Moody Blues...

... no, not my current state of mind (life is going pretty well at the moment) but you might think so from the predominant shade of my recent knitting.


I've been on another sock-yarn-squares romp and have cranked out about 20 in the last couple of weeks. These are the ones that have been blocked. There's quite a bit of Lorna's Laces in there, plus some Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino, some Rowanspun 4 ply left over from my stealth project and a bit of Artesano Alpaca Inca Cloud.


I've also got some socks on the needles - just my usual pattern with my green and red hand-dye for the Resident Radiologist. I just don't seem to have the will to knit anything bigger at the moment.

Here's who I saw for the first time on the canal this morning.

Last year they had two cygnets and one survived - hope they have a better time this year.

Unreliable intentions.

...when I made my rules about the sock yarn blanket, I said that I would block as I went along so at the end, all there would be left to do would be sewing up. I promptly failed in that aspiration and accumulated 40-odd more-or-less (often less) squares, all with woven in ends but all in need of a good wet block.


Last week, I had an unexpected day at home while an electrician re-wired our upstairs lighting so I thought I'd bite the bullet and get on with the blocking. I didn't fully anticipate how many times it's possible to kneel on pins and not learn my lesson. This was the more repetitive blocking task I've ever undertaken and it has definitely reinforced my intention to block the rest of the squares as I knit them ( though as I type, I have three more squares lying on my desk, unblocked, so my intentions appear to be pretty unreliable!).

Despite the gathered pullover and an unbloggable project still sitting unfinished in the work pile, I've also cast on another project. It's the 'On the sunny side' baby sun hat by Melanie Hoffman. I'm knitting it in Colinette Banyan, colourway 'Marble', for the daughter of a colleague . It's a really well-written pattern and will probably only take a couple of evenings to knit up.

More squares

Well, I've finally got round to blocking the body of the gathered pullover and done some thinking about how I'm going to do the sleeves, but until it's dry and the inspiration takes me, I'm back to squares for the blanket.

The initial 4-square-per-evening fervour has subsided to a more managable 2 square per evening-when-I've-got-nothing-else-to-knit pace. I've also stretched the rules about allowable yarns slightly to use up the ends of three balls of Noro silk garden. I would class this as a fairly heavy DK but it looked OK knitted up on 3mm needles.


I have however adhered to the ends-woven-in rule and there is not a single wayward end to be seen in the pile of squares waiting to be blocked.


These are the latest batch of squares. I'm up to 45 squares now so that's 20% of the minimim 225 squares I need.

Photos and Gathered Pullover

I finally gave up on the lack of daylight (even at the weekends - it's really been that dreich) and managed some surprisingly decent photos in a dark room with the flash on.

Here are the first batch of squares for the sock yarn blanket...


I know that I've already broken one of my self-imposed rules and not woven all the ends in yet but hey - I always need room for improvement.


I've also got my mjo back for the gathered pullover. Its amazing what a couple of episodes of Grey's Anatomy on DVD can do for extending the length of a tube of stocking stitch. I had been finding this slow going, but miraculously on Monday evening, I added about 5 inches without really noticing. A couple of days later (including waiting in yesterday morning for a contractor to arrive) I'm now over half way through the cable motif.


As usual, I've made some modifications to the pattern as written.

1) I changed the hemline from a rolled edge to a sewn up facing (and I think I did a pretty good job of the sewing up, even if I do say so myself!).
2) I've lengthened the body so that it falls mid-hip on the real (long-backed) me as opposed to the me in my head.

3) I've added some shaping to the body by changing needle size. I started on 5.5mm (pretty much getting gauge), then shifted down through 5mm to 4.5mm for the waist, then back up to 5mm over the rib cage and through the motif. I think it should block out pretty nicely to fit well without hanging off me.


It's the BigKnitOut tonight so I'm hoping to get up to the armhole and v-neck divides.