Rain, Rain, Go Away

Well, isn't the recent weather becoming rather tiresome, this is supposed to be the summer for goodness sake. I, in Nottingham have not had it anywhere near as bad as some parts of the country and to have your home flooded more than once must be devastating. My heart goes out to these people, as the clearing up process takes so much time and for the worry of listening to the forecasters predict more heavy rain is unimaginable.

We did not manage to go camping in Whitby after all, the forecast for the whole week was not good, and really by watching the inches of rainfall, it was probably best we didn't go. We did however, manage to go out and about on an odd day trip and made the most of what bits of sunshine we did get, one of those trips DB took me to our local LYS Yarn. I had a fabulous time, browsing through books and getting to feel and see lots of lovely yarn, so much better than on a computer monitor. To be honest, I wasn't looking for anything in particular, as I have that many WIP's I can't possibly start anymore or can I? Then I saw the lady owner of the shop wearing a fabulous cardigan, and after a lengthy discussion with her, it really did appeal both pattern and yarn used. The pattern is this one called The little lacy number cardigan

and comes from this book called The Sublime Merino Hand Knit Book

The yarn used is Sublime Extra fine Merino wool and is so soft, you just can't help touch and feel it, by this time DB came into the shop and when I showed it him, he did say he could see me wearing it and offered to buy me the yarn, to make up for the disappointing week's holiday, now you know, this is a good offer you just can't refuse. So another WIP on the needles, although I have really settled into this pattern, the lace is very basic and simple and is only worked on every fourth row, with stocking stitch in between, great for TV watching, the pattern also has a ribbed waist section which is done on smaller needles to the main part, now anything that makes this area look slimmer is a bonus in my opinion ;-)

Here is my progress so far on the back. I chose this lovely deep pink colour, a change from my usual blues and greens, but thought it was time to be more adventurous with colour and after all it helps to cheer up these dark and wet days.

I have also made good progress on the Jaywalkers and have now completed one sock and cast on for the second straight away and I am now about half way on the cuff.

I am a bit more used to the colourway now and I am pleased how it turned out and I bet you'll agree you've never seen a sock quite like it before ;-)

I am now back at work "groan" Am I the only one, but why is when you start back, after a couple of days its always seems like the holiday break never really happened, at least we have our knitting to look forward to at the end of the day, oh what sanity ;-)

Socks, Socks, Socks

At last, they are done, the man's socks, I have being promising DB for the last six months, eight days later than my final agreed deadline of being completed for his birthday, but hey they done and they fit OK too...

I will try and get him to model them for next post, but at the moment, he says they are too hot to wear, can you believe it, after all the work I put in to getting them done, there's gratitude for you ;-)

But now that's out of the way, I can cast on another pair, for myself this time though ;-)

Can you remember last post, I purchased the STR skein colourway Knitty Rocks, yeah that one, so bright it leaps out to you from the monitor. Here's a few pictures of it, unravelled from its skein, wound into balls and a sample of it knitted up

Here is the skein, unravelled and ready to be wound in to a ball, the hank hanger incidentally is a device which DB made for me, after seeing the complete tangle and frustrated mess I made once trying to wind a skein into a ball on my lap! he thought of and made this, the idea with this, is so I can clamp it to the shelf at the side of my chair and to be able to adjust the height, length and angle according to my seated position and hand wind into a ball, while the weight of the skein with gravity untangles itself as you go, once hand wound into balls, I then rewind with a ball winder into centre pull balls, this is probably not as quick as using a swift, but it does work well and the good thing, is it uses very little space and all can be done from my chair. DB has been bugging me to put this on the blog, just to prove that after the last post of putting his socks on upside down, he is not a complete gonk really, lol!

Here the skein wound into balls, at this point, I'm beginning to feel a little uneasy about the colourway, a good part of the skein, has some fluorescent lime green pieces, which I'm not keen on, when I originally ordered the skein, those didn't seem as electric as they do in real life.

I decided to knit a pair of Jaywalkers with this, after seeing the pattern tons of times on other people's blog, I quite fancied a pair, typical of me, following the trend, a year of so behind everyone else. This is them knitted so far, I am not usually this adventurous with colour and these certainly are technicolour. I am really not sure what to think of them, they turning out most unusual don't you think?

The third STR Kit has now arrived too, blimey the year is certainly rushing by, I have still not thought about what to make with the second kit, yarn yet, the pattern for that one was called grasshopper, a rather lacy pattern, which I think may be beyond my reach, and I am not all that keen on holey socks either, maybe a few lacy holes but not as much as in the grasshopper pattern. Anyway sorry, I digress, here's is the picture of the June Kit, a lovely pattern with a lovely skein called Firebird, perfect for the summer I think! This pattern is called The Solstice Slip, This is my favourite kit so far...

I'm feeling a lot less stressed now than I was last post, especially as I have this week off work, lots of knitting in order I think, we were going to go camping, but all the rain we have had lately, our campsite is water logged, so we shall have to wait towards the end of the week and see if we can get on then. We are hoping to go to Whitby, I've not been there since I was a child and the quick break will be a nice change. I am also hoping to find a yarn shop or two to browse in and of course I will be taking the jaywalkers to knit whilst I am there. Fingers crossed for the sunshine ;-)