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. 😉

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.

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.

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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!