Ginger Knits UK

Finished: Book The Circle by Dave Eggers. I thoroughly enjoyed And you shall know our velocity by Dave Eggers, so when my work friend Nick was reading this I asked if I could borrow it. I tend to read borrowed books faster than my own as I feel the impetus to return them before they get lost in my piles of book. I had no trouble finishing this and found it compelling from the start. I won't say much about the plot (I hate spoilers and hardly ever read the blurb on the back of books which seem to give away half the plot) but it starts with a young woman leaving her dull hometown job to work at a googlesque company, Circle. I work in digital communication which may have piqued my interest but if you use the internet (and here you are dear reader), you should read this. Heck, I'm not even sure I should be blogging after reading this book. Started: Allotment 2014 We headed to our strip of land on Saturday. Most of the work was wedding, pulling up an ex...

Hello blog I haven't seen you for a while. I've been volunteering/interning/working full-time at MSF UK for the last few months, learning new skills and lots more about the awesome humanitarian work they do. Most of my job has been on the website so when I get home in the evenings the last thing I've wanted to do is look at the internet. I've got a small hiatus before something else begins, so I'll be doing a spot of catching up. I haven't knitted much either, (blame the Game of Thrones book series for that) but I have done some knitting. © Clare Storry These are p/hop samples of one of my favourite sock patterns, Molly Weasley's gift socks . I really like knitting these (this is my second pair) as the pattern is easy to memorise, making them very portable, but there are a couple of interesting parts which makes them interesting to knit too. They are the Vikkel braid just after the cuff and the eye-of-the-partridge heel. I have no idea...

Last year when I went to Dublin with p/hop I stayed with my good fibre friend Bioniclaura. We had the traditional viewing of the stash, in Bioniclaura's case, the yarndrobe, browsing of pattern books and general knitchattery. Laura is an excellent knitter and crocheter. However she was lamenting her inability to knit socks (she has crocheted a fine pair which you can see here on Ravelry ). When I returned home I decided to knit her a pair as a thank you for having me gift.  Monkey  is a classic pattern and great for variegated yarns. The yarn I used for Laura's socks is some I'd dyed myself. When I was knitting them I was watching a lot of zombie films, mainly the Ramero living dead series, The Walking Dead and Simon Pegg Classic, Sean of the Dead. The way the yarn knitted up reminded me of gory zombie inflicted wounds. So dear reader, I give you Walking the Dead Monkey socks . Grrrrrrreat.

I finished the frakking socks on the way to my Uncle's funeral, kitchener stitch and everything! The funeral went well and on my way back to London I spied this Phillip Larkin statue in Hull Station. I managed to squeeze out one more photo of me with it as I love Larkin's poetry. I tried to persuade my parents to be in the photo so I could quote his most famous work but they weren't having any of it. I picked up a copy of Caitlin Moran's new book, How to be a Woman , which I started on the train home. It is magnificent and made me guffaw out loud in places, mostly going under the Humber Bridge. You should read it.

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 in Yorkshire last weekend celebrating my mum's birthday. We treated ourselves to a wonderful lunch at The Bay Horse in Hurworth. I was expecting pub grub, you know, tasty food which looks home cooked. What arrived was something from Mastchef The Professionals. I don't use the word amazing much, I think it's overused,often on the mediocre, but this was amazing. This was Alex's starter, eel with horseradish foam (YES, FOAM!!!) and a concentrate of beetroot as well as jelly cubes of something tasty (we can't remember what they were. I had a butternut risotto which was delicious but not as photogenic as Alex's starter. The main courses were equally exquisite though we were too busy eating to take any photos. I was surprised how filling I found the food though we had enough room left to try the desert taster menu. I'm not much of a cake fan (yes, I know that's odd, especially for a knitter, I much prefer savoury foods to sweet) but espec...

When Bioniclaura came to stay for KnitNation she very kindly gave me some Donegal Aran Tweed Yarn . The yarn is made in Ireland in a mill in Kilcar, County Donegal and I bought a little more of it when I visited the Knitting & Stitching show in Dublin with p/hop in October. As I'm supposed to be making 52 pairs of socks this year of course I made socks. The yarn is lovely to work with and though it feels a little rough at first after a gentle wash in some soak it softens up beautifully. I made these socks toe up, using Judy's Magic cast on for the toes. I cast on 18 stitches and increased every other round using YOs knitted through the back loop to 36 stitches on 3.75mm needles. They have a standard heel flap and gusset and were very quick to knit, taking one evening per sock. I gave this pair to my Mother in Law for Christmas and she is very happy with them. Though she loves all my knitting and often contemplates nicking things I have made for other people like some yarny...

I'm currently making myself a pair of socks using some left over Mist Alpaca yarn in 2 colourways. I love the way the colours are working together as I alternate the yarns and the stripes remind me of Paul Smith colours. While Browsing the Paul Smith website to find something similar to illustrate my point I came across this. Image from PaulSmith.com I'm emulating Paul Smith who is imitating granny squares. I think I prefer mine to his. At least when I make granny squares they are real!

The healing powers of knitting are severely underestimated. After 8 weeks being stuck in the flat, only able to hobble a couple of hundred meters at most, the lure of Cookie A's book launch at Loop was the incentive I needed to try walking further without my leg brace. Cookie A, for you non-knitters out there, is a sock designer who makes beautiful and sometimes quirky patters. I've made two of her patterns already, pomatomus and monkey which were both fun to knit. She's got a new book out which as well as including patterns also has good tips on how to design socks, which is something I'm just starting out on. Cookie and her husband were both lovely and friendly and happy to share tips for sock designing, pose for fan photos and sign books. I'm just so happy to have made it out of the flat for something which isn't a hospital appointment. And there were biscuits. Yay. I'm going to put my leg up, ice it, and work out which socks to knit next, or maybe de...

I've given up on TV. After 4 weeks of vegging in front of fairly quality TV I've had enough. I'm spending the mornings listening to Radio 4, then when the Archers comes on at 2pm I switch to BBC 6 Music. I did try XFm but it's full of ads and plays the same tunes over and over again. I'm also reading a bit more which is a good thing. I'm currently on a murder mystery set in the 1900s with Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung as characters in the novel. Actually I haven't completely given up TV, still watching the Dally Show which I record on More4 then watch the next day. John Stewart makes me giggle. I'm still following Heroes, Lost and BSG as well as Corrie. I've become obsessed with sock knitting, probably as I'm enjoying wearing hand knit socks at the moment as they are comfier and warmer than shop bought ones, and they are easy and portable to knit. These are my latest pair, I'm using up some Hummingbird Alpaca sock yarn I had left over from maki...

I've had these socks on the go for ages. I think I started the first one about 2 years ago, when I was a relatively new knitter. I wanted to make the second sock with the pattern reversed but didn't have the skills to do so. I recently found this blog post on reversing the Pomatomus pattern so spent last week making sock 2. While I like the end result I did find these really tedious to knit. I prefer the reversed pattern to the original, although that may be due to an improvement in my knitting. Here's the knitty details: Needles: Bamboo 2.5mm DPNs Yarn: Can't remember, bought it ages ago in Liberty. It's quite stretchy so I think it's got elastic in it. Used Less than 2 50g skeins. The colour is semi solid.

I made the first one of these while in India. The Darwin Day KAL (Knit-A-Long) over in the Ravelry AAC group provided the impetus to overcome second sock syndrome. The yarn is handspun British yarn from a seller on Etsy. Etsy is a great arena for crafters and I can lose hours there browsing the beautiful hand made items. My yarn is from Shunklies , a UK spinner. I used 2.5mm bamboo DPNs to knit the socks. The pattern is called Monkey .