Excuse me while I yawn through this post. Like most parts of the UK, we’ve been treated to wet and windy weather over the past day or so. I don’t want to go out. The small people don’t want to go out. And the cat doesn’t want to go out. I don’t know how she does it. She’s must have a bladder the size of a football. But eventually, despite the wind and rain, she had to pay a visit outside. Only it wasn’t just before I went to bed. Or when I wake up. Oh no. It was at 4am this morning. I couldn’t even nudge Mr B to let her out as he’s away. *sighs* I need coffee. And is it too early for chocolate?
I am already on my second WIP of the year, but I’m afraid that and the finished one will have to stay secret for now. I would feel more smug than Smuggy McSmug of Smugtown who won the International Smugness Competition five years in a row if I could post a FO photo when it’s only mid January. I might cheat and backdate the post with the photos in when I can finally reveal them.
But my plan to knit the Dolphin Lace Scarf once this second project is done has been thwarted. Of course it has. I said not so long ago that it was hard for me to plan my knitting and there you have it. My lovely grandma who (as far as I am aware) is my only relative besides Mr B who wears the knitted socks I make, mentioned that she’d been wearing hers in bed recently. Not the Jaywalkers I knit her, but a pair of plain Opal ones that were knit pre-blogging. Well, that just won’t do. She clearly needs bedsocks!
I don’t know if it’s the same for anyone else (I imagine it is, because let’s face it, we’re all obsessed knitters) but I was already mentally looking at patterns and considering them as soon as she mentioned that she was wearing her socks as bedsocks. So my brain went something like “Ooh, bedsocks! Alpaca! Soft!” and before the conversation had ended, I had pretty much cast on for them.
Of course I didn’t, because I have a WIP and I am being good (ha!) but later in the day I went to my stash and found a skein of Artesano Hummingbird in Flamingo…
…and after working on my WIP all day, it couldn’t hurt to cast on just to see how it knitted..!
I should mention the pattern I’m sort of using. As I said before, my thoughts immediately went to these socks:
They’re the Heelless Sleeping Socks from Knitting Vintage Socks. They’re knit with fingering weight yarn and 2.75mm needles. With only 48 sts cast on, this would make them far too small. Hummingbird is DK weight, and I’m using 3.25mm dpns and getting a far bigger sock. But because the yarn is so heavily varigated, the stitch pattern was getting completely lost on the sock. So basically I’m knitting a plain tube which has no resemblence to the pattern other than the stitch count.
I know I could have used a plain yarn, but the buttery softness of the alpaca is perfect for cozy feet in bed. Plus it’s stash, and I get to feel virtuous for using up yarn I already have. It would be something if I could completely avoid buying any yarn at all this year. It’s certainly doable considering how much yarn I already own. *blushes* But this is not a resolution. Because then I won’t feel despondent when I don’t manage to stick to it.
This will be the perfect pattern for mindless knitting when I need to keep my hands busy but don’t want to knit something that needs any thought whatsoever. I just knit straight till they’re the right length and then shape the toe. 