More socks

Finished the March socks already, spurred on by the thought of casting on my next pair of socks. Although I should be knitting Christmas gifts, I have decided to knit these for myself instead: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/aragorn-english . The yarn I had originally bought for these turned out to be too stripey to use for this particular pattern and I had no other suitable yarn in the stash. So I had to buy more. This gave me an excellent opportunity to place an order with Posh Yarns. My first order though I doubt it will be my last. The yarn, in its special pink packaging, arrived on Thursday.




Pretty isn't it? The yarn is 75% merino, 20% nylon (for durability) and 5% stellina sparkly fibres. The colourway is "Writing My Memoirs"

Tonight, I shall be winding my lovely new skein into a ball ready to cast on. I am even intending to knit a tension swatch for these socks since it would be awful to get to the end and find they didn't fit me.

The pattern is a lot more complicated than I have ever tackled before with several "new to me" techniques, including cabling without a cable needle, lifted increases, and a very, very cool tubular cast on involving starting on scrap yarn which is later removed. I practiced the cast on in scrap yarn last night and was pleased to find it wasn't nearly as difficult as I had expected it to be. And it didn't unravel when I undid the scrap yarn starter. I hope that's a good omen for the highly complicated looking charts and instructions that follow.

And for those readers in despair at the lack of sewing. Join the club. I am not happy about my lack of desire to sew. Its not like me but I suppose like most things, I will get up one day and decide to sew something, and that will be that. (She says, hopefully and with her fingers and toes crossed). The time required to set up and sew something is greater than that taken to pick up a bit of knitting. I think this is part of the problem as I don't feel I can justify a huge length of time away from the college work to make a whole garment, but knitting socks in ten minute coffee breaks seems more possible. I can pick up and put down knitting quite happily, but start a sewing project and I have no desire to do anything else, and certainly lack the willpower to put it down after ten minutes and go back to the college books.