In the Making...

I've recently finished two pairs of socks. The first was intended as a Christmas present for Mr but it's very hard to try and knit a pair of size 11 socks in secret and on a deadline, so it was after Christmas that they were finished. His favourite colours are black and burnt orange together. So when I saw the yarn on The Knitting Goddess stand at Yarndale, it just had to be bought. The colour name is just great too, "Where There's Muck There's Brass". The pattern is Paper Moon  by AnneLena Mattison .  My ravelry project page . The pattern didn't go up large enough, so I had to alter it. The largest size went up to 70 sts, mine were 77 sts; I added the extra stitches within the garter stitch bands. I worked them two at a time on circulars from the toe up. I'm a toe down kind of girl but I tried them for a change. Though I did manage to use up every yard of yarn this way, which definitely gets a tick in the pro column. They look...

Sorry for the alliterative title, couldn't resist. With an offhand comment to Mr, "That it's Wonderwool Wales this weekend and wouldn't it be nice to go." His response being, "Why can't we?". So we did. Bit bonkers. 10 hours of driving in total but it was lovely weather and we had a good day. I was relatively restrained with my purchases. Here's what I bought: Rachel Coopey's new book, Coopknits Socks, and some sock yarn. The bronze one is Fyberspates Vivacious 4ply and fivemoons Luna 4ply 50g hanks in Denim and Pumpkin and a little mini one too. The scotch eggs were fab! I can finally show you a finished project, which just happens to be a Coopknits pattern!  John Huston in Posh Yarn Megan 4ply, just in time for a birthday present.

I love knitting in the round and have done a LOT of it. So I thought I had fairly good knowledge on the subject. I was bought Circular Knitting Workshop by Margaret Radcliffe for my birthday and was quite surprised that there was a lot of information that I've been finding very useful. It's a beautifully made book, clearly written with lots and lots of good photographs. It's set up like a lot of knitting books with techniques and then projects to demonstrate the techniques. However, the first 103 pages of this 320 page book are filled with details of circular knitting from the cast ons, joining in the round methods, diffferent ways to graft,  to converting a pattern to circular knitting. I wish I'd had this book when I first started. It's very in depth. Much of the information I've seen in other places such as books, Youtube, Ravelry etc. but it's brilliant to have it all in one place and organised into sections. One section that surprised me was abo...