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Saturday 27 July 2013

FO: Wharfe Socks

Just a quick post today to report on the socks I finished before I went on holiday. These guys just flew off the needles, mainly due to that excellently just-addictive-enough lace pattern. I really enjoyed watching them grow, and thinking about the little stream in my parents' garden.


When I was little, I enjoyed imagining where the water in our garden flowed. Our little stream (or beck) flows off the moors, through our village and into the River Wharfe. The Wharfe flows through many picturesque towns and villages, and through Tadcaster where the water is used for brewing beer, and no doubt past some former wool and cotton mills. It then joins with the waters from all over Yorkshire to travel through York, passing millennia of history. From there it flows south to join the Humber, go under the Humber bridge and out to the big blue sea.


Lovely socks, though knitting them may have made me a bit sentimental!

Pattern: Kalajoki by Tiina Seppälä [rav link]
Yarn: Toddy by The Yarn Yard in Haar [sea mist that comes over the north east coast of the UK]

Sunday 14 July 2013

Holiday Knitting Plans


Dear readers, I have a quandary. I am going away for a few days but none of my projects are ideal. Let me review for you:


First up, Skelf. This is on hiatus until this warm weather ends - it's just too hot to sit with most of a worsted-weight jumper on your lap! [Yes I will keep thinking of excuses not to knit it.] Even if it were cooler, it is not sensible to take an entire jumper away for a week - unless I'd have a lot of knitting time. We're flying to a city break. Next!

The gloves I'm knitting for OH are also on a go-slow. I'm not enjoying these at all at the moment; scared of running out of yarn and keep having to rip back every time I knitted a finger, he tried it on and it was too small. Lost the loving feeling, but at least OH will be on the holiday to keep trying them on - though as I said, it is quite warm at the moment and whether he will want to try them on is another matter!


My blue criss-cross socks are definitely in time-out. I was doing so well and going great guns...


...and then, disaster struck:


Oh yes, that is how much yarn I have left to finish the second sock. A real moment for curse words. Shoved them into time-out until I work out what to do with them.


So what am I actually knitting at the moment, since everything is too rubbish / too hard / too big? The answer is some lovely socks, in a pattern called Kalajoki [rav pattern link] in Yarn Yard Yarn I bought two years ago. The colour is called Haar, named after the sea mist that affects the east coast of Scotland [according to Wikipedia] and it is beautiful to knit with. I'm racing through these with their just-addictive-enough pattern and slightly-larger-than-normal needles.


So now I need to decide whether to start something for the holiday. It's times like these I am glad of my approach to Knitting The Queue this year; to have a selection of projects I can choose from. I've narrowed it down to two options:

First, vorticity. This pattern and this yarn (from Wharfedale Woolworks) have been wedded together for some time. Things have been holding me back, sadly: the pattern is on 2mm needles (teeny tiny!); plus, I've mostly been going down one needle size on the sock body and two for the ribbing, which I don't own. However, now my gauge seems to have evened itself out a bit more, and so I could probably knit the body on 2mm and just slightly reduce the number of stitches in the ribbing. Ready to go!


Second, daffodil. I will admit that this yarn has been giving my pause for thought when looking at my queue. I thought I would make a classic, symmetric triangular shawl but then the pooling bugged me; it was random and chaotic (good) then pooled for ~12 rows (fine), but the two together were a bit funny-looking. Instead, we're going to try knitting a cowl with it, and hope that it doesn't flip between pooling and not, but at least picks one and sticks with it! I've got a slightly odd yardage (339yds/310m) so I've gone with the Irish Mesh Cowl [rav link], which takes 220yds/201m. So this one is ready to go, too!


What say you? Should I take two new projects away with me? Or should I be a good girl and take an old project to finish?