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One down, one to go on the mystery socks for the SolidSocks Ravelry group. I’m almost to the heel on the second sock now!

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Mojo

Late summer is usually the time when my knitting mojo makes a comeback. The realisation that we’ve pretty much had all the British summer that we’re going to have usually beings on a hankering for bundling up in cozy hand knits.

True to form, the needles have been clicking away these past few weeks.

sleepy hollow socks by Lori Law

Yarn: Regia Stretch Color

Ravelled here

I’ve had this pattern in my Rav queue ever since the Yarn Harlot enticingly blogged about them and their clever heel construction. Eventually, after hearing other knitters rave about the heel, I decided I had to give it a go for myself, and yes, the heel construction is fabulous.

I actually love heel flaps with picked up gusset stitches. I have it down pat.  A lovely thick, cushiony slipped stitch flap sandwiched between a teensy bit of garter and a slipped stitch selvedge. There is something deliciously satisfying about making a slipped stitch selvedge and then picking up the exact same number of gusset stitches on both sides of the flap, and then slowly seeing them decrease away. But there is also something deliciously simple about the sleepy hollow heel. No picking up, no working back and forth on that heel flap. It’s in the round all the way, increasing for the gussets. And at the end of it, a lovely slim, shaped heel. Me likey.

The toe is a little pointy for me, but that is something that would be very easily rectified.

And yes, this yarn is probably starting to look a little familiar :) I bought an ungodly amount of it from Kemps earlier this year, so there is quite a sizeable amount currently sitting in my stash. Cue a glut of projects featuring dark grey Regia Stretch! I do love it, but I think that this is the third project in a row I'’ve used this yarn for, so I think it’s definitely time to give it a break and mix things up a bit :)

I have a few other things on the needles now, but I’ll leave that for another day.

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Food dyes and yarn

I’ve been wanting to try my hand at dyeing yarn for a quite a few years, but have never until now taken that extra step to actually doing it. Eskimimi’s blog post about her gorgeous colourful hand-dyed yarns gave me that little shove to give it a bash myself.

Armed with some Rutland Tweed Morcott, food colouring and vinegar, here what I’ve come up with so far…

  

It’s not been a total success, but I’m pretty happy with what I’ve ended up with. The yellow was my second try (I forgot to take photos of my first!) and was meant to be a pinky peach. That clearly didn’t work! I now know that the natural food colourings are essentially useless for yarn dyeing purposes! The yellow is the only one that really has any effect. I actually quite like the yellow though.

Having realised this, I searched out some artificial cochineal from the kitchen cupboard and had another try which was a lot better, except that the dye was a pretty uneven! I swear I’ll have success at last :) The tweedy flecks in amongst the pinky red of this one make me think of strawberries and watermelon.

These are only 50g hanks, so I’m not sure what I’m going to do with them. I’m hopefully going to search out more dyes this weekend for some more dyeing experimentation. I’ve been rather fascinated by natural dyeing for some time now, so I’m definitely keen to give that go once I’m a bit more familiar with this malarkey!

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FO: Haruni

My knitting mojo has been somewhat lacking of late, but the needles have not been entirely idle.

Haruni by Emily Ross

Yarn: Regia Stretch Color
Ravelled here

I love this pattern, it’s beautiful.

This was my post-exam knitting treat. I’d wanted to knit it for quite a while, but thought it’d be quite a complex pattern so put it aside until my exams were finished and then went at it.

The pattern was surprisingly straight forward, I think it’s one that looks more complex than it actually is. The first pattern chart was quite easily memorised. I found the second chart a little trickier as it was quite hard to read the lace until I was several rows in, but it wasn’t as hard as I thought it’d be. I finished it in 2 weeks, which I think is some kind of record for me!

I wasn’t too sure I’d made the right choice with the Regia Stretch yarn, which I predominantly chose because I love the colour. I mentioned how sproingy it was when I blogged about my Earl Grey socks, and whilst I was knitting Haruni I was little concerned about how that would work for a shawl/scarf. I needn’t have worried though, it blocked out perfectly! I used my new blocking set up for this, which I’ll blog about soon.

I love the leaf border and the crochet cast off the pattern uses. The only mods I made were to knit an extra repeat of the first chart for a slightly longer scarf, although I’d have liked to have seen how it would have turned out with another couple of repeats!

Just a quick shot to end on of me wearing it this morning in my Beavis/Cornholio pyjamas… I’m a class act all the way :)

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Apology and Totoro progress…

First of all, I have a big apology! I have no idea whether anyone reads this blog, or if anyone has been trying to leave comments, but I only just realised this morning that my comments box was completely messed up and that no one could write anything! I have now trawled through my code, and it should (hopefully!) be fixed! Fingers crossed, anyway. It was pretty good revision procrastination :)

Knitting has stalled slightly thanks to imminent exams, and because posts sans pictures are boring, I leave you with Snoopy, very happily modelling an incomplete Totoro hat :) It now has both i-cords and one ear though!

 

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