Today we are expected to get two months of rain, in one day. *I* am also expected to travel to london for dinner with in-laws and other family members, and then come home again. Meh. We shall see.

However there are chips baking in the oven, and it’s not cold, and there is work and knitting, and more work to be done, and then Tour de France footage to watch, and sisters to talk to via googletalk so I am feeling very content.

Shall we look at some knitting? I think we shall.

The Ruana is coming along, slowly but surely.  It’s wonderful, almost-mindless knitting (the only decision is what colour to knit next, and for how long), so it’s great for when I’m watching Tour coverage, or films or whatever. Plus I’m putting all these random balls and half balls to use.  I still think I’m only going to wear it around the house, but I’m fine with that. We have a number of blankets that get used like that, but we can always do with more – especially in the depths of winter, and I can’t see that changing any time soon.

I actually finished these blue-green socks, but the weather is so dreadful that you really can’t get a sense of the colour from the photo I took this morning. So last weeks photo will have to do, till the weather changes again for the better.

I’m wearing them now, and they’re stretchy, and very comfortable (even though it’s really a bit too warm for socks right now.)

Lastly I finished my pegbag. And gave it teeth. Actually I don’t have very much to say about it. I knit it in the round, and it’s a slipknit stitch, so it was pretty easy, and quick. I used a small trouser hanger that I bought from the local drycleaners as the hanger part, so that the whole thing wouldn’t be too huge, and then grafted the top stitches together with the hanger in place, so that it all magically comes together at the top, all neatly. So actually I’m pretty pleased with that.

And it got used yesterday. So – yeah it’s a success. But I don’t really like using thick cotton very much…

(oooh! lightening! THUNDER!!)  Maybe I should unplug my laptop while I go have lunch?

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Hopefully next week I shall have more news about my business – it’s moving along now. 🙂

Scale Socks by Me

My Ravelry Post: here
Stitche Pattern: from Traditional Knitted Lace Shawls by Martha Waterman
Yarn: Claudia Hand Painted Yarns (sports weight – purple dot 1 skein
Needles: 3mm, and then 3.75mm for ankle upwards
Note: I am a toe-up sock person. In fact 99% of the time I’m a toe-up-both-socks-at-the-same-time person. Being sports weight these knitted up in no time.

Of course they’re completely unsuitable for July – yes it’s raining here in the UK but it’s also MUGGY, and so they’ve gone into the drawer, ready for when it starts getting chilly again.

Conclusion: I like them. I love the yarn – and the stitch held together well. (I’d like to knit another, finer pair, with a purl row between each vertical row of scales, which I think would look great.)

Currently I’m trying to knit up a number of dk/sports weight skeins into socks. This is not the season for it, but I’m loathed to buy more yarn until I do.

Plus there are knitting rules that I feel happy to stick to:

1. There is always a pair of socks on the go
2. There is always some lace and/or a shawl on the go (this will be the case of the forseeable future given the that Frost Flower Shawl is still only about 1/4 completed, and probably needs some more work putting into it).

And proving said rules, I already have another pair of socks on the go (and another fo to show, but I’ll leave that till next week), and I’m waiting for the shawl book my sister is bringing back, before I start my nannan’s shawl, since I’m still not 100% sure what pattern I’m going to use.

I am snooze-button knitting – that eternal round of ‘just 5 more minutes…’, which invariably leads to ‘I’m LATE!!’

Case in point – I am knitting while I wait for the camera to turn up on my desktop, while I wait for Flickr to upload my photo, while I wait for the page to load, even though I need to leave the house in 17 minutes if I’m going to get today’s quota of blackcurrants picked before dinner…

And what am I knitting?

Well I’m stash busting on a GRAND scale, and knitting this:

The Knitted Ruana from Folk Shawls by Cheryl Oberle.

 And here is the portion of my stash:

So many lovely colours to play with, and it’s only 236st a row, so it’s not even as if they take that long. And once you get to the end, because the tassles are made as you go, there is always yarn to cut, and choose and re-join, so the end of a row isn’t really the end…

And since I have 1hr of Tour de France highlights to watch every evening for the next three weeks, (not even including extra weekend coverage), I think this basket of yarn will get well used. 🙂