sweat pea?

Isn't it funny how your opinions of a project can chop and change so much?

I decided I make socks for my friend K (n.b. I'm not doing the whole fake name in the blog thing, she actually goes under the one letter). It's her 24th this weekend and she's going round the world at Easter. Handknitted socks are just perfect for the traveller, giving me an excuse to get my greedy knitters fingers on some Curious Yarns sock wool and pop my Jaywalker cherry to boot.

When the yarn arrived I was even more excited, the colours reminded me of a photo we'd taken of our feet in Florida a few years back (K and I have many photos of our feet, ahem, another reason why socks were the perfect present). Curious Yarns have a "doubleskein" thing going on - they send you 75g of a MC and 25g of a CC for toes, heels and cuffs. It’s 100% wool, machine washable and yummy.

About an hour in I was loving the pattern, but feeling less enamoured with the yarn. The colours were nice, just not together. Not so bad I'd dump the project, but it was bugging me, the shine of perfect had gone. By the next day I decided I didn't like the pattern either. I know this is about as sacrilegious as criticising the clapotis, hey it lacks stretch! But...

...by the time I'd finished the second sock I'd been totally converted. The colours worked when the cuff was balanced by the heel and the toe, and the pattern - I take it all back, it showed off the yarn so well and snugly hugs around the foot. I started mentally writing my blog entry for the completed project, waxing lyrical about the loveliness of the yarn, etc and speedily cast on the second.

Finished now, its not flawless - the shine of perfection was lost in the idea rather than the reality of the project. Curious Yarn's cute idea of a small skein? Well, I was four rounds short of yarn. As it happens the end of the toe in the MC was ok for this colour combination, but I think I'll stick to the single-skeins in future. So, overall, I'm quite proud. They are super-comfy, and will be just delicious for travelling in.

And don't worry K, I took this shot BEFORE I washed them.

shucks, socks

My Olympic progress has improved, helped muchly by a trip to Kent and back on thursday and knitflicks yesterday, I've finished two socks! Not of the same pair, but two socks nonetheless. And two half-done's on the needles.

I'll leave posting about them till I have a complete pair done. So the photo above is from a book the boy gave me for Valentine's. Not the one about poo, its called Woman's World, its a novel written entirely out of bits of text cut out of 1960's woman's magazines. Its by the guy who does lost consonants series in the Guardian, and hilarious. Thought I'd post it here, as the crafty knitting community is the sort of place to appreciate such things.

Right now I'm making the boy act as a swift while I ball some yarn. His payment for this will be a cherry and almond muffin, which I'm about to take out the oven. Then I'm taking the rest of the batch down the road for knitting with some livejournal/ Bustie types.

Oh, and shucks, such nice comments about the cardigan. Thank you knitting bloggers!

fairly difficult (to knit on crowded tube)

So here be pictures of my "Fairy Easy" cardi. I'll write up a better post on in it the knitalong when I have the time. Just so you know the thing in the background that looks like a toilet seat isn't one, its the door of our washing machine. There is a limit to how much I share, though I admit I have a bit of a reputation for discussing such things (my boy gave me Everybody Poos* for Valentines).

Slow progress on the socks, as I had to stand on a crowded tube this morning rather than my normal hour of public bus knitting. In the rest of public knitting world, one Stacy seems to be suffering from the dreaded gage-issues, but the other Stacy's sock seems to be coming along fine. Laurie has some fantastic pictures of the olympic progress on her bag. Iolarah's doing a hat she's designed herself and I have her to thank for the news that the knit olympics have made it into Wikipedia.

Sarah, however, is my new favourite blog. She's posted a picture of her knitting in public. Moreover, she also has a photo of a pair of Socks that Rock Jaywalkers she knit "on 9 plane flights and in a total of 6 states" - wow! She's doing an alpaca tubey which looks lovely.

* incidentally, when I typed "everybody poos" into the amazon search engine I got a page saying it couldn't help, but would I like to search the keyword "boys" and look at Nintendo games.

frogged

More public-knitting news in as much as the Dulwich knitting group were in a local magazine complete with feature on Cast Off and information about where you can download a pattern to knit a bakewell tart. They misquoted everyone, and of the load of photos she took they decided on a very unflattering one of unflattering yarns. I've spared you this pic in my shot above, you just get to see the knitted-tarts.

In other news, I have finished my Fairly Easy Fair Isle, hence that lovely green sleeve in the shot (beautifully bringing out the scab on my knuckle, don't you think?) but I'll post about that properly later in the week. Also in the photo is some progress on my first socks. However, this has now been seriously frogged due to a slight miscalculation on gage. Why is it I never trust patterns? Why?

This means I'm way behind Olympic schedule. So I either speed-knit (quite possible, but I don't want to rush these, they are gifts) or decide against the handicap of knitting in public (*wails* but I LIKED that idea) or re-challenge myself to only two pairs of socks. If the lack of parenthesis didn’t give it away already, I'm going for the last of those. And if on top of that, I finish my Pomatomus then all the better.

And they're off... (team knitting-in-public edition)

So I started the Olympics a bit later than everyone else, but my flatmate and I took our knitting to a local cafe this morning and I cast on my first pair of socks.

I feel a bit like a self publicist with this knitting in public thing. There was a post on Live Journal punk_knitters recently saying how much fun it is to knit in public; the funny looks you get, the way you impress everyone. At first this really surprised me because the last thing I think about is the audience. It might sound odd, but I learnt to knit to give me something to do on the bus - so it just turns out that I do most of my knitting in public. Thinking about it though, it is kind of fun knowing people are watching you knit and wondering how it all works.

Anyway, from my daily click through knitting blogland there seem to be loads of people feeling they'll probably have to "go public" with their Olympic projects just to get it all done in time. We seem to have several sock knitters in the team, which makes sense as socks are such a portable project. Stacy, the "Empty Nest Knitter" from team Texas, is representing team dpn for her first socks. Lars, one of those lesser-spotted male-knitters, is another first sock-er. Good luck to them, once you've turned your first heel there's no going back.

One of the things that LiveJournal post picked up on was how its especially fun knitting on dpns because they look so very impressive to non-knitters. Personally I magic-loop, which I think looks so weird most people don't realise it's knitting. I was working some gloves on the tube once and these two ladies sat opposite me spent a good ten minutes arguing whether I was doing crochet (and yes, they pronounced the "t").

In the non sock public-knitting world, Kat (who's doing a grey Samus, from the looks of it) had picture of Olympic torch last time I checked her site, so obviously all go! Another Stacy is a challenging herself with button holes and a hood. And Lise, Yarn Mom of team Maryland (and team off the cuff, brave lady) is doing an amazing Where's Waldo sweater. I love stuff like that, my flatmate's doing the most georgous wonder woman jumper at the moment.