Catching up

This is Ella blocking, all flat! I've worn her a couple of times, and she's nice and warm, and I'm pleased I paid attention to alternating the more- and less-variegated skeins in knitting her.



This is the Zauberball I mentioned in my last post, in the process of becoming the dragon's breath scarf (so named because this is an adaptation of the flickering flames pattern, and red). I'm a lot further on now than in this picture - I just haven't taken any photos for ages.

I've finally finished both Lucas's Tomten and the red cardigan, both of which were waiting for fastenings, and I'd failed to find the green toggles and reddish-purple ribbon, respectively, I wanted, so in the end I plied some yarn (orange for tomten and the silk mix edging yarn for the red cardigan) against itself twice to make cord ties. The double plying means the cord is stable, and it's four times thicker than the working yarn, which is a good thickness.

I've now got three knitting projects on the go, and they're all actually in progress: yesterday I worked on all three of them, depending on how much my eyes were free to look at them:

• Coriolis socks (almost no looking-at required) while working through some of the reading for the first week of my course


• Dragon's breath scarf (some looking-at required) while watching TV


• Selbu modern hat (lots of looking-at required) while listening to music

Snippets of progress

The news in brief:

• Went with Frax and Kauket to see Brenda Dayne knitting on the fourth plinth on Saturday, and then went to the pub with aforementioned plus a load of other knitters who had come for the same reason. F, K and I were by chance all knitting Coriolis, and we all made decent progress, and I made the acquaintance of an Oxford knitter who knows lots of the same people I do.


• On the same trip, went to iKnit, and bought a Zauberball in shades of reds. Have made plans for a flame-patterned scarf.


• Ella is finished and soaking, in preparation for my first ever excursion into blocking. It's very three-dimensional at the moment, so I'm eagerly awaiting the lace-blocking miracle that's reputed to happen.

Project promiscuity (swimming Coriolis)

While knitting Wisteria, I've also done some other knitting...


After I'd finished the heel (eye of partridge, which looks gorgeous with this yarn) of the first sock, I weighed the remaining yarn, and discovered that it's not going to be enough for two full socks, so I immediately put the live stitches on waste yarn and cast on for the second sock with the other end of the ball. These will have contrast legs, but I haven't decided on yarn for them yet. The available one that goes best is the dark red Dream in Colour Smooshy that went with this yarn for the push-me-pull-you socks, but there's more of that leftover - probably actually enough for a whole pair - so I'm reluctant to use it. None of my other sock yarn goes as well, so these might end up being very short socks. On the other hand, the DiC is a suspect in a hat-in-planning I'm thinking about, which would probably leave enough to finish off these socks...

Knitting while camping

Just back from a weekend of camping, swimming and knitting (report on the camping and swimming on my personal blog, and photos on Flickr), during which J and I both cast on for coriolis - she wanted to try a toe-up sock and had beautiful but very dark and rather subtle yarn, and I wanted some simple, portable camping knitting, so coriolis suited both of us. We spent a lot of time sitting at the tent or on the riverbank knitting, and both got to about halfway through the spiral increases. We're planning to cast on the second ones together at the Reading Festival in a couple of weeks (even if we haven't finished the first by then), so these should probably be called my "camping socks", but the swimming trip was so much fun it's taking precedence, and I'm calling them "swimming coriolis".



(This is the variegated yarn I used in my push-me-pull-you socks, but it's so much more beautiful on its own.)

Getting back on the horse

I'm just back from a lovely week with some roleplayers, during which Frax and I compared notes on our lost mojo. She recovered hers during the week, and mine is now slowly resurfacing, I think. I don't want to scare it.

In the couple of months since I last wrote here, I have done some knitting, including most of a cardigan, but it's not gone well, and I'm not sure if the yarn (soft handspun singles) will stand up to frogging and re-knitting (not least because there has been quite a lot of frogging already), so at the moment I'm not thinking too much about that.



While on holiday, I picked up the sixth and final baby jungle stripe coriolis, and forced myself to knit a few rows. Now, at home again, I've found that finishing it required less force than picking it up again did. And I've now wound my first skein of spinning oddments into a ball, and am starting to think about the shawl I'm going to knit it into...