One FO, Two Cats and a WiP

Ugh! I completely missed Once Upon a Socket and have some other projects that are completed or in progress that I meant to blog about earlier but I have been preoccupied by a) my shower giving up the ghost (while I was in it; that was a joy), waiting for a new one to be ordered and installed and now…waiting for another new one as the first new one has a heater fault. So while I have a shower now (rather than a week and a half of sponge baths out of jugs of hot water), I can only have a barely lukewarm one. Water saving and/or military showers have nothing on me right now – I am in and out like a flash. It is definitely times like this that I wish the previous owner hadn’t ripped out the bath…

Also, two days after the shower originally failed, the two cats we adopted arrived. I’m going to try not to turn this blog into All Cats, All The Time but there will now be furry guest stars occasionally. They are a Tuxedo mother-daughter called Pepper (6) and Jess (5) and have settled in nicely. You can follow their activities on their own instagram, should you feel so inclined.

Which, actually allows me to segue nicely into an in progress project, which is my Attic24 Sweetpea Blanket, which is already Cat Approved as Jess, who is a tiny, adorable lapcat, is happy for me to crochet on the sofa, providing she can sleep on my lap. This has lead to the adorableness that is my WiP snoring, purring or occasionally stretching a paw or two out from underneath.

I am halfway through week 3 of the Posy colourway and enjoying it. It’s long enough that the cat and I can sit underneath it and the pattern is set and forget at this point. I’m not rushing to finish this but it hooks up pretty quickly.

The other project is a FO! Yes, not content with two pairs of socks in Jan, I also started and finished in early Feb, my Quarter One Good Intentions Project, which was an Oliver’s Hat from the Jamieson & Smith pattern/history book. I bought the pattern yarn (J&S Supreme Jumperweight) and the book at Kathy’s Knits in Edinburgh when t’hb and I went up to Scotland in 2017. We were based in Glasgow but took a day trip to Edinburgh as t’hb had never been.

It was a very enjoyable knit and I have enough left to knit another with a slightly different colourway, possibly for t’hb. Need to weight the remains and do some colour swatching. Like all my fairisle, I knit it inside out to even my tension out and it has been very useful in these recent gales.

I do have a sock in progress but I’ll save that for the next OUaS post as it should be in a more exciting state by then.

Once Upon a Sock – February 2019

It’s Once upon a Sock time! Hosted by Paula of Spin a Yarn, you would be more than welcome to join us if you knit or crochet socks and want to talk about them on the 1st Thursday of the month!

January turned out to be a bumper sock month for me. Not only did I finish my Parkamoor socks just after the new year, I also cast on and completed two different pairs! I was shook, as the kids say.

First up was a pair of Beaufort Socks, which I had bought as a kit during a knitting librarian meet up at the lovely Wild and Woolly. It was a very soothing and swift knit, helped I think by being 5ply wool on 2.5mm needles!

Also, I find that things with charts/repeats go quicker for me, partially because it is very easy to think ‘oh, I’ll just finish this repeat…’. Also because you can definitely see your progress in a way where endless stocking stitch doesn’t quite match up.

It was also a nice project for trying out some Guernsey yarn and stitches as I have considered knitting myself a Gansey at some point, which as I enjoyed it, has moved a bit further up my long term knitting thoughts.

As soon as that pair was done, I immediately cast on for my test knit for Kat.

These are a stunner, tbh and I can’t wait for everyone else to be able to knit them. They are her Afternoon Tea socks and if you like cables and interesting design features, you’ll love ’em.

I knit mine in some DyeNinja High Twist Merino from the stash, on pattern needles (2mm) .

The colourway is ‘All the little Angels’, which is a Terry Prachett themed colour, so you can bet I’ll be wearing these on the Glorious 25th of May.

Other than those socks, I am making good progress on my Quarter One Good Intentions project and my Attic24 Sweetpea blanket but as neither of them are socks, they will have to wait for another post. 😉

2019 Good Intentions and Plans/2018 Review

I am not attempting any grand goals or setting many resolutions for 2019. 2018 was a bit of a hectic year, what with buying my first house and moving into it. But I do like to review and contemplate, so a brief look back at the year that was and a look forward into the year we’re edging into.

When I restarted this blog, I had quite a few WiPs skulking about. I am very pleased to say that they are all FOs now, partially helped by the house move as I was galvanised into finishing so that I wouldn’t have to pack them.

So, in 2018, I made: [* denoting where a WiP was completed]

Six pairs of socks (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
One shawl
One pair of wrist-warmers
Three crochet blankets (1*, 2*, 3)
A jumper*
A Dwarven Beard

I also completed two small embroideries and started a few more WiPs! Mostly relating to English Paper Piercing.

So, that was a whistle-stop tour of 2018.

What does 2019 hold? Certainly a fair amount of DIY (some of which may appear on the blog; I have yet to decide on that, some of which is going to be boring home-ownership related, like replacing parts of roofs and adding more insulation.) and a focus on stash usage across my crafty pursuits ( which should be easier now that all my craft crap can live in a room of its own), so I can afford such exciting things as…more insulation and a roof that isn’t likely to leak unexpectedly.

Handily, Louise from Knit British has brought the Good Intentions Club back again (Rav thread with 2019’s dates), which focuses on matching the patterns in your library with the stash you have, so I’ll be drawing on that as my main inspiration for 2019. So far, I have only picked two Good Intentions and they are for Quarter 1, Oliver’s Hat, for which I have the yarn bought specifically for it in the stash and Quarter 2 will be a Carbeth Cardigan, the yarn for which I got as birthday present.

And on the crochet side of things, I got the yarn pack for the latest Attic24 CAL, the Sweetpea blanket for Christmas, so while I am not going to be racing to keep up with the CAL, I am going to be doing a gentle CAL with my knitting workmate J over 2019.

I’m also test knitting for fellow OUaSer Kat – yarn from the stash is ready to go! – over the next few weeks as well as doing very well with my current sock WiP of the Beaufort Socks, which I bought as a kit and so had in the stash. (5-ply yarn on 2.5mm needles is whizzy!). There will continue to be sock projects that are as of yet undecided because I am not short of sock yarn in the stash.

Related to my stashbusting; I am not going on a yarn ban but I am going to try not buy skeins that I don’t need. I have a couple gift vouchers that can come into play (one of them is tentatively earmarked for a project that may turn up later in the year.) but really, I have enough to be getting on with and enough other WiPs to complete that 2019 should be going along fine.

Got any grand plans for 2019?

Once Upon a Sock – January 2019

January 2019! January 2019! What is that even. *Kermit flail*

It’s the first Thursday of the month (and the first Thursday of 2019! whaaaat!), which means it is is Once Upon a Sock time, a link-up for blog posts about handmade socks in whatever stage they’re in. Hosted by the lovely Paula of Spin a Yarn, you should definitely join us.

I hope you all had lovely holidays – mine definitely involved a fair bit of crafting, quite a bit of family visiting us (we hosted my parents from the 23rd to the 28th and my mother and sister in law and my nephew on that side came round for Boxing Day.), much food/grazing on chocolate and plenty of fizz. And a distinct lack of being up before the sun rises (yes, going back to work yesterday was a shock to the system.)

But now it is January, the shiny start to a shiny new year (hemhem), so best foot forward and all – I have finished socks to share! Behold, my completed Parkamoor socks! Fresh off the needles yesterday so technically, my first FO of 2019!

They’re knitted in Regia’s Pairfect which are designed to give you the best chance of starting at the same point for an entirely matching pair. Mine are in Anthracite, which is meant to be a sort of ombre grays but you can’t really see much of the ombre, so it’s a light leg and a dark foot! Oh well!

It’s a lovely pattern though and I’m not just saying that because they’re by fellow OUaSer, Katherine! The cables are neatly designed and give enough brainpower to keep you thinking. Also, excellent cabling without a cable needle instructions, if you’ve ever wanted to try that.

Although, I will admit that as these were my knitting while moving house pair, there are one or two quirks to mine that are not as written! Chiefly, I forgot two cm knit plain stocking stitch after the cables and went straight into the heel on the first sock, which meant I had to do the same on the second so I didn’t have one leg longer than the other (didn’t spot that until I was casting on for sock two.) and secondly, I entirely failed to do eye of the partridge and just did slip stitch on the heel. Oops! (There was also some immediately after the movers left knitting where I forgot that you decrease a gusset on every second row and knitted/ripped back the world’s tiniest gusset. )

But aside from those operator errors, I am already planning a second pair, this time with the after-thought heel in the future!

I have a another post to come about last year/this year’s crafting plans so I shan’t go into too much detail but I have cast on (having unpacked my yarn and needles now), the first in a pair of Beaufort socks, in the pattern yarn, which I bought as a kit early last year. It’s a 5-ply (or Gansey weight) in a lovely rusty orange so I look forward to having pictures of something more exciting than the toe to show in the future.

Once Upon a Sock – December 2018

It’s Once Upon a Sock time, where a passel of bloggers gather together on the first Thursday of the month to talk about socks (big or small, in progress or completed!) via the medium of a linkup hosted by the lovely Paula.

You should join us!

We’ve moved into our house, which is very exciting, although it is still home to box mountain (albeit one where the mountain is now a series of small hills, scattered in different rooms) and my yarn boxes have not yet fully reappeared. (eek!)

But, luckily, I had some socks to wrangle in preparation for this eventuality! Below are my completed (and unmissable, even in the boxes) uneek toe up socks. They’re definitely eye catching and I’m quite glad I went for a vanilla sock as I think any patterning would have been overwhelmed by the colours and colour changes.

I’ve still got enough leftover that I could knit some contrast trainer socks similar to my recent rose city rollers or some Bubble and Squeak mittens which is also tempting. I think the colour variation would work quite well with those.

With those off the needles just before the move, I made sure I had the next pair ready to go and cast on for Katherine’s Parkamoor socks for a bit of light cabling. They’re trundling along nicely after a bit of post-move brainfarting, where I settled down after the movers had gone and promptly forgot that you don’t decrease on every row of a gusset! Tiiiiiny gusset and some ripping back later and we were back on track! I’m currently rapidly approaching the toe on sock number one.

I’m using Regina’s Pairfect in Anthracite, which is a ombre-y yarn, although it is very hard to capture the changes in this particular colourway in a photo, so it does look like it just goes light to dark with no intermediate colours in between!

One other move that happened recently is that I’ve moved my domain (internet home since 2000!) over to this blog. There is still some work in the back end but you can now reach the blog at intergalactic.nu instead of the wordpress url. Hooray!