Sock Clubs - Like Christmas in June!

Today I received a sock club instalment from Cazza's sock club. This club is closed, but with luck she'll open another one later in the year.

It was quite exciting (in a sock geek sort of way) to get a squishy package and have no idea what it contained.... What's the yarn colour? What's the pattern? Despite my control freak tendencies I like the idea that someone else gets to decide what I knit next. So I opened the package and found two skeins of variegated yarn in some lovely greens and blues with a smattering of purple. This picture doesn't really do the colours justice I'm afraid.

Being an obsessive I had to see what it was going to look like knitted up and cast on right after dinner. It's a lace pattern, which is not normally something I would knit in a variegated yarn - but after one repeat of the pattern it's looking pretty good.

Thanks so much to everyone who has left comments lately. It's nice to know people are visiting!



Wendy asked about the pattern for the round felted bag. I had to dig back in my memory - but with the help of google I've located the pattern a blog called amimono note may 31, 2005 entry.

I used Rowan Big Wool - 1 ball for each colour on 8mm needles.

My 'embellishments':

• The striping pattern is random -- as a geek I use a single dice to determine how many rows the next section should be. If I try to plan out the 'random' stripes beforehand I end up overanalyising the whole thing. I try not to second guess the dice - but as a control freak that's hard for me!


• I did a round of single crochet around the top of the bag - it just seems to finish it off for me.


• The giant bobble and closure - they are pretty straightforward. The closure is a 2 or 3 stitch i-cord . The bobble is a square knit on the same size needles (10-12 stitches by 10-12 rows). Using a darning needle I thread a strand of the yarn around the square - stuffed it with bits of yarn then pulled it into a bobble shape.

Blogs - Who Knew?

I confess that until recently I had strongly held views on blogs. (If you've visited more than once you'll have found I have strongly held views on lots of things. Like a lot of people it's fair to say, the less I know on subject the more strongly held my views.) Anyway - I felt blogs were for self absorbed folk who had too much time on their hands.

Ha! What a fool!

Before the world of knitting forums and blogs I had never felted, made a shawl or knit a sock. Inspired by the amazing yarns and patterns I've found on blogs and in forums over the past 2 months I've made 2 felted bags, 5 pairs of socks, 2 stoles and 1 shawl. Crazy! And the list of things I want to make and the yarns I want to knit with just grows by the day. My yarn stash has grown an embarassing amount, and I have gadgets and needles of every description...and still every day I find something new.

I've been a knitter since the age of 5 or 6 - but it's fair to say that I've been exposed to more aspects of knitting in the past 2 months than in the many (many) (sigh) years before.

This week I've decided to attack the Alpine knit scarf in Victorian Lace Today and yesterday I googled to see if I could find any pictures of finished scarves by other knitters. In that trawl I found some pictures from a knitter (Laura) of a different shawl in the book. It's fair to say the shawl hadn't really made any impact on me from the book -- but the pictures on this blog were stunning! And zooooooom - the shawl moves up the 'make me' list.

And this week - my blog became a 'mini (very) point of interest' on an American forum from Knitty.com. One of the posters there was interested in knitting the Hanami stole, googled it and hit on my blog. It gave them all another view of Melanie's lovely pattern and a few things to consider in knitting it.

Through that, one of the forum members found the entries on the Kaffe Fassett coat. By some strange coincidence one of her knitting group members had brought the pattern to their meeting the night before and sent me a message to tell me. How cool is that!

I have found a couple of knit forums (the one listed above, and the Angel Board) to share ideas on, so many blogs I love to visit, 3 fab new local yarn shops and sooooo many amazing online shops (possibly too many if my credit card bill is anything to go by) -- I sometimes feel overwhelmed by the possibilities.

But it's great!

Great Zane Lowe Radio 1 'On Board' Mission
Texts sent so far are:
Day 1: Soo is knitting up socks and on board.
Day 2: On board and knitting a shawl. Soo.
Day 3: On board and loving the knitting groove. Soo

On day 3 I did get a shout out. But I'm not satisfied --he dropped the knitting reference and just said I was on board. Bah!!! This ain't over yet - Zane - not by a long shot.

Knitty, Witty, Woo - I like the idea of other knitters texting. But I do think we should stick to some rules. (I love rules.) (Even when undertaking some strange 'reclaim the hipness of the knit' campaign, I love rules.)(I'm a lousy revolutionary.)

1. You can only text if you are actually listening. (7pm, Radio 1, Monday through Thursday - text 81199)
2. You can only send one text per evening.
3. Text should contain 'on board' and a knitting reference.

Obviously - you can ignore these rules - but I like to think that slowly over time he'll get a few more knitting texts each day until we break him and he finally sends out some love to the knitters.

I'm actually out tomorrow night so I'll continue the campaign on Monday (as per rule 1).