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.
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