My Jules sock pattern, from Issue 1 of The Inside Loop, is now available as a free Ravelry download. It features Mr B’s feet in a starring role on the front page; what more could you want?!

Normally at this time of year, I’d be deeply embroiled in gift knitting. Of course, this year things are very different and the normal half dozen gifts are being pared down to just one at the moment, given that I have no idea whether I’ll even get this one done in time. My heartfelt thanks go out to online shopping with free delivery which means I’ve bought most of my relatives’ gifts with just a few clicks and not even having to venture out into the rain.

But I couldn’t not make Mr B’s annual Christmas Socks. This will be the fourth year that he’s had them and it’s becoming a bit of a tradition now and given that it’s hard enough to buy presents for him as it is, this is at least one thing that I can give him that he can’t just go and buy himself.

I’m using the Mini Mochi I bought earlier in the year for these. So far it’s knitting up nicely. It does have a slight fuzzy halo and is a bit loosely/tightly spun in places, but the colours are gorgeous and it’s producing a very jaunty pair of socks.

Rose is two months old today. She’s started smiling a little bit, but only when the mood takes her, and smiling at her doesn’t always get one in return; most often she just looks surprised or faintly disgusted.

On Monday she was weighed for the first time in several weeks and is now 10lbs 5oz – almost 4lbs heavier than her birth weight. I’m not surprised, really, as I’ve noticed that she’s not swimming in her clothes so much, though still fits into the newborn size. And she has lovely little rolls of chub on her wrists and knees. Though I am probably the only woman in the world who puts on weight when breastfeeding, so the fact she’s eating like a horse isn’t having a positive effect on me.

ETA: Anna asked about Rose’s cardigan. It’s Helena from Knitty and one of the many baby things I knitted this year. I think if I made it again, I’d make the sleeves longer and roll them up as there’s still plenty of room in the body, but already the sleeves are beginning to skim her wrists (could possibly undo the hem to make these longer, though). Perhaps she’s part orang-utan…

My Pablo socks are now available to download directly from Ravelry as a free pattern. One down… several to go!

Just a quick message inbetween feeds.

You may have read on Ravelry that The Inside Loop website is closing down. Diane and I have decided that with us both having other commitments that take up a huge amount of our time that we won’t be producing any more issues and to therefore take the site down.

What this means is that the patterns and articles will still be available until the end of January, so there’s plenty of time to download any you want. Yesterday we contacted all of the contributors to let them know so that they could start looking into making their work available from alternate sources. We did want to leave it a few days before announcing the site closure to everyone else until we had heard back from all the contributors, so I wanted to reassure everyone that the site isn’t going to “do a Magknits” and just disappear.

It was a lot of fun and hard work producing the magazine for a year. I ate far too much cake, gossiped a huge amount and other than the mad last minute panics that we seemed to have with every issue, it hardly felt like work at all.

My patterns will be reformatted and then put up for download again, hopefully before the site goes down depending on how much free time I get. I would like to rejig a couple of the designs and remake them, but will post here with any updates. The articles I wrote will also end up on here.

And now it’s time for milk again and by the sound of it, another nappy change!