Sock festival

As in a very small festival of socks... Thank you to the people who emailed to ask if we were affected by the flooding: we are lucky in so many ways. If this area DID flood we'd be the first house under water but, as this part of the UK is drier than many notably dry places, we were fine. Just a bit damp under grey skies, depressed and over-worked. One bright spot in the last fortnight was the official Trying-On of his third pair of socks.

Yarn: Cross Lanes Farm Aran Wensleydale on 3mm needles.
Pattern: my own, stockinette foot just in case they can be worn in boots, leg is Stansfield 12 from 'More Sensational Knitted Socks'.
Comments: It's official: "The best socks yet". Clearly, when in doubt, make his socks snug rather than loose. Good for length and width, try a 14st heel next time: although that 10st heel looks fine when his foot is on the ground, it's a bit pointy. The rule of thumb seems to be that however many gusset stitches appear if I M1 every second row for 2", it's the right number. I like simple.

Another bright spot was the arrival of a shipment of Wollmeise yarn. I'm torn. The colours are stunning: Claudia works brilliantly (literally) with blues and with red/orange. But... the yarn feels like Lorna's Laces. More like cotton than superwash. However, hers are the colours in which I dreamed I was knitting Gairloch socks. So I am. Two at once, toe-up on 2mmm magic loop, holding both colours in the left hand. Co-ordination counts!
Here's the toe and sole:


And the instep.
On the foot, because that's where socks belong. In sunlight these socks just GLOW! They'll be my winter house socks. Might be winter 2008/9, though :-)

The band-aid on the foot is a reminder of the bright spot that was the weekend just past. Forget stalking end-notes through the dense verbiage of archaeological papers, forget that relatives are coming to stay this week (Must. Clean. House.). Let the music wash it all away for three days. We listened avidly to everything from Last Orders and Show of Hands through Bruce Cockburn, Ruthie Foster, Ricky Skaggs to Toumáni Diabate and more. We stayed to the end three nights running, to listen and dance to CJ Chenier and one of my old favourites, Shooglenifty. Most years we do this by ourselves but this year we had the added pleasure of weaving our path through the music in company with a friend or two. Now? It's Monday morning and we're paying the price for showing those youngsters how it's done. My feet hurt, my throat is raw from cheering and two more papers to be typeset arrived in the mail over the weekend. I don't care. You only live once, make the most of it!

Soon... more socks. I've been spinning Teyani's superwash roving in 'Chain of Fools' (Crown Mountain Farms), entranced by the never-ending changes in colour and the way that plying alters the palette. When Navajo-plied (at the bottom) the colours are too intense, but that two-ply looks a little, just a little, like the subtly multi-coloured handspun that I coveted so badly that I started spinning. I'm now trying for something slightly tighter, a bit more twist, to improve the wearing quality. I must, I really must knit something other than socks. But not this week. Excuse me, I must just go and put my nose to the grindstone.