Frustration

Hello my darlings, you find me in a somewhat melancholy mood today.

Today is Mother's Day here in the UK, and my facebook feed has been filled with the joyous moments of my friends as they celebrate time with their own mums, and receive gifts from their children.  As I have no children of my own to take my mind off the subject (please don't pity me for this, I am childless by choice!), I am simply reminded that my mam is no longer here (you can pity me for that bit).

I am alone at home, Kelly is out, I'm not sure what he's up to, and Stephen is at work.  I should be going for a run today, Sundays are a training day in my Great North Run preparation schedule, but I have had a bad couple of weeks with my joints, and I made the mistake of trying to go to watch a band on Friday.  It turns out that standing for several hours while being elbowed in the back by people wanting past is even more tiring and painful than running for half an hour.  Anyway, it means that running is currently out of the question.

"But this is a blog about knitting!" you say, surely I should be knitting?  Sadly no, my wrists and fingers are also especially sore right now, and I'm finding that I can't knit for more than a few minutes without being in agony.

Look at this:

This is the Stitchnerds Mostly Green March KAL that I've been working on.  It's staring at me, it wants me to be knitting it.  I want to be knitting it.  I can't, because it's a 12 row pattern repeat, and the little bit of obsessive in me can't bear to stop unless it's at the end of a pattern repeat (also makes it easier to know where I'm at when I pick it back up again later).  But I'm also getting onto much longer rows now, and 12 rows is way too much for my wrists to handle.

On the plus side, I have managed to finish a sock:

Just one, I've only knit the cuff of the second so far, but I'm quite proud of this sock.  I've heavily modified the pattern to make this sock specifically fit me.  The leg is shorted and wider, to accommodate my permanently swollen ankles without having to make decreases while knitting ribbing.  The heel is shallower, and the foot narrower, to account for my freakishly small feet, and the toes are more rounded, because I don't have pointy toes.

Stash Love

I generally just gush a bit about new stuff that I've acquired, but I don't give it all its own section.  This time I may have gone a little over-board, and yeah, my stash acquisitions require their own section.  It almost goes without saying that everything in this section has come from the marvelous and wonderful Countess Ablaze.

Remember I said that my sister had ordered my absolute favourites from the February Odyssey Trail update, due to us being on our way to see Queen and Adam Lambert play at Sheffield Arena?  Well, I've now picked that parcel up from my sister, and it contained these:

The yarn is called "A child endures many griefs", and is on the Lord Kitchener base, which is a 4-ply Blue faced Leicester and silk combo.  The fibre is "Drawn dark water", on Mulberry silk, kid mohair, and nylon.

Then I was going to be good, and not buy anything else until the next Odyssey update, but the Countess did a mid-month update that included these:

The top one is "Nerds prefer their rainbows darker" on The English Gentleman, which is a DK mix of Blue faced Leicester, and Masham, and is entirely UK sourced.  The bottom one is a one of a kind colourway that everyone thinks resembles a nebula, on a 4-ply Viscount of spark sock blank.

Sock Blanks

When the sock blanks first appeared on the Countess Ablaze website, a few people asked what they actually are.  It does seem a bit strange to buy yarn that has already been knitted up, but there is a purpose to it for the dyer.  It makes the creation of certain types of colourway much easier, in particular gradients.

This is a photo of a sock blank that I really wanted from the latest update, but I wasn't fast enough, so they sold out before I got there, it shows how gradients work on these:

You also get to enjoy the far superior camera skills of the Countess in that photo!  But you can see how knitting the yarn into a simple rectangle makes it easier to dye long colour changes, or wide stripes, or deliberate pooling effects.  Then when you knit with it, you can unravel the entire blank, and wind it into a ball as normal, or you can even just unravel as you go, and knit straight from the blank.

If you don't like that wibbly, frogged effect when you're working with the yarn, then you can unravel it, re-skein it, and wash it, then ball it up in the usual way, but that seems like an awful lot of faff to me!

Penguins and colour-therapy

I have acquired only one new penguin since my last update:

What you can't see in this photo is that you can stick a pencil up his bum, and he'll sharpen it for you.  This is useful, because I've recently discovered a new craze - adult colouring books.

Apparently colouring is therapeutic, calming, and relaxing.  I can't really comment on that, but it certainly is addictive!

Don't worry though, I'm not going to let it interfere with my knitting time, at least not once my own body has stopped interfering anyway!

Goodbye for now my dears.

Accidental Monogamy

The decision that it's time to do a blog update seems to come to me randomly, on a whim.  Well it came to me a few days ago, and I suddenly realised that I just didn't have anything to show you.  How can this be?  I'm always working on several things at a time, I finish about 4 projects a month on average, so how could I have nothing new to talk about after nearly 3 weeks?

Then it hit me that without any intention to do so, I'd been entirely monogamous in my knitting for those 3 weeks.  I'd been working on only 1 project, and it was a big enough project that it did take that long to finish, although this may slightly have been because my joints have been playing up, which meant I couldn't actually knit for more than about 40 minutes at a stretch without having to rest for a bit.

It's not a complicated project, and certainly not the biggest I've ever completed, but it was a joy to work on.  This yarn was just gorgeous!  It's Sovereign by Countess Ablaze, 4-ply, alpaca, silk, and cashmere.  Not an every day yarn, certainly not the sort of thing you'd make socks from, but if you're making something to be worn close to the sensitive skin of your neck, then this is definitely the stuff!

Here's a closer look, because it's impossible to do the colours justice in a photograph, but this photo does better than the first one:

Yes, I'm a big Countess Ablaze fan-girl, but I don't care.  She chooses gorgeous yarn bases, then produces the most deep, intense, and beautiful colourways, and she finds her inspiration in the best places.  She's also a very lovely woman to know.  

So of course, here's more of her work, just arrived this week from the second Odyssey update:

I suspect that this one will sit in my stash until around autumn, then it will demand to be something to keep me warm and look like the turning leaves.

And the last bit of Countess love is this:

The Stitchnerds group on Ravely are doing another KAL for March.  This time the theme is the colour green, representing St Patricks day, and the first buds of spring.  I've chosen this yarn, and I'm going to make a nice light spring shawl.  One can never have too many shawls!

However, I'm not going to remain monogamous.  I just don't think it's in my nature ;)

I've already cast on a new pair of socks for myself, because spring may well be on its way, but it still feels a lot like winter to me!

This yarn is ZigZag by King Cole.  They cater mostly to the budget end of the scale, but they do it well, and ZigZag is my favourite work-a-day sock yarn, because you can't buy luxury hand-dyed merino all the time if you have normal finances.

Bendy Knitters

I try not to dwell on my health issues.  The last couple of months haven't made it easy.  I'm now just one step away from a final, formal diagnosis, and confirmation that what I suffer from is Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS).  

However, as though summoned by my need to not feel so isolated by my condition, an article appeared in Simply Knitting this month about The Bendy Knitter.  She's in a very similar situation to mine, yet she has taken ownership of her condition, and of her life. 

I also found this lovely video diary called Issues with my Tissues, of a woman who decides she will complete the London Marathon, despite knowing the pain and difficulty that doing so will cause her.  It's reassuring, since I'm effectively doing the same in running the Great North Run later this year!

I truely hope that the appearance of stories like these will help to raise awareness of the condition, because awareness, and understanding, are the things that can help us lead a relatively normal life.  Without those things, we will continue to be branded lazy hypochondriacs, simply because EDS is an invisible illness.

Penguins now?

Look what Kelly bought me last week:

I hear what you're saying now.  You're saying "That is plainly a monkey!  It is not a penguin!"

But look! :

See, all is well :)

That's all for now my dears, sweet dreams.