64 Litres of Sock Yarn

I'm back now from a lovely holiday. Shropshire was really interesting and we visited lots of castles and priories and whatnot. The we went on up to North Yorkshire to stay with my parents for my Mum's birthday. She had a lovely day and we had lots of nice outings.

I didn't get much knitting done while we were away, a bit of the latest sock but that was about it. I have done a bit more of the multi coloured cotton jumper since we have been back, and here is it so far:

Just the edgings to go now, the end is in sight! I have borrowed the DVD of Pride and Prejudice from my sister so I think that might be the evenings viewing while I finish this off. I have had a preliminary try on and it seems pretty good, although perhaps a little wide around the top of the sleeves. I think I will have to do the edgings and give it a nice little wash and push into shape before I pass judgement though.

Now to move not-so-smoothly into the subject of this post. Yesterday I had a trip to Staples in Horsham and got 4 64 litre plastic storage boxes. I have filled them all up already :-) They are just the right size to fit under our spare bed, so two have gone under there already filled with some of Paul's clothes and my dancing stuff. I have decided to use the other two to organise my yarn a bit. So one is full of sock yarn and the other has some of my odds and ends in. It is rather depressing to find that I have more than 64 litres of odds and ends!

If you have ever wondered what 64 litres of sock yarn looks like, here it is:

I think that should keep me going for a while :-)

Off to catch up on all the blogs I have missed.

The socks win

I've finally decided that it will be a couple of pairs of socks which will accompany me on holiday. They are nice and small and portable and just mindless enough :-)

Unfortunately not much actual knitting has got done over the last couple of days, but the washing machine has been on overdrive! I think we are now all washed and partly packed, I must go and consult my list and see what I have forgotten.

Hope the weather holds for our week and a bit away!

Mermaid

I forgot to mention in my last post, but after all the umming and ahhing I decided to buy the Hanne Falkenberg Mermaid kit in Colourway 4. I was rather worried about whether the colours would be ok but luckily they are wonderful, even nicer than they looked on the website. It is always a bit of a difficulty to gauge colour accurately from a website particularly with different monitor settings and whatnot. I know that my monitor usually shows things slightly darker than they really are, which means telling the difference between black, dark brown and dark blue on a website can often be a challenge! Anyway, here is a picture of the kit in its lovely smart bag!

I am going to be good and not start it until I have finished off some of the things I have on the needles at the moment. I find I am generally better to work on only a few things at once, enough for variety but not so many that I forget what I was thinking about for each one.

The multi-coloured cotton jumper is progressing but rather slowly now. I have joined the second sleeve in now and although the end is sort of in sight the rows now are obscenely long, I think it took me over an hour to knit the most recent row. At least each row is getting shorter and shorter, and I am just carrying on knitting til I think the neck is the right depth and then I shall have a think about the shoulders. Unfortunately it is not particularly photogenic right now in its scrunched-up-on-the-needles state so there isn't a picture for your delectation.

We are off on holiday on Friday for a week away which I'm really looking forward to. We are going to have a bit of an English Heritage fest for the weekend on our way up the country to visit my parents for the rest of the week. It is Mummy's birthday on Thursday 11th, I wont tell you what I have got her in case she gets round to reading this :-) Although actually quite a lot of her pressies are things she has requested.

As is often the case with holidays though I am having the customary what-knitting-to-take dilemma. The difficulty is that the multi-coloured jumper requires lots of balls of yarn taken with it since I haven't decided beyond the next stripe or two what colour or pattern I am using, also it is getting a bit big for dragging around. The to-be-felted bag is being made from oiled shetland and so requires a lot of hand washing, again more of a sit around knit rather than an on-the-go knit. I have a sock on the needles (what a surprise!) but I'm not sure how much time I will have for knitting, so will just one pair of socks be enough? Oh the choices, the choices!

I shall think on it all while doing another row on the multi-coloured jumper and contemplating what to feed my sister when she comes round for lunch tomorrow.

Hope the weather is good next week.