Flukes finished...well....

They are for the moment. Really they need to be slightly ripped back so that I can include the 2 pattern repeats I forgot but as I managed to knit the toe and sew in all the ends before I noticed I'm considering it to be temporarily completed. Much as I wish I could just rip it back now and get it done, I just don't have the heart. As soon as I had woven in the last end I had mentally moved on to the next project so I have done just that and I'm currently cruising along on my first Charade. I'm planning on getting on and fixing the fluke once I have finished the first Charade so hopefully I'll have forgiven the socks for coming out wrong (it wasn't my fault, they made me do it) by then.

So far I am really enjoying the Charade pattern, it is really easy to memorise and while being more interesting than stocking stitch is really not very much more complicated. I actually started the main herringbone pattern on Saturday evening just after our power went out so it turns out the pattern is easy enough to do even by candlelight! I have to say that it was a very good job that I had some knitting I could do in the dark otherwise I may have been very pee'd off indeed. Our house is an old bungalow which lies between and area of scrubby trees on one side and the site of a new build on the other side. The new build is pretty much complete on the outside and they are now ready to start laying their cables and pipes etc. So on Saturday there was a digger digging a massive trench all the way up the drive for said pipes etc. Despite Chris warning them that there were wires where they were digging, the owner insisted it would be fine and to carry on. Needless to say within a minute or so they had sliced through our power line and water pipe and we were left in the dark (and cold) until 10:30 at night. They did fix the water pipe pretty quickly which was a start but when it got to 4 hours after my dinner time I was beginning to lose my sense of humour a little. In addition, it looks like the area to the other side of the house is being prepped for redevelopment as well. They started removing the trees on Thursday and apparently there will be heavy traffic to the area as of today, so I'm absolutely dreading what I will find when I get home today. I guess it is a good job I'm a knitter, I can just sit down, pick up my needles and let it all wash over me. Unless Mr Next Door Man starts doing whatever he was doing the other day that made my house shake again. If that happens again I'm going round there with my knitting and poking him in the eye with it. There are limits.

Alexandra Palace

I have had a very busy weekend which included my long awaited trip to Alexandra Palace for the Knitting and Stitching Show. I went with one very specific aim in mind, to get some buttons for Brights 1 and I did not come home disappointed! I set out at about 8:30 to meet my sister at her house and then wandered to the train station for 9 ish. We really did not want to set out that early but there is something going on with the trains further along the line so our usual 40 minute journey into London took about an hour and a quarter. When we finally arrived at the venue we had a good slow wander round, taking everything in, thinking about what we might like to get and remembering where we anted to return to once we'd been all the way round. This was not the case when we reached the Button Company stall. We just dived right in and loved every minute of it. The lady behind the counter clearly had a similar attitude to me, she obviously loves buttons and sees them as objects to just have and to look at as well as sewing them on your clothes. They had a good selection and my button tin is now nearing full. it wasn't til I go home that I actually chose which ones were going onto Brights 1 but I chose some really lovely white heart shaped ones which look really cute.



My second objective at the show was sock yarn. I only have a couple of balls in my stash and they are spoken for so I thought I'd pick something really special
.

This is Cherry Tree Hill Supersock in Silver Streak and I love it. i made a scarf for my grandma last year using some Glitter Alpaca in the same colourway and I really liked that so hopefully these will turn out lovely. I like the monochrome effect but there are some nice subtle greens and blues in there which will make the end effect a little less stark. Can't wait to get going with that. I'll have to get get Chris to help me wind it first, luckily he seems to quite enjoy that.

My third objective was to get Jess to buy some yarn. She can knit a bit but she has been resisting any urges because she is worried that she might be turning into me! Jessie is 11 years younger than me but even my dad has his moments when he has to pause a second while he works out which one of us he is talking to. One of my favourite tricks is to go round and visit them and then borrow a jumper off Jess and confuse him even more. The result of this is that we do get compared quite a lot so I can see why she wants to assert her own personality and doesn't want to take after me so much but hopefully the call of the yarn will be too much for her. before we went on Saturday Jess decided she would like to make some armwarmers and we had been most of the way round the show and we still hadn't seen anything she liked. Eventually we spotted something just right and I was really pleased that she had picked something from Aragon yarns. They are a Kentish company, so are fairly local to us and it seemed really nice that she picked it. I'm going to help her devise a really simple armwarmer pattern and really look forward to posting the results when she's got them done.

We both got a few other bits and bobs before heading for the train station, once we were there we couldn't resist a quick trip into Lush where they had just put out all of their Christmas stuff. We both came out loaded with great smelling bath bombs and bubbles and shower gel, lamenting that there would be no time for a nice wallow in the bath when we got home. I got back to my house around 5 and I needed to be at the restaurant for a hen night by 7:30 so I didn't have time for much more than a cursory glance at my purchases before heading out, but I think a good day was had by all.

Et Voila!

Well Brights 1 is finished, I'm really pleased with it, it fits just right and looks nice on which is always a bonus. I think my second greatest fear when finishing a project is that it will just not suit me and I will have gone to all that effort just to look silly. My greatest fear is it not fitting, but I suppose I can do something about that if you want to rip it back and start again. Although I suppose you can do that if it doesn't suit you too, rip it back and make it into something else. Anyway.... I think this will be something I wear a lot, although I will have to buy some buttons and sew them on so that I can actually wear it! The Knitting and Stitching show is this week so I'll get the buttons there, this means I'll have ever such a lot of choice but I will have to wait til the weekend to wear it.

I am also making good sock progress too. I've decided to be sensible and keep working on the Flukes rather than casting on for anything else. I finished the first sock a couple of months ago but they have been hibernating since while I worked on bigger garments. I am now well on my way to finishing the leag on the second sock and I'm hoping the rest won't take me too long. I am really enjoying knitting this pattern. The lace has become pretty intuitive, all I need is a quick glance at the chart at the beginning of each row to remind myself what I'm doing and I'm off. The pattern has only 8 rows and to my tiny mind it seems like I have achieved something every time I finish a pattern repeat. It's quite good cos it breaks the whole thing down into manageable chunks.

I will add photos of me actually wearing this when I remember.

It's Socktober!

Well October has arrived and with it Socktoberfest. Unfortunately I am still working on Brights 1 so I have a choice of whether to go all out til it's done and then get on with some socks. Whether to abandon it all together until november or whether to work simultaneously on it and sock thereby impeding progress on both of them. Things are just never easy!

With regard to this I was going to write about how it looked like the weather was turning and how I could see the long winter nights stretching ahead of my begging to be filled with knitting. However I am sitting next to a window through which glorious sunshine is pouring, which kind of puts paid to that, at least for the time being. Yesterday was pretty grim all grey and brooding and rainy. I was a little unimpressed by that as I hadn't been out on my scooter in the rain before, but I put on my waterproof jacket and trousers and made it to work with no dramas. When I woke up this morning it looked pretty awful too. In fact it was pouring with rain as I was leaving the house, so I pulled on all my waterproofs again but by the time I got my bike out of the garage it had stopped and by the time I had been riding for five minutes it was shaping up to be a glorious day. Needless to say I felt a little conspicuous arriving at work in full waterproof gear! I'm actually quite looking forward to the winter, I like it when the nights draw in and you can feel all cosy indoors. I love getting out all the woolly jumpers and hats and scarves and surrounding myself in snuggly stuff, I guess I was born to be a knitter.