Here, hold my socks...

Nathan is on holidays, which is particularly great in the Summer because we can do some good outside things with the kids! The other day we went to the local Ballarat Wildlife Park and the kids had a ball feeding the massive (lazy) roos.


I got one to hold my sock while the kids played on the playground. I hardly got the photo taken before he started nibbling my knitpicks needles!


Roos are such a pest in Australia. (But roo meat is very nice!)
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Finally, today, I cast off the Casbah socks!


Got to love Jeny's Super Stretchy Cast off for toe-up socks. It uses about 5m of yarn (hehe) but you could get both your feet into it.
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I used my standard toe-up pattern, but with 60st around and 2.5mm needles. The pattern is a rib that is K3 P3 on one row, and K5 P1 on alternate rows. The yarn is the very lovely Handmaiden Casbah! I shalt buy thee again!

P.S. White legs are "in fashion" in Australia, so you know! ;D

Cinderella

hehehehehe.

S62011

My Casbah socks are going so slowly that they're almost going backwards. My Peppermint Crisp socks are actually going backwards, as the pattern I picked wasn't working out and I ripped back to the toes. The Soctoberpuss socks are tiny, but they're not really getting any time.
So I don't think I'm going to manage a pair a month next year, even if the Yarn Harlot can. Instead, I'm joining the Super Special Six Pattern Sock Club 2011 (!) to make 6 pairs. Here are my yarn choices...

1. Patonyle sock yarn, chocolate-dyed by me.

2. Dream in Color Smooshy. Color: Spring Tickle

3. EGMTK. Color: dark green

4. Wired For Fibre Greta. Color: denim

5. Two Tees. Color: Kaleidoscope

6. Dream in Color Smooshy. Color: In Vino Veritas

Here's a link to the chosen sock patterns, with knitting dates and pictures. We're all doing Shur’tugal, Nutkin, Leyburns, Fox Faces, Nanner and Boyfriend Socks.

You might not have heard of Two Tees, as I think 'Sue from the knitting group" has only just started dyeing it. I got some pretty quick, from her HawthorneCottage site. Luckily she lives "around the corner", so she put it in my letterbox, all balled up for me :)

My eyes are bigger than my stomach at the moment. I have a contagious case of startitis, so stay away! hehe.

Green and gold Christmas

We may not have been winning the cricket lately, but I have been buying some Green and Gold anyway...

9 skeins, adding almost 1kg to the stash! But I have a plan (as part of my Christmas present to myself) to get rid of a less-lovely kilo of yarn to some op-shops, maybe with some spare needles...

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(BTW, the first two are Dream in Color Classy, colors "Spring Tickle" and "Still Spruce". The second two are Madelinetosh DK, colors "Forestry" and "Winter Wheat". Stole the images straight from Webs.)

Noviembre

End of October: 17.8kg
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minus
12g Matt's phone sock
60g eucalypt given to Kelly
95g chocolate hat
120 Fargyles
85 Picovoli extra (1 whole ball)
40 Baby's Jet dress
50g sacrificed to kids entertainment
-----462
plus
45g from last month
------427
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End of November: 17.4
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I have such a craving to buy yarn. LOL. We'll see if I can hold off until next year :)

Fleecey

Last year's shearing has produced, in this year, a 20g ball of 2ply brown wire that is tough and scratchy and horrible. This year I said I didn't want to keep any, until Nathan sent Byron in to give me a little handful of this:


Barely a hint of dirt or grass with long white fibers... Why on earth did I start with the short, dirty stuff from the black sheep last year? I haven't washed it. Just trimmed the very end off, which is felted into tiny curly tips. Makes your hands a bit greasy, but spins up great as it is! I've been pulling it from the side, just like that, though I can't do it quickly enough to use my wheel with this stuff.
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Inspired by my baby sister, I thought I'd attempt a felted scarf. I laid out my long strip of bubble wrap (3m at the post office was about $2.50) and laid out a mat of fibre running acrossways. Layer two was lengthways. Layer three was stripes of pale blue and pale green (as opposed to the white), and layer 4 was more white.
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This is 250cm x 30cm, laid out on towels on the floor (while the kids had a nap). Then I wet it, rolled it up, and agitated it around, scrunched it, microwaved it, threw it against a chair, washed it again, put it in the dryer... even ironed it. I also did Kelly's trick of trimming the sides with scissors!

The blue and green stripes were supposed to be hard to see, but this was a bit too light. Anyway, it ended up 200x25cm, and was far thicker than I guess it should be, but I wore it out on Friday and it was warm!!

See the storm coming in? It's rained all weekend.

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I have done some socking, including 8 teensy heels, but I got distracted again by the Lacy Baktus version of Baktus.

The colors don't really look like that. Silly fluoro light bulbs. It's WFF Elizabeth in Waterlilies, a rainbow mix of very soft colors.

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No yarn purchased so far this month. Pity I can't take off 200g for the felt scarf, but I didn't count my fibre in the big yarnweigh.

Two and a half FO's.

A little beanie whipped up out of the BWM rustic 12ply I dyed with RIT. I cabled the top with a random-make-it-up-as-you-go method that worked ok. Though cables are a bit pointless with dark yarn, hey?


Here's Zachy, fast asleep on the beanbags at playgroup, while 20 or so kids ran around him screaming! Can't half tell he's a number 3 child!

My Casbah socks are up to the gusset increases. They are taking forever, as 4ply socks with 2.5mm needles two-at-a-time do when you have three littlies. But I am loving every soft stitch! And weirdly (I don't even know why I chose these colors) the teal and purple and gold are appealing to me very much. Hmm.

Another FO! I actually finished this back in July or something, but it was too short and rolly. So I snipped off the ribbing and knit another skein on (about 6 inches) with some double garter on the bottom. Sorry about the dodgy photo. It's dark green Picovoli.

And yes, I have a few Zachary/chocolate rolls to shed yet. Must get onto that some time. Yaaaaawwwn!!!

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Byron and Jasmine picked me these from one of Nathan's many natives in the front yard. Not sure what it is. Some kind of purple bottle brush. Cute.

More green Fargyles.

Yep, I ran out of yarn. They're short little Fargyles, but I love em, and the Tosh Vintage was really nice to knit with. I don't seem to have the hang of twists; instead, I just do single cables, and this tightly twisted yarn is nice and non-splitty, which is pretty good for cabling without a cable needle. Also, I'm starting to think that knitting is a little bit like my brother described carpentry: All the skill is in covering your mistakes well! Hehehe.

Stash sums for October

OCTOBER
minus
270 Little Jet hats for kids
10 Cardi for Gill
35 socks for Byron
300 Jasmine's dress
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-615

plus
200g uruguay wool
460g wool from Webs
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+660

end of September 17.8
end of October 17.8
+45g


If I could resist buying new yarn, I would be doing so well! Hehehe.

Jasmine's dress

As part of Fair Trade fortnight, I did a bit of shopping at Tribes and Nations and found some little knitting bags! They're a good size for socks :D

Also finished one little dress for my 2yo. It's the Milo pattern, altered into a dress. I also used 10ply instead of 8, so this size 3 came out quite loose on Jasmine. I used up every skerrick of yarn, and even had to do a bit of green on that icord hem. LOL.

Here are my side seams. I increased every third row on either side of my 10 marked-off stitches under the arm. Then I used up my green with about 6 rounds of garter stitch. To weight it down a bit, I bound off with an icord edge, which is so neat, but eats up the yarn like crazy! lol. Now that it's done, it occurs to me that it now looks like the bottom has curled up. hehehe.

But it's enough to pull down the stocking stitch curl quite well. Jasmine condescended to have her singlet swapped for it, and even stood still for a picture or two.

It's a little loose, which is fine. It's more of a Winter dress anyway, to wear over tights and long sleeves. Looks like it will fit her for a few years!

The blue sky is now gone, and it's raining buckets. That's Spring for you.

Yarnvest

The Browns' chook hopped over the fence to tell me the Tosh Gum was ready for harvest.
And she was right. Thanks girl.

Picked three Madeline Tosh skeins in the flavors Forestry, Amber Trinket and Filigree.

Also found some Dream in Color Smooshy out on the log, wearing a name tag that said "En vino veritas". Doesn't that mean something like, "The truth will come out if you drink too much red"?

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In the letterbox was a little parcel from Fair Trade Connections. I'm doing a little 2 weeks challenge, where you have to spend $2 a day on Fair Trade products. Got this green wallet from an Indian leather shop, where they get paid a decent wage for their work for once.

I had a break from socks to whip up matching hats for the kids. It stash busted a few grams of yarn, and they all wore them for a few days, until it turned warm. Spring!

Then I had another anti-socktober tantrum, and cast on a milo dress for Jasmine. I'm making this in Lauren (by Wired For Fibre) and it's speeding along nicely. Already used about 200g.

Byron is wearing his socks around with enthusiasm. Last week he said to me as I walked past, "These socks are nice and comfy and warm!"

"That's good, Byron," I replied. "Maybe you can tell people at playgroup that I made them for you."

"NO! They might say, 'you can't have those socks!'... I don't want to tell anyone! I'm serious!"

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Kids!

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Goodnight.

Minisox

I think I'm one of the slowest knitters I know! Apart from the recent wedding, the gardening, the little girl's first haircut, reading Tara Moss and "Eat Pray Love" and my book about Grameen again, and watching Australia blitz the Commonwealth Games (between cartoons) I've had nothing to do except these tiny socks, and it's taken me almost 2 weeks!
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Slack. (The three kids and 6 other pairs of socks are no excuse.)
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I do like the multi-tone effect caused by accidently dyeing the skein while twisted up (where is my brain?) and despite how huge they seem to me, they somehow fit Byron's feet well. Sigh.
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Also bought 200g of fingering handspun from overseas somewhere. It was more multicolored in the picture, I thought, but I just plan to ply it together and knit some soft hats or something.
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35g knitted, 200g bought. Hmmm.

8 toes

Here's a pic for DrK. Eight little sock toes on two circs. Each sock is only 22 stitches around, so they're not much work each, though it takes a while to get around them all. Bit of fun. L-R: a grey/pink/blue bamboo sock yarn from Wired for Fibre, multicolored sock yarn from Bendigo Woollen Mills (bargain room), green Dream in Color smooshy, Elizabeth (by Wired for Fibre) in Waterlillies, BWM luxury 4ply handdyed, grey Koigu, handdyed 4ply sock yarn (?Sullivans) in rainbow stripes, WFF Rita (sock yarn) in Opulent.


A little blue and yellow stripey 10ply sock yarn for quick and easy socks for my 3yo.

One finished blue sock that will probably suffer SSS for the rest of its life. The afterthought heel worked well, though I should have made it bigger, I think.

Zach in his little fat hat, which is just a tube of Jet, two strands held together, kitchenered at the top. Why make anything complicated when he looks so cute in the simple stuff?

Here they all are in the back seat. Three baby seats are going to be squashed in there for a while, as you need a kids seat until they're 7, now. Note Byron's new jumper from Grandma :D