Going, going,...

Sometimes it's important to buy something because soon it will be gone, and there will be no more.



Jaeger Extra Fine Merino Double Knitting
Shades (from back, left to right): Biscuit, Golden, Coal Dust
Sadly this has been discontinued, but it knits up beautifully. Sometimes wool companies make strange decisions.

Vintage scarf

Being blocked...

I know this has already appeared on ravelry, but it is one of those projects that became addictive and which lingered in the mind as it raced off the needles.

A 70th birthday present for someone I've known most of my life, it was a gamble in case purple was not a favourite colour and lace a disliked texture. However, it went down well, which is not so surprising as the yarn is a fantastic mixture of silk and cashmere.

I chose an original pattern from, I think, the 1930s. I have a large collection of vintage patterns, waiting to be used and adapted for modern life. This one required no adaptation, just blocking and wondering if it might have been published the year its recipient was born. That would have been a neat coincidence indeed.

The yarn came as a transatlantic gift of great generosity, delivered one rainy Sunday afternoon to me, a complete stranger except for some emails. We should have been out looking at pelicans in St James's Park but instead talked about knitting and New England over a cup of English tea.

Yarn: Jade Sapphire Cashmere-Silk 2-ply, vintage rose colourway (perhaps); 1 skein

Needles: 3.0 mm
Adapted from ‘Two-Colour Scarf’ in vintage "2 oz Woollie Book", cost 1 shilling, Weldon’s leaflet no. 364, probably 1930s.

If you aren't on ravelry and would like the pattern instructions, do let me know. I'm sure copyright has now lapsed.

Toe Techniquery

Thanks to the patient teaching skills of Purlescence and Erqsome, and the equally helpful advice from KatinkaKnits, I now have one kitchenered sock toe. I'm sure it shouldn't take three people to teach me something everyone else seems to know from birth, or at least much earlier on in their knitting careers, but I'm very pleased to have it at the end of my foot at last.



In case I'm being heelist, here's an alternative view.




Here's another heel, just to balance things out. This is the heel for a Harris Tweed sock in Skein Queen Plushness, mentioned earlier. Not quite tweed as we know it, but pink is de rigueur at the moment.

Nostalgia

I have bought myself a treat. There is an exhibition too.



The book is still pristine, still shrinkwrapped. It's for next week when time slows down a bit. Maybe some of the shops still exist.

What would you do...?

So, rather unexpectedly I have some free time. More than a few days. Good days.

What would you do with such a windfall?

All ideas and suggestions on the back of a postcard, please.

No bungee jumping.

Maybe no one will notice...

So, this project was going well, with the cables proving easier than they first appeared and things flying along quite nicely. The wool was wonderful, buttery soft and thick, and there I was knitting away like a wild thing to produce two thick aran socks of wintry warmth. Hoorah!



Anyone guess what really happened? Um...



No, the heels were fine, I didn't mess those up, or wear them out in my sleep as before... It was something else...



Yes, I ran out of wool.

I quite like the oddness. I could start a trend.


Pattern: Log Cabin Socks from 'Handknit Holidays' by Anne Woodbury
Yarn: Jaeger Extra Fine Merino Aran in Cedar (with a touch of Juniper*)
Needles: 4.0 mm

3 skeins = 285.0 yards (260.6m)

(*well, at least I kept it arboreal)

Making amends

There have been entirely justified complaints about the parlous nature of the frequency of new entries here.

However, I have been very busy deciding what knitted garment I should make next. I have decided on this:



but first I may have to grow my hair. Modesty, you know.


('nuff said about the quality of the pics. Technical problems abounded)