Socks

We got a new camera. It's lovely - much more sophisticated than my previous one. Does lots more things, including macros.



Don't these Knitpicks Harmony needles go well with the Bearfoot yarn from Mountain Colors. I started off making Friday Harbor socks from Knitting on the Road by Nancy Bush. Unfortunately, the yarn just ended up looking a bit lumpy in that pattern, so they are plain K3P1 rib socks with a Friday Harbor cuff.



Speaking of socks: I need to say a big "Thank you!" to my HSKS partner,Yvonne (also known as Emma Gorodok). Yvonne sent the most wonderful sock project bags, filled with goodies. I'm afraid I can't post pictures of everything here now as the little bags are at work, where they will live in my desk, holding stress-relieving and sanity-restoring emergency sock projects.

Warming up

Feels decidedly springy today. I've finished my International Scarf Exchange 6 scarf and after blocking, took it outside to try for a background different to one of my usual sofa shots. Here it is dangling in one of our olive trees:



Some more garden picture:


A miniature flowering cherry.


Each year more and more moss and lichen finds a home on J's pondside Buddha.


The grass is full of tiny aconites and grape hyacinths.

Brrr

A wild and windy couple of days - horizontal snow much of the time and gritters on all the major roads. Why do I remember getting summer clothes and sandals at Easter as a child? Is that one of those trick childhood memories that turns every Summer holiday into a Famous Five book or is the weather really shifting so drastically?

We walked on the beach, dressed like we were walking across Antarctica, and drove up to the Heugh Breakwater, near my new school, to watch the waves in action.





What a person needs, when the weather is like this, is a bright, bright, bright cosy wool sweater:



Terrible picture, but lovely sweater. This is my take on Chinese Lace Pullover by Angela Hahn. My modifications were: longer body (about 3 inches more), merino dk instead of cotton/silk, added some rows of garter stitch around the neck as I felt the neckline was too low when I had finished it, only did 1 repeat of lace around the sleeves so they weren't too fussy.

Back into the light

I feel like this lovely anenome that is flowering in the garden - as though I've been down in the dark, underground, for a while now. It's one of those things that I don't always recognise until I start to come out again. Not a depression, I think, but a head-down, coping-by-putting-one-foot-in-front-of-another period.

Things at work have been very hard for a while - I got the job, we had an inspection and had to weather with the response of some colleagues to the inspection findings, lots of things have been difficult and everyone has been very tired. It's been a long, hard term and I'm glad it's my two week break!

I have responded to the stress of it all by eating chocolate (consequence - weight gain of 4lbs, I was lucky!), sleeping and getting in some knitting - not as much as I would have liked, but it all counts.

I finished my Chinese lace pullover. No pictures yet, but I'll get some done this week.

I have cast on for my International scarf Exchange 6 scarf.

Here it is:



I'm doing a pattern called Forest Shawl or Scarf, which I printed out from t'Interweb. Unfortunately, I didn't bookmark the page or note the creator. It's in James C Brett Merino. The colour is darker than it appears here - more a dark Merlot shade. I love the way this yarn shows the lace pattern and love how soft it is.

I've been making small (and I mean small) woollen hats for Save the Children. They are easy to do and can be finished really quickly - even when my brain is fried and I can't keep my brain focused on anything complicated.



I read, on the Save the Children website, that half of all babies born in Tibet die in their first week - mostly due to hypothermia. What terrible statistics!