knitelly

Another week of knitting goodness. Monday I went to John Lewis, where I changed my mind about the DK for SockWars and bought this ball of Cashsoft. I've been wanting to try this for some time, and thought socks would be a great small project to try it out, plus add a little special softy goodness to the gift. I swatched on Friday, was relatively happy with the result, went back to JL on Saturday to buy another ball........ to find that there wasn't a single ball left of the same colour, let alone dye-lot.

So I bought two balls of DB merino DK in a deep orange. So far, it's been lovely to use, but I'm not convinced that it's a good yarn for socks (especially those with a stretchy rib pattern - unless they were only ever to be used slouching on a sofa in front of a fire).

The SockWars pattern is simple and suits DK - (with a more robust yarn, these would make great socks for men) and I knit the leg, turned the heel and picked up the instep very quickly. Quite a few of the warriors had finished their socks in a couple of days, although with no homes to go to..............

..............due to power outages and resulting IT problems, the onset of war was delayed, dossiers still have not been sent out resulting in much confusion and some resentment. This is a great shame, because by all accounts, the Yarn Monkey has organised this war on her own, while looking after her family and keeping down a job. If I had been affected by a hurricane, I'm not sure that emailing 700+ knitters their dossiers would be very high on my priority list, and the fact that she has obviously had to overcome huge obstacles to provide us with enough information to make a start is nothing short of amazing. I wish the kill-joys would remember this is supposed to be fun.

In other knitty news, I went to two knitting groups this week; on Tuesday I went to Angelknits, the first time in months. I do like the Rose Inn, but that evening the lighting was dreadful. Still, it was nice to catch up with people. On Wednesday the Phoenix hosted another excellent evening at the I Knit London club, which you can read about here.

Cozy is progressing slowly. I had a slight setback, when I had to rip out a few rows to correct an error, and as I've said before, frogging this yarn in this pattern is not fun. But I love the pattern so much, I really want to make a shawl for myself, so I bought some Jaeger extra fine merino aran in black.

After John Lewis, I paid my first visit to Loop. Just like Stash Yarns, the shop is much smaller than appears on the website, but Oh. My. God. What gorgeous, gorgeous yarn. I particularly fell in love with the Be Sweet yarns [tagline: creative products with a conscience]. As soon as I have finished both Cozies, I'm going to buy me some of this dang good stuff and knit me a piece of heaven.

Anyway, obviously I couldn't leave Loop without buying something; a couple of sets of bamboo dpns, my first Addis, and this, one skein of Debbie Bliss pure silk. I'm going to see how far it goes into making a scarf - using the Cozy pattern OF COURSE.

Right, that's me done for tonight. Must stop buying yarn and concentrate on some actual knitting this week. Hopefully, I'll have some pictures of some FOs soon.