Hold that thought

Sometimes life gives you intriguing new potential go-to sock yarn...

 

and sometimes it gives you a loved one's hospital emergency. Sometimes that emergency happens to the person for whom you're the appointed decision maker, too. 

 

At least the hospital in question is pretty.

With lots of gardens!

Canadian healthcare, eh? 

I bought this yarn online as comfort food when things were just bad, and it arrived when things were a lot worse, and it is delicious. 

 

It's Briggs and Little single ply pretty untreated sport weight yarn, which is to say it is scratchy and full of plant fiber, but whoa is it amazing to touch. 

 

Not soft, not silky, but... kinda alive?

Like, all the little nerves in my palm perk up when I hold a skein. Finally! they say. Something we can really work with and examine! 

My feet might not be like-minded, but I'm pretty sure the yarn will soften up enough with the miracle of Soak Wash to make it a real contender in the Great Sock Experiment. 

I want to cake it and cast on socks with it SO MUCH. Even though the socks I'm currently testing out are really satisfying to knit. But there is just no time. I'm coming home from the hospital at night so spent, I don't know how any nurse ever manages to survive a month in that job. In the morning, I can only gaze longingly at it as I rush out the door. In between, I'm navigating diagnosis / treatment / companionship and then updating all the other people in our circle as to what's happening. 

This whole thing has been on the horizon for a while, and will cap more than 96 years of life for the person whose approach to it is utter calm and acceptance. I mean, what more can you ask? I can't let myself be the one to rail against it. But the situation requires a focus on dignity and love and administrative excellence, so this Hug is going to have to serve as a placeholder for a week or three while things unfold.

As I say, hold that thought! And if you have any tolerance for 'rustic' wool yarn, do yourself a favour and try out some Briggs & Little. So affordable and so, so crunchy.

Auditioning new sock yarn

I couldn't decide which of two yarny glamour shots was the most fetching, so you're getting two very similar ones in this post:

And now, an explanation. As part of my long weekend celebration negotiations I traded a visit to a tank museum for a visit to a yarn store. The tank museum came first and ended up being SUPER interesting, go figure, so I tossed the yarn store idea as being impractical and unnecessary since I still have loads of yarn stash despite having Stopped Buying Yarn (except for project-specific emergencies, ahem) some years ago. 

Of course as soon as I got home, I realized that sock yarn shopping is very, very necessary as I still have not found a substitute for my beloved 100% merino wool Vesper Sock, which stopped shipping to Canada years ago because our postal service kept misplacing parcels. 

(If you are reading this from the US, I highly recommend buying a great deal of this yarn. Like, more than you think you'll need. There's no nylon in it, so you may have to darn the heels and toes over time, but it will be worth it. Because there's no nylon to interfere with your enjoyment of knitting and then wearing 100% merino wool.)

Ready for the second glamour shot?

This. This Malabrigo Sock is the *only* yarn I could find, after nosing around online on returning from the tank museum, which is 100% merino wool, an equivalent weight (more on that in a moment) and reviewed well per our friends at Ravelry.  

These reviews all complained that the ensuing socks all wore out in the heels and toes because they have no nylon in them, but honestly, the twist looks a bit tighter even than this purple strand of Vesper, don't you think?

 

Or maybe it's just a bit thinner. I can't tell. The yardage runs a tiny bit longer over the length, I do know that.  

You also need to know that I did my sock yarn hunting online and ending up buying all three of these skeins from Granny Bird's Wool Shoppe, which has one of the most wonderful yarn store names I can imagine, and also, a great selection of yarn on top of fast shipping. Highly recommended!

 

Today's Hug includes a pop quiz.

Question One: which yarny glamour shot did you prefer, the neatly lined up one or the scattering?

Question Two: which bridge view do you like best, the quiet one or the rapids?

 

I can never get over how different these two sides of the bridge are, even if they're both 'water running between green stuff'. So brown, the day I took these... we've had lots of rain and it's stirred things up.

 

Okay this pretty much concludes today's discussion of Sock Yarn Auditions. In the absence of any other contenders, and please feel free to advise me of others available to this Canadian knitter if you know them, we're competing between colourways here. 

I'm betting heavily on the denimy blue Playa to be the yarn most likely to result in differently patterned socks, and Myths to be the yarn most likely to match the fall walking shoes I've got my eye on, and Pearl to be the yarn that looks even less like purple in sock form.

Which of these three categories will win my heart the hardest is what we're watching for, basically, and I doubt you'll wait long to find out because with fast dwindling supplies I'm scared to knit any more Vesper until I have a backup in view... while simultaneously re-hooked on sock knitting.

Thanks again for dropping by and also, for indulging me on my vacation weekend away looking at tanks. Please have a wonderful rest of the weekend! and I'll see you next Saturday.

 

Oh, and here's a picture I took post-tanks of a beautiful garden. Disclaimer: it's part of a cemetery. But it came out so bright and cheery, I just had to share and extend a hope that your day is as technicolour!

 

 

 

 

The last of the stripey sock yarn

Omigosh you guys, ever since I've been knitting socks (give or take a pair) I've been knitting with Knitterly Things Vesper Sock, and after years of club yarn and one-off purchases I thought I'd never get through...

I'm down to six final skeins. And there's no more shipping to Canada, neither. While I work out who I'm going to hit up to take yarn deliveries for me because honestly, the colours on offer aren't getting any less swoonable, I decided to cake two skeins for ready knitting, and eke out the other four. But which two?

I mean these ones are gorgeous.

As are these.

 

waaaaannnhhhh

 

This is SO HARD. But choices need to be made, so I am being ruthless. I don't love this one as completely and utterly as I do the others...

 

... so it's standing back for a minnit. 

And I really, really love these ones, so they're standing back for the final knits.

Which leaves these two!

I mean, they're perfect. One says summer, and the other says autumn, and by a complete coincidence we have a summer and autumn coming up.

Wouldya look at that perfect drape of luscious colour? Whaaaa

Cake time!

Nearly forgot how to do that, it's been so long. Reminds me of how I used to be all yarn all the time, instead of mostly yarns (har har, a writing pun.) It feels good to be getting some balance back.

Here's hoping you have a lovely balanced weekend. And by balanced I mean with equal amounts of good things and even nicer things. Thanks for dropping by, and I'll see you next Saturday!

 

(ps isn't this pretty?) 

 

 

 

New yaaaaarn

Lookit what came in the mail this week!

Remember when I was short one ball of yarn for my current blanket and couldn't see paying shipping from England for just the one ball, and thereby justified buying everything I needed for an upstairs blanket? Well, that's what this giant gauzy muslin bag from Wool Warehouse is about. It's so jammed with blues and greens you can't see the red, but it's in there!

It's always such a gamble trying to match anything to the upholstery and curtains in our main bedroom and my tiny office upstairs. There's a sofa in each room, both done in the weirdest blue which I would have called navy until I saw navy on it, and the same drapes, which also have a lot of strange colours in the blue and creamy floral print. 

But darned if I didn't nail it with the slightly teal 'Mallard Blue' which is close enough for both fabrics without actually clashing.

I couldn't be happier unless I was actually working on this thing.

See what I mean? These colours are tumbling around on this curtain-print sofa cushion like they're already at home. It's gonna be so good!

Here are more glamour pairings with the drapery fabric. The grey beige of Parchment that matches one of the two stem colours, with the cream, called Cream, that matches the background...

And the grey beige that doesn't quite scream at the mushy peas green (aptly called Mushy Peas) that traces the stems and dominates the leaves.

 

 

And how about a closeup of Mushy Peas with the curling vines on the drapes?

  

These five colours were to be the lineup for this blanket - a lighter sea blue called North Sea, a grey beige, a cream, mushy peas green, and the teal blue:

 

But I have this other pale blue colour from an early shopping spree called Duck Egg, which also matches part of the curtain print... the pear shaped bit just to the right of this ball.

It seems to be friendly enough with the other two blues.

It's also from the other mill that used to make this yarn, and therefore it has the shinier element I don't really like messing around with the matte finish of the other colours. So I'm thinking maybe it could be a border? Or if I opt for a granny square blanket, the yarn I use to piece it all together? 

Or maybe I should leave it out entirely, and use it with the leftover blues in some other small projects for these two rooms. 

SO many possibilities. And so much work to do before I get to pursue them! 

Hope your weekend is full of fun or comfort, and thank you as always for spending a bit of it with me. See you next Saturday, hopefully with something that isn't a blanket. 

(but no promises, heh.)

 

 

 

 

Brace yourself for colour

Guys, I did it - I finally took the plunge on gear for a colourful Attic 24-style blanket!

This only 12 of the 15 colours Lucy's Hydrangea blanket calls for, and also, almost none of them are the colours she chose.  I think Lucy's colour choices are key to her comforting, inspiring, cheery brand and I love them all, but I just can't blend that much pink and purple into my red/navy/cream-based decor, ya know?

I think I did a pretty amazing job because only three of the fifteen colours I chose were all wrong for the drapes I wanted to match. Working off small colour swatch images from my screen, that was a surprise! And when I went back to the Wool Warehouse site to find three replacement colours, I had no trouble. There are just that many available in Stylecraft Special DK. 

For closeups though, here are some proofs that the matches really are that matchy... even the gorgeous Pink Rhubarb, top right! I so hoped that one would, because I loved the look of it on screen and I really wanted to tuck in as many Lucy-adjacent choices as possible.

And the excess doesn't end there, because I didn't know what size crochet hook I'd need. Only that I wanted it to be an Addi Swing hook, because I'm taking a big enough risk crocheting a blanket after all that trouble I had with my arm over last year's sweater. So...

 

I got the recommended 4mm size, plus one larger and one smaller. 

Something I noticed about the three I got wrong (stacked on the left) is that they look right with my bedroom drapes, represented by this rumpled cushion:

So when I went back to the site to get the additional living room colours - bottle green, midnight (blue), and lincoln (a muted green) I threw in extra denim blue and parchment beige *and* a duck egg blue. But no more hooks! even though I think I might in future need a 5mm one. If it happens: excuse to go into a local yarn store, amiright?

The top left blue (north sea, I love that one so much) and bottom right (denim) are self-explanatory, but here's proof of the mistletoe green and parchment working for those stems on the bedroom fabric:

Ugh re my rumpled cushion. I guess SOMEbody was leaning on it writing furiously to finish a manuscript or something... anyway in the end, Pete and I agreed that the French navy blue I picked is just No for both rooms. It's really a royal blue, which makes me wonder the the official royal blue looks like. Anyway, it's not totally screamy with the drapes and cushions, but it's horrible with the more mallardy-blue sofa we have under the window, so I will think of something else to do with it. 

(and now I wish I had bought a ball of mallard blue... oh well, I can do it when I buy cream to do all the framing around that dream blanket!)

So, as you can see, I have been very busy this week! Finishing revisions to a manuscript that must be done by Sunday night, and choosing colours for a blanket I couldn't stop obsessing about, and visiting the Royal Winter Fair where I bought more alpaca yarn I will show you later, and being inspired by a friend's crocheted blanket with a very fine hook in wool... which you know I am gonna wanna try, if these two blankets don't knock me off my post.

But now I have to get back to that revision work. I am motivated, because I cannot even swatch for the blanket till it's done. Wish me luck...

And have a wonderful week. Thanks so much for dropping in, and I'll see you next Saturday!

 

 

 

Scraps

 I've been settling in nicely at Instagram the last few weeks, having found my way to a wonderful community of booklovers (come visit!) and I can't help noticing there is a LOT of overlap with knitting. And not because many of us indulge in both passions, either. After all, what is a To Be Read pile if not a Yarn Stash? and read books on a shelf are not unlike yarn scraps.

Of which I have many. Some people never reread books but keep them to fill their shelves as a record of where they've been, and I suppose you can do the same with yarn scraps. I know I recognize many of these yarns and remember the beautiful things I made with them. Still, you *can* reread a book. And you can use up yarn scraps too.

I could almost certainly cobble together a pair of Frankenstein-esque socks with what's lying around in my scrap box. Or embroider something, or even make a rug. Tie up a gift parcel. Braid long strips for drawstrings or tiebacks. Leave some outside strategically for our animal neighbours to use in their nests. And let's not forget the ol' loom. Weaving is the audiobook of the knitting world, in that it allows you to get through stashed yarn very quickly and frees you attack the next thing on the list.

 

Or I could just leave all these scraps in their protective cases in a box in a cabinet to come visit every so often, remembering the diehard knitter I indulged for all those years when I didn't the time or tranquility I needed to tackle a short story, let alone a full-length manuscript. One of which I hope to wrap up in the next few days (or even this weekend, cue the nail-biting)!!! I've only been working on this thing for 14 or 15 months... I am overdue a completed if creaky first draft at this point, don't you think?

 

And on that note, I will take my leave of you for another week, a bit abruptly, but only because I really, really need to wrap up this story.  Hope you have a great weekend and, as always, thank you for spending some time with me today. 

Okay, okay - one more scrap tray! These are the bigger leftovers, generous enough for sock cuffs or handknit pockets. If you have ideas or favourites, I'd love to hear 'em.