Done-diddley-un!

I grafted the toe of Monkey the Second last night at 9.04pm, while watching Lizzie Bennet give Darcy what-for in the drawing room at Hunsford Parsonage.

That means I knit a pair of socks in seven days flat. I can hardly believe it myself! But here’s the proof:

Irrepressible indeed.

The Vital Statistics:
Pattern: Monkey by Cookie A for Knitty
Yarn: The Knitting Ninja’s Cashmerino sock yarn in colourway “Camo”
Needles: 3.00mm Knitpicks Harmony circular, magic loop method.
Modifications: Eye of partridge heel flap, but otherwise, I followed the pattern pretty much straight up.

Oh, and here’s to a very Woolly New Year for us all. Can you believe that this time last year I was blogless and didn’t know any of you guys? It feels like we’ve been friends for ever!

See you in 2008.

The Nature of Monkey Was Irrepressible!

I love Cookie A! I flew through the first sock in no time flat – cast on on Sunday 23rd on the train from Newcastle to Sydney to visit my sister (I had to put it away while I was at her place, because my 10-month-old nephew displayed an unwholesome interest in the ball of yarn – I tried to explain to him that it would felt if he stuffed it in his mouth, but that moved him not at all). The leg was easily accomplished in the four-hour round trip, and I got the heel flap and gusset done the next day, and the foot and toe was a couple of hours’ work on Wednesday 26th after we got home. Three days work (I took Christmas day off – there was way too much going on, and the wine was flowing freely), but it didn’t feel like work at all! The second sock is also moving along nice and quick, although I am still trying to dig my house out from underneath the holiday crap that has overtaken it.

Better get back amongst it.

What I did on my Holidays, by Kate

In the last week, there have been bus trips, train trips and car trips.

There has been swimming

presents

visits from superheroes

and knitting.

This is most of a Monkey sock in Camo cashmerino sock yarn from the Knitting Ninja (sorry, I can’t link. Morgan’s site is down). The Bamboo purse is all but finished – it only needs a lining. MIL loves it and is eagerly awaiting the completed article. Pics soon.

There were also kids craft projects, visits with grandparents, aunties, uncles and cousins; eating, drinking and merriment galore, but there are no photos as I was having too much fun.

When we got home there were more parcels waiting both in the mailbox and under the tree, and after supervising the ripping of paper by the boys, I got to rip some of my own:

My Mum knows what constitutes perfect knitting TV. Beautiful people, gorgeous locations and a story that I love to bits.

Mandie dyed some Merino/Optim sock yarn specially for me. Yummy colours – much more rich and purply in real life. And ssssssssssssooooooooooofffffffffffttttttttttttt.

Becky sent me some Paton’s SWS (that’s Soy Wool Stripes) which I have never been able to get my hot little hands on, and which somehow manages to be both silky and fuzzy at the same time.

This is also from Becky. It is hand spun scrumptiousness the exact colours of English lavender, and it even smells like lavender. I am so looking forward to knitting with this – I’ve never played with handspun before!

I hope you all had a bright and beautiful time, whatever your traditions, and that the jolly old elf and his lesser-known associate the Fibre Fairy made all of your woolly dreams come true.

Now I have to go and scale the Everest of dirty clothes that just landed in my laundry. I’m thinking the North Face is a good place to establish a base camp.

On The Frog & Toad

We are making the annual Christmas pilgrimage to impose upon visit the rellies. I am writing this on my BIL’s computer, some 500km from my usual stomping grounds. Although I have access to a computer and can both read and comment on your blogs, I don’t have access to my email (can’t remember the password for my email account) so I am semi-incommunicado until the 27th. And then I will have to wade through the fifty-seven billion spam emails (mostly ads for penis enlargement and declarations of undying love from Russian mail-order brides) that will have totally fooled my spam filters (I get between 50 and 75 in my inbox every day).

The Christmas knitting continues apace; I will take pics of the finished bamboo purse before I gift it and blog it when I get home (I remembered to bring the camera, but can’t upload pics onto BIL’s computer). I can promise you all a long, boring and picture-heavy holiday post when I get home.

My BIL’s house is a place of many wonders; the swimming pool, X-box and bigscreen TV are only surpassed by the kitchen miracles – a dishwasher and an espresso machine.

I am very awake and alert right now. I may yet lose the ability to blink.

P.S. Becky, after all my rash promises, I left those two packages sitting under the tree at home, so I will have to chew my fingernails a bit longer. I can pretty much guarantee you that the first thing I do when I walk in the door will involve ripping of tape and wrapping paper, followed by squeals of delight (and I am most definately not a squealy person).

Bamboo: Not Just For Pandas

Plan B is coming along nicely. The Bamboo yarn is soft and silky to the touch, beautiful to work with. I can’t believe how different the real yarn looks from the pics on the Cleckheaton website. If I had been going off those pics instead of fondling it in my LYS, I never would have bought it. This is how it really looks:

…and this is how it knits up:

That’s one pattern repeat down, two more and the handles to go, and the Christmas knitting is DONE, baby!

Dead to us.

Friday (as I may have mentioned) is the day Sasquatch goes to Preschool. Yesterday was his Christmas Party day, so off we went, armed with a plate of fairy bread and high hopes. When I went to pick him up at 5pm, he was super-excited, talking so fast about everything he’d done, I could barely understand him.

We get home, and we are unpacking his backpack, and out comes…. a book! (Tawny Scrawny Lion – do you remember that one from when you were a kid? It was one of my favourites, and I was so happy when I found out that Little Golden Books had re-released all the old classics…. but I digress) I held it up, all astonishment, and said “What’s this?”

Sasquatch looks at it, and his excitement suddenly turns to slumped shoulders and hopeless despair (I swear, this kid is the most appalling ham – he could give Shatner a run for his money!) . “Santa came to the party,” he tells me in lugubrious tones.

“But that’s a good thing, surely?” I asked.

“No! He gave me a stupid book!” (Just to clarify, Sasquatch loves books – the library is one of his favourite places in the world, and he considers himself cheated if he only gets one bedtime story. Also, every kid at the preschool got a book).

“But you love books!” I said. “And this is a really good book – I had this same book when I was a little girl, it was one of my favourites!”

He looks at me with the I-can’t-believe-how-dim-you-are-woman face. “I asked Santa for toys! I asked for a ball and a pirate ship and a skipping rope! I used my best manners and everything!” He shoots the book a look of pure disgust, “and he gave me a stupid book!”

He slouches off in high dudgeon (I know, slouching and high dudgeon seldom go together, but somehow the kid manages it).

So there you have it. Santa screwed him over.

Just for the record, we read the book at bedtime, and he was spellbound. Loved it. Agreed that it was a totally good story. Nonetheless, Santa is persona non grata in the House of Frog.

What is up with Blogger?

Blogger has always had it in for me. Whenever I try to comment on a Blogger blog, it forces me to do that little word-recognition dealie (technical jargon is my life) at least three times before it accepts my comment – sometimes it won’t let me comment at all. But just lately, it really seems to have something wedged up its USB port, because it is refusing to acknowledge non-Blogger people exist, and will only allow comments under my Blogger ID (one of which I do have, because I joined SSoS). The downside of this is, it’s not allowing me to put my email addy in the form, and if you guys are replying to comments I make on your blogs, I’m not getting those replies.

I swear, I’m not being ignorant!

In other news, that lilac Tofutsies has betrayed me yet again, and even the power of Monkey Monkey Magic cannot overcome this yarn’s unwillingness to be socks. Therefore, it has been returned to string and I am moving on with my life. The replacement gift will be this, in this yarn (if the universe doesn’t want my MIL to have socks, who am I to argue?) .

One last thing – have you seen this? I am so getting that kit! That honey-coloured yarn with my brown leather clogs? A match made in Hosiery Heaven!

Responding to Oracular Advice

First off, special thanks to Taph for confusing the issue with her link to Wendy’s gorgeous lace edging. Because I have no self-control at all, I swatched it up yesterday. Here ’tis:

(Yes, there’s  a couple of glaring mistakes, but you get the gist) I like it, but I don’t know if I like it better than 1B… This is gonna take some thought.

Also, for those of you who wanted to see it on, i took the following shots of the swatches draped over my wrist. Left to right, they are Cathedral Windows, Catharina, and Wendy’s (click for big):

Kate said: I kind of like the very first, the as-written, because I like the laciness of the double yo’s. However, like Amy and Taph, for me the issue is the drape – how much structure do you want in the edging? Is it to be an everyday cardi, and if so, would a drapey edging get in the way or provide a nice bit of femininity? If it’s for good, I’d say go for fancy!!

And the socks – what’s your favourite orchid? Will these remind you of it when on your feet (as opposed to blue-grey stuff that I sincerely believe is no where near your normal skin colour!!)???

The doubled yarn-overs are lovely, and if this were for ‘bestest’ I’d totally do them, but the odds of my needing a fancy-schmancy cardigan are completely laughable. This is for nice-casual, to pop over a t-shirt or a sleeveless dress if the night gets a bit cooler, or to cover up my incipient bingo wings* when my in-laws turn the air-con up to eleven. I’m looking for a sturdier edge than I would get with the doubled yarn-overs. Besides, I would catch those on everything, and ruin the cardi in about five minutes flat.

Amy said: I’m no help at all. I would need to see it held right up against the sweater, preferably while it’s on you. I think they’re all pretty; it all comes down to drape and length, I think. And what you feel like knitting, of course. (You do know a crocheted edging would go much faster, once you got the hang of crochet? Just saying. I don’t think I could face the miles of lace edging you have before you. Sheesh, I’ll just shut up now.)

I think the sock looks nice–I’m not sure what you’re seeing?

I’ve not knit very much lace edging (those swatches are the first I’ve ever done), but I’m quite enjoying it, and I don’t see that miles of it would be terribly onerous (and yes, you should all feel free to taunt me with that in a couple of weeks time when I’m whining about the endless acres of lace edging and how much I hate it).

As for crochet: someone once told me that I would learn to like Guinness if I drank enough of it (I think that’s more likely a sign that you’re drunk, than that your palate is maturing), but I’ve never seen why I should want to learn to like something that tasted like fizzy Vegemite (Vegemite on toast is a Very Good Thing™, but fizzy alcoholic Vegemite? Not so much). I feel a bit the same about crochet – if you like it, do it, but it’s just not my bag, baby. Besides, the Lara cotton is kinda splitty, and even were I so inclined, it wouldn’t be the yarn I’d choose for a visit to Planet Hook.

* * *

I’m still having problems with the sock; I can’t find a pattern that I like and that works with the yarn. I’m going to give the sock thing one last shot by casting on for Monkeys. If that still doesn’t do it for me, I will accept the fact that my sock mojo has gone away for an early Christmas Holiday, and figure out something else for MIL’s pressie.

Oh, and Kate? You asked about my natural skin colour – owing to my Scottish ancestry, my complexion is a delicate shade of pale blue. If I tan (rather than my usual cycle of burn/peel/burn/peel), by the end of the summer I’ll be a robust fish-belly white.

*Bingo Wings: noun. Flesh on the underarms of women who might commonly be seen at bingo nights (I learned this snort-worthy term thanks to the crazy ladies at Mason Dixon Knitting).

Consulting the Oracle

As well as Christmas socks, I have been knitting on my Brick House pinwheel sweater, and am rapidly approaching the point where I have to make a decision. You see, the pattern calls for a wide band of crochet lace around the body of the sweater and at the sleeve cuffs, but I don’t crochet. I know the mechanics of it, but I don’t enjoy it, and it makes my hands hurt, and I’m not too fussed on the fabric created. So I’m going to use a knitted lace instead (and let’s not get into the whole knitted lace/lace knitting thing here – I know there is a difference, I just can’t remember which is which), but the question is, which lace?

I’ve been busily researching the subject, and I have swatched, and narrowed it down to a short-list of four possibilities, but I can’t decide. Therefore, I am consulting the Bloggy Oracle (that would be you).

Here we have Swatch the First:

This is from the Cathedral Windows Shawl by Liz Haywood for YARN Magazine #6 April 2007. On the right, we have it exactly as written in the pattern, with doubled yarn-overs in the edging, and on the left, I’ve modified it slightly, with just a single YO. I’ll call these swatches 1A and 1B respectively.

Swatch the Second:

The same pattern, only I worked it in Garter stitch instead of Stocking Stitch.

And finally, Swatch the Third:

This is from a Faroese Shawl pattern suggested by Becky. The pattern is called Catharina, by Myrna Stahman.

I am leaning towards swatch 1B for several reasons, not least because Cathedral Windows is already set up to be knit around the outside of a circular garment, while Catharina is designed to be knit back-and-forth and thus would require some recalibration, which really isn’t an option this close to Christmas – my brain just ain’t up to it, people. However, I am not set in stone on this, and would love to hear what you have to say on the subject.

P.S. I am also swatching for the final pair of Christmas socks. I had always planned to use the Orchid Socks pattern with this yarn (in fact, I bought the yarn with this pattern in mind), but now that I see it knit up, I just don’t know. Do we hates it?

Colour reproduction is horrible here – it’s not really that drab grey; it is actually a rather pretty lilac marl TOFUtsies .

Socks and Markets

My Sock Tree has been busy again:

Rainy Day Blues Socks

The Vital Statistics:
Pattern: Joe’s Office Socks by Anna Peck
Yarn: Paton’s Patonyle 4ply, colour 4303, denim blue
Needles: 2.75mm Knitpicks Classic Circulars, (Magic Loop method)
Modifications: I knit these toe-up, as usual, with a short-row toe and heel, 1×1 rib and Lucy Neatby’s tubular cast-off. I also included seven moss-stitch diamonds scattered at random over the two socks, symbolic of my Dad’s seven grandchildren (these are his Christmas present). Overall, I’m very happy with them, and hope my Dad will be too.

In other news, today I took my boys to the Christmas Markets at Millthorpe, a village about ten minutes drive from here. They had a gorgeous time on the Jumping Castle,

And I got a bargain on a hand-thrown pottery dish

Five dollars, can you believe it? It matches exactly to some others I already own, see?

I bought a beautiful loaf of sourdough baked in a wood-fired oven

It was delicious (you have to be pretty quick around here when there’s sourdough involved!)

Despite the sad lack of woolly goodness at the markets, I’d call that a good day.