Same again

Inside out (and not quite finished).


It's a pretty good description for how I've been feeling lately. Still waiting for all the things I was waiting for last week and the stress is starting to leak out. I put my back out yesterday doing nothing more acrobatic than hanging up a towel and have been moving slowly and confined to quarters ever since. Fortunately this has not effected knitting and I'm feeling much better this evening.

I have reached the point on the vanilla cardi where I can go no further until the needles arrive and I'm beginning to worry about where they are. This thing is taking forever, and if I can't complete it very quickly it's going to get shelved by some deadline knitting. I hate to even consider this - we'll see what gets here first, I guess.

On the up side the socks are seeing a lot of action. I'm doing a bit of experimenting with these. The pattern is pretty much my usual way of knitting boy socks, with a 72 st cast on. The difference is that I've decided to go up a needle size after the gusset decreases are complete. I've mentioned before that himself has rather wide feet, and they're widest in the couple of inches before the toes. Of course I could also just decrease fewer stitches at the gusset....maybe I'll try that next.

I worked most of the sock on 2.25mm dpns and then went up to 2.5mm. Only a difference of a quarter millimeter, yet the difference in gauge is immediately apparent. The fabric on the larger needles is a little floppier than I like for socks and I'll be interested to see how it wears.

The yarn is Lang Color Aktion and appears to be a limited edition colourway. I picked it up some time ago in Canada intending it to be a pair of Jaywalkers (pattern now found here) for myself. I made the mistake of leaving in plain view, however, and Adam adopted it. Like a lot of the Lang sock yarns it came with a cute little spool of reinforcing yarn tucked in the center. Great idea but matching up a self-striping pattern on the yarn and the thread is totally beyond my mental energy level at present and I'm not really fond of the way striping yarns look on flap heels. So the heels and toes are in some solid brown stash yarn and I'm actually very happy with the way it looks. They were in danger of being too stripey.

After a miserable wet April, May has brought summery sunshine and much higher temperatures. After what seemed like a long winter it's a welcome relief. I have to wait, a warm breeze helps me think that good things are on the way.