Purple Socks

I've finished my Christmas knitting! It was just two pairs of socks. They are both waiting for a wash and pat into shape so in the mean time as not much knitting has been done here recently I finally got round to taking some pictures of some socks I finished a while ago.

The yarn is Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in colour Purple Club, bought from Get Knitted . The pattern is Go With The Flow Socks from the Summer 2005 Interweave Knits magazine. I did alter the pattern a bit though, I didn't like the cuff so just worked a k4, p3 rib over 77 stitches for 20 rounds and then worked one round of k4, p2tog, p1 to give me 66 stitches for the leg (the original pattern had 60 stitches round for the leg so I just added in an extra pattern repeat).

Here they are from a different angle:

and a close up of the stitch pattern.
I am very pleased with them. The LL sock yarn is lovely to knit with and very soft to wear. I have only worn them a couple of times so far but they seem to be wearing well as well.

Yesterday was knitting group Christmas meeting which was good fun. After seeing all the curly whirly scarves I am almost tempted to actually get a move on and start one myself :-)

Nearly a crisis

In the end I took both the mobius scarf and Mummy's Christmas socks with me to Paris, and am glad I did. I managed to finish the socks so they are just waiting for a wash and then I can wrap them up! Goodness I am organised!?

So now onto the other knitted Christmas present. If you are reading this Annie please look away now.

I bought the yarn for Annie's socks and Mummy's socks at the same time, and it is supposed to be the same, 4ply alpaca from Texere, although the blue for Annie's socks came on cones rather than in balls. However as I started knitting with the blue it felt a bit thicker than the plum colour I used for Mummy's socks. This seemed fine though, the knitting is just more dense, but I am knitting Annie's on fewer stitches anyway so they shouldn't come out too big. All was going swimmingly until when I was about half way down the foot part (these are knitted top down) I glanced down at the cone and felt the first twinge of an approaching panic. I could see the cardboard of the cone through the yarn, there really wasn't much yarn left on the cone.

It is always odd the compulsion to knit faster when you think you are going to run out of yarn. So yesterday was spent in a frantic rush to the finish. Which would I reach first? The end of the sock, or the end of the yarn? Luckily the sock won, so here is the first sock:

and the yarn left on the cone:
That was cutting it very fine.
I have started on the second sock, and am knitting away hoping that there will be at least as much yardage (it is odd we don't seem to use the word metrage) on the second cone.

I am feeling very virtuous that I am 3/4 of the way through my Christmas knitting already (it always helps to set nice low targets, then you can enjoy the feeling of reaching them :-) ).

Just a quick post

Just a quick post as I am off to Paris in the morning for a conference. Since I finished writing my talk I have been worrying about the second most important thing: what knitting to take with me. It had to be something small and easy but which could occupy me for several hours on the Eurostar and possibly in breaks too. So I have cast on for a mobius scarf (does anyone know how to do umlauts?). Here it is after knitting the first row.

Should be a good bit of fairly mindless knitting, and is vaguely appropriate since the conference is history and philosophy of maths, and I am talking about geometry. The yarn is baby silk, 80% baby alpaca, 20% silk bought from Elann. It feels absolutely gorgeous. I have cast on 336 (approx, it is a scarf after all) stitches on a 3.5mm, 100cm addi turbo and now the dreadful first row is out of the way it seems to be going quite well. The cast on is in Cat Bordhi's Treasury of Magical Knitting, and is really clever, although I haven't yet mastered the art of not doing it too tight. It all seems to work out ok in the end but the first row is a devil to knit.

Mummy's christmas present socks are coming along, I have just passed the heel of the second sock. I'm not sure whether to take them with me to finish off or not, I might see how the space goes.

Here they are with the second sock on my Brittany birch needles.

Anyway, better dash, time to try and work out what I have forgotten.