I find I always like to leave my knitting at the end of the day at the same point in the round. I think this is so that I will have more of a chance of remembering what I was up to when I come back to it. My other half finds it a little weird that even though I am knitting in the round I still have the “after I finish this row” problem.
6. I have weirdly very wide feet. My other half jokes that they are as wide as they are long. When trying to buy shoes as a child the shoe shop assistants, after measuring my feet, would often check that I had only 5 toes on each foot, and would often suggest that if I chopped a toe off I would stand a better chance of getting shoes to fit (not entirely sure whether they were kidding or not. Since we used to shop at the same shoe shop each year for school shoes the assistants got to know us, and after a few years of the same routine in which they would measure my feet then find that actually they didn’t sell anything that fitted me, they would all make a bee-line for the back of the shop as soon as they saw us coming).

I tag anyone who would like to be tagged (is there anyone who hasn’t done this already?). If you do then drop me a comment to let me know to come and read.

So there you have it, as you all suspected I am completely normal (no sniggering there please).

More pictures of knitting soon, I am off to see if my camera batteries have finished charging.

Well it has certainly been a busy December so far, and I am definitely looking forward to a nice rest over Christmas.

My Christmas knitting present plans turned out to be a little ambitious. I did manage to finish a pair of cashmere socks for my mum:

The orange-ness of our dining table makes them look a slightly odd colour. I’ll try and get her to take a photo of them when she is wearing them.

And a hat for my dad:

This was a bit of an experiment after having read the article on Brioche stitch in the round by Meg Swansen in the latest Vogue Knitting. Once I got into the swing of it it was good fun, and a nice quick knit since the yarn is chunky.

Hope you all have a great Christmas, and I will see you in the New Year. I’m off to wind a skein of cashmere sock yarn into a ball to start on my Mum’s next pair of socks. Maybe if I start next year’s christmas knitting now …

I do still exist and haven’t fallen into my stash and drowned as was suggested in the comments (although most days it is a close run thing, we haven’t been able to sit on the sofa in the lounge for about two weeks now due to the yarn).

We got back just over a week ago from a conference I was helping to organise in Edinburgh, and I still haven’t caught up on all my email yet! Also the place where I work has introduced a new finance system and it is all very busy.

In Edinburgh we stayed at the Royal British Hotel which despite the name was very Scottish and even had tartan carpets!

I managed to get some of one of my Mum’s christmas socks done during spare moments while we were away. As you can see above it was stunned by the carpet, even though it clashed badly. The yarn is Serena 100% cashmere sock weight by Posh Yarn. It is lovely but seems to be knitting up to a tighter tension than the sock yarn I have used before so I am slightly concerned that the sock is coming out a little small. I will see how it is after I have washed it and then work out whether I need to reknit parts of it.

At the weekend we finally had a bit of decent weather and I persuaded the other half to photograph me in the circular cardigan:

and from the back:
The yarn is Inka by Garn Studio, 72% acrylic, 28% wool, bought from Interknit Cafe in Farnham.

It was really fun and very addictive to knit. I am going to try another one but this time as an eight segment circle rather than seven to see if I can get the centre back to lie flatter. Also I think I will experiment with shaping the shoulders and neck to get a better fit. Since this photo was taken I have crocheted a chain accross the inside of the shoulders to stop them stretching so hopefully that will improve the fit.

And just for a last silly, I bring you, new shoes:

They are Birkenstocks and are made of wool! (as close as I could get to a sensible pair of knitted shoes). They are wonderfully comfortable and I love them.

Catching up on a few old things here, I found this photo on my camera.

This is some lovely Norwegian yarn my Mum bought for me on their holiday there earlier in the year. I think it will make fantastic bright cheery socks, just the thing for winter days. It hasn’t been very wintery here yet. It is still remarkably mild, I haven’t needed a coat yet and we haven’t switched our heating on.

I am still plodding on with the Patchwork Jumper. Not really worth a progress photograph. The second sleeve is slightly longer than it was but it is dragging rather. I think I need something good on the telly so that I can have a proper go at it and get it finished. In the mean time I have loads of ideas and keep buying one ball of this and one ball of that to try out ideas but I don’t want to have too many things on the needles at the same time because I find it rather overwhelming. All rather circular as an argument and I think the solution is to get a move on and actually finish the patchwork and then I will feel free to try out lots of other ideas.

My copy of the first issue of Yarn Forward Magazine arrived last week! Unfortunately there was an error in the printing of charts C & D for the Ariel silk top 🙁 I have re-sent the correct charts to Kerrie and hopefully the errata will be up on the website soon. I would love to hear your thoughts on the magazine, particularly on the technical editing, but also generally.

I am starting to get in patterns to edit for Issue 2 which is all very exciting! I was hoping to do a design for Issue 2 but the yarn for it still hasn’t arrived and the design deadline is in only 2 weeks so it might not be happening at this rate 🙁

On Thursday night, Friday and Saturday last week I attended 3 fabulous workshops with Lucy Neatby . She also ran a class during the day on Thursday on grafting too but unfortunately I couldn’t go to that one.

Thursday and Friday’s workshops were at Taj Crafts in Buckinghamshire. I had a lovely time in their shop and managed to do a bit of damage to the credit card though not too much. They are really easy to find too if anyone is thinking of visiting, they are very close to the junction between the M4 and the M25. Saturday’s workshop was at Reading Museum, organised by the Reading branch of the Knitting and Crochet Guild .

Thursday’s class was on equilateral triangles, she had some great garments to show us including a waistcoat (vest for all of you on the other side of the pond) in Noro, and a couple of hats. It was great fun having a go ourselves, each triangle is knitted onto the previous one and then the remaining seams are done with mattress stitch. Mine came out as a very small hat, just the right size for a grapefruit! I stayed up far too late on Thursday night getting it finished, a fascinating technique and very addictive. I think I will have a go at a hat for me using triangles with the left over yarn from my circular cardigan.

I love the symmetry with this pattern. The triangles tile so beautifully and really lend themselves to being made into so many different shapes.
Interesting piece of trivia for you: 3 of the 5 Platonic solids (or regular polyhedra) are made from triangles. The Platonic solids are the only solids for which each of their faces are the same, and for each face, each side and angle is the same. For example, the cube is one because each face is a square of exactly the same size, and each square face has 4 sides which are the same length, and 4 angles which are all 90 degrees.

Moving swiftly on to Friday, this was toe up socks with Bosnian toe and Turkish heel.

Don’t you just love this cast off! I really want to try it with three colours too. It is done with a crochet hook. You cast off a couple of stitches with the first colour, then crochet a chain of about 4 stitches, then pick up the other colour and do the same. Then pick up the first colour again and repeat but making sure than the two chains are twisted. You can vary the effect by the number of stitches you cast off in each go, and by how long the crochet chains between cast offs are.
This is the Bosnian toe, a garter stitch square which you then pick up stitches all around to knit up the foot.
And the Turkish heel. This is an after thought heel, made by knitting in some waste yarn where you want the heel to be, then going back and knitting over it with your main yarn and continuing up the sock. When the rest of the sock is finished you come back and put the stitches from the waste yarn back on your needles and knit your heel, grafting the end together.
At the end of Friday’s workshop we had just enough time to learn tubular cast on (in green), and tubular cast off (bind off)(in red). They are beautifully neat and almost invisible in rib. I will definitely be using these again. It was really useful to see how the cast on works with a 2×2 rib as well as a 1×1.

I bought both of Lucy’s Knitting Essential’s DVDs and her sock book while I was there but I haven’t had a chance to look at them properly yet.

Saturday was off to Reading for a workshop with a much bigger group. The morning workshop was on knitting with colour and mixing colour in different ways. I seem to have failed to photograph my swatch from that. We covered holding two or three yarns together and varying the colours one at a time, also fairisle and intarsia and combining the two.

In the afternoon Lucy gave a talk on her knitting, over coming problems and planning your knitting to allow more flexibility, and we practiced some grafting.

All three workshops were fantastic. Lucy is a great teacher, very clear and patient and her handouts seem very comprehensive (I am going to re-read them as soon as I get time). We also seemed to cover an amazing amount of really useful and interesting stuff, I definitely feel that I got my money’s worth and will be signing up for more classes if and when she is back in the area again (not sure that the budget will run to a trip to Canada!).

Its been another busy week or so. A busy time workwise as we have something like 3/4 of our conferences for the year in the last three months of the year! Also with Ally Pally and National Knitting Week it has been a busy week and a half in a pleasant way too.

My mum came down for a few days to stay with us in between visits to my Nan who is in hospital with a broken hip at the moment, and we managed to fit in a day at Ally Pally and also a day visiting yarn shops in the area before she went to stay with my sister for a bit.

I thought Ally Pally was great this year, more yarn, and I think slightly less crowded. Also a much better temperature, although the hall with the guilds in was still rather hot. It was fantastic to see so many inspiring things. Lots of lovely new yarn, and wonderful to catch up with the familiar favourites too. I even managed to find a few nice bits and pieces to accompany me home 🙂

Apologies that the photographs are rather dark. It has been rather cloudy, rainy and grim here. These were taken outside in as much light as I could find. Just imagine really bright yarn if you can’t see the piccies very well 🙂

At the top we have my bargain of the last half-hour of the show. 2 packets of 10 balls each of Paton’s Crystal from Black Sheep Wools for £7.99 a packet. Years ago I bought some of this in purple and the T-shirt I made from it has washed and worn really well, so I think I will make another the same or similar.

Next on the left hand side, there is a skein of Cherry Tree Hill supersock in dusk, a skein of Cherry Tree Hill supersock potluck in blues/greens, and a skein of Cherry Tree Hill merino lace in dusk, all from the Wooly Workshop . I could have happily spent more time there.

At the front on the left are two skeins from Catalina. The dark green is 100% baby alpaca chunky, and the teal is 60% baby alpaca, 40% merino chunky. They are both unbelievably soft and I think I am going to make hats. Catalina had some really gorgeous yarns, I had never come across them before so it is always good to have my horizons broadened.

On the top right are two balls of Regia bamboo from Web of Wool, and just to the left of them the skein you can hardly see is my first ever Colinette! It is jitterbug, and the colour is florentine. I was a little disapointed that I wanted to see some Colinette Wigwam (a cotton tape yarn) but they hadn’t brought any with them, I suppose it is the wrong time of year for that kind of thing.

The jazzy skein at the front on the right hand side of the middle is a skein of Opal handpaint from Laughing Hens. We were there right at the end of the day and it was nice to have a bit of a chat with Nicki again. I went for a workshop down there a few weeks ago, I have been meaning to photograph my samples and blog about it ever since I came home.

The last yarn, in the front right corner was another new to me yarn. 2 balls of 20% possum, 80% merino in a DK weight from Jamie Possum (their website isn’t up yet but should be in a month or so). It is a lovely soft, and slightly hairy yarn and I think I am going to have a go at a hat. I seem to be in quite a hat phase at the moment, at least theoretically, in that I am buying lots of yarn which is going to be hats but I haven’t actually knitted one yet.

It was also great to meet up with lots of friends new and old and chat about knitting. I saw Yvonne , Dawn , and Mary (I don’t know whether she has a blog, but she was wearing a fantastic fairisle cardi!) at the Knit and Relax stand. I also ran into Mary a couple of times, and met Sue for the first time though I have been reading her blog for a while. It was nice to chat to Kerrie again although she was understandably busy with the customers. Unfortunately as I was there on the Thursday the Yarn Forward Magazine wasn’t there yet. My copy still hasn’t turned up, still floating somewhere in the post. I am looking forward to seeing the first issue and to hearing what people think about it. I’m sure I have forgotten several people I spoke to, my brain was a bit toasted by the end of the day. Say hi in the comments if I have forgotten you and please accept my grovelings about my lack of memory.

On the friday I dragged my mum out of bed at the crack of 11 o’clock and made her drive me to Stash Yarns, I can be a hard task master. We managed to find a few lovely bits and pieces, and had a great time talking to Michelle and Nathalie. Apologies for an even worse photo than the last one.

With a lot of imagination this is, three skeins of Fleece Artist sock yarn, a skein of Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Worsted in Black Watch, and two balls of Loft by Zitron in a really loud purple, pink and orange colour. I have never come across Loft yarns before and this one is lovely and soft. I think it is going to be …. yep you guessed it, a hat. I think that has become my new solution for yarns which I want to try but not necessarily buy a sweater’s worth.

After Stash we headed down to Fibre Crafts and I gave in and bought the Tap Dancing Lizard. My sister has requested socks with reindeer on for christmas, and this book has one in which I think I will be able to adapt.

Then we dashed down to Farnham to the Interknit Cafe before they closed. Shockingly I didn’t actually buy any yarn, but I did order some lovely Garn Studio Alpaca in a dark tealy colour.

We were exhausted but happy after all that lot.

Speaking of which that is how I am now after two and a half days of workshops with Lucy Neatby. They were fantastic but I am shattered. Off to bed now and I will blog about the workshops tomorrow.

I can’t believe it has been more than a month since I last updated.

Things have been busy busy here, aided and abetted by my deciding last week that I wanted to finish my Circular Cardigan before The Knitting and Stitching Show at Ally Pally . It zipped along on 7mm needles (good job too considering my brink-man-ship), although my speed was slowed slightly by re-knitting the sleeves several times.

The original pattern had straight sleeves which when I tried it on slipped down my shoulders, so I had the idea that I could use short rows to make a shaped sleeve-head which would be more anatomically appropriate. Jacqueline Fee talks about this in The Sweater Workshop . The sleeves you see in the finished article are numbers 5 and 6. Number 2 was a silly mistake where I did the sleeve head upside down! 3 and 4 were good but at that point I decided it was too wide across the back, and because of the construction I needed to undo both sleeves in order to make the back narrower.

I finally cast off last night and washed and blocked after band rehearsal. I am just hoping it will be fully dry for the show tomorrow.

The yarn is Inka ,72% acrylic, 28% wool, by Garn Studio. It stood up well to the repeated undoing and redoing of the sleeves, and I am hoping will wear well.

I really enjoyed knitting this. I rarely ever knit with anything thicker than DK or perhaps Aran weight so it was nice to have something which grew so quickly. Great from the instant gratification point of view. It is a circle in 7 segments which needed some persuasion to lie flat. Also because 7 is a prime number it isn’t symmetical, so you get a horizontal line caused by the increases across the right side of the body at the front, but not on the left. I would like to have another go but this time use a circle in 8 segments. I think this would help it to lie flat in the centre of the back, and also make it generally more symmetical, I love symmetry.

Better go and organise my shopping list for tomorrow. Anyone else going to Ally Pally tomorrow? If you see me come up and say hello, I’ll be the one in the loud cardigan, or with the weather we have been having probably carrying the cardigan. I will try and blog more soon.

Thanks Daisy for the shoe link, I will give them a try!

The patchwork jumper now has one arm! And Blogger even seems to be co-operating, I uploaded today’s pictures first time. Obviously the threat of defection has worked.

Without further ado, here is the one-armed wonder:

And a close up of the join of the sleeve to the body.
A bit of unpicking and reknitting was involved but I am very happy with the results so far. It satisfies my sense of neatness that it is all knitted together, there are no seams. An elegant solution, I think that is the mathematician in me speaking again.

I have started the second sleeve and that is coming along although not particularly quickly. This week has been a busy week of tech editing for the first issue of Yarn Forward Magazine. It has been a very interesting and educational experience. I have been really surprised by the wide variety in the quality of patterns submitted, although there seems to be an almost universal blind spot over tension information! There will be fewer patterns in the first issue than in subsequent issues so I think I will be even busier in future, although at least by then we should have a pattern template and also have more experience with the whole process. I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on the new magazine when it comes out. Particularly those pertaining to the clarity and correctness of the patterns. This is my first go at this, but I am keen to learn! (Hopefully there wont be too many mistakes along the way). I only have three patterns left to complete for this issue so it is going well. One really is just a trivial odd number vs. even number problem that I am waiting to hear back from the designer about, but should be easily solved. One Kerrie is going to post me the garment so I can work out what shaping the designer meant as the pattern isn’t clear. The third seems so far to be a clear pattern, but it is on 12 pages (!) and I think it may be easier to read in chart form, so far I am on page 3.

It hasn’t been all work round here though. I have just signed up for Skip North 2007 which I am now ridiculously excited about. I know that Rosie is going. So who else is going to be there? I may be a little tired by the time I get there though because it is the week after Majma (a Middle Eastern and North African dance weekend down in Glastonbury, their website is rather out of date as booking has already opened for next year).

I’ve also started having osteopathy treatment on my neck, back and shoulders which have been a problem since January. Hopefully this will start to do the trick, it will certainly make the knitting easier if I don’t hurt! I have just about recovered from Thursday’s treatment now which is good because I have another appointment tomorrow morning.

I had just about given up all hope of Blogger actually allowing me to upload any pictures when finally I managed it. It seems that whenever Blogger is being irritating enough for me to start researching alternatives it pulls its socks up and I think I’ll just give it another week or so. It is still in the back of my mind to possibly change hosts though so those of you who use something other than Blogger, what do you use? and what do you think of it?

Back to the knitting content:

At knitting group on Wednesday Masumi was knitting a blanket for charity using a lovely wave pattern. She generously let us write the pattern down so I had a go:

I think it would make a great scarf. A very easy pattern too as it is only a 3 row repeat. I knitted this sample out of some left over Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Worsted, colour Get Knitted .

After knitting group I headed down to Farham to see if the new Interknit Cafe had any of her new stock. Last time I was there only about a third of what she was hoping to stock had actually arrived. She had a lot more this time though is still expecting more! I see an excuse for another outing on the horizon.

Some of the yarns that had arrived are by Garn Studio . They have some lovely yarns, at pretty reasonable prices. Of course some had to come home with me 🙂

This is Inka 72% acrylic, 28% wool, knit on 7mm – 8mm needles for a tension of 16 sts x 11 rows to 10cm. The colours are just fabulous. I bought colour 5, and my Mum bought some in one of the other colours. It contains really long lengths of each colour, similar to Noro (but without the bits of Japanese countryside) which is why the balls above look to be completely different colours even though they are actually the same dye lot. Garn Studio have loads of patterns you can download for free on their website (in English!) and I had a very fun time printing a load out. The pattern I am going to knit with the Inka is Jacket with Circle Pattern . It looks fun and I think would work with the multi-coloured-ness of the yarn. I am slightly concerned about the way the sleeves join on as in the picture they look a little odd. The model is standing in a rather artificial pose though so that may make a difference.

I was so keen to start this that I got out my Denise needle set to do some swatches only to discover that a 7mm needle which the pattern calls for lies between a US size 10 1/2, and a US size 11. I swatched with both the 10 1/2 and the 11 but there is a big difference in size (a 10 1/2 is 6.3mm and an 11 is 7.7mm) and the fabric produced wasn’t what I was after. I have ordered a 7mm Addi Turbo to use, and am going to actually finish up some of my other projects on the needles while it is in transit.

As well as the Inka I also found a few other bits to come home with me.

Two balls of Garn Studio alpaca, it also came in a fantastic kingfisher colour although she didn’t have any in. She is going to order some and it should be in in a week or so so I will have to work out what I would like to knit with it. A ball of Debbie Bliss Cashmerino DK, the colour is actually slightly darker than this. I bought just one ball so that I can do some swatches and see what sort of thing I would like to make and then go back and buy enough to actually make it. And finally three balls of Patons DK cotton, this is the same as the 7 balls I bought last time I was in the shop, and is even the same dye lot! ( a customer had returned it). I should now definitely have enough for a T-shirt thing for me so I am very happy.

Those of you with long memories may remember my patchwork jumper I started knitting during the Knitting Olympics . I have finally started knitting on it again and am nearly up to attaching the first sleeve to the body (I haven’t actually started the second sleeve).
With the help of the Big Royal Dig this is progressing quite well.