Comprehensibilty optional

I'm a few hours off of my flight home from Canada. We flew through Toronto and London... which resulted in my poking DH awake 9 1/2 hours after we left to show him we were flying over our start point. But all our flights left on time, arrived on time, and brought us to where we were supposed to be, even if we didn't really want to be there (Heathrow Airport, I'm looking at you). We were about 16 hours travelling (overnight) and I slept about half an hour of that, so please forgive me if I'm not particularly coherent.

When I got home today, there was a lovely clean house waiting for me (my house sitter is a wonderful person), a small cuddly cat (who seems SO small next to my parents 5 month old, 35 pound puppy), and a parcel from Belfast. Over at Ravelry we did another Irish Christmas swap, and I'd heard that my parcel arrived while I was away! So after cuddling the cat, I tore into the parcel.


As you can see, I found lots of lovely yarn inside! Hopefully I can get this right without having to get up off my chair. There are two balls of Twilleys Freedom (which I've never tried, but is lovely and cozy soft - maybe a hat?) Three balls of purple Sublime merino silk something mix (I'm not getting up to find out) and some Trekking handpaint. It's all yummy, and the colours are just perfect for me. And speaking of yummy, my swap person listened when I said I love mint choocolate, and included some after eights, and a (Belfast made?) mint bar. I must admit that some of the After Eights are empty wrappers in this picture. And finally there was a little notebook (which I seem to have misplaced, it's the jetlag, I can't remember anything and you wouldn't believe the number of typos I'm making here) and a sweet Christmas card, with a cat that could be my Sadie's sibling on the front of it.

Thank you secret Santa, it was great to have my parcel to look forward to when I got through the front door today!

I was going to post more (like shawl pictures) but I think they can wait until another day, when it doesn't take me three tries to spell 'another'.

A tale of two socks

Some might remember some socks I made last year out of Fleece Artist Sea Wool. One of my first pairs of socks, and I was rather pleased with them at the time. However, as time wore on, I was slightly annoyed with the way the colour faded.


I debated blogging about them, but decided that it wouldn't be right to name and shame without giving Fleece Artist a chance to do something about it. So I emailed them, including before and after pictures.

Literally 5 minutes later (and I do mean literally, I checked my email) I had an email back from the company. They apologised, and offered me a skein of their newer yarn, Casbah. I of course said yes to that, and it was sent to my parents house. All in all, brilliant customer service. When I arrived at my parents, this was waiting for me...

Isn't it beautiful? I'm not sure what it's going to be, but I think it might be too nice for socks.

I'd also done a little online shopping, and so some Oceanwinds sock yarn was waiting for me too.

Looking outside, there's a good chance of a white Christmas this year.


See the stop sign? There are roads there, but the plow hadn't been by yet.

Henley Perfected

The name is appropriate. It did take me a while to get this sweater perfected. Ages and ages, or so it seemed... not to mention the twice frogging of the stocking stitch portion of the body. And still I don't have a decent picture of me in it, and can't be bothered to put the effort in to getting one. So you get the self portrait.

Despite all that, I'm happy with this sweater. I tired hard to make it work for me, and I think it does. So, the mods:

• Knit in the round
• Lengthened by several inches
• Lace portion lengthened, so not to cut the bust in half
• Knit a size big because my tension was off
• Knit the sleeves a size small at the bottom, and then increased to the proper size. I didn't like how HUGE they were going to be otherwise.

The yarn is Debbie Bliss Rialto 4 ply. Lovely yarn, really nice to knit with, great sproing to it and still very durable.

PS I'm on holidays! I may or may not be here while I'm away :)

Knitter on a plane

I leave for Canada in 3 days. This year I get to spend 2 1/2 weeks in my hone country - the first few days in the city I was born in, and then the rest of the time in my hometown. I'm being asked frequently if I've packed yet, and the answer is a big fat 'NO'. I've got a few carrier bags of presents that have been bought and must be packed, along with sweets that my family like that can't be bought there. But my own packing? Nothing. I haven't even got the suitcases out of the attic. I spent all evening yesterday baking (not the most practical, baking 5 batches of cookies the week before you leave the country, but I hope to give them all away).

I have, however, decided what knitting to bring.
Eagle eyed readers will recognise this as the yarn I brought to Canada last year, while I was knitting the snakes and ladders shawl. I got through the whole first ball, and then stalled. A few months ago I dragged it out and tried again, starting on the second ball. But I was obviously living in denial (not just a river in Egypt) when I started this shawl. Anyone with half a brain can see that these balls, although the same yarn in the same colourway bought at the same time, are nowhere near the same colour. So the second half of the shawl was a completely different colour than the first. And the shawl got frogged. I'm obviously going to have to stripe the two yarns together ( it's hand dye, I should have known this, but denial is a lovely place to visit). I reskeined, soaked the yarn, and when it was dry it got re-wound.

So plan b is a simple stocking stitch shawl. Melody's shawl. Except I'm going to wing it without a pattern. Nice, compact, thoughtless knitting for airplanes, airports, and whereever else I may end up. I've also got at least 2 skeins of sock yarn waiting for me at home, so if I get bored there's always breaking into one of them as a distraction.

Is it ok that I'm thinking of bringing my ball winder on holidays with me?

Best guess

Two pairs of christmas socks, with time to spare. I had decided to do these for Christmas presents, and I had to knit a sock a week to make sure they were done before I head home for the holidays. We leave Saturday, so I think I've done well!

BIG socks, for BIG feet.
Yarn: Cherry Tree Hill Supersock Merino in colour Green Mountain Madness
Pattern: Winging it toe up pattern. There's not much out there written for size 12 feet.



These ones are a bit small for me, but at least I could attempt to model them on my own feet.

Yarn: Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock Multi, Colour SWAK, the February Jimmy Beans colour
Pattern: The same makey upey pattern of the other pair, but this one top down.

Fingers crossed they fit. The sizing is 'best guess'... I'm pretty sure the pink ones will, but the other ones look SO big, I'm worried. But then, they're for BIG feet.