Progress...

Hello again my dears, I hope that you're all keeping safe and well.

I'm feeling a bit more positive than I have been so far this year.  Things are generally looking a little more hopeful in the world.  Several promising potential vaccines to COVID 19 are almost ready for release, although it will be some time before enough can be synthesised to treat the entire population, but at least the end is finally in sight.  Joe Biden won the US election, so in January there will be a genuine leader back in the White House.  While he's hardly the answer to all the world's ills, he will at least listen to experts, follow the science, and hopefully this will mean that with some persuasion he will stop funding fossil fuels at the expense of future generations, and every other creature that we share this planet with, allowing some small possibility that we may yet survive the climate crisis.

Of course, right now we're back in lockdown, and we don't know if we'll be out of it before Christmas.  Not just that, but this morning Stephen woke up with a cough... He was supposed to be in the office today, but obviously that was too great a risk, so instead he went to get tested, and we now have to isolate at least until we get the results.  This evening, I've started coughing too.

So, I'm going to assume that we've just got some seasonal bug until I have proof to the contrary.  

FO's

In the last month I am proud to say that I've finished 7 projects!  I can't show you all of them, because a couple of them are intended to be Christmas presents.  Not the most exciting presents, but at least I'd like to keep them a surprise.  So I won't show you those until after they've been given to their new owners.

You saw the beginnings of these last time.  Stephen still hasn't bought his winter boots, but at least he has some more comfy socks.

The pattern is my standard sock pattern, and the yarn is Woolcraft Superwash Sock, in the colourway 1517.

No, I don't know why I pulled this face either.

The hat is Damaris Slouchy Beanie by Kunbi Aya-Okanlawon.  She asked if I would test knit it for her on quite short notice, and of course I agreed.  Once I settled into the pattern, I really enjoyed it.  It uses the mosaic technique, so it's much easier than it looks. I'm really pleased with it.

The yarn is Lang Yarns Yak, in the colourways 0003, and 0090.  This is a brilliant yarn for a hat, as it's so soft, and so warm, and it has absolutely none of the itchiness that many wool yarns can produce when you get a bit warm and sweaty wearing it.

Finally, after almost 7 years, and being ripped back to nothing 3 times, I have finished this gorgeous little shawl! I am in love with the Celtic cable designs!

The pattern is Kyna by Lucy Hague, and the yarn is Fyberspates Vivacious in the colourway "Deep Forest".

These little critters are from a game called "Among Us".  I've never played it, but Gemma, Demi, and my godsons play it.  Gemma asked me if I was up to crocheting them some of the aliens.  I thought maybe my godsons in particular might like the corpses too!

I am so ridiculously proud of these, because I've never considered myself to be especially skilled at crochet, and I've always struggled to read crochet patterns, yet I managed to follow the pattern to make these, and I'm quite pleased with how they've turned out.  Not only that, but at the time I made these, the corpse pattern wasn't available in English, so I adapted the main pattern myself, including making the bone!

The pattern is Among Us Amigurimi by Daniela Lopez, but it's written in Spanish.  The English version is available on Daniela's Instagram feed, under @TejiendoConArtemesia.

The yarns are a mix of commercial merino DK, by Rico Design, SMC, and Sublime Yarns.

Last month I showed you my 2020 Shetland Wool Week hat, Katie's Kep, by Wilma Malcolmson.  The hat pattern is always available for free every year, but this year there is also a glove pattern.  The glove pattern was sent to anyone who bought a supporters pack (remember the project bag and pin badge?)  and is also available in the 2019 Shetland Wool Week Annual. 

The more observant among you may notice that the left glove does not match the right.  This is because I did a lot of knitting on these while sitting up with insomnia, and didn't necessarily remember the order of colours correctly.  The especially observant among you may notice that neither glove matches the hat!  I decided that I could live with these errors, as they're still pretty, and they're very comfy and warm.

I really like this glove pattern, because it has an exceptionally simple construction.  No gusset increases, no starting the base of each digit on a different row, yet they're still really comfy and cosy!  These have instantly become my dog walking gloves of choice.

The pattern is called Katie's Fingerless Gloves, by Wilma Malcolmson.

The main yarn is Artesano Definition, in the colourway "Night", and the colourwork is made up of Made by Penguins mini-skeins from several of the Emperor Penguin subscription boxes.

WIPs

Only 2!  AND... they're both long term projects that I'm aiming to finish before the end of this year!

In February last year I cast this sock on.  Both yarn, and pattern came in my January 2019 Knitcrate.  I don't often cast on as soon as I acquire yarn and pattern, and even less frequently (never before?) use the suggested yarn, in the suggested colourway!  But I really liked this combination.

I should have known just by looking at the pattern that this was a foolish plan, as there was never going to be the slightest chance that this pattern would fit my lipoedema legs.  When I realised this, I stopped working on the sock, but didn't want to rip it out, because I do still like the colour and pattern combination!  Then I thought about the fact that Becky has skinny ankles (when she hasn't fallen over and damaged them by running about all over the peak district anyway). So I decided to finish the socks, which makes me happy, then give them to Becky, which makes her happy!  Win-win!

The pattern for these is Winter Light by Laura Fahlin, and the yarn is Vidalana Ambient Sock, in the colourway "Robin's Promise".

Spot the glaringly obvious errors.  Multiple errors.

I did not spot these errors until I took this photograph.

This project has already spent almost 3 years in time-out due to one error that I couldn't live with in a gift knit.  If I don't cut my losses now, this will turn into my never ending guilt trip at the bottom of my WIP pile.  Much like the royal blue sweater that my mam started knitting for me the summer before I started high school at the age of 13, that she still hadn't finished when I graduated 3 years later.  Or when my sister graduated 2 years after that.  Or when our family friend Vikki graduated 7 years after that!

So I have decided to use the few squares that I've already knitted to turn this into an approximate rectangle, abandoning the pattern entirely, then it can be a dog blanket.  Finn keeps trying to steal it anyway, and he won't care about all the mistakes!

I still have 6 balls of this yarn left, so I shall use those to make a different blanket.  One that does not involve sewing lots of tiny squares together!

There is no pattern, because I designed this myself and never wrote it out properly.  That's the really crazy thing!  I hate sewing, yet I keep designing blankets that involve sewing together lots of tiny squares!

The yarn is Rico Design Baby So Soft, in the colourways 001, 007, and 015.

Stash Acquisition

Finally, this section is actually something resembling a reasonable size!

Given how many socks I knit, and the fact that I only use commercial sock yarn for anything that's going to have to deal with such heavy wear, I like to pick up sock yarn whenever I see colourways that I like.  So when Knit Nottingham shared the new selection of Opal Uni solid colours, and there were 2 lovely red shades (it's rare to find a good red), I dived right into those DM's and asked if there were any left for me!

These colourways are: Berry, Ruby Red, and Smoke.

This is my Made by Penguins November Little Penguin subscription, and the colourway is called "Neon Flamingo".

I'm not a big fan of pink, probably some internal conflict caused by years of being told that pink is for girls, and blue is for boys, when the whole time I'm like "I don't want pink! I want BLACK! And red! and purple!"  Having said that, I really like this colourway, and I don't even understand what it is about it that means I like it so much!  It's going to be a fantastic splash of contrast to my usual darker colour palette when I add a few squares of this to my mitred squares blanket!

Do you recall that last month I said I was allowing myself a little splurge in place of each of the yarn festivals that I would usually attend, but couldn't this year?  This is what I went for to make up for missing Bakewell Wool Gathering.

It's a dye kit by It's a Stitch Up, and excepting bowls and pans, it contains everything you need to start dying your own yarn using acid dyes.  I've tried a little bit of natural dying before, but I really wanted to source everything for that from natural sources, which made effective mordanting difficult.  I figure if I'm going to end up buying tubs of alum, then I may as well use modern dyes!  So that's what I'm going to try over Christmas.

I've no intentions of taking this any further than a bit of playing around for my own amusement, and for the sake of saying it's a skill I have.  I don't think I could deal with all the cleaning up!  Also, if all goes according to plan, we'll be getting a shiny new kitchen fitted some time next year.  I really don't want to ruin it with dying accidents!  

This kit contains 10 mini-skeins of 4-ply merino, 6 different colours of professional grade dyes, citric acid mordant, dropper bottles, stirring sticks, chemical spoon, and a book about dying techniques.

My most recent acquisition, and the only one that I can't really justify.  Except that Jillian of Mothy and the Squid is such a lovely, open, honest, and caring person, always trying to do good in the world, so she deserves good things to happen to her.  She currently does all of her dying either in her back garden (hardly ideal in British weather!  Especially at this time of year!) or in her kitchen.  When we all realised this (she shared a photo of her "work space"), many people urged her to set up a kickstarter.  She said that her business is how she earns money for things like renting studio space, so if we want her to have a studio, buy more of her yarn!  

So that's exactly what I did!

Since then, she has been convinced to set up a kickstarter for a studio, and I'm pleased to say that she should be in her new studio by the end of this year.  Even with all of this urging, she's still running giveaways to "give back" to the people who are supporting her!

These 5 mini-skein colourways are called (top to bottom) :

- Wild Flower Bouquet

- Hermit Crab

- Pansies

- Horse Chestnut

- Polar Light

Knitting Adjacent

It matches the project bag so perfectly, it's a little hard to see, but what I'm trying to show you here is the zipper-pull/zip-charm.

You'd think that with all the crafting I do my fingers must be pretty strong and dextrous, right?  It's true to an extent, in that one of the many reasons that I do these things is to keep my hands working, because the more I exercise the muscles, the more they support the ligaments that are weak because of my faulty collagen.  However, knitting puts very little pressure on my joints.  I'm doing a lot of movements, but there's no pushing and pulling on the joints, as I hold my knitting quite relaxed while I'm working.  I'm still entirely capable of dislocating a finger by pushing my fork into a bit of pasta, and occasionally entirely incapable of maintaining a strong enough grip on a tiny zipper-tag to actually be able to open or close the zip.  Mostly I deal with this by not using many items that have zips.  But I loved this project bag by Woolly Originals when I spotted it at Woolness last year, and at the time I was both financially flush, and grieving the recent loss of my dad, so I bought basically everything I saw at that festival.

Then earlier this year Mahliqua started making these zipper-pulls, and I knew I would end up buying one.  I resisted for longer than I thought I would.  Until I saw this particular one on Instagram, with it's burning embers colours in both yarn, and swarovski crystals.  It's perfect, and I love it!  I'm not even using this project bag right now, as it did contain my Katie's Fingerless Gloves, but I've kept it near my 'nest', just so I can look at this beautiful object!

More Shetland Wool Week 2020 goodness!

This year's annual is absolutely full of patterns, and not just for knitting either!  There's even a weaving pattern in there!  There's some serious long-term colourwork goals for me in this book!

I know that I don't really need any more stitch markers, but just look at how stunning these are!

The iridescent snowflakes I bought for no other reason than they are truly beautiful.  These are seeing a lot of use right now.

The glow-in-the-dark stars though!  I mean, you just have to give some appreciation to this genius!

They even have a genuinely useful purpose.  I'm terrible at remembering which way round to do my increases.  For some reason I'm not so bad with decreases, but every raglan shoulder I do I have to check every time!  Now I can mark my work with these, and everything will go so much more smoothly and quickly!

Photographing small things that glow Hax 101 - cut a small hole in the bottom of an empty cardboard tissue cube, place the large hole that the tissues used to come out of over the glowy things, ensure flash is turned off, place phone camera lens over the small hole you cut in the bottom.  Take photo.  Voila!  Your own tiny dark-box!

Finn

Time for the cutest pupper pics!

Cute, but also naughty!

He claims that the post just exploded all on it's own, and he had nothing at all to do with it...

See those little spotty bags that have been ripped out of a little cardboard box?  Fortunately their contents were not harmed.  You'll see what they are later.

We now have a post cage attached to the back of our door!

One night it was raining really heavily, so Stephen and I went to sit on the front doorstep to watch it, while drinking hot chocolate.  Finn did not understand this strange behaviour, but he really did want to share my hot chocolate.

Active pup is active.  I think he'd been considering chasing he ducks, but they flew away.  Even on these current cold, dark evenings, Finn still likes to get right in the lake!

He lived in kennels with other dogs for the first 7 years of his life.  He chased birds for work, and now he chases birds for joy.  He loves to be out in the countryside, running around, swimming in lakes and rivers, following all the exciting scents.

But he also loves his home comforts, and he is more than happily settled into his retirement life of sofa snuggles, cushions, blankets, and curling up between mummy and daddy in the big bed at night, making sure to steal just enough duvet that neither can quite manage to cover their arse.

Penguins!

I promised that there would be more this month, and I wasn't wrong!

Yeah, I know, this looks a lot more like a photo of Finn than a photo of a penguin.  I promise that it is a photo of a penguin, it's just that it's Finn's penguin, so I wasn't allowed to position it how I wanted it without it being stolen back.  So this is the best shot I got before he made it filthy.

Just an indication here of how soft and gentle Finn is with his toys, this penguin has a squeak.  We did not realise that it had a squeak for 2 whole days, even though he rarely put it down except to eat during that time.

These are 2 separate orders from Kate Elford.  The first of these was perfectly intact when I took possession of it.  The second was strewn all over the hall floor amid the detritus of it's own packaging (Thank you Kate for wrapping each item individually inside the parcel!) as well as the remains of a Mind Christmas appeal, and the envelope from this month's The Knitter magazine.

As well as the usual penguin pin badges, what we have here is penguin stitch markers!  2 wooden ones, and one ceramic one. (I missed out on the ceramic ones first time around, but I got one when she re-stocked!)  Also, an acrylic "Pea of Positivity" stitch marker, which is just adorable!

You know when you take a single canvas bag to the supermarket, because all you want is bread and mushrooms, but then the electric hum of the strip lights and the refrigeration units turns your brain into mush, so you wander around aimlessly adding things to your basket, so that when you eventually encounter a checkout, there's no way it's all going to fit in that one canvas bag?  

WWF giant penguin tote to the rescue!

When the staff at your local pharmacy set traps for you...

Recently a new display stand has appeared at our pharmacy, and it's right next to where you have to hang about waiting for your script to be dispensed.  It contains a selection of small microwavable plushies (Their bellies are stuffed with wheat, so they hold heat like a little furry hot water bottle).  Front and centre - penguins.  Of course.

Another tree decoration penguin.  Just one of those things that ends up in your basket in the supermarket when you're wandering around with your brain dribbling out of your ears, choosing which aisle you walk down next based largely on which one has the fewest other humans in it, rather than which one is most likely to be holding an item on your list.

When you're in a different supermarket than your local, because for some reason your local hasn't stocked lamb stock pots in over a month, and you've completely run out, but it's shepherds pie week next week.  Not only is your brain dribbling out of your ears, but you're also lost, because everything is in a different place, and the supermarket at Crystal Peaks is way bigger than the one in your nearest little town, and a different (posher) brand.  Then suddenly there is a size 6 plastic woman wearing a penguin top in front of you, so you have to go on clothes safari to find another one 3 times the size.  

You love the top so much that you wear it at the first available opportunity.  It's soft, and warm, and lovely, and it's got chocolate hobnob crumbs melted into it, and dog hairs all over it, and you realise that you haven't taken a photo of it yet.  So you wash it, and photograph it while it's still wet and hanging on the airing rack.

I really wasn't sure if I should put this in my Finished Objects section, or Penguins section.  Then I remembered that half of the people who "read" my blog skip right past the knitting stuff, because they've only come to look at photos of my dog, and the latest members of my penguin colony.

Last night I just wasn't feeling the knitting.  So I dug out my ancient cross stitch supplies, and a notebook with squared paper in, and made penguins.  

This is base model penguin.  Next I intend to try adding accessories, like hats, and/or scarves. The ideas seem to work on paper, but I've no idea how they'll transfer to the aida.  Watch this space to find out!

Right, that is all my dears.  Only 1:25am, and I didn't start writing until about 7:00pm!  I think this may actually be a record!

I shall be back in a little over a week for this year's pre-advent post.  There's a lot less in it this year, so I shouldn't struggle too much with keeping this promise!

Take care, be kind to others, and to yourself!