Mending Monday 2016 #1

Hello chaps.

The new year has heightened my desire to mend stuff. Or, maybe it's just that I'm in tidying up mode and have been sorting things out like a demon. Anywayz, sometime in the Christmas melee, I got my sock needlez out and rummaged in the darkest corners of my knitting bag for a pair of socks that needed repairz. 

(Sorry about the z thing, I'll stop now. Promize)

Here they are in all their newly knitted glory sometime ago (2011 I think!). But they were getting dangerously thin on the ball of the foot, and needed some repairs. Of course, I decided not to darn the darn things, but rather to reknit a goodly portion of the foot.

I chose the spot, snipped a single stitch and then carefully picked up the live stitches with my needles.

As the original socks are striped using two yarns, I picked out two sympathetic yarn colours from the stash and got to work. They aren't a perfect match, but hey, these dudes will be on my feet and unless I am at home, they will be inside my shoes and Noone Will Ever Know.  Okay? 

This time I alternated the colours stitch by stitch rather than round by round to give a thicker and more durable fabric. I did this before with my socksperimental socks
and the man socks with a squidgy toe. Scientists have not yet reported on the outcomes of these important sock trials; an independent commission has been established to examine the reasons for the non-reporting. It is expected that resignations will follow. 

Where was I? Oh yes, re-socking: a surpisingly short time later (silent witness anyone?) the blighters were done and on my feet.  Hurrah for mending. Hurrah for hand-knitted socks. Hurrah for extensive sock yarn collections. Hurrah for me! 

Ahem. 

My reward for mending these socks is to make myself a cowlowlowlowl. Not sure about the pattern yet, but have picked out the yarn...

41/7

It's that time of year again. The one where I have my birthday (41, ahem) followed shortly after by our wedding anniversary (7 years). To add to the excitement, my brother and sister in law arrived last weekend with their two young sons. 


It's such a shame that the weather has been so awful - but if I have learned one thing in my 41 years on this earth, it is this: moaning about the weather never, ever, ever make one jot of difference to the weather that comes. You just have to make the best of it. So, the driest days have involved trips to beaches, farms, play parks and walks around and about; and the wettest days have involved trips to museums, swimming pools, soft play and inside sorts of places. Edinburgh's blessed with a number of such venues, so it hasn't been too hard - but still, a shame for them not to have seen some Scottish sunshine.

My in-laws organised a gathering of the wider family to celebrate the visitation from the American branch. As both my mother and father in law celebrate their 70th birthdays this year, we made the most of the opportunity to celebrate, and surprised them with birthday cake and champagne! They were completely unprepared for the surprise - but both seemed really delighted. Significant birthdays are always worth celebrating, and the greater the age, the more reason to take stock and give thanks for health and happiness. 


Meanwhile there has been knitting. Dolly (age 3-6 months) now has 2 sleeves. A back will follow methinks. There is also a sock making good progress - mostly encouraged by the tennis, which was superb this year - and one or two other things have sprung on and off the needles. A tank top began a week or so back, but was no sooner started than ripped again. Not. Quite. Right. 

FOs reporting for duty.

Deli is done - finished on Sunday evening while watching the color purple. (We have a Love Film subscription, and I'm trying to fill a few holes in my (our) cinematic education). Here is a bad phone photo of it in action on Monday.

Today I was in Glasgow at a conference. I took some small knitting with me and polished off baby beanie no. 10 before lunch. Then I accidently cast on a sock in the afternoon plenary. All I can say in my defence is: there was yarn, needles and a requirement for me to sit and listen to some people talking for an hour or two.

I'd show you the hat - which is super scrummy, using some Kaffe Fasset striping sock yarn in hot pink - but it has escaped somehow. I suspect it jumped out of my bag at the conference...  If you are in Glasgow and find it wandering about, do send it home!

The Cardigan of Doom (again)

On Saturday evening, I was booked to baby sit for a family we know. They had a dinner of spectacular proportion to go to (17 courses or perhaps 29), and I knew that I would have a long evening to entertain myself. The plan was this: to seam the cardigan of doom and continue with the knitted edging which goes on for several hundred yards seemingly. I got my bag ready in good time, and when the time was right, I set off to supervise someone else's children into bed (with an obligatory story or two) and then settle down on someone else's sofa for the evening. After reading the paper and spending some time trying to work out which combination of FOUR remote controls resulted in a tv with both sound AND picture, I picked up my bag to begin. I hauled the sorry nicely blocked pieces out of my knitting bag and set them aside. Then I reached in for my scissors and needle case. And, it was at this point that my plans for the evening broke down. Neither scissors nor needle case were actually in my bag - and I believe scientists have established beyond doubt that those two things are fundamental for sewing up anything you might care to mention. I was stumped. I was flummoxed. I was completely bojangled.

Fortunately, before leaving my own two chiddlers at home for the evening, I had stuffed the boy socks into my knitting bag, just in case.

Just as well. Sock two progressed from just started to more than half done, just like that. I finished it last night, and tried it on my sleeping son to make sure it wasn't too small. Save for one small detail (some blocks of duplicate stitch on the sole to indicate the approximate size of the sock- I'll show you sometime) - they are all done and in the (very smug) Christmas box. And the cardigan of doom still mocks me from the knitting bag...

Making Monday: making, baking and being at home

As is always the case, a week was simply not long enough to accomplish everything on my list, but it was good to get some things finished, and some things started, and to have a few days where work interruptions were minimal and the priorities were unashamedly domestic.There was...

: : knitting - two socks finished (but not a pair)

: : sewing - one small t-shirt refashioned and two pairs of trousers cut out ready for stitching (both repurposed from my old trousers)

: : baking - a lemon drizzle cake (from Nigella's domestic goddess book) and a delicious quiche (mushroom and leek) and home-made pizzas and a jumble fruit crumble

and playing, and meeting friends, and some trips out, including one to see this: the Tour of Britain, which started yesterday in Peebles.

And there was a wee bit of gardening (in between the showers) and paperwork and sorting and decluttering (three big bags for the charity shop), but a bit less sleep than we hoped for on account of a small person with a tickly cough but, all in all, it was a good week.

Don't forget to check out other making mondays to see what everyone else has been doing...

Powerless

I have been taken over by an inner sock knitting demon. I am powerless to resist. My husband thinks I am addicted.

So, with Java on the needles and coming on nicely (now at the heel of sock one), a pair of stripey scrappy socks cast themselves on early on Tuesday so that I could knit them while I read and marked 4 student dissertations (cables and charts are not conducive to knitting while reading, so it was imperative to have something plain to knit). It was a day well spent - and by bedtime I had done my marking and kitchenered the toe of sock 1 (here's the yarn I chose). 

The second sock has taken two days (rather than one) to knit, and I will shortly kitchener the toe. With this in mind, I found myself rummaging in the stash this morning for some more sock yarn, as you do: get up, have breakfast, wake and feed children, get work and nursery bags ready, get everyone dressed, select and weigh sock yarn.

As my sock drawer is quite full these days, I'm trying to get ahead with gift/birthday/christmas knitting. The almost finished green/grey socks knit this week are for my mum (christmas) and as my dad's birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks, the next ones will be for him.

Blood

On Saturday I took myself and my knitting into town. My main purpose was to donate blood and I thought I would take my twisted sock with me to work on while I waited. The weather was dry and bright; a lovely autumn morning. I arrived just after the donating suite opened and only managed one or two rounds of sock knitting before filling out my questionnaire and going through to give up some claret. As usual, the staff were cheery and chatty and nothing short of lovely. As if that weren't enough, the Scottish Blood Service includes Tunnocks tea cakes amongst its offerings for donors.

Baby Elias is still rather poorly, so although we are very far away from his hospital bed, I thought it was a good thing to do with him in mind. Get well little man; we are all thinking of you.