" title="Knit one, read two"> Knit one, read two

From looking at this first photo and, indeed, from looking at the project itself at first this could easily be mistaken for a baby sock. Looking a little closer reveals that it is actually adult-sized. In fact, it’s the first of a pair of socks that I’m knitting for my Mum as a belated Mother’s Day present. She wears a lot of these little trainer liner socks when playing golf so I’m hoping these will get lots of use.

The pattern is Pom Pom Peds from Purlbee. I haven’t decided whether or not to make the pom-poms yet. I know my Mum has a strong preference but I can’t remember whether it is for pom-poms or against. I wonder if there’s any subtle way I can work the question into a conversation!

And here’s one I made earlier from the same pattern with some leftover Opal sock yarn. Unfortunately, I don’t think I have enough yarn to do the pair but since I still don’t really like the stripes, maybe it doesn’t matter.

These are a really quick knit, that’s one and half socks since Friday.

Now, I’m generally considered an intelligent person but like many other intelligent people, I occasionally do things so lacking in common sense that people wonder how I’ve managed to survive as long as I have.

So, recently there was a weird confluence of events. I finished my Katje cardigan without having planned what I fancied knitting next; Birdwoman was talking about knitting lace; I had been raiding my stash/unfinished projects and reclaiming yarn from projects that I was never going to finish.

Next thing I know, I’ve cast on for a River with some Kidsilk Haze that I’ve had for a long time. It was going to be a shrug but I finally admitted that I was never going to wear the shrug and I should use the yarn for something else.

Now, one of the reasons I was so keen to move directly on to a new project was the fact that I have my next set of exams in less than a month and I needed something to distract me.

Note to self: knitting lace in fluffy mohair does not help relieve stress. I don’t think I’ve made this many mistakes in a project since my first garter stitch doll’s blanket when I was 7.

Some times it flies along with no problems at all and then there are nights like last night when it takes me half-a-dozen attempts to get to through a single row.

Never mind, I’d still prefer this

to this

any day!

Ta-dah!

Another finished cardigan. This time, Katje from Cocoknits, knitted in Noro Cash Iroha.

Even more amazingly, I have actually woven in all the ends already. There were a lot of knots in the Noro resulting in a lot of ends to be woven in but two episodes of Battlestar Galactica and one episode of Blackpool later, they were all done. It helped that that was the only finishing needing done on the cardigan; no seaming whatsoever!

I love this cardigan. It’s a great casual wear and the yarn makes it nice and snuggly.

My only complaint is that it seems that Spring is finally here and I might not get to wear it as often as I’d like!

I hate knitting sleeves. No, really, I hate knitting sleeves. I don’t mind acres of stocking stitch in the bodies of jumpers but, for some reason, knitting plain sleeves really, really bores me.

I think it is because sleeves feel like they should be quick to knit; after all, the rows are much shorter than body rows. But, no matter how quickly they are going, I always think they should be going faster.

I’ve discovered that the only way I can get through sleeve-knitting with any of my sanity intact is to adopt a Zen approach: the less I care about how much of the sleeve I’ve knitted, the more of the sleeve will have been knitted. Unfortunately, the only way for me to achieve a mind-state where I’m not measuring the sleeve length every five minutes is to distract my mind from my knitting entirely, usually by way of watching a favourite DVD.

The reason for this rant? I’ve finished knitting the body of my Katje and I’m in the process of knitting the sleeves. So, last night, I sat down with my knitting and Blackpool (warning: spoilers^*) on DVD and managed to get the rest of the first sleeve finished. (Apologies, as always, for the scary headless web-cam photos but I am supposed to be studying today!)

One down, one to go!

* Spoilers doesn’t really cover it. The warning should really say “BBC have decided to summarise entire plot of series, including how every plot thread turns out, in four paragraphs.”

While I’m on the subject of coffee, Steven and I found ourselves in the unusual position of having a free weekday afternoon recently and decided to spend it in town with three of our favourite things: books, coffee and cake so I thought it might be nice to share some of our recommendations for the best places to find these in central London.

Books

London Review Bookshop: A brilliant bookshop with an amazingly wide range for the size of the shop. The London Review of Books is a fortnightly literary periodical, similar in format to the great 19th century periodicals, so the books are more likely to be sporting stickers saying “Radio 4’s Book of the Week” than “Richard and Judy’s Bookclub”. Bury Place, just round the corner from the British Museum.

Foyles: Europe’s largest bookshop (in terms of number of books stocked) has been on Charing Cross Road for over 100 years. Huge food/drink and poetry sections. They also have a secondhand/antiquarian department.

Quinto: the London outpost of the Hay Cinema Bookshop. One of the best secondhand bookshops in London. Charing Cross Road.

Any Amount of Books: Another excellent secondhand bookshop, although its prices tend to be higher than Quinto. Charing Cross Road.

Forbidden Planet: A must for sci-fi fans. As well as books, they also stock DVDs, games, action figures, t-shirts and much, much more. The only bookshop in London (that I know of) with a “Paranormal Romance” section. Shaftesbury Avenue.

Gosh! comics: A new discovery for us but one of the best comic shops we know of. Great range of stock from Disney and Tintin through to DC Comics, Dark Horse and many, many more.

Coffee

Caffe Vergnano 1882: Not much seating but the coffee is great. Charing Cross Road.

Monmouth Coffee Company: Best coffee in London, according to Steven. Covent Garden & Borough Market.

Cake

The cafe at London Review Bookshop: Wonderful cupcakes and larger slices of cake. I highly recommend the Lemon Merinuge Cupcakes if they’re available; they were better than many full-size lemon meringue pies I’ve had. Tip – If you like your coffee milky but still tasting of coffee, get a double shot here.

Konditor and Cook: Brilliant cakes, biscuits, gateaux but their hot food is just as good at lunchtimes. Not all of the branches have seating; the Curzon Soho and Gherkin branches are two that I know that definitely do.

I would like to present my most recent finished item: a cosy for our cafetière.

It’s hard to explain just how excited I am about this project. It’s a quick, simple garter stitch project using leftover yarn and yet I’m more excited about it than any of the more complicated projects that I’ve knitted recently.

The reason: I designed it myself. It is the first project that I’ve had the idea for and then actually sat down, knitted and finished it. I have a notebook that I keep ideas for knitting projects in. At the moment, it has notes and thoughts for about 14 projects in it, including this one. Of the others, I’ve knitted a gauge swatch for one and knitted up most of another one but failed miserably to take notes as I did so and have only managed to half-finish the seaming.

So, to actually take this project from initial idea to finished item makes me very, very happy.

I’ll be even happier when I get around to writing up and publishing the pattern but I have a feeling that that’s going to be much more difficult and time-consuming than the knitting was!

And to show just how simple a project this is:

Having just finished knitting another pair of socks, which it turns out was the fifth pair in less than a year, I think I might have to finally admit that I like knitting socks. For those of you who remember previous claims that I didn’t like knitting socks, I do have an explanation: I don’t like knitting the socks that lots of other sock-knitters like knitting and which, for a while, were the socks that I thought I should be knitting.

Obviously, I’m not talking about all other sock-knitters here but, for lots of people, sock-knitting is about bright, varied colours and interesting patterns. The thing that I’ve finally accepted is that I don’t like the bright colours and interesting patterns and I won’t wear the socks once I’ve knitted them. Whereas, relatively plain patterns knitted in solid colours will get worn all the time. Since I’m very a much a product knitter rather than a process knitter, of course I didn’t enjoy knitting something that I wasn’t going to enjoy wearing.

The fifth pair of the year, Steve’s Thuja (from Knitty), is a great example of the plain colour, plain pattern sock that I love. Knitted in a tweedy oatmeal shade with just a simple seed rib, they still look great. The only thing I would do differently with this pattern in future, would be to use a different toe that didn’t require grafting. I know that grafting a toe is easy but, since finishing is my least favourite part of any project, why do it when I don’t have to?