And then there were two.....

Finished object alert.......


Well, my first finished sock has a sister now!

Some statistics:

Yarn - Colinette Skye in shade Neptune, two skeins
Needles - 3.75 addi turbo lace (these have featured a lot in my life recently)
Pattern - Made it up with advice from several google searches.
Cast on - last week!
Cast off - just now (again)


So that I have it written down somewhere.....

Cast on 20 stitches using judy's magic cast on. This was the first time that I have ever used it (my last abortive sock had a short row toe which had gaping holes down the side and was the reason that I never got beyond mid sole) and it is an invention of shear genius. Quick, simple, easy to remember and oh sooooo effective.

Then increased 4 stitches every other row 5 times, until there were a total of 40 stitches.

Gusset - increase 2 stitches every other row 9 times. This is more than average as a proportion of the total stitches but I seem to have fat ankles. Next time I might try more.

Heel..... guess! They are both subtly different, but worked in slip stitch. Next time I will take more of a note as I am going along because I have no idea now.

Then work 2 inches, and start increasing every 5th row.


See - pretty increases to fit round my bulging calf's! I would say fat calves, but they are the one bit of me that is actually mostly muscle, we do quite a bit of cycling and walking. After 10 lots of increases, start rib until the wool has nearly run out.

I cast off the second sock so many times. The first one I just did a standard cast off loosely and while it looked fine on, was very saggy when the sock was taken off. Resorting to my Knitters Handbook and deciding against a sewn bind off I tried one that involved decreasing stitches. Not quite stretchy enough. So armed with a needle I started off on my first attempt at a tubular bind off in double rib. It said I should be good at grafting (I am not) and able to do it with single rib (have never attempted) but I thought that after a glass of wine it would all be fine. And I am quite proud of myself - it's not 100% even but for a first attempt it's ok. And the actual method is again pure genius, neat, stretchy and so much less obvious than any other method.


I still might sew soles on these, but at the moment I am enjoying wearing them too much to bother (and I need to try and figure out where I can get some suitable leather, or decide to sacrifice some jeans or something).

I have nothing on my needles and I'm not sure what is coming next. Unusual for me, but the intense concerntration at the end of this project meant that I had no time to daydream about what was coming next.

Either a malabrigo jumper for me, or something out of rowanspun 4-ply or the black man jumper. Who know's which way the wind will blow!

Weekend Distraction

Mostly this weekend I have been distracted from everything that I should be doing. I finally finished stripping, sanding and finishing a cupboard that I rescued, when clearly judging by the state of the washing pile I should have been sorting the washing and doing the ironing.

Then my brother in law phoned to announce that we have another niece as of yesterday. We have been designated as god parents, so on finding out that it was a girl of course needed to knit somethings. I am really looking forward to having a god daughter - so far everyone I know has managed to produce boys, so it was a welcome change to be able to knit in pink! I am really exited about being able so spoil/be a bad influence/knit for a girl.

Introducing the very pink stripy hat.........


Finished object statistics....

needles - 3mm addi turbos, 80cm long
Yarn - King Cole anti tickle merino in shades 1, 146, 67 and 29 (white, salmon, fuschia and a slightly pinky red).
Pattern - made up as I went along, inspired by one that I saw someone else knit, but I have no idea who it was.
Cast on this morning and took about 6 hours to complete - with a break to bake coffee and walnut cake in the middle.
Gauge - 7 stitches per inch
Finished circumference (unstretched) - 12.5 inches, which is sort of large newborn size.


The pattern was really simple. Cast on 90 stitches, and join in the round. Because this was always going to be a fairly simple little project I thought I would try out some new skills and so knit it all using the magic loop technique.

Knit 1.5 inches in red. The colour sequence goes salmon, white, fuscia and then back to red.

The stitch pattern is 1 row purl and then 5 rows knit. This makes very pleasing little bumpy coloured lines where the colours change. I also slipped the first stitch after the purl row to make a sort of jogless join.

Work until the desired length (in my case the red starter row and the four stripes) - 90 stitches.

The decreases are all worked on the last row of the stripe. Change colour (to salmon for me) purl one row, knit 4 rows and then work one round of knit 4, k2tog (75 stitches).

Change colour (white), purl 1 row, knit 4 rows and then work one round of knit 3, k2tog (60 stitches)

Change colour (fuschia), purl 1 row, knit 4 rows, and work one round of knit 2, k2tog (45 stitches)

Change colour (red), purl one row, knit 4 rows and then work one round of knit 1, K2tog (30 stitches).

Change colour (salmon), purl one row, knit 4 rows, and then work another round of knit 1, k2tog (20 stitches)

Change colour (white), purl one row, knit 4 rows, and then again work a round of k2tog, k1 (this will end with a k2tog) (13 stitches)

Change colour (fuschia), purl one row, knit 4 rows. Work a round of K2tog, k1 again ending with a k2tog (8 stitches). Knit 4 rounds. K2tog four times (4 stitches). Work about 2 inches of 4 stitch i-cord, break thread and pass through the 4 stitches pulling tight to secure.

The russian splice does have one fantastic advantage, which was that the only finishing required was to darn in the end from the casting on. I generally thought it was a bit of a pain in the ass, but once I had got into the rhythm it wasn't too bad. It is worth a bit of practice of working out where the join is going to fall and getting the colour change in the right place. Bear in mind that it did tend to move a bit on the next round for me. By the top of the hat it was all looking pretty good though.

I did like the magic loop as well, not so sure I don't prefer 2 circulars, but this did have the advantage of only needing on needle and not having so much dangle. Definitely more portable.

The hat is great fun though, and I think it is going to be repeated in a slightly larger size for my brother's girlfriend this christmas. The decreases worked exactly how I intended in that they give a point at the top of the hat but aren't silly santa hat shape. I might even quite fancy one myself (in green though.....)

Much progress has been made on the harebell scarf as well...... another few repeats of the main pattern brought me to the point where I had to start experimenting with the edging.

I had a look at a few books for some ideas, but in the end I decided to use the outside portion of the origional chart. Miles and miles of picots ahead! I am applying it using the same join as on the myrtle leaf shawl - which is joined on the front of the scarf rather than the normal method on the back. I quite like the effect though. What do you think?

Secret Hat for my little sister

I have finally finished something - a hat for my little sister for her birthday. In fact this is a minor miracle, because there are still 3 weeks to go until her birthday, so this time there is a vague chance that she will get it in time!

Finished object statistics......
Wool - some random 4-ply shetland wool bought very cheaply from ebay, in Bright Pink and Bright red. Also the end of a skein of sock yarn that I dyed myself ages ago.
Needles - addi turbo circulars, 3mm in various lengths.
Pattern - made up as I went along (more about that later)
Cast on - earlier this summer
Cast off - yesterday!
Tension - 8 stitches and 8 rows per inch

The pattern was remarkably simple and went like this:

Cast on 160 stitches using a provisional cast on in pink wool and join in the round. Purl one round, and then knit one round. Then make up some patterns using a piece of graph paper (making sure you can fit the repeats into 160 stitches). I went for naughts and croses, and then some lettering (can you guess what my sister is called) to add a personal touch, and then another repeat of the naughts and crosses.


The top section of the hat is knit from a very simple pattern with a 4 row repeat, diagonal crossing lines in pink. This is nice and easy to remember! When the desired length is reached (I did just a smidgen less than 5") place 8 markers evenly round the circumference of the hat (every 20 stitches).

Decrease round - knit to 2 stitches before the marker maintaining the pattern, k2tog in red. Repeat 8 times.

Knit one round in pattern (making the stitch before each marker red). When there are too few stitches for the 40cm needle move to knitting either on 2 circulars, or dpn's or a magic loop.

Repeat these two round 9 more times.

Work 10 decrease rounds. Break yarn, pass through the 8 remaining stitches and pull tight.

Place the stitches from the provisional cast on on the 40cm needle (picking up one extra stitch at the join) - you should have 160 stitches, and join the sock yarn. Mine was 100% cashmere and very soft, but choose something that will prevent any itchy forehead (cotton or silk would have preferred but I didnt have any in the stash) and preferably unsuitably bright!

For the first round, knit 8 k2tog. Repeat 15 more times. (144 stitches)

Knit in the round for some depth - I chose to end when I reached a stripe of plain knitting in the hat, just above the lettering. Whip stitch the live stitches to the purl bumps on the inside of the hat, remembering to miss out 1 purl bump in every 10 to make up for the decreased stitches.

Block and wear (or give to someone as a present)!