Ginger Knits UK

Deadline day. I had til midnight to knit another fiddly heel, two feet and two toes. My camera ran out of juice to document progress but I did take a crummy webcam photo on Mr G's laptop. Luckily the weather wasn't enticing us outside so I had an excuse to sit in my parents dining room and knit. I did have to stop for lunch, and to chat to Max the notmycat, but mostly I knit. I work well to deadlines and worked out how to do more complicated cables without a cable needle, making the socks grow much faster, though with slightly gappier cables. I need to work on that, though a bit of tweeking at the end will neaten out the gaps. By 11pm I had finished one sock and had a "Viper V" and the toe to go on another sock. I made it to the toe by midnight but couldn't knit anymore. Plus I had an early start in the morning. So near, and yet so far....

As I was visiting my parents I couldn't spend all weekend knitting, especially on a lovely day out to Durham. I didn't knit when we stopped for a picnic lunch by the River Tees as I was too busy feeding the ducks and taking in the view. If I'd been knitting plain socks I might have been able to knit and walk. But I wasn't, so I didn't knit as I walked along the Tees, taking in the lovely scenery. I also didn't knit when we were trying to spot Durham Cathedral through the trees or when we examined this interesting sculpture or when we visited the Old Fulling Mill , Museum of Archeology which was a bargain at £1 to visit. Inside there was an exhibit of Chinese Funeral stuff and also British History, mostly of the surrounding area. I thought you might like these Bronze age spinning whorls. I didn't knit while over looking the Tees either but did take a photo of sock no. 2. I also didn't knit (yes there is a theme here) when ...

I was up at stupid o'clock on Friday to get the train to Yorkshire to see my parents. I thought I'd sleep for the whole journey but the challenge was too much to resist so I did knit most of the way. Writing this in retrospect I can't remember how far I got with it but also knit in the car from the train to my parents house and for most of the day at my parents, taking breaks to chat to the cat from next door who sleeps in my parents garden. Nice tache, eh? There were some dropped stitches, cables twisting the wrong way and swearing but also some constructive knitting. Next time on Frakking Socks, a trip to Durham and some swearing.

On Thursday evening at 5pm on the dot I eagerly cast on the first of my Viper Pilots socks. I also tried out a Google+ hangout for the first time and could see and chat to knitters in the US also casting on their first socks, which was pretty nifty. Unfortunately we don't have a proper microphone so I have to talk through our skype phone which makes knitting at the same time tricky, so I listened to the other knitters chatting away about cast on techniques and the like. I was storming along, on about my third round of ribbing when I realised I'd cast on 10 stitches less than the pattern. While this wasn't a major disaster, as I usually make my socks narrower as I have thin feet and ankles, it did make me take stock of my occasional cockiness and pay more attention. Much like being back at school. I worked out how to modify the pattern, adding a couple of increases before starting the leg and removing one stitch from the ribbing sections of the pattern making my socks a n...

I'm about to embark on a daft challenge. I first spotted it on Google+  and after a little poking around on Ravelry found the Can't Sock it Challenge. The aim is to knit a pair of socks over the four days of Sock Summit, a sock extravaganza taking place in Seattle, and the pattern must have been blogged by the YarnHarlot. I think I an knit a plain pair of socks over four days so have added the challenge of choosing a heavily cabled sock, Viper Pilots by GlennaC. I was an avid watcher of the new Battlestar Galactica so found the perfect yarn to knit the socks in. It's YarnYard Clan which has great stitch definition for cables. The colourway is unnamed so I have christened it Blue Steel. I was tempted to cut the corners off my pattern print out to add to the BSG geekiness, but I couldn't be bothered. Cast on time is 9am PST or 5pm BST. I'm itching to get going, suppose I better wind the yarn first... I'll try and update my progress here over the weeken...

Last night, when I got home from taking the p/hop stuff to KnitNation and exploring the marvellous marketplace , I planned to write a blog post about all the fab vendors there. Then I watched the news, and the report from Somalia made me cry. Not just weep softly but full on snot river tears of anger that small children and their families are still suffering from a lack of the most basic and essential resources. So instead of writing here I wrote here.... ...and I lit the knit signal. You know what to do.