Squishbel

I’m working on yet another Ishbel.

 

This one is knit with little puffs of pure silk and feels like it’s made with wisps of cloud.

 

I luffs it.

 

 

Head on over to Tami’s blog to check out what everyone else has on their needles for WIP Wednesday!

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Well travelled.

I totally started to write this post for Tami’s FO Friday, but I ended up getting a bit distracted by a few blog tweaks, and then I got very distracted by the lovely weather (a rarity in the UK… even more so in the North!), and so here we are with an FO Monday! Not quite as catchy, but there we are.

Solid Socks Mystery Feb/Mar 2011 by Lisa Stichweh

Yarn: Schachenmayr nomotta Regia 4 fädig / 4 ply in Pale Grey

Ravelled here.

These poor socks have been sitting in a crumpled pile since May, until I finally got off my arse a couple of weeks ago and blocked them. Let me say now that this poor treatment is in no way indicative of my feelings towards these socks – I love them!

First of all, I’m a sucker for grey, and these are a lovely pale, elegant grey. Plus, Regia is always a good stalwart yarn (…and I bought a truckload of it when it was going cheap at Kemps…).

Second of all, this pattern is looovely! It was another one of the Solid Sock mystery KALs, although I kind of missed out on the whole “knitalong” part… again. o_0 (I will have to improve at this… going to cast on for the June/July KAL very soon!)

 

I absolutely love the lattice lace on the leg, it’s so wonderfully stretchy and squishy. I was a little concerned that it was working up a bit big, but I read a comment on the forum that said that the pattern would start to pull in a bit further down the leg (where the stocking stitch starts) so I plugged away at it and it fits like a dream.

 

 

The pattern was challenging enough to keep me entertained, but simple enough to memorise so that I didn’t feel chained to the print out. I also love the way that the chevron snakes around from the back of the foot (excuse the bad snapshot – apparently it’s rather difficult to take a picture of the back of your foot!).

 

 

I know that these were a very enjoyable knit, and I’m fairly certain that I stuck to the pattern (apart from adding another chevron to the foot), but it’s been so long since I actually knit these and I appear to have made no pattern notes at all, so I can’t really remember much about the process of these socks, or even the size I made (medium? I think so..!).

In fact, one of the few things I do remember about these socks is that I worked on them to and from Amsterdam, St Neots, and Nottingham, so they are rather well travelled.

 

And after all that, they certainly deserve a rest.

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Ribbit.

6 rows of garter stitch frogged. Last nights movie knitting down the drain.

My own fault – I forgot to move up a needle size for the garter border. Thought I could get away with 3 rows with the smaller needle and the last 3 rows with the larger because I was feeling too tired and lazy to frog back.

I couldn’t.

This morning the difference was bugging me. Again I tried to ignore it, but after three attempts at binding off with three different bind off techniques and each one looking as messy as the one before, I bit the bullet and ripped it back. Plus, this is a gift, and I feel like it wouldn’t mean as much if I hadn’t given it my best.

So on again with the garter (and the right size needles this time!) and a new approach – instead of 6 rows of garter and a purl off, I’m going to try 7 rows garter and a knit bind off. Here we go again…

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Let’s start again…

I’m a little ashamed at my feeble attempt at Knitting and Crochet Blog Week, but the truth is that life rather got in the way. I did start off with the best of intentions, but seemed to stumble at every hurdle. I began to write the posts in advance so that I could schedule them, but didn’t manage to finish them all before I went on holiday. And then as soon as I got home, I started a new job (yay!) and was trying to fit blogging into my new schedule when I was made redundant (boo!) and quite frankly didn’t feel like I wanted to blog. But the urge has started to creep back in, so here we go with a fresh start, and apologies for dropping out of blogland completely!

To kick things off, I wanted to share some pretty little skeins that I dyed up for a couple of projects.

 

I especially like this. It’s Rowan Cashsoft 4 ply, sourced in a creamy white quite a while ago from Kemps, and it’s picked up the colour beautifully. Wiltons Violet food gel is notorious for breaking up colour-wise, and I love the effect it’s had here, albeit helped along slightly with the odd dash of red dye.

 

It’s currently knitting up wonderfully into a Moonlight Sonata Shawl for a friend, and is very nearly off the needles which will warrant a post of its own very soon.

The other skein is destined for the June/July Solid Socks Mystery KAL, which I’ve yet to cast on for (I did peek at the socks in progress though – so pretty! Head on over if you’re interested!). I didn’t really plan or even think through the dye process for this yarn. I think I vaguely had an inclination towards something pink, so I chucked a load of rose coloured dye into to pot, came back a couple of hours later, and hated the colour that I saw. This prompted a rather frenzied attempt to rescue the yarn, which involved throwing various random dyes into the pot in a completely haphazard fashion to try and transform the colour into something which wasn’t quite so loathsome. The result is quite a pretty, almost plummy, magenta colour, but which I have zero chance of ever replicating!

All caked up and ready to go.

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