I said in my last post that there had been a little bit of knitting while I had been offline but looking back I realise that there was actually quite a lot of knitting just not very many projects.

Most of the knitting went into this:

which is the Tweed Baby Blanket by Jared Flood. The blanket is a modern take (colour-wise) on a very traditional blanket style (garter stitch square knitted on the bias with a feather and fan border).

I’ve been wanting to knit one of these for a long time but, given the cost of the yarn and the effort involved, I was waiting for a good excuse. Becoming an aunt for the first time at the end of April was the perfect excuse!

I used Rowan Felted Tweed DK on 4.5mm needles, which gave a nice drape to the blanket and enough openness to the lace border that I didn’t have to block it. The Felted Tweed is machine washable (which I insist on for baby presents for new parents – they’ve got enough to worry about without worrying about hand-washing woollens). After knitting, I washed the blanket in the machine and then just laid it flat to dry.

I have mixed feelings about the Felted Tweed yarn. I love the colours and the finished blanket is lovely and soft and squishy. However, it sheds a lot even after washing. After knitting with it, my clothing looked like I had been sat on by a small, white hairy dog. As much as I love the finished result, I will need to think very carefully about whether I use the Felted Tweed again in future.

For now, I have to get this blanket posted off before I decide that I’m keeping it for myself!

The second sock syndrome was even worse than I feared. Not only did it take me four attempts to get started but it then took me four attempts to knit the heel. Four seemed to be the magic number though and all was well after that:

(Technically, this is the same picture of the first sock that I showed before but the second one does look exactly the same, honest!)

So now it’s time for a pair for me. I’m making me a pair of my Southwark Spire Socks, since I don’t actually have a pair due to having left one of the sample pair on a train.

The yarn is from The Yarn Yard and is their Bonny sock yarn in “Matelot”. I wanted something similar to the blue that I knitted the samples in and I had heard lots of nice things about Yarn Yard yarn so thought I would give it a go. It is 75% wool, 25% nylon so should be perfect for socks.

I’m really pleased with how it is knitting up so far: the stitch definition is lovely and the subtle variation of the semi-solid is just enough to be really pretty without overpowering the pattern at all. Fingers crossed that this pair isn’t as much trouble as Steven’s socks were!

It’s been nearly three months since I posted about how I needed to knit Steven and me a lot more socks. Unfortunately, despite a lot of sock-related activity (two new patterns and a book review) I’m sorry to say that I haven’t completed even one pair that we can wear.

I have finished the first of a pair of my Real Ale Socks in Regia 4 ply for Steven but I seem to be suffering from a particularly extreme form of second sock syndrome.

Second sock syndrome usually applies to a knitter’s reluctance to knit a second sock due to the repetitive nature of knitting a second item that’s identical to the one you’ve just finished. In my case, the spirit is willing but the flesh appears to be weak. What you see here is my fourth attempt to knit the second sock of this pair:

The first three attempts have fallen foul of bizarre combinations of casting on the wrong number of stitches, working the wrong type of rib for the cuff and twisting the cast-on. I would cross my fingers that I’m past the worst of it but I don’t think that’ll help with the knitting!

This weekend has been one of the most exciting in my short career as a knitting designer. Why? Because the latest issue of Yarnwise is out and I have a pattern in it!

Back in November, I saw a post on Ravelry by the editor of  Yarnwise looking for last minute submissions for their Winter/Spring issues. I usually ignore submission calls because the deadlines rarely work well with my day-job and studying and, well, the rest of my life. However, I realised that for this one I had a pattern already mostly designed that fitted one of the themes really well and I had a few days booked off work that I’d be able to spend tweaking the design and actually writing the pattern. So, I knitted up a swatch/sample, put a submission together, sent it in and the rest is history.

Here are the sample socks before they were posted off to have their “proper” photographs taken:

I’ll do a full “Story of a design” post at some point but for now I’m too busy grinning at seeing my pattern in print!

Sock Innovation by Cookie A. manages the difficult task of trying to be two things at once and succeeding brilliantly at both.

Not only is it a great collection of sock patterns but it’s also an amazing resource for anyone with an interest in designing their own socks. It straightforwardly walks you through many of the issues that need to be considered: how to convert flat stitch patterns for knitting in the round; how to work out where to place the patterns so that they flow nicely into heels or toes; how to invert cable and lace patterns so that they can be knitted in the other direction. There are also descriptions of how to work some of the most common types of heels and toes.

The most important resource in this book for anyone wanting to design their own socks is a table of stitch counts for flap heel and turn variations. Heel flap patterns traditionally say something like:

Row 1: Sl1, kX, ssk, k1, turn work.

Row 2: Sl1, pY, p2tog, p1, turn.

Row 3: …

Row 4: …

Repeat rows 3 and 4 until Z stitches remain.

Until I started designing my Irish Stout Socks, I had never given any thought as to how someone would determine the number for X, Y and Z. For those socks, I figured it out by trial and error but going through that for every sock design would be extremely frustrating and time-consuming. Sock Innovation contains a comprehensive table for values of X, Y and Z based on the total number of stitches in your sock so I never have to do my own calculations again!

The second half of the book is a collection of 15 patterns that demonstrate the techniques from the first half. There are patterns with multiple stitch patterns that transition into each other; socks with mirrored patterning; socks with non-standard gusset decreases. One of my favourites is Rick, shown below, which has a diagonal twisted rib pattern.

So, whether you want to design your own socks or just knit fantastic socks with interesting construction, you’ll find something of value in this book.

When we lived in London, my train journeys regularly took me past Southwark Cathedral. It’s an impressive building from all angles but I was always fascinated by two of the spires which are leaded with a beautiful geometric pattern.

A bit of trial and error got me a twisted stitch pattern:

and quite a lot more trial and error got me a sock pattern that incorporated it:

Southwark Spire Socks are now available from Yellow Ginger Designs and Ravelry.

I hadn’t fully appreciated just how much colder Scotland is than London before we moved back, despite having lived here for most of my life. It doesn’t help that the flat we’re renting (while absolutely beautiful) has really high ceilings and single glazing throughout. It does also have a great heating system but sometimes even that is just not enough. However, woolly socks to the rescue! It’s amazing how much warmer everything feels with a pair of woolly socks on, which means that there’s only one solution – I need to knit Steven and me a lot more socks.

I did get a head-start with this pair that I knitted last autumn but for some reason stopped just a few rows from the end of the second toe. Five minutes knitting and some kitchener stitch this morning and I have a new pair of socks:

The pattern is a free pattern: Winter Lace Socks and the yarn is Cygnet Truly Wool Rich 4 ply. The lace pattern is very simple to follow and makes a very nice sock. I had hoped to get a pair out of a single ball of yarn but ended up having to start a second for the toe of the second sock.

And now they’re keeping my feet toasty warm while I blog – expect to see more socks soon!

I had a wonderful day at the Glasgow School of Yarn the weekend before last. For the second year running, it took place in the beautiful Queen’s Cross Church, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh. It’s not the ideal venue for a knitting event but well worth a visit on its own merits.

I couldn’t make it along on the Friday but signed up to take Woolly Wormhead‘s hat design class on the Saturday. She brought a huge selection of hats for everyone to try on to judge what style would suit them best and then we got stuck right in to measuring each other’s heads, calculating gauge and working through the maths for our hats. Much frantic knitting then ensued (particularly from me since I had not read the joining instructions carefully enough and brought lighter yarn than was really sensible) as we raced to get as far through our hats as possible. It was a great class and I learned a lot about hats and hat design that will no doubt show up in future patterns. I don’t have a picture of my own hat (which is just about finished) but here are some of the selection of her own designs that Woolly brought with her.

Because I was in an all day class there wasn’t a lot of time for shopping but I did manage to find a couple of beautiful things in the marketplace at lunchtime. I bought this pretty little project bag from AndSewtoKnit …

which is just the right size …

… for a new shawl project using the yarn that I bought from Old Maiden Aunt.

The pattern is my Oren Shawl pattern and this one is going to be for wearing under my coat.

Speaking of patterns, I also got to see my Kentigern Shawl, which was my design competition entry, on display:

I’m making some final tweaks to the pattern before it goes for editing but it should be available in the next couple of weeks.

The amazing thing about this post is that I wrote it on the train on my way to work. Not because it is amazing that the technology exists to allow me to blog from the train (which is also amazing) but because it means that I wasn’t frantically knitting my shawl, which is what I’ve spent every other train journey recently doing. For various reason, I had even less time to knit the shawl than I expected to have and it was beginning to look like it might not get finished.

Actually, since the pattern was due first, I had to finish writing that without having finished knitting the shawl so the shawl is artfully draped in the pattern photographs to try to disguise the fact that half of its border is missing! The pattern was finished and submitted on Tuesday (also on the train to work) and from then till I handed the sample in yesterday just about every waking minute that I wasn’t been at work was spent knitting.

In the end, the timetable for finishing it went something like this:

Wednesday

18:10 – catch train home from work, knit whole way home

19:00 – arrive home from work, start knitting again

20:00 – stop knitting long enough to eat pizza which had just been delivered

21:00 – contemplate possibility that it’s actually impossible to finish knitting shawl tonight, keep knitting anyway

22:00 – decide that it is possible but that it’s going to be midnight before it’s done

23:00 – Steven goes to bed

00:15 – knit last stitch of edging, decide to leave grafting of edging till morning

01:00 – go to bed having pinned shawl out to block

Various times during the night – wake up from a nightmare that I accidentally brought the shawl to bed and it’s started unravelling, double-check to make sure that shawl isn’t actually in bed unravelling

Thursday

06:30 – curse the person who invented alarm clocks

06:50 – get up, make coffee, get dressed and ready for work

07:10 – force Steven to admire shawl before letting him leave for work

07:25 – realise shawl is still damp, get hair-dryer and dry shawl

07:45 – graft ends of edging and weave in remaining ends

07:55 – take some very quick, very blurry pictures of shawl which will almost certainly turn out to be completely useless for anything

08:03 – realise that I should have left for work 3 minutes ago, put shawl in bag and run for train

8:16 – actually catch train

12:00 – pop out of office during lunch to travel across city to deliver shawl

13:00 – shawl delivered, normal service resumes

Now that the dust has settled and I’ve had a good night’s sleep, I am looking forward to the shawl’s unveiling at this weekend’s Glasgow School of Yarn where it is my entry in their design competition.  I can’t make it along during the day today but I will be there tonight for the party to celebrate The Yarn Cake‘s second birthday and the results of the competition.

And on the way home on the train I’ll be frantically knitting the gauge swatch that is my pre-class homework for the hat design workshop that I’m attending at the Glasgow School of Yarn tomorrow!

It is not 152,000 stitches … it is more like 164,000.

I’m working on a new circular shawl design and forgot to count the stitches in the border (mostly because I haven’t decided what they’re going to be yet).

According to my revised calculations, the bit shown in the picture is just over 2% of the total shawl. It would have been nearer 4% but I had to rip out quite a bit last night due to a silly charting error and ignoring the little voice in my head telling me that the lace didn’t look right.

Did I mention that I’m working to a deadline and that I’m moving house between now and when this is due? You’ll have to excuse me, I need to go knit the other 98% of my shawl.