Why wait until your socks are finished before you wear them?

This sneaky photo was taken this morning while shoe shopping with Diane. She was buying, not me. I was just there in my role as Fashion Guru. *sniggers* If you’re buying boots to wear with handknitted socks it makes sense to try them on with said socks. But what if you don’t have any with you? Ever resourceful, Diane used the half-finished sock in her bag, and wandered around the shop with a circular needle around her leg, trailing the remaining yarn behind her. I think the sales assistant was slightly bemused by this mad behaviour by people who knit their own socks and don’t just buy them like normal people. Oh, and for the record, she didn’t buy the boot in the photo, but some gorgeous ones with ribbons on instead.

I have yarn pr0n to share too, of course. I have found The Yarn for my noggin warmer!

Two squidgily scrummy balls of Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino in pale pink for Grumperina’s Art Deco Beret (Ravelry link for those of you on there). And I don’t even have to knit it myself!

Pattern: Basic Hat Pattern from The Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns
Yarn: Jaeger Matchmaker Merino DK in Black, Cherry and Charcoal, 1 ball of each
Needles: 3.25mm and 3.75mm circs

Taking a break from unbloggable knitting to whip up two noggin warmers, now that the weather has decided to give up completely on summer and move straight to winter and COLD and WET. A lovely, simple, mindless pattern, I just knitted the colourways that were demanded requested.

So one Dennis the Menace striped hat for a Beano-obsessed six year old, and one simple grey hat with a couple of thin and sophisticated stripes suitable for a small person who is nine going on nineteen… I miss being able to put silly hats on them both without complaint.

Of course, I need snuggly headgear, too. So I think a trip to buy nice squishy yarn for a Bunny Hat is required!

One of the things I like best about being a knitter is that I get to buy myself presents in order to give other people presents!

This is more of Cairi’s lovely 100% merino sock yarn, for another person deserving of handknitted socks this Yuletide.

I’ve almost finished the first ball of yarn for Mabelle. Let’s see how far I’ve got:

Answer: 2½ inches. A combination of cables, which eat up yarn, and having 260 stitches on the needs equals not much progress. Bah. On the POSITIVE side, I have got the hang of cabling without a cable needle, and I’m getting faster at it and dropping the stitches less often. I found it very fiddly at first and nearly gave up and went back to using a cable needle, but it is definitely worth persevering.

I love the tiny cables. I so want to finish this sweater before Ally Pally, but in reality it’ll probably be Christmas. I have other knitting to do and so Mabelle will be my weekend knitting, while I get on with my “day job”.

I did it!! I steeked for the first time ever! And I’ve got a badge to say so!

The apprehension was much worse than actually doing it.

I did a crocheted steek both sides of where I was going to cut.

After cutting! The edges folded inwards…

…and the cut ends unravelled, but didn’t come loose!

I then just picked up along the edge and did a couple of rows of garter stitch. Job done! The Earth didn’t stop moving and dancing hippos didn’t bounce into the room, but I CUT my knitting.

Thank you so much, Diane, for forcing us to try steeking. It really was a lot less scary than I’d made it out to be. And I am so ready to knit this now!

The yarn for my Mabelle has arrived:

It’s King Cole Merino Blend DK in shade #136. I think it’s a discontinued colourway (I bought mine from this splendid eBay seller, but can’t find it on the King Cole website). Anyway, the shade name is “African Violet”, though I have renamed it “Tinky Winky”:

See? Far more like a Teletubby. I hope this doesn’t mean that I’ll look less like a delicate flower and more like a big purple creature with a triangle on my head.

It’s lovely yarn. I’ve used it before, pre-blogging, for a small person’s sweater and it washes and wears really well. And it’s incredibly reasonably priced, too. Even full-price, it’s no more expensive than some other yarns which are blended with acrylic and other synthetics. So now I’m a happy bunny with my yarn, it’s time to swatch!

There’s been a fair bit of knitting over the past week Chez Gypsy, but it’s the unbloggable sort. But I’d love to share it on here, so that I’ve got something interesting to post! In any case, there was no knitting of any sort this morning as I spent a good hour or so sewing on nametapes. Thursday is BACK TO SCHOOL day! It’s going to be very quiet and strange round here, but I can at least do grown up things again, like drink coffee with Diane. It’s been pretty miserable weather-wise this summer, and already it’s feeling a bit autumnal. I love autumn and winter. It means knitted hats and gloves and scarves and general woolly goodness!

I’ve started photographing my stash and uploading it to Ravelry. I found yarns I didn’t know I had, and it’s encouraging me to be ruthless and label some for sale or swap, though I might put it for sale on the forum or on here as well. It needs to go!

Of course, you don’t need me to tell you how utterly fabulously fantastic Ravelry is. And how it’s also a time swallowing, black hole of knitting mystery. I can pop on there for five minutes to upload a new project or yarn and find myself followng a trail of sweaters across the world and three hours have gone by. I’ve added so many new projects to my To Do list. Many are patterns that I really didn’t notice before, or looked a bit meh. But once I see them knitted up in a different colour, or with longer/shorter sleeves, etc, it changes my opinion completely.

Speaking of sweaters, it’s time for me to start one for myself. So when the yarn arrives, I’ll be casting on for Mabelle.