In the Making...

I'm doing Sockdown again, this month. You'd have thought I'd been all socked out by now. I'm doing a pattern from the "Underappreciated" category - so any sock pattern that has less than 15 projects on Ravelry. I'm doing Phaeodaria by Hunter Hammersen , which is absolutely gorgeous and have no idea why it hasn't got more projects - though it's a relatively recent release. Incidently, the pattern was in the Sock Report , which are all patterns using sock weight yarn and there are some really gorgeous patterns in it. I "accidently" (imagine I said this with lots of irony!) bought all the patterns. It's a twisted cable pattern and there are a couple of stitches that I'd not encountered before. Twisted decreases - described in the pattern by k2tog tbl and ssk tbl. I thought k2tog tbl was pretty self explanatory but was struggling to find a clear description of a ssk tbl. If you slip, slip and knit through the back loops, then i...

I had a wonderful day at the weekend. I spent the entire day in the back garden with my dyeing gear and my burco . The weather was gorgeous and it was really good to be out in the garden which I haven't done much this year. It's my first go at handpainting yarns and I made a complete and thorough mess even though I had my gloves and apron I seemed to have more dye on me than the yarn did! I dyed 3 lots of merino sock yarn (or at least I think it is as it wasn't labelled and from a bargain bin on the bluefaced.com stall) The yarn turned out like I wanted but I had a few problems with the fleece. I did something wrong somewhere because the pale greeny one was meant to be bright blue so it either needed an extra wash before hand or I didn't put enough citric acid in. The purple is wensleydale and silk and turned out as intended though.