I’m still a bit dim

But at least not imagining things.

It turns out if you keep scrolling through Diagon Ally, past the charts, there are in fact written instructions for each foot. Sigh.

See what I mean about lacking brain power right now?

So the socks have come out of the naughty corner, and as of this morning I can just about see the beginning of the foot pattern emerging.

Hopefully I have enough wits left to follow the written part and I won’t have to frog the whole sock. Do please keep your fingers crossed for me!

Hannah

xXx

WIP Wednesday 12.08.20

Current WIP count: 7

The Beachcombing blanket has been languishing for a while because I wasn’t sure what to do about the border.

Of course Eleonora designed a lovely border for it, but it involves these big bobbles that look like bouys and I’m really iffy about appendages on my yarny makes. It’s far too easy for them to snag or get caught, and I had visions of one of the bobbles tearing off and unravelling the whole border.

So I didn’t want to do that, but I had no idea what to do instead. Until Monday, when I came across this video for a wavy shell border.

Waves and shells fit nicely into the seaside theme of the blanket, and it looks good – win win!  Plus it’s a bit of a yarn-muncher so that’s helping with stash mountain as well. Now I know what I’m doing it’s whizzing along and I should be able to cross this off the WIP list by the end of this week. Hooray!

Hannah

xXx

WIP Wednesday 05.08.20

Current WIP count: 7

Yes I’m one WIP down, but that’s because I frogged rather than finished something.

The Havana blanket has been sitting in a box for over a year, and I realised the thought of working on it wasn’t bringing me any joy, so I frogged it.
I’m actually quite relieved now it’s gone. Maybe I’ll try again one day if I find the right yarn.

I’m also chugging along with my socks. Apologies for the photo quality – it’s miserable weather in Scotlandia today.

I sort of wish I’d gone for a contrasting heel as well, especially looking at the amount of main yarn I have left.

So these may end up as not-quite-matching socks in the end. That’s okay though; they’re only for me and hardly anyone will see the toes whether they match or not. I can’t wait to get these done and make a start on another pair for The boyfriend.

Hannah
xXx

WIP Wednesday 22.07.19

I finally managed to tear myself away from knitting socks, although I didn’t get away from them completely.

At the bottom of my wardrobe there’s been a pile of holey socks accumulating over the years, and there they would probably still be if I hadn’t suddenly hit a shortage. Yes, I wore through so many pairs of socks that I didn’t even have enough left to last a week! It was beyond time to get on with it.

You may remember the moth incident a few months ago. Well that left me with lots of short pieces of sock yarn far too small to make anything with.

I quite like the look of visible mending so I decided to use them for fixing all the socks, regardless of colour.

The first couple were done and fastened off before I remembered you’re supposed to do them inside out, but now I’m getting the hang of it and I can see the stitches getting neater each time.

I still don’t know why mending things feels so satisfying, but add in using up those scraps of yarn I thought were goners and it’s even better. I may never get rid of old socks again!

Hannah

xXx

Not really moving that WIP list along, am I?

Current WIP count: 8

I’m a bit behind with my CAL blanket, since the squares took foreverrrrr to dry. At the weekend I’d had enough and got the hairdryer out to finish them off so I could finally get on with it.

After that the boyfriend and I spent about twenty minutes shuffling the squares around until I was happy that the randomly bright-looking squares balanced each other out. It was…interesting trying to make sure the colours all worked while keeping the squares with the same pattern apart, but we got there in the end.

So now I’m joining, joining, joining and looking forward to starting the next crochet part; the border.

I’m pretty excited about it!

Hannah

xXx

Ends and ribbing

Current WIP count: 8

I’m still working away at my Beachcombing CAL

I’m even being a grown up and working the ends in (almost) as I go, instead of leaving them all to the end. That’s my task for today.

Turns out the only thing I like less than sewing in ends is doing ribbing on 2mm needles. This is as far as I’ve got:

But in my defence, I did accidentally pull out a needle yesterday and had to start again.

I will get there eventually!

Hannah

xXx

A sort-of finish

I finished my square!

So it is an FO, but obviously I haven’t finished the blanket what with the next part of the CAL not being released yet.

This is another stash busting exercise, still trying to use up the ridiculous amount of cotton yarn I bought however many years ago. I probably could have matched the pattern colours, but I have a looooot of blue shades so I started there and chose a few colours that worked with them.

I rather like it!

Hannah

xXx

WIP Wednesdayyyyyy

Current WIP count: 8

Oh look, another WIP crept on there. It looks a bit creepy at the moment, but this is going to be a frog bookmark for the boyfriend.

It’s probably darker than it should be, but it was the closest yarn to me and he’s happy with it so on we go.

I’m still on the bottom ribbing of his Flax. Not too much left to go though, and then it’ll be sleeve island for me.

I now have a heel on my sock again, and I’m away down the foot.

It was soooo much easier the second time round – I’m almost looking forward to the next one. It is quite addictive, isn’t it?

Hannah

xXx

Frog socks

Current WIP count: 7

So the heel worked, yaaay!

But.

I tried it on and it fits, but the leg is just too long for me, and I’m seriously considering frogging back to shorten it.

Is that a bad choice? I think I might do it anyway.

Flax was my procrastination project while I was avoiding the heel so I’m almost at the bottom ribbing.

I was put on furlough from work today so it shouldn’t be too long til this is finished. Silver lining!

It’s definitely time to get some of these WIPs finished off so that will be my focus for a while.

Hannah

xXx

All of the WIPs

Current WIP count: 9

Yes, actually nine, but I can explain!

I’m doing a wee test knit of some baby bonnets. They took less than an hour each and as soon as I stitch the ears on they’ll be done and off the list.

I do so love cute baby makes.

I’ve also been chugging along with Flax, and you can already tell it’s going to be a jumper.

Turns out miles of stockinette is still miles of stockinette, even with a thicker yarn, and I’m starting to get a bit twitchy with it (hence the pattern test). But just working on it a little bit at a time throughout the day will get me there eventually, and at least it won’t take me 9 months like the Flax Light!

How’s everyone doing? I hope your yarn is keeping you happy and less anxious 🙂

Hannah

xXx

 

No matchy matchy

Current WIP count: 7

I was so hoping to get some matching fingerless gloves going for me and the boyfriend, but there were issues. Prepare yourself for a tale:

This Caron yarn is thicker than the pattern calls for so I made some adjustments for the first pair of gloves. Sadly the adjustments were not quite enough and they turned out a bit baggy around the wrist area.

The bf and I prefer our gloves to fit much closer so I immediately cast on another pair with fewer stitches. This turned out to be perfect size-wise, but that particular stitch count led to some serious chunks of colour pooling.

The bf is fine with this – hooray he has the fingerless gloves he asked for!

I am not fine with this – boo no matchy matchy for us.

The bigger gloves are now in my Knit for Peace box , and I’m debating whether I want a pair of my own enough to try again with a different yarn. The answer is probably yes.

My blue hat is progressing nicely; just a few more centimetres to go before starting to decrease.

In other news I decided to go through my FO box to see if any of it would be good for donating, and discovered that moths had been chowing down on some of my scarves. This has never happened to me before so I may have had a little cry before sorting it all out.

Thankfully, my favourite Sea Wave scarf was untouched (yes I stuck it in the freezer too just in case). One scarf was a total write-off. Another was only chewed at one end so I will chop that end off and frog the rest to reclaim the yarn. Everything else seems to be clean, but just to be sure I hot washed the acrylics and will gentle wash the rest when they’ve been in the freezer long enough for my liking.

And for the record, Amazon may be the root of all evil, but they did get a bumper pack of cedar wood blocks delivered less than 18 hours after I ordered them.

Hannah

xXx

Charity begins at home

Current WIP count: 8

It’s quite addictive, this making for charity thing. I’m onto a second pair of bears for Simba (small this time).

And a second hat to send to Knit for Peace.

Plus there’s been a call for knitted and crocheted items to help animals that have been injured in the fires in Australia. My boyfriend lived in Australia for a chunk of his life so the whole thing is hitting him pretty hard, and that makes it personal to me. I’m hoping to get a few things made up over the weekend so he can take them to the Post Office on Monday.

I just love the double joy of making something and knowing it will help someone (or an animal) to feel better.

Hannah

xXx